Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 17th, 2018
"There's no such thing as luck, but I sure as hell believe in stupid."
We're a visual people, and so most of you will recognize Taylor Sheridan from his role as a chief of police in Sons of Anarchy when the controlled puppet regime had finally left the scene. It's not a remarkable role, and it's not a complete surprise that Sheridan found his calling more recently behind the camera. As a writer his first script did hit it out of the park. Sicario is an awesome film populated with compelling and interesting characters who thrived on a broken system. That theme appears to have stuck with him, because the first season of Yellowstone appears to take us back in time to the days of open frontiers and cattle barons who struggled to keep their land amid lawless communities and raiding parties of American Indians who were portrayed as savage beasts who kill women and children in the middle of the night to become to shadows of nightmares and the stories told to keep children in line. These themes are all there, but it takes place in a modern 2018 setting that does indeed make for an interesting new twist on an old idea. This is the dawning of the modern western where lands still stretch for miles and are still owned by a single family. It's Bonanza in the 21st century, and Kevin Costner thought enough of the idea to star in this television drama series for The Paramount Network.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 17th, 2018
The Jerk, released in 1979, is a rags-to-riches-to-rags comedy film of belated self-discovery. This was Steve Martin’s first starring role in a feature film and was also written by him. It's hard to watch the film and quite picture Martin as the unknown he really was at the time. Since then Steve Martin has come and pretty much gone from our collective experience. When this film was released, much of this kind of humor was somewhat unique and clever. Today that is not so much the case, and it looks and feels quite a bit dated.
Carl Reiner directs Steve Martin (who co-wrote the script with Carl Gottlieb) in this gag-laden comedy about an idiotic white man, raised by a poor family of black sharecroppers, who doesn’t realize he’s not black. Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin) is told the horrible truth when he finds himself instinctively tapping his f…et to an easy listening tune on the radio, instead of a low-down blues. His mother (Mabel King) tells him he’s white and Navin takes to the road (in a World War II bomber helmet and goggles) to start a new life in St. Louis. A filling station owner, Harry Hartounian (Jackie Mason), give Navin his first break, hiring him to pump gas. One day at the station, Navin has a brainstorm, concocting an invention called “The Opti-grab,” a combination handle and nose-brace for eyeglasses. But Navin runs into trouble when a crazed killer (M. Emmet Walsh) picks out his name at random from the telephone book and tries to kill him. Navin escapes to a traveling carnival, where he wrangles a job as the “guess-your-weight” man. At the carnival, he discovers his sexual nature, thanks to stunt rider and S&M enthusiast Patty Bernstein (Catlin Adams). But Navin meets the beautiful Marie (Bernadette Peters) and he quickly falls in love. In the meantime, the “Opti-grab” has taken off, and soon Navin is a millionaire.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on December 14th, 2018
“I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire, pulled apart by force, but there is nothing I can do to change it.”
To say there is pain in The Handmaid’s Tale might be the biggest understatement of 2018. The series is set in a dystopian near-future in which women — even the ones who are supposedly part of the ruling class — are enslaved and tortured in a variety of heinous ways. Handmaid’s Tale immediately became Hulu’s flagship show and picked up an Emmy for Best Drama Series last year. So expectations were high for this second season, which too often proves to be torturous for viewers as well.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on December 6th, 2018
As a fan of The Conjuring films, I keep hoping that these spinoff films will manage to step up and be on par with The Conjuring, but instead they just keep letting me down. But that doesn’t stop the hordes of fans from still seeing these films; after all, the pair of Annabelle films were box office hits, and The Nun had a nice theatrical run as well, earning over $110 million. The Nun is a bit of a departure, as it takes us back to 1952 and is set in Romania to deliver a gothic horror story that seems as though it’s a bit of a nod to the old Hammer films from the 1950’s on into the 1970’s. Does the film deserve its box office success? Well, thankfully I didn’t have to take a vow of silence, and I can tell you all about it.
The film wastes no time in setting the tone and delivering the terror as we see a pair of nuns walk through the bowels of an abbey in Romania as they open a big, scary door that has the inscription “God Ends Here”. Obviously whatever is beyond this door is bad, but why these nuns are so gung ho about opening this door and going inside isn’t explained (at least until much later on into the film). It’s no surprise that the result of opening this door causes bad things to occur, one of which is a nun killing herself as she sees The Nun coming towards her. This sparks an investigation by the Vatican to be led by Father Burke (Demian Bichir) and Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on December 6th, 2018
“Sometimes when you trust your impulses, incredible things can happen.”
I doubt this is what Jesse Usher’s character had in mind when he used it as a pickup line for Bella Thorne’s character. However, Ride does feature what turns out to be an extraordinary night for these two characters as they find themselves at the mercy of a demented individual with a .44 Magnum. This movie has been on my radar for a while, and it was a movie that I jumped at the chance to review. I’m fortunate to say that I was not disappointed, although I did find the ending to be a bit anticlimactic. When I saw the runtime for this film, a mere 77 minutes, I anticipated that the thrills would be over fairly quickly, but the story managed to pack quite a bit into this brief period.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 3rd, 2018
This year, I have gravitated more towards watching movie courtroom dramas. I watched Anatomy of a Murder for the first time. The same could be said for the Verdict with Paul Newman. I re-visited A Few Good Men in glorious 4k with pleasing results. Then I got an opportunity to review The Third Murder, a courtroom drama that takes a look at the Japanese court system when one lawyer decides to seek the truth. Even though I was about to go on review hiatus for the holiday season, I eagerly wanted to take a look, and I am glad I did.
In the dead of the night, Misumi (played by Koji Yakusho), a fired factory worker hits the back of his former boss's head repeatedly with a hammer. After this continues for a few brief minutes, Misumi then douses him with gasoline and then sets him on fire to watch him burn. Misumi stares into the night with death on his cheek. We fade to black.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on December 3rd, 2018
So this was not one of Nalyce’s favorite films to watch, but she was a trooper and watched it till the end. Benji Off the Leash is a digitally remastered telling of the 2004 film. To its credit, the story surprising holds up. Even more to its credit, my daughter was actually able to follow the story. I mean, I had to explain certain parts, like who was Benji? And explain the profession of dog breeding, a profession she automatically decided was a bad job given that to her eyes it broke up puppy families. However, once we cleared that hurdle, we were able to continue the movie. Full disclosure, my knowledge of Benji beforehand was nonexistent. I mean, I knew the name, but not the significance. Fortunately for me, there is a decent opener so that I could catch up.
The story opens up with a news announcement that makers of the Benji films are going across the U.S. looking for the next dog to play the character. We then settle into a Mississippi town and into the lives of a family of dog breeders, headed by Hatchett, who is abusive to both his family as well as the animals under his care as he continues to breed new puppies in order to gain more money, not allowing adequate time between pregnancies.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 29th, 2018
“I get it. You’re taking me back in time to show me my mother and father, and I’m supposed to get all goosey and blubbery. Well, forget it, pal…you got the wrong guy!”
Bill Murray was the absolute best at being a jerk on screen during the 1980s, which made him the right guy to step into the role of a modern-day Scrooge. Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” had been adapted countless times before Scrooged and there have been dozens of versions since the movie’s 1988 release. But while this sarcastic, intentionally gaudy update isn’t exactly the most faithful version of Dickens’ classic tale, it remains a personal childhood favorite.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 28th, 2018
“…I’ll show you how to be rich.”
HBO’s fantastic and fiercely funny Succession is about a group of people who are great at being rich…and not much else. The show’s fictional Roy family controls the powerful conglomerate Waystar Royco, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the late Rupert Murdoch’s media and entertainment empire. The show would be entertaining enough if it merely lampooned the spoiled brats who stumble into becoming masters of the universe. But Succession goes to another level by wringing legitimately powerful family drama out of an objectively absurd and despicable cast of characters.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 20th, 2018
"Loyalty is tricky. It's a moving target."
As the summer wound down from the season's requisite anchor film blockbusters, there was increasing room for a few independent films that will make their way from the festival circuit to fill the newly vacated screens at your local multiplex. For some it was to attain eligibility for the year-end award season. For others it was a short window to turn a profit from what was conceived more as a work of art. For others it was a chance to become a sleeper hit. And for others yet, an opportunity to deliver a social message on the larger soapbox of the big screens. Blindspotting appears to be on the cusp of all of these things. But perhaps it came a little early for any awards consideration, and at a time where it was still competing with the mega-films of the summer. There's no doubt that the film attempts to hit us with a message, but it falls just short of that accomplishment. Blindspotting works best as a character study, and it's in that mode that the film almost approaches compelling.
