Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2017
"Survival of the fittest. It's the law of the jungle. There's always someone trying to take what's yours. How do I know? It almost happened to me."
Where the heck has Alec Baldwin been lately? I seem to recall he was a pretty hot A-list movie star actor at one time. There was The Hunt For Red October, and then there was... OK, forget the A-list movie star bit. He was really an A-list television star. He killed it in 30 Rock and then of course there was... OK. Re-set. Now I remember. There was that hugely popular radio talk show he had going on for, what was it, five minutes?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2017
"In the future, the line between human and machine is disappearing. Advancements in the technology allow humans to enhance themselves with cybernetic parts. Hanka robotics, funded by the government, is developing a military operative that will blur the line even further. By transplanting a human brain into a fully synthetic body, they will combine the strongest attributes of human and robot."
...and resistance is futile. OK. Wrong franchise.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 19th, 2017
Every year it seems the “summer” movie season seems to start sooner than the year before. Here we are, the second Friday of March, and already we’ve seen the huge box office weekend for Logan, and now this weekend we have the release of Kong: Skull Island. Ever since Kong first graced the big screen back in 1933, every film that followed was a mega-event. Personally it wasn’t till 2005 that theatergoers got to fully experience the massive beast in all his glory as he became worthy of the title “the 8th wonder of the world”. Now we have Legendary Entertainment playing in the giant monster movie sandbox with plans to set up a series of monster films. All this leads up to the inevitable clash of the kaiju monsters where we will finally see the showdown of Godzilla vs. King Kong. Before we begin to get too excited, how does our current trip to Skull Island fare?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 22nd, 2017
"You wanted me back. I'm back."
Keanu Reeves has enjoyed somewhat of a career renaissance thanks in no small part to the success of John Wick in 2014. There he teamed up with some stunt friends of his going back to The Matrix, and together they brought a new action hero to the screen that was as much graphic novel as it was action film. It would become the directing debut of the stunt team of Stahelski and David Leitch. Along with their action star, everyone stuck to what they knew and refused to overcomplicate the whole thing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 14th, 2017
“Black…all important movies start with a black screen…”
I completely understand if you’re Batman-ed out by now. The Caped Crusader barely had a chance to catch his breath since the end of Christopher Nolan’s landmark superhero trilogy in 2012 and being pressed back into duty to help kickstart Warner Bros.’ budding superhero universe last year. But between those two iterations, we got a glimpse at a fresh, knowingly funny version of a hero that takes himself entirely too seriously. Batman was a scene-stealing supporting player in 2014’s blockbuster The Lego Movie, and now he once again takes center stage in a sharp, hilarious, irreverent adventure that celebrates practically every version of the beloved character.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 31st, 2017
"I always know who you are. It's just that sometimes I don't recognize you."
Logan is perhaps one of the most interesting, endearing, and popular characters in the Marvel universe. Wolverine has the distinction of having been created by someone other than Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. While they invented the X-Men team from which the adamantium-clawed warrior was born, he was actually created by the team of Len Wein and John Romita, Sr. in the mid 1970's. Since that time the character has taken on a life of his own, a life that is as much owed to actor Hugh Jackman as anyone else. The funny thing is that Jackman is really nothing at all like the comic book character, who was actually quite short.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 11th, 2017
"I got this..."
When Sly Stallone delivered his homage to the 1980's action film in The Expendables he hit a lot of the action film requisites. It was old-school fun with a new-school level of effects and production design. But with all of his efforts to bring back the 1980's action star hero, there was one beat he couldn't have connected with until a couple of years later. You see, action films are like potato chips. You can't have just one. Films like First Blood, Die Hard, Terminator, and all of the others always had one final thing in common...the sequels. In case you thought that The Expendables was a one-off, the sequel was inevitable. And this is one case where the second film might be a little better than the first. Sure, it's somewhat of a two-hour cliché, but who says there's anything wrong with that?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 2nd, 2017
"Man, we'll die with you. Just don't ask us to do it twice."
Remember the old days of the action movie? Those films where someone like Stallone or Schwarzenegger would run around and take out armies of bad guys while barely breaking a sweat. You know the kind of movie I'm talking about. The ones where the hero goes up against a hail of bullets and explosions and manages to pick off the bad guys without catching a single slug himself. These were the days when a guy like Bruce Willis could fall thirty floors, get a spike impaled in his ribcage, have a ton of concrete wall fall on his head, and get run over by a truck, but still manage to take out the bad guy while muttering some witty little catchphrase that we would all be repeating, because if we could deliver the line just right that meant we were tough guys too
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 30th, 2017
“I’m writing a book about magical creatures.”
The wizarding world J.K. Rowling conjured for her Harry Potter series captured the imaginations of children (and many, many adults) throughout the globe because it was precisely that…a fully realized, living and breathing world with its own lingo and lore. So while spinning off a corner of that universe might seem like a blatant cash grab, Rowling’s imagination has provided particularly fertile ground for new franchise opportunities. (OK, OK…the part where Warner Bros. agreed to make five of these before the first one even came out *does* feel like a cash grab.) For example, this latest crowd-pleasing stab at a billion-dollar series is based on…a fictional textbook mentioned in Rowling’s Potter saga.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by John Delia on March 23rd, 2017
Probably the most silly of animated films this year, and that’s a good thing for Sing. Enjoyable, very funny, touching, and absolutely incredibly wacky. The family film targets children, but the adults will enjoy it a lot more than the average toon. I’m surprised the filmmakers waited so long to put the film in theaters, but with no children’s anime to stop it from becoming a blockbuster, it’s a very possible chance it will. Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey voiced), the grandson of a theatre owner, has the tough job of bringing the venue back to its glory after he inherited the entertainment palace.
