Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2010
Every seven years, thirty assassins descend on an unsuspecting city and slaughter each other, all the while being observed by hijacked security cameras for the benefit of the high rollers who are betting on the outcome. The previous winner was Ving Rhames, and he thought he had walked away from the life after that tournament. But then his wife was murdered, and he learns that the killer is in the new contest (taking place this time in England). Also taking part is the fatalistic Kelly Hu, who winds up being the reluctant protector of drunken priest Robert Carlyle, who even more reluctantly has become a long-shot competitor in the tournament after accidentally swallowing a tracking device that paints him as a legitimate target.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 22nd, 2010
Eddie Sutton (Russell Hornsby) is an idealistic police officer, dreaming of making a real difference. His family (nurse wife and three kids) is currently living in a too-small apartment. The chance to kill two birds with one stone comes up with a program that encourages officers to buy homes in depressed neighbourhoods, and so Eddie moves his family into a spacious former crack house in the titular LA district. Things, as one might expect, are not easy. Eddie discovers (to his unaccountable surprise) that his new neighbours are suspicious of the police. His son is bullied in school. The girls have their own problems fitting in. And crime keeps rearing its ugly head. But as the series progresses, Eddie and his family make of their new house, and its neighbourhood, a real home.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 17th, 2010
Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) is the manager for the Leeds United soccer team, brought in to replace Don Revie (Colm Meaney), who is off to manage the England team. Clough is young, charismatic, brash, arrogant and opinionated, and has some pretty unflattering (and publicly aired) views about his predecessor and the thuggish style of play he fostered. So begin his 44 catastrophic days in 1974 as the unwelcome manager of United, and the film flashes back to the meteoric rise that brought him to this crucial pass.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 17th, 2010
Director Robert Altman here adapts David Rabe's play about a small group of recruits on the verge of being shipped off to Vietnam. The action takes place entirely in the barracks, and here we get to know African-American Roger (David Alan Grier), fitting in as best he can in a white man's army; sensitive and gay Richie (Mitchell Lichtenstein); and possibly-closeted Billy (Matthew Modine). They talk about and dance around their various fears and anxieties, and then into the mix comes the explosive Carlyle (Michael Wright), whose life on the streets and experience with racism have turned him into someone who talks and acts long before he thinks...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 15th, 2010
When the UK minister for International Development (Tom Hollander) has the nerve (not to mention lack of political acumen) to opine that war in the Middle-East is “unforeseeable,” all hell breaks loose. The pro- and anti-war bureaucrats in Washington see him as useful to their cause, and descend, talons outstretched. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's Director of Communications (Peter Capaldi), a Scot who makes Don King look even-tempered and restrained, goes into apoplectic overdrive in his attempts to keep everything on-message.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 15th, 2010
What we have here is, essentially, a great, heaping collection of public domain material from the classic comedy duo. The menu is as follows:
17 episodes of their radio show: The Abbott & Costello Show (1942-1949);
14 episodes of the Colgate Comedy Hour TV show (1951-54) with our boys as hosts;
20 trailers from 1940-59;
2 features films: Africa Screams (1949) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1952);
a WWII PSA: “The Autobiography of a Jeep”;
a collection of film and TV bloopers.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 13th, 2010
Years after his wife's unsolved murder, Norman Reedus has retreated within himself, carrying on a morose existence in a low-end apartment, gloomily taking part in unofficial greyhound racing. His neighbour, Emmanuelle Béart, is in love with him. Since Reedus is obsessed with solving the murder to the exclusion of any other human interaction, Béart decides to present him a solution. Based on the tiny bits of information Reedus has on the suspect, Béart picks cabbie Harvey Keitel as matching the profile well enough to make for a good target. She begins a relationship with him in order to put him in the frame and give Reedus, though murder, the catharsis he needs.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 1st, 2010
Before SpongeBob SquarePants, before The Family Guy, before South Park, before even The Simpsons, there was Mighty Mouse. This revival of the Terrytoons character was a short-lived, but creatively vital series that ran in 1987-88. It wasn't an adult show, like many of its spiritual successors would be, but it was something that hadn't been seen in the world of television animation in a long, long time: it was witty, smart, and expected its audience to be smart, too (and that includes smart kids, at whom the series was ostensibly aimed).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 1st, 2010
Sterling Silliphant, in the latter days of his career, gifted the world with the deliriously schlocky screenplays to the likes of The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and that apotheosis of the Expensive Badfilm, The Swarm. So it is sometimes hard to remember that he also penned the script of In the Heat of the Night and some 74 episodes of Route 66. I confess to a being a complete newcomer to the series, and though I was rather baffled at first, I was also struck by the quite beautiful prose being spoken. Anyone who thinks highly literate scripts are impossible (or just about) on network TV should cock an ear (and an eye) in the direction of this series.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 27th, 2010
The time is the 1930s, the setting Africa, as Mussolini attempts to recreate an Empire through the colonization of Abyssinia. An officer and poet Elio (Al Cliver) returns from the campaign with the spoils of conquest, one of which is Abyssinian princess Zerbal (Laura Gemser, of D'Amato's Black Emanuelle films). The erotic heat in his home is already pretty torrid, what with wife Alessandra (Lilli Carati) carrying on with secretary Virma (Annie Belle). Zerbal's arrival upsets the emotional apple cart, passions flare, and the supposed slave starts to exert more and more influence over the putative masters.
![The Damned United [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-damned-united-blu-ray-large.jpg)
