Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jonathan Foster on February 16th, 2013
“When lives are on the line, it’s hero time!”
What would you do if you had a gadget that allowed you to transform into different alien creatures? Think about it. If a good and virtuous person found it, they would use it to help others and protect the planet. If it fell into evil hands, they would use it to gain power and cause havoc. Everything comes down to the question of how that power is used. Unfortunately for Earth, Ben Tennyson found the alien gadget in question.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jonathan Foster on February 13th, 2013
Slugterra reminds me of the cartoons from my childhood — like G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — where the good guys are always extolling the virtues of friendship, hard work and fair play. The show also seems to be a cross between Pokemon and Transformers, featuring competitors dueling with little creatures called “slugs” that transform into powerful beasts once they hit 100 mph.
One hundred miles beneath the Earth’s surface lies the world of Slugterra. The story revolves around young Eli Shane, an enthusiastic young “slugslinger” who wants to follow in his father’s footsteps of upholding justice and fighting evil. That evil comes in the form of Dr. Blakk, a billionaire scientist obsessed with being the best at dueling and the power that comes from that. Helping Eli fight against Dr. Blakk are his friends: Pronto, a moleniod (think mole-people) tracker with an over-inflated ego; Trixie, the slug expert and amateur filmmaker; and Kord, a cave troll and the group’s mechanic. With each new slug and adventure Eli encounters, he learns more about what it means to be a Shane while coming closer to defeating Dr. Blakk and his mutated “ghoul” slugs.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 30th, 2013
Do you have what it takes to win a video game championship? That’s the question Noobz asks and the Reign Clan tries to answer. The Reign Clan consists of four guys obsessed with Gears of War 3. There’s Cody (Blake Freeman, also the film’s co-writer and director), the anger-prone leader, and Andy (Jason Mewes of Clerks, Mallrats and pretty much every Kevin Smith movie), who is Cody’s best friend and a game store manager. There’s also the sexually confused Oliver (Matt Shively, TV’s The Troop) and “Hollywood”, who the rest of the clan believes to be Casper Van Dien.
When Cody loses his job and his wife in the same day due to his excessive game playing, he is reluctant to go compete in the CyberBowl, the nation’s premier gaming championship. It takes some doing, but Andy finally convinces him that the $400,000 prize is worth it. From there, they must overcome hilarious obstacles — including other clans, a mace-wielding mom and finding out that “Hollywood” is really a teenager (Moises Arias, TV’s Hannah Montana) — in order to win, not only the prize money, but the respect of the online gaming community.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 28th, 2013
“The most important thing about being a drummer is the ability to hit hard.”
Fat Kid Rules the World tells the story of Troy Billings (Jacob Wysocki), a high school student who lives a lonely life because he’s, well, fat. Despite his large size, Troy is pretty much invisible. Unable to stand the monotony of his life, he steps in front of a bus. At the last minute, Marcus (Matt O’Leary, Domestic Disturbance, Brick), a dropout and punk rock musician, knocks him out of the vehicle’s path.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 23rd, 2013
When I first received Love Me, I thought it was going to be just another angsty teen drama. (Something along the lines of Dawson’s Creek.) That notion was quickly disabused, however, when a young girl is stalked and attacked in the opening scene. From there, the film jumps ahead three months, with the town still reeling from her disappearance. While discussing how eerie the case is with her friends, Sylvia Potter (Lindsay Shaw, TV’s Pretty Little Liars) quite literally bumps into rich pretty boy Lucas Green (Jamie Johnston, TV’s Degrassi: The Next Generation) and falls for him instantly.
Fortunately for Sylvia, the feeling is mutual and, despite her friend’s many protests, Sylvia begins dating Lucas. As their relationship deepens, Sylvia discovers some unsettling things about Lucas, including the fact that he was dating the missing girl at the time of her disappearance and police consider him the prime suspect. As the pressure mounts and new evidence comes to light, Sylvia must decide what — and, more importantly, who — she believes.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 22nd, 2013
What do you get when two different kinds of horror movies collide? One answer is The Millennium Bug, which combines your typical monster/alien thrill ride with the increasingly popular “Help! I’ve been abducted by crazed rednecks!” brand of horror movie nightmare. It's better if you think of this film as Alien meets Wrong Turn.
When a paranoid dad (Jon Briddell) hears about the potential problems the Y2K glitch will cause, he decides to take his 18-year-old daughter (Jessica Simons) and new wife (Christine Haeberman) out to the middle of nowhere on New Year’s Eve to escape any possible chaos. No sooner have they set up camp than they are hunted by the crazed, redneck Crawford clan. The Crawfords, led by Billa (John Charles Meyer), are seeking “new blood” for their gene pool because the new “generations” are becoming increasingly mutated. (Who would’ve thought these redneck freaks would know so much about genetics?)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 17th, 2013
Do you realize how much you’re affected by advertising? Branded attempts to answer this question while showing us where our world is headed if the trend continues. Mishka Galkin (Ed Stoppard, The Pianist) is Russia’s advertising whiz kid. When Mishka meets Abby (Leelee Sobieski, 88 Minutes, The Wicker Man), they immediately become friends, despite the fact that she is the niece of Bob Gibbons (Jeffrey Tambor, TVs Arrested Development, the Hellboy movies), Mishka’s boss. Even though Bob warns him to stay away from Abby, Mishka enters into a personal and professional relationship with her, developing an Extreme Makeover-type show in Russia together. Unfortunately, the show tanks when the woman getting the makeover falls into a coma following her cosmetic surgery.
In the public outcry that follows, Mishka is jailed and Abby is deported. When he gets out after being incarcerated for a few days, Mishka angrily confronts his boss, claiming that Bob used his former CIA contacts to orchestrate the show’s failure so that Abby would leave Russia (and Mishka). During this argument, Bob has a heart attack and dies. Believing his marketing ability is “a curse” harming those around him, Mishka decides to leave the advertising business behind and become a hermit. (The idea that Mishka’s ability is a curse comes from the film’s narrator, who sounds like GLaDOS, the evil computer from Portal.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 13th, 2013
What do you do when you have to choose between the law and what is morally right? Lieutenant Danny Sefton (Seth Gabel, TV’s Dirty Sexy Money and Fringe) faces that very problem in Allegiance. Having lost the respect of the men in his command by transferring to a recruiting position right before they are to deploy to Iraq, Sefton faces a crisis of conscience when one of those men — Specialist Chris Reyes (Shad “Bow Wow” Moss, Like Mike, Roll Bounce) — has his non-deployment waiver revoked.
Reyes’ son is sick. However, due to conflicting diagnoses — one says Stage 4 lung cancer; the other chronic asthma — and the fact that he’s the best medic in the company (and they don’t have a replacement), Lieutenant Colonel Owens (Aidan Quinn, Jonah Hex, TV’s Elementary) decides to deploy Reyes. Having exhausted all his options, Reyes tells Sefton he intends to go AWOL and asks for Sefton’s help.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 10th, 2013
If you watched any comedic movie in the late '90s, you’ve seen Harland Williams. A funny guy who always played the dummy (see Half Baked and Down Periscope), his career never took off the way similar stand-up comics like Jim Carrey and Norm MacDonald did. In this special, Harland performs his trademark wry and goofy comedy in a new, innovative way: the comedian does his routine outside and with no audience.
It’s just him and a microphone on top of a mesa in the Mojave Desert. Harland doesn’t mind breaking the fourth wall, telling the viewer at the start that it’s okay there’s no audience; that he believes you are smart and “I think you’ll know when to laugh.” Just in case we miss something, though, he throws sunflower seeds at us if he feels something was particularly funny, like his polio walk. (“C’mon, polio doesn’t even exist any more!”) This breaking of the fourth wall makes you feel like you’re there on the mesa with him.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on January 3rd, 2013
In the financial world, the term “arbitrage” refers to the possibility of risk-free profit at zero cost. This seems to be the goal for Robert Miller (Richard Gere), a hedge fund manager desperate to sell his business and retire. The reason for his desperation is that his business is completely broke due to a bad investment. This goal has completely consumed Robert, and it affects everything he does. Robert treats his employees like slaves, is nervous around his family, and regards his mistress as little more than a plaything. One night after the sale suffers yet another setback, he convinces his mistress to come with him to his country cabin. While driving her car, he falls asleep at the wheel and has an accident. Now he has something else to cover up. From then on, there’s nothing he won’t do — no lie he won’t tell, no depth he won’t sink to — in order to keep his secrets and keep his family in the dark.
Arbitrage turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be. Gere takes what could easily be a static evil character and really fleshes it out. We may not like the things he does when his world starts falling apart, but we understand and almost — ALMOST — sympathize with him.
