Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 11th, 2012
War Horse began life as a novel by Michael Morpurgo and went on to become a relatively successful Broadway play. I haven't read the book, and it's hard for me to imagine the material on the stage. But in the hands of Steven Spielberg there is little left to the imagination. This is definitely one of his most inspired films and contains some of the more beautiful and compelling images. That's saying a lot when you think about the many iconic images Spielberg has brought us from ET to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and the great white shark in Jaws. Yes, the images rank right up there. Unfortunately, the film itself doesn't come close.
The story begins with the birth of Joey, a thoroughbred horse. But this is not really the beginning of the story, is it? Joey is sent to auction where drunkard farmer Ted Narracott (Mullan) falls in love with the impractical animal. Helped by the taunts of his landlord Lyons (Thewlis) he bids too much for the animal and wins him. The problem is that he needed a working horse to plow his fields, and Joey isn't going to make wife Rose (Watson) very happy at all. But his son Albert (Irvine) instantly sees what his father saw and falls in love with Joey. He promises to train him. If he can't the family will lose their farm. But even this isn't really where the story begins.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 10th, 2012
Ben Affleck's dating life wreaked plenty of havoc on the moviegoing public during the early part of the 2000s. We all know about the infamous Gigli and Jersey Girl debacles with Jennifer Lopez. (It didn't even matter that J. Lo was barely in Jersey Girl — which actually has a few cute moments — or that the indefensible Gigli was just a deeply weird flick which happened to star two of the world's most famous, romantically-involved movie stars.) The film usually left off this dubious category is Bounce, a soggy romantic drama starring Affleck and former squeeze Gwyneth Paltrow. Although the pair — who, to be fair, also appeared together in the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love — keep this movie watchable, there's a reason Affleck mostly focuses on directing these days and hasn't made a movie with Jennifer Garner since they got married.
Affleck stars as hot-shot ad man Buddy Amaral. (We know he's a hot-shot because he speaks quickly, brashly and constantly has a drink in his hand...Mad Men taught me that.) After scoring a major account with an airline in Chicago, Buddy is stranded at the airport with a hottie (Natasha Henstridge) and friendly family man Greg (Tony Goldwyn). Greg allows himself to get bumped from the flight so he can use the airline compensation to take his family on vacation at a later date. Once the flight starts boarding, Buddy gives Greg his ticket so Greg can go home to his family sooner, but mostly so Buddy can hook up with the hottie at the airport hotel. The plane crashes, killing everyone on board.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on April 10th, 2012
“Don't you ever touch the sacrificial fluids... okey dokey?”
“Okey dokey” indeed; in 1985, director Josh Becker gathered his friends, including Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, and they shot Thou Shalt Not Kill… Except in Detroit around Campbell’s childhood home. Working with a microscopic budget, they created a tribute to the savage exploitation films of the sixties and seventies, full of bad lighting, crappy sets, leaden acting, cheap makeup gags, horrible dialog, and a certain goofy infectious fun.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 6th, 2012
"In the pantheon of predators, it's one of the greatest discoveries since the T-Rex: a snake 48 feet long, weighing in at 2,500 pounds. Uncovered from a treasure trove of fossils in a Colombian coal mine, this serpent is revealing a lost world of giant creatures. Travel back to the period following the extinction of dinosaurs and encounter this monster predator."
With a title like Titanoboa: Monster Snake you might be expecting the latest huge monster mash-up from Roger Corman or the latest cheap CG creation from the SyFy's Original Movies series. Huge snakes have been common fodder for both of these places. But the monster snake depicted in this film comes to us from The Smithsonian Channel, and this guy really existed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 6th, 2012
The Killing began life as a Danish television series. We are used to seeing British shows reinvented for American audiences, but it's rare to find something from Danish television that someone found so compelling they decided to work it for the competitive American television landscape. It's no surprise that such an effort would find its way on cable rather than network television, where boundaries can really be pushed and explored.
AMC is a pretty good choice to land such a show. They've committed to some pretty groundbreaking shows in the few years they have produced original programming. Anyone who has caught an episode of The Living Dead certainly knows what I'm talking about here. The once movie-exclusive network has already proven a willingness to push the boundaries of television. So with all of this boundary pushing you might expect a cutting-edge series that plays out unlike anything in the genre. You would think so, but you'd be pretty disappointed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 6th, 2012
Roman Polanski's seminal neo-noir finally makes it to Blu-ray. Gino has already handled the previous DVD release, so I'm going to turn the reins over to him for a while, then jump back in.
"Jake Gittes is a Chandler style detective with all of the trappings. From the office to the secretary and the cop friend, Gittes is a cliché. He appears to specialize in tracking down extramarital affairs. When he’s hired to keep an eye on a rich millionaire, the subject turns up dead, and maybe it wasn’t his wife at all who hired him. Gittes now must investigate to save his own hide. His investigation leads him to a corrupt water department taking advantage of a manufactured drought. His client has a dark secret that only complicates Gittes’ efforts.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 5th, 2012
Thankfully, I have never been scammed out of any large amount of money unless you count my ex-wife. *drum roll*. I think of myself as fairly intelligent but sometimes intelligence is not enough when a large enough pyramid or ponzi scheme walks across your front lawn. Furthermore, when somebody you trust tells you it is a sure thing, it is hard to look the other way. Let us proceed with a documentary on one of the most famous ponzi schemes of them all with deception played by one Bernie Madoff.
Melodramatic music go! Blood dripping! Fire crackling! Wife snoring! Oh wait, nevermind. In the beginning, we hear a quote that Wall Street has always been about making a profit. Then we hear a bunch of news reports about Bernie Madoff pulling off a $50 billion ponzi scheme. Outrage is rampant and people want to know why the SEC did not catch this sooner. Let’s join H. David Kotz, Inspector General for a sentence or two before we get more dramatic special effects.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 3rd, 2012
If you haven't heard of South Park by now there is certainly something wrong with you. You're just not paying attention. More important, you've got a lot of catching up to do. The show is entering its 16th season on Comedy Central, and Paramount is now giving us the 15th season on high definition Blu-ray. And, if you are just hearing about South Park for the first time, what a wonderful journey you have ahead of you. You might need an airline sickness bag on occasion, but you are in for a solid treat.
After 15 years you would think any show might have to start losing steam. It's true that South Park did appear to suffer some during the middle years, and I was one of those critics asking how much longer the show could go on. But the series experienced something of a renaissance in the last couple of years and is better than it has ever been.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 3rd, 2012
When Peter Gabriel left the band Genesis to pursue his own solo career, it was the break of a lifetime for the band's drummer, Phil Collins. He took over the front-man duties with style, and before long Genesis was enjoying the most commercial success of their lives. Collins provided the smooth, easy-to-listen-to voice that Gabriel really never had. The tunes were instantly more recognizable and stuck with you for a long time. Of course, that meant that Collins would go out and work on that solo career as well. He didn't quite abandon Genesis and managed to keep both careers on the charts for quite a long time. If anything, the two entities became more and more the same. It's hard to distinguish the band's Invisible Touch from anything Collins released under his own name. No problem, as long as the records were selling. And sell they did.
We haven't heard a ton from Collins in recent years. He's always been there. He's toured under both names a few times in recent years. But the releases became less and less successful. Much of this can be traced to Collins' wish to become a one-man band. The last few CD's were produced in his own home studio with Phil filling in for most of the instruments. The lyrics lost much of their creativity, and it seemed that the British rocker had waded deep into stagnant waters.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 2nd, 2012
They came back to tie the game five different times. They were down by two runs in the bottom of the ninth and facing a closer who had been a perfect 6 for 6 in save situations during that postseason. They were down to the last strike of their entire season two different times. I guess what I'm trying to say is, at a certain point, it became obvious — painfully obvious, if you happen to be a fan of the Texas Rangers — that there was no effing way the St. Louis Cardinals were losing Game 6 of the 2011 World Series.
Personally, I didn't have a horse in the race when I originally watched this game live on October 27, 2011. (I'm a Yankees fan. Before you boo me, you should know I was born in 1982, which is the exact year they stopped making the playoffs for 13 straight seasons, the longest drought since the franchise became the Yankees. So they've been lousy for a really good chunk of my life, including during some of my most formative years as a sports fan. You may commence booing me.) The fact that I couldn't have cared less who won, but I also didn't dare go to sleep until it was over — and I suspect I was far from the only one — tells you how objectively thrilling this game was.
