Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on January 18th, 2011
A young dreamer named Power is fired from his mining job just before his union-leader father instigates a strike. Wishing he could be a drummer, but never getting the chance to play an actual kit, Power does not know what to do with his constant ambitions that make him air-drum 24/7. Fate steps in and he discovers an underground movement of air-drumming that all leads to a major event in New York city where he will have a chance to face off against a billionaire country-music star, who just so happens to be the son of the evil Copper Mine owner who is treating his Union friends, and family, so unfairly.
This film does spend a good chunk of time riding on the one-note quirkiness of its man child lead character and his oddball dreams of air-drumming, and does not get saved by the token love interest or ethnically broad supporting characters. But this film does find moments where it moves past the potential to be another rehashed, super-quirky Napolean Dynamite clone (though it strays close). It clings tightly to the RUSH worship of other contemporary comedies such as I Love You Man into rides it into a sentimental and surprisingly moving story about spirit. This almost exclusively occurs in the third act so the audience will have to hold tight until then.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on January 2nd, 2011
8 corporate hopefuls gather at a mysterious location and are instructed to take one final exam as a final test to see which one will walk away with a prestigious job at a major company. The trouble is their exam papers are blank, and it would seem that there is not even a question to answer. For 80 minutes each must solve the puzzle without being disqualified by breaking one of the few rules, all of which double as a riddle/clue to solving the exam question and answer.
There are no set changes, no flashbacks to see more about the character's past, not a single thing that takes us outside of the tiny exam room. As our young hopefuls are slowly eliminated from the competition, the story becomes all the more engaging. The cryptic, “think WAY outside the box” puzzle solving (along with an interesting science fiction angle to the story that is revealed about midway through) makes this film resemble a film like Cube more than 12 Angry Men. Normally a film like this would hinge on the characters, but the riddles and their manner of deducing then trying to solve them is ample for maintaining the audience's interest. Like how the setting was far more interesting than the characters in Cube, the riddles are more interesting than who is trying to solve them.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 16th, 2010
Thierry Guetta has the habit of filming everything he does in his entire life. This habit did not shake while filming the, technically illegal, work of his cousin 'Invader' who is a street artist that pastes up images from and inspired by the video game Space Invaders. Guetta quickly fell head over heals for this underground movement of creating street art and started documenting some of the most famous street artists in the entire world, including the ever (in)famous 'Banksy.' It was Banksy who questioned Guetta as to what his plans were for all of this footage, which was originally nothing, and encouraged him to make a documentary about street art as it is a temporary medium (since it is considered vandalism, all pieces are removed or destroyed soon after being created) and these pieces deserved to be recorded for history's sake in a formal film. Guetta's attempt at the film was deemed unwatchable and so Banksy took over the film and turned the camera on Guetta so that his personal story would be told along with displaying many artists' work.
Some speculations state that this film is an elaborate prank being pulled by Banksy. Remaining anonymous as he directs this film, who is to say that the art made by Guetta is not in fact created by Banksy as a way of demonstrating that pop art is the last vestige of the under-talented, and yet they can make millions if hyped just right. Indeed, the climax of the documentary is Guetta putting on an epic gallery opening in Los Angeles as his new moniker “Mr Brainwash” (a name that has been seen as evidence towards Bansky's message of how hype can brainwash the masses and disguise lack of depth or meaning). I do not subscribe to this theory, as this film seems more like a jab at those (Mr Brainwash being central) who use marketing and gimmicks to make money from something that should be about expression and not profits.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 14th, 2010
7th heaven reaches its 11th and final season of rampant political correctness and lessons of family togetherness through Christian love. Yes, that was a mildly passive aggressive summary of this show, but I feel sometimes one strong bias deserves another to challenge it. This show, the story of a very large family lead by a Minister (and don't deny it, he leads them) as they convey their socially and politically conservative Protestant Christian point of view of “real-life” situations.
To be a fair reviewer, I shall put aside my personal objections to critique how the show works just as a family drama for a moment. The 11th season is quite hard to get into as there are countless references and relationships that have been building up for a very long time. I'm not asking it to be like a Law and Order brand of storytelling, where a viewer can jump in at any episode to enjoy a fully encapsulated story, but this show becomes an undeniable challenge to watch if you are seeing it without any background knowledge of the characters and their previous stories.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 13th, 2010
The comedy team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer should be commended for their unwavering attempt to destroy the spoof comedy entirely. Sure, they aided the Wayans brothers in creating the first Scary Movie film (which is decent spoof film) but in 2006 they started their campaign with Date Movie and continued right through Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, and now Vampires Suck. Did they succeed? And did it take the recent loss of Leslie Nielsen to have us be reminded that spoofs where once a glorious and enjoyable thing.
Well, while their previous efforts (I'm cringing at the idea that any “effort” was placed into making their films) where bloated with endless pop culture references that were dated before being made, Vampires Suck mostly just runs on one, the Twilight series. Yes, there is still a parade of references made, mostly to reality TV shows such as Keeping up with the Kardashians and Jersey Shore, but they mainly stick with vampire and werewolf gags that have either been done already or are simply too weak and witless to even register as a complete joke.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 12th, 2010
Bryce and Juli first meet in the second grade. Juli is convinced that Bryce is walking around with her first kiss, while Bryce is not returning any sense of being similarly infatuated with Juli. As the years pass by, Bryce manages to keep her at bay, until things “flip” (as it were) and it is Juli who may be veering away from Bryce.
This will-they won't-they (probably will) romance is told by trading the point-of-view and narrator between Bryce and Juli. This tactic makes the story more interesting to take in, despite the potential tedium of having the entire story essentially being told twice. The audience is privy to the continuous compare and contrast happening between Bryce and Juli's thoughts and feelings and so we get a more immediate understand of who they are, and what they are motivated by.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 25th, 2010
A surgeon named Michael Foster, played by Peter Gallagher, has his world turned upside down when his wife disappears one morning without a trace. Initially he suspected she was having an affair and ran away with another man, but as strange evidence gathers he soon realizes that she has been a part of a strange coven of witches and her disappearance might not have been her choice.
Originally airing on the Lifetime network, this film retains being separated into two parts on this DVD. Each part clocking in around the 90-minute mark, the first part can be a touch tedious as so little time was spent establishing the relationship between Foster and his missing wife that we have no reason to emotionally connect with the situation, aside from our hero's despair as he searches. As all the supporting characters, along with our desperate protagonist, come to accept the supernatural truth driving the plot, by the second part, the story finds a better pace and can hold your attention with more action and moments of tension.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 19th, 2010
Here is a second volume of episodes from the Marvel cartoon's first season, which is geared towards young children. The review for the first volume, written by the highly skilled and suspiciously well-dressed Michael Durr, can be found here: https://upcomingdiscs.com/2010/07/12/marvel-squad-vone/ . Dr. Doom is still using his many evil minions to obtain fractals of the shattered Infinity Sword before the Superhero Squad, a team of Marvel heroes assembled for their unique skills depending on the mission as led by Iron Man, can stop him.
As it has been for every episode in this first season, the humour ranges from quirky one-liners that only slightly older viewers may catch, to extremely low-brow bodily function gags, mostly pertaining to farts and burps; though the latter only arises whenever Mole Man or Hulk are involved. Not to say that this makes it uninteresting for viewers young or old but is more unifying. As well, each episode often features cameos by many characters from the Marvel universe, much of whom are rather obscure as only hardcore Marvel geeks might know (show me an 8-year-old who knew who Thanos was before this show and I'll eat my Thor shirt!). Perhaps the most amusing cameo is The Punisher, being voiced by Ray Stevenson who actually played the violent vigilante in an R-Rated adaptation of the comic Punisher: War Zone; only here, he uses a metaphor about brussel sprouts when speaking about crime...but still has many a gun go off at random in an especially amusing scene.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 17th, 2010
A 911 operator returns to work after suffering the loss of her child during delivery, only to start suffering what seems like hallucinations of a lost girl and a menacing man. Obsessed with what she sees, she starts a journey from New York to Pennsylvania to discover the truth behind her visions.
Catherine Bell is solid as the lead but the supporting cast is less than stellar, placing the weight of the film onto her shoulders. Sadly, the pacing does nothing to help her. The building of this film's mystery could have been edited down to fit within a hour as if it were a prime-ime drama. Granted, the conclusion is interesting enough but the path getting there contains too many scenes of filler dialogue that seem only there to get it closer to a feature length of an hour and a half (which it still doesn't quite make). So all in all, Bell is largely left stranded while everytone else plods through the motions, and we the audience are left less than riveted (Fun Fact for Geeks: Keep an eye out for actor George Buza, who might be recognized from Sinbad or as the voice of Beast from the X-Men).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 17th, 2010
Based on the books by Jan Guillou this film is in fact the merging of two epics produced in Sweden. It also happens to be Sweden's most expensive production thus far. It tells the tale of a boy raised in a convent and trained to become a warrior by a former knight Templar. He falls in love and has a child with a young woman named Cecilia and the two are forced away from each other. Cecilia must pay penance living as a nun while Arn is sentenced to 20 years fighting in the name of God as a Knight Templar in Jerusalem.
This is indeed a huge production, and a beautifully shot one at that. The director of photography deserves any credit he recieves for making this film look as big and epic as it wishes to feel, allowing it to rub shoulders with the monster budgets of Kingdom of Heaven and Braveheart.
![Flipped [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/flipped-blu-ray-large.jpg)
