Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 10th, 2017
When we begin the second season of Blindspot, three months have passed since the first season's explosive finale. We are placed back in the action with the same time having passed on the show. Jane (Alexander) has been kept at a covert CIA black ops location where she is being tortured for information. It is a fortuitous time to rejoin the action, because we arrive just in time to see her engineer a clever escape. Meanwhile Kurt Weller (Stapleton) and his team have been back to more mundane FBI cases, and it's obvious they miss the excitement of working the tattoos. They're about to get their wish, and things are about to get pretty intense as we join the sophomore season of Martin Gero's Blindspot.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by John Delia on August 9th, 2017
Putting a twist on the original movie Going in Style, director Zach Braff does a good job of reviving the comedy for modern-day audiences. He turns up the laughter with memorable situation comedy and actors who can deliver some of the best one-liners. It’s a lot of fun for a date night or just a chance to get away from the humdrum to laugh a little. Retired and trying to scrape by on his retirement check, Joe Harding (Michael Caine) is about to hit an unexpected brick wall. With his mortgage in jeopardy from lack of timely payments and his granddaughter needing help with tuition, he’s in a very tight spot. His best friends Albert Garner (Alan Arkin) and Willie Davis (Morgan Freeman), who have been living together for the past 25 years to curb expenses, are about to be in the same boat.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on August 8th, 2017
“Extraordinary people come with singular issues and needs.”
On the surface, being blessed with a genius-level intellect seems like good thing, right? So it's interesting that movies about uncommonly smart people (Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind, and The Imitation Game to name a few) tend to focus on the extreme isolation and inevitable exploitation of these individuals. Gifted is about a potential “one-in-a-billion” math prodigy and her weary, protective uncle, who carries himself like someone who's seen too many movies about exploited geniuses and knows full well that “nobody likes a smart-ass.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on August 4th, 2017
An action film with a running time of 89 minutes should mean that it’s going to be lean on the story and keep things moving at a fast pace. S.W.A.T: Under Siege delivers just that, but unfortunately in the process delivers something that we’ve seen many times before. The film is being branded as a sequel (by name only) to S.W.A.T (2003), the film with Colin Farrell which was an adaptation from the TV series from the 70’s. S.W.A.T: Under Siege has nothing to do with any of the previous incarnations, and has relocated from sunny California to Seattle Washington. But is the film worth checking out? Well I’m not a fan of sequels that go straight to DVD, but this film does dangle a wild card for the audience that convinced me to give this a shot, Michael Jai White (Spawn, Black Dynamite).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on August 4th, 2017
“It's not all it's cut out to be...it's not about being on stage all the time. It's about the killing of time.”
There certainly hasn't been a shortage of sitcoms starring stand-up comedians. Many of them (Roseanne, Home Improvement, Everybody Loves Raymond) have grafted the comic's persona onto a family-friendly format. Even the shows that have depicted the life of a comic tend to take a surreal approach (Louie) or fast-forward to the part where the star is an established comedian (Seinfeld). HBO's Crashing stands out because it honestly (and painfully) depicts the struggle of an aspiring stand-up...and makes it look very, very funny.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on August 3rd, 2017
“My persona's very, like, witty yet narcissistic.”
These self-aware words are spoken by Hannah Horvath, the on-screen alter ego of Girls star/creator Lena Dunham during the premiere of the show's final season. Of course, anyone who's watched Girls knows the “witty yet narcissistic” label applies to practically every character in Dunham's often flawed (and even-more-often brilliant) HBO dramedy. So while this final batch of episodes includes some superb moments, it's not a total surprise that this polarizing series concludes its run with a frustrating finale that is more satisfying for the show's creators than it is for its fans.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 31st, 2017
Ever since Lionsgate acquired the Vestron Video collection and has been re-releasing these remastered titles, I have to say I’ve been in nostalgia heaven. I remember seeing these VHS boxes in the horror section at my nearby video store and renting many of these to get my weekly horror fix. Waxwork was always a box cover I always appreciated, but one of the most memorable was Warlock, because in the sea of black VHS boxes with gory box art, Warlock was this white box with the mysterious Julian Sands and this menacing shadow in red. I even remember seeing the trailer attached to my VHS copy of The Monster Squad, and I always dug the trailer for the film, but it took forever for me to finally get to see the film
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on July 26th, 2017
“I'm done with crazy.”
When it comes to movies about psychotically wronged women, the crazier things get, the better. Unfortunately, the makers of Unforgettable — a dull domestic drama/wannabe thriller — never got the memo. It's a shame because the movie had some of the ingredients to be a deliciously pulpy thriller, including an amusingly unhinged turn from one of its stars. But in the end, this comes off as a Lifetime movie that slipped through the cracks, fell upwards, and was accidentally released in theaters.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 14th, 2017
"Freedom has a price. I died 7 years ago. Left behind a brother, a wife, a son, but the dead talk if you listen. They're there with you. Reaching out. Trying to tell us something. Because not all deaths are the same. Some are real. Some are a story. Question is: do you believe the story? Was the man who died who you thought he was? The dead talk. If you listen..."
The same can be said for dead series. Fox has been riding a wave of series revivals that have brought shows back from the dead in a limited-run event series format, and it has actually been doing well for the network
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 5th, 2017
When a film like The Belko Experiment comes along there is a part of me that wonders, how far off is the film from reality? Films like Death Race 2000, The Running Man, The Purge, and Battle Royale have all flirted with the idea of the government using murder as a form of entertainment while also using it as a way to control the public. You look at the violence in the world and how numb we’ve all seemed to have gotten towards violence in the news and our favorite TV shows. I can’t help but wonder, would it be so crazy to see murder on our television screens? Looking back at history and the gladiator times, there was murder for entertainment, where families would cheer on the bloodshed and carnage.
