Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on September 20th, 2011
“You're like the maid of dishonor.”
Bridesmaids, from director Paul Feig, producer Judd Apatow and based on a script by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, became the highest grossing R-rated female comedy of all time, edging out Sex and the City. Although coined by many as the female version of The Hangover, and there are certainly similarities, this does the movie a certain injustice. Where The Hangover is funny in a mean-spirited, rude-boy way, Bridesmaids taps into Apatow’s gift for producing comedies with human characters we care about and balancing the comedy with a touch of pathos without crossing into dramedy territory. Both movies are structured around an upcoming wedding and deal with sex and body functions in a frank and explicit way, but that’s where the similarities end.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on September 16th, 2011
“Listen, I know you’ve been playing for Luke all year, but for this game… I want you to play for you. You’ve earned it. I want you to take the burden of this family off your shoulders and I want you to go out there and I want you to have a ball. I want you to hit someone haaard! I want you to play for the joy of playing the game… or the love of playing for the CHAMPIONSHIP!”
Luke (Stefan Guy), a rising star at lacrosse and football in high school and seems destined for a bright future until he climbs in the car with a reckless teenage driver. One deadly car wreck later, Luke is laying brain-dead in a hospital with his devastated parents, Steven (Aidan Quinn) and Maryanne (Andie McDowell) by his side. The hospital explains that law requires them to pull the plug on brain-dead patients, but keeps Luke alive long enough for his classmates, teachers and big brother Jon (Ryan Merriman) to say their goodbyes. Grief from Luke’s sudden death ravages the Abbate family. Jon initially decides to sit out the rest of the football season, but coaches and pastors intervene, and soon family, faith and football save the day.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on September 13th, 2011
“One – you can't do it. You just can't. This isn't a personal attack towards you, I'm just saying that no man can do it, it goes against nature. The male was biologically designed to spread his seed. You're gonna piss off the seeds, Matt! It goes against science! You wanna be the guy who goes against science?”
In 1988, director Michael Lehman brought us Heathers, one of the great, all time classic black comedies so ballsy it could never get made our current post 9/11 and Columbine culture. Then something happened to him and began to spit out tepid, careful comedies like Hudson Hawk and The Truth about Cats and Dogs. 40 Days and 40 Nights taps into the abstaining-from-sex-and-keeping-the-reason-from-one's-potential- mate premise Judd Apatow mastered with the far superior 40 Year Old Virgin.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on September 3rd, 2011
“They're right. All those people who say it's our job to just sit and watch people die. They're right.”
A starving, war savaged toddler girl squats, burying her face in the sun baked earth of the Sudan. She remains motionless, near death and locked in catatonic despair. A few feet behind her a vulture, nearly as big as the child, eyes her hungrily and patiently waits for her to grow too weak to fight it off. A photographer quietly circles the scene, snapping away and looking for the best angle. He finds it, gets the shot and leaves. The photo wins a Pulitzer Prize. The little girl presumably gets eaten by the vulture.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on September 2nd, 2011
“How would you like to use that gun belt for something more than just holding up your pants?”
Although the title of the blu-ray is Return of the Magnificent Seven, the original film’s title sequence just calls it Return of the Seven, and for good reason. There is nothing vaguely magnificent in this movie. This is the type of sequel that gives sequels a bad name.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on August 30th, 2011
“We deal in lead, friend.”
In the fall of 1956, Anthony Quinn watched a special screening of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai and had an epiphany; this Japanese masterpiece, inspired by the great American westerns of John Ford, would, itself, make a great American western. Quinn acquired the rights and contacted his then close friend Yul Brynner and pitched the idea of him playing the bad guy and Brynner the good guy. Brynner screened Kurosawa’s film and called in producer Walter Mirisch, who in turn contacted director John Sturges (Bad Day at Black Rock, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Great Escape). Sturges loved the concept and immediately set about acquiring the rights, ultimately forcing Quinn out of the picture. Quinn sued, but lost.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on August 26th, 2011
“The windows around here are not big enough for you?”
Writer/Director Keith Bearden’s debut film, Meet Monica Velour, seduces you like raunchy 70s porn star, but finishes you off with a happy ending like a cheap masseuse in a roadside massage parlor. Not that this is a sex comedy, nor are the stars particularly sexy (except for Jamie Tisdale who plays young Monica Velour who is very, very hot), but the theme is about sexual illusions. Illusions from a time long past, when pornos tried to be movies instead of a series of masturbation loops and there was an ironic air of innocence to the whole smutty affair.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on August 21st, 2011
“The Hamptons are like a zombie movie directed by Ralph Lauren.”
Although I prefer genre films, chick flicks can prove a guilty pleasure. I can get in touch enough with my feminine side to shed a tear at a powerful love story, laugh at romantic misadventures, and embrace the belief in soul mates. So I slipped on my pink silk pajamas, grabbed a box of tissues, curled up on my chaise lounge and approached Something Borrowed with an open mind. OK, I might not have pink pajamas or a chaise lounge, but, in all fairness, this romantic comedy, based on the bestselling novel by Emily Griffin, doesn’t have anything particularly romantic or very funny in it. What it does have are vapid, banal, selfish caricatures trapped in a forced premise which could be resolved in minutes if anyone acted in a remotely adult manner; as well as something borrowed from just about every bad rom-com movie that came before it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on August 10th, 2011
“This family thinks they are better than us!”
If you think the wedding “rom com” has been done to death, Jumping the Broom won’t change your mind. It covers much the same ground you’ve seen again and again, but one cannot deny director T.D. Jakes has crafted a charming if clichéd film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on August 10th, 2011
“The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom; I'm a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you that a good phony fever is a dead lock, but, uh... you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor's office. That's worse than school. You fake a stomach cramp, and when you're bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It's a little childish and stupid, but then, so is high school.”
John Hughes was enjoying a creative peak in the 80s. He owned the teen coming-of-age genre with movies like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Uncle Buck. Hughes wrote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in less than a week to avoid a writers’ strike. The film was shot for a budget of $6 million as a love letter to Chicago. It is arguably his finest movie.
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![Magnificent Seven [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/magnificent-seven-blu-ray-large.jpg)
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