Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on April 23rd, 2013
“Nobody grows up wanting to be a knuckleball pitcher. It’s born of desperation; it’s born of necessity.”
By the start of the 2011 season, there were only two active knuckleballers in Major League Baseball. One was a failed power-hitting 1B/3B, while the other had been cut by his team at the start of the previous year’s spring training. Knuckleball! — an engaging documentary dedicated to the kookiest pitch in baseball history — illustrates how that desperation extends beyond the few brave souls who have attempted to make a living in the big leagues by throwing very softly.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 22nd, 2013
“I want to talk to you about the war for the soul of Los Angeles.”
This could easily describe the current rivalry between the surging L.A. Clippers and the geriatric Los Angeles Lakers, but Gangster Squad has slightly weightier matters on its mind. The stylish 1940s and 50s cops-and-crooks saga wants to tell a story about corruption and violent men unable — or unwilling — to turn off their capacity for hurting others. Instead, the film winds up being a somewhat shallow 21st century gloss on The Untouchables. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 22nd, 2013
“Whose move is it?”
To be honest, I’m not much of a chess player. I know how all the pieces move and I enjoy the mental challenge, but I never really committed to becoming proficient at the game. (Now, if we’re talking Connect Four, you don’t want to run into me in a dark alley.) Pawn establishes its intriguing chess motif early on, before almost completely abandoning it in favor of becoming more of a generically twisty thriller.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 18th, 2013
“I want to visit a country of dreams, imagination and magic.”
Instead of “dreams, imagination and magic”, the Africa presented in this confounding, family-friendly offering from Spanish filmmaker Jordi Llompart is a place of trippy visuals, head-scratching dialogue and horrid CGI. Magic Journey to Africa — billed as a “giant screen spectacle” — is now available for home consumption, where the film’s dazzling 3D presentation is its only saving grace.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 8th, 2013
For better or worse — okay, it’s worse — it’s now impossible to hear the words “Jersey” and “Shore” without thinking of a certain group of knuckleheads on MTV. Down the Shore is a dreary, observant drama set in the region and starring James Gandolfini. If anyone is ever going to restore the area’s good(?) name, you figure the Sopranos star is a better bet than most, having previously dominated the Garden State from a pop culture standpoint by starring in the landmark television drama.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 2nd, 2013
“The important thing for a writer is to tell a good story.”
Martha Gellhorn, considered by some to be the greatest war correspondent of the 20th century, was extremely adamant about not wanting to be a footnote in someone else’s life. So I’m thinking the writer — who died in 1998 — may have had mixed feelings about Hemingway & Gellhorn. On one hand, her life story gets the prestigious (and mostly sympathetic) HBO Films treatment, and Gellhorn is played by Oscar winner Nicole Kidman in a sensational, searing turn. On the other hand
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 1st, 2013
When The Sandlot first came out 20 years ago, I connected to the coming-of-age baseball story as strongly as Babe Ruth connected with one of his titanic, 400-foot homers. I grew up in baseball-obsessed Puerto Rico and I happened to be the exact same age as dorky protagonist Scotty Smalls. Though I’ve kept in touch with the film over the years, Fox’s new 20th Anniversary Blu-ray re-release of The Sandlot marked my first time watching it from start to finish in a long while. It surely won’t be the last.
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on March 29th, 2013
When I tell you The Host is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, you’ll probably think I’m exaggerating. There’s a decent chance you don’t know me and that we’ll never meet, so there’s no way for you to know I’m not prone to hyperbole or making “Best Ever/Worst Ever” statements. Obviously, I haven’t watched every movie that’s ever been made, but I feel reasonably confident in saying I’ve seen more than most people. Since I don’t make pronouncements like these lightly, I’m going to do my very best to explain why The Host — a stunningly bad sci-fi/romance that utterly fails as a work of science fiction and as a big-screen love story — is among the most inept films I’ve come across.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 25th, 2013
The great, central joke of Veep — HBO’s sharp, profane political comedy — is that no self-respecting politician aspires to become the Vice President of the United States. (Just like no self-respecting kid dresses up as Robin for Halloween.) It’s no accident the POTUS is completely MIA from the show, leaving his second-in-command and her beleaguered staff to deal with the countless indignities of a job described on “The Making of Veep” featurette as “so close to being important.”
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on March 22nd, 2013
It’s like I always tell people, the only thing better than one gloriously over-the-top action spectacle centered around an attack on the White House is TWO gloriously over-the-top action spectacles centered around an attack on the White House. Lucky(?) for us, Hollywood is happy to oblige in 2013. Channing Tatum gets a chance to protect Jamie Foxx from a very hostile takeover in June’s White House Down, but they’ve been beaten to the box office punch by Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart in the junky, wildly entertaining, and more mythical-sounding Olympus Has Fallen.
