Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 12th, 2021
Despite the pandemic going on, 2020 managed to deliver when it came to the horror genre. The Invisible Man and The Dark and the Wicked were definitely some of the highlights, and then there was Freaky, a horror comedy that was delivering a twist on the body-swap story. I’ll admit I was a little hesitant with embracing this idea, but when I saw it was being helmed by Christopher Landon, who brought us the Happy Death Day films; well, it gave me a little more confidence. This is one of the few films that managed to get a theatrical release, but I’m still a bit hesitant on actually returning to the theaters. Now that I’ve seen the film, I have to admit I’m a little bummed I didn’t get too see this with an audience. This is definitely one of those films that is a little more fun when you see it with an enthusiastic audience. It’s pretty much Freaky Friday meets Friday the 13th, and, well, slashers always tend to play better with crowds.
From the opening sequence you pretty much know what you’re getting into. It starts up like a very standard (clichéd even) situation with teenagers talking about a local serial killer and whether homecoming will be cancelled because of him. How this sequence plays out reminded me of Scream, mostly in how it was self-aware and how that opening sequence with Drew Barrymore stands alone a well crafted cinematic slice of horror. From the get-go, the humor is well mixed with some nicely done gore effects. What’s slightly problematic, and what I feel some horror fans may take issue with, is that the film is very much a riff on the mainstream 90’s horror style. It’s really my biggest issue, but I’m slightly more forgiving of this, because this is a style choice that’s obviously done in a tongue-in-cheek manner. As a reminder, Vince Vaughn also played a serial killer in the 90’s when he took on the role of Norman Bates in the awful remake of Psycho. Thankfully, just from the opening sequence alone, Vaughn redeems himself and actually plays a great menacing killer.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on January 30th, 2021
When it comes to the DC universe on television, I feel like Warner Bros. knows exactly what they are doing and truly understands the comics as well as their audience. Now that WB has merged with HBO, I was worried about whether some of the DC TV shows would continue on, since I’ve been impressed with the first two seasons of Titans and the first season of Doom Patrol. I was even more curious about whether Doom Patrol could continue to deliver it’s WHAT THE F*** moments that were sprinkled throughout the first season. Now that I’ve come to the abrupt end that Season 2 delivered, I’m happy to say the show has managed to outdo itself. One thing I want to get out of the way before I delve into this review: the season is only nine episodes long due to the pandemic, so the show does end with many story threads left wide open.
You think you’ve seen some weird and off-the-beaten-path shows? Well, Doom Patrol is without a doubt the most fun and unique show I’ve seen. It makes Twin Peaks seem normal, and calling the show bonkers is putting it lightly. Oh, and for those of you with young kids, you definitely may want to steer them clear of this show until you’ve seen what it offers. Where the first season delivered town-swallowing donkeys, asses with feet that can eat you, and talking streets, Season 2 steps up its oddball nature with sex ghosts and robots on ecstasy, and that is just a tiny glimpse at the oddball fun this show has in store for its audiences. I haven’t even gotten to some of the more absurd aspects of the show. But please don’t let this scare you off, because this motley crew of misfit superheroes are a hell of a good time to watch, and even more surprising is how lovable they all are.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on January 28th, 2021
I’ll come out from the start and say how much I love the film Snowpiercer (2013). I was already a fan of Bong Joon Ho since I had seen The Host at a film festival, and I just thought his career would have exploded after the release of Snowpiercer. The tension created in that film as you see the tail section carefully move their way to the front of the train and the horrors they encounter along the way is engaging, and it speaks volumes. The stories about cannibalism are heart-wrenching, and the violence is intense. You definitely feel the desperation and are rooting for the tail section from start to finish. Sure, there was plenty of class warfare on display, but in the film it was very clear who was “good” and who was “bad”. Now we have a TV series inspired by both the graphic novels and the film, and this time those lines of good and bad are not so clear as it spins a new tale for us. This isn’t simply a TV show version of the movie, which is something I’m thankful for, but instead this is another version of events that could have happened on this epic train that is essential to mankind’s survival.
The show kicks off with a brief introduction to the chaos as people attempted to board the train -- the savage cold that was taking the globe into its grasp, gunfire exploding at the station, and the immediacy to board as the doors were closing and the train was about to depart. Because I’ve seen the movie and that took place 17 years after the train’s initial departure, I was looking forward to an origin story to see how sections were established and how the stowaways were handled. Unfortunately we don’t get to see that here either, and I’m a bit disappointed by that. This time around the show starts off seven years from departure, and the divide in classes has already been established. The first episode throws so much at the viewer that a scene where you witness a passenger take their own life just sort of loses its impact. What disappointed me most is that the show starts off as a bland murder mystery, where a body is found mutilated and the only one who can solve the crime is a former homicide detective who resides in the back of the train.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on December 17th, 2020
When I first saw The Strangers, I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by how much that movie stuck with me. Sure, there have been plenty of home invasion flicks over the years, but The Strangers is definitely right up there with the best like Funny Games and Inside. Writer and director Bryan Bertino is one of modern horror’s underappreciated creators. He is so good at keeping things simple, utilizing small casts and single settings, and keeping the horror relatively grounded in reality. With The Dark and The Wicked, he gives us his best work to date, and for me one of the best horror films in years. Personally, this is my favorite new horror release since 2016’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe. I’m sure plenty of people will disagree with me, and for as much love as I have for Hereditary, what The Dark and The Wicked did that honestly very few horror films manage to do is genuinely get under my skin. This movie actually creeped me out, and it didn’t use big gory FX or go for cheap jump scares. This literally is a master class in creating tension and delivering a story to audiences that starts off in familiar territory but takes us in new and fresh directions.
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 17th, 2020
"Chances are if you are watching Season 3 you like it."
Kevin Costner plays John Dutton. The name itself recalls those years as a kid watching the myriad western shows that crossed our television screens throughout the 50's and 60's. He's the owner of Yellowstone Ranch, which takes up hundreds of square miles and borders on the national park of the same name, which we never do get to see. What we do see are the other borders of the Yellowstone. It borders a large and mostly impoverished Native American reservation. The ranch has apparently existed with an uneasy peace with the residents of the reservation. But there is a new chief in town. He's Thomas Rainwater, played by Gil Birmingham. Rainwater has some kind of a grudge that we never got to completely understand in the first season. He's a political beast who has turned Dutton and his ranch into a common enemy to fuel his own popularity and ambition.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on December 12th, 2020
When you check out the poster and Blu-ray cover art for this film, you could easily think that this was yet another cheesy teen romance, but the film is something else entirely. There is a bit of teenage romance in the film, but mostly the focus is on the mental health of the film’s protagonist, Adam (Charlie Plummer) and his struggles with schizophrenia. It’s a heavy topic, and somehow the film manages to tackle the topic in an honest way without being overly depressing. This was challenging material, especially when your target audience is under the age of 18, and during the time of COVID, it’s a bold move for a studio to put out a film with this kind of heavy subject matter. I didn’t expect to like this film, if I’m being honest, and I’ll happily admit that the film surprised me. That doesn’t mean that the film doesn’t come with its share of problems, but are they enough to discourage someone from checking out this film?
The story is told to us by its protagonist Adam in a way where it seems as though he’s talking to his therapist, but we never see this person, so it may have been better if he were just speaking to the audience, since the perspective has him talking to the camera in a medium shot during these sequences. He introduces us to his condition, and we see the situation unfold that had him removed from his school, basically an accident during class that resulted in his friend getting a bad burn. This should have been a tragic and traumatic scene, but it comes off a bit silly when we see one of the personalities he sees, the bodyguard, go and fight a bad CGI black whirlwind that creates the chaos in the classroom. It’s early on with this scene and every scene involving this “dark cloud” where I feel director Thor Freudenthal was the wrong choice for this project. Sure, he may have experience and success with doing family films like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but this film needed to be a tad darker in tone and, well, the ending of this film is just absurd and basically craps over all the realness most of the film presents.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 11th, 2020
"Our true enemy has yet to reveal himself."
If anything, the third part of the Godfather series of films is symbolic of when too many sequels are greenlighted, and consequently, the film is doomed to fail. More often than not, the reason why these films crash and burn is because of major studios acting like Adelphia executives and wanting more money, and in using the previous films’ successes as leverage, they lose sight of things like quality. It’s happened to other trilogies. And if you put together previous films with the reputation that the first two Godfather films have, the only question left to answer is whether or not the third film would be a minor or major letdown. Most of the essential players returned, with the exception of Robert Duvall. (Duvall said Francis Ford Coppola never really negotiated with him, while Coppola says that Duvall asked for more money, so who knows?) Mario Puzo helped out with another part of the story, so why did this film not live up to the hype?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on November 27th, 2020
It was over twenty years ago when The Haunting came out. I remember actually looking forward to this movie, mostly because of its director Jan De Bont, who was responsible for the 90’s summer blockbusters Speed (1994) and Twister (1996). For the record, I choose to pretend that Speed 2: Cruise Control never happened, because let’s face it, that was simply one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. To De Bont’s credit, he’s also the cinematographer of some pretty great films as well; Die Hard, Flatliners (the good one), and Basic Instinct, to name a few. Now another thing that had me excited was where CGI was at the time. The Frighteners had come out in 1996, The special effects in that film were great and they hold up to this day, so really, with a bigger budget, a solid director and cast, this film should have just been amazing. The result ended up being a film that shows what happens when you rely too heavily on CGI for scares rather than crafting good old-fashioned suspense with atmosphere and story.
The 1999 film is based off the book by Shirley Jackson. Sadly it would take nearly two decades more for the superior Netflix adaption of The Haunting of Hill House to release. While the 1999 version may be closer to the book, what is ironic is that it’s about a paranormal study on fear, yet there is nothing terrifying or scary about this film. The film follows so many typical haunted house tropes that even Ray Charles would see these “scares” coming.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 24th, 2020
Eddie Murphy has a ton of films under his belt. If you’re like most folks, his antics have long ago become tired and worn out. Come with me now to a time when Murphy was young and full of energy. Trading Places was really only Murphy’s second film after 48 hours. In Trading Places, we get vintage Eddie Murphy. You can tell he was still hungry. Today he simply calls too many performances in. Dan Aykroyd was also at a turning point in his own career. It hadn’t been too long since he lost his longtime partner Jim Belushi to a drug overdose. He was just learning to stand on his own. Put these two guys together today, and there’s not much chance you’d get the solid gold that was possible in 1983. Fortunately for us, there is this HD release of Trading Places, when both actors still felt they had something to prove. The cast was brilliant all the way around. Jamie Lee Curtis displayed her obvious assets for the first time in a film. Known mostly as a scream queen at that time, Curtis was a choice the studio was not at all happy with. The Wolf Man’s own Ralph Bellamy, along with fellow veteran actor Don Amechi, played the Duke brothers to perfection. Finally, Denholm Eliott added his own understated brilliance as Coleman, the butler.
Trading Places was originally written as a vehicle for Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. That team had had great success with a few films already, and it was felt they were the only ones capable of pulling off this kind of a film. I’m not sure how that might have worked. Certainly it still might have been a funny outing, but somehow I think everything worked out for the best. Trading Places broke many conventions of the time. The black and white stereotypes were a concern, as were other elements. Having a hooker play such a pivotal role was questioned. The studio even expressed some problems with the fate of Mr. Beaks. A little gorilla love went a long way toward the poetic justice these kinds of villains often require. John Landis stood his ground the entire time, refusing to budge. Remove any of these elements, and who knows what we might have ended up with.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on November 11th, 2020
"And so it began. 30,000 years ago, man discovered his best friend. Dogs were man's best friend and only animal companion for the next 15,000 years. And then cats came into the house, y'all. For the next 15,000 years cats and dogs fought each other, hissing and barking and breaking things along the way. With the emergence of technology, harmless skirmishes grew into diabolical plots as cats and dogs tried to eliminate each other as humans’ companion. Eventually humans grew tired, so dogs and cats had to do something if they wanted to stay the number 1 and number 2 animals in the human household. Cat and dog leaders worked together to stop these plots and formed an organization called The Furry Animals Rivalry Termination... The last decade has been the most peaceful in centuries."
This movie is proof positive that Hollywood refuses to let a franchise die. I wasn’t really fond of the original film in the franchise, and I completely ignored its sequel; however, this standalone sequel managed to be mildly entertaining. Granted, it is extremely over-the-top. To the point that it borders on the ridiculous with some of its antics. Like a parrot driving an ice cream truck. Still, I had to remember that I was not the demographic that the film was designed for. This is where I rely on my trusty daughter to help me give these movies a fair shake. Her exact words were, “Is it over yet?” I think that pretty much sums up how she felt about the film. It’s ironic; the movies that I don’t mind so much are the ones that she really doesn’t vibe with. And the movies that she tends to be intrigued by, for me it’s like my eyes are bleeding. I begin to realize how different my daughter and I are.
