Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 2nd, 2018
Sports movies have been something of a cliché for years now. And it's not really a recent phenomenon. Everybody remembers Ronald Reagan appearing in Knute Rockne All American as the famous George Gipp. That was 1940, and Hollywood is still selling films that ask teams to "win one for The Gipper". That's exactly what you get in director Sean McNamara's The Miracle Season. Substitute high school volleyball for college football, and you likely already know the story before you even order your popcorn and soda. Of course, even with established Hollywood formula and a well-trodden story, things are never quite that simple.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 2nd, 2018
"30 years ago during the Cold War, there was an experiment... Something went wrong. They opened up a passage directly beneath us. When you go through this door, you come out the other side, you're in another world, identical to ours. Same experiment... When this door opened our paths began to branch off more and more over time."
That setup describes the premise behind the new original science fiction series on Starz, created by Justin Marks, a writer who most recently delivered the script for Disney's live-action Jungle Book film. This is his first attempt at building a series from the ground up, and it's absolutely a winner.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 31st, 2018
"Every bridge, every building grows from an engineers imagination."
Dream Big: Engineering Our World is the second of Shout Factory's latest collection of IMAX films to be brought into the capable arms of the UHD/4K format. And while this film doesn't take us so much into the natural beauty of some picturesque place on our planet or deep into the darkness of space, it does deliver a rather grand look at some of the wonders of the man-made world. Both films were directed by Greg MacGillivray, which binds them together in a somewhat nice little bow.
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on July 28th, 2018
"Your mission should you decide to accept it. Isn't that the thing?"
And that has been the thing. Since 1966 Mission Impossible has plotted out nine seasons of television and six movies, thrusting Tom Cruise into an action hero icon. Cruise and company have taken their time with these films. It's been over 20 years, and we're only on the sixth entry. For the first five films, each of the Missions have been directed by a different director, from John Woo, who directed the second and worst of the films, through J.J. Abrams, who turned the ship around with the third, which was also his first feature film, to Christopher McQuarrie, who becomes the first director to repeat in the series of films.
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on July 27th, 2018
As the summer winds down from the season's requisite anchor film blockbusters, there will be increasing room for a few independent films that will make their way from the festival circuit to fill the newly vacated screens at your local multiplex. For some it will be to attain eligibility for the year-end award season. For others it will be a short window to turn a profit from what was conceived more as a work of art. For others it's a chance to become a sleeper hit. And for others yet, it's an opportunity to deliver a social message on the larger soapbox of the big screens. Blindspotting appears to be on the cusp of all of these things.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 27th, 2018
"Wildlife and its habitat cannot speak, so we must, and we will" - Teddy Roosevelt.
Actually they do speak for themselves, and Shout Factory's UHD/4K release of National Parks Adventure gives that wildlife plenty of grand opportunities to speak to us through the grandeur of the American National Park system. Last year Shout Factory showed us what the UHD/4K format could really deliver by releasing a series of IMAX films in the new format. It was a bold move that has really paid off. IMAX cameras utilize 65 and 70mm film, which offers source material that is actually much higher resolution than 4K.
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on July 14th, 2018
Dwayne Johnson appears to be a pretty busy guy. In addition to the HBO series Ballers about to enter its fourth season, Johnson puts out a couple or more films a year. We're not talking about small independent films, but rather huge high-budget and big f/x films. Next year will see Jungle Cruise and Jumanji 2, following with San Andreas 2, Suicide Squad 2, Black Adam and a remake of Big Trouble In Little China, all arriving in the next couple of years. This year saw Rampage, which comes to home video next week. It's a busy life for Dwayne Johnson, who appears to have dropped "The Rock" from his name. I sure hope it didn't hit anyone on the head. Now he's starring in Skyscraper, which shamelessly combines elements of Die Hard and The Towering Inferno. In Skyscraper, Johnson shows us that he's intent on hanging around for a while... this time from 220 stories high.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 12th, 2018
You might call me jaded, but I am pretty disappointed by the state of horror movies. It's not just the last few years. The truth is I haven't seen 10 really good horror movies in over a decade. Now that I've had a chance to see A Quiet Place, that number isn't going up. A Quiet Place is not a really good horror movie. It ends up making a lot of the same mistakes that filmmakers think define a horror film in the modern age. It relies too heavily on jump scares and characters who do some of the most idiotic things, thus placing them in a somewhat self-created dangerous situation. But I will make the argument that A Quiet Place is still a pretty good horror film because
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 8th, 2018
"You can tell a lot about a person's character by how they treat people they don't have to treat well."
It had been a decade since Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible hit theatres to box office success, established a new blockbuster franchise, and added ‘action hero’ to Tom Cruise’s resume, and six years since John Woo’s highly stylized follow-up raised the franchise to new box office heights. In 2006 the long-awaited third installment arrived amidst controversy about Tom Cruise’s crazy off-screen antics. It was feared that the happenings of Cruise’s personal life would somehow bring down this movie
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 5th, 2018
"This is not Mission: Difficult, Mr. Hunt. It's Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you."
After four years and nearly $200 million at the box office, it was only a matter of time before Paramount and Tom Cruise would partner again for a new Mission Impossible film. This time the move would be completely toward the action and stunts and farther away from the television series. The hiring of John Woo to direct the second film put quite a punctuation mark on that move.
