Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on October 15th, 2024
"Let's get this party started, people!"
So, I somewhat missed the boat on the Despicable Me franchise but let me see if I got the gist. So Gru, played by Steve Carrell, is a reformed clumsy master villain, (though from what I can see he maintains the clumsy part) who now works for the Anti-Villian League; essentially now helping catch villains instead of being one. Interesting premises and after watching Despicable Me 4, I can see why the studios have deemed to keep the series going. Returning to the franchise with Carrell is Kristen Wiig as Lucy, another member of the Anti-Villian League that originally hunted captured Gru before falling in love and becoming his wife and mother to his son, as well as Miranda Cosgrove, who voices Margo, Gru and Lucy's oldest adopted daughter, and Dana Gaier as Edith, Gru and Lucy's middle adopted daughter. New additions to the cast include Will Ferrell as the film’s primary antagonist and old nemesis of Gru’s, Sofia Vergara as a femme fatale and secondary antagonist, and most notably and possible my favorite character of the film, Joey King as Poppy Prescott, an aspiring super villainess who has admired Gru for a long time.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2024
"This is the story of one of America's great unsung heroes. I mean, you've seen him, but you never knew who he was. You've cheered for him and cried for him, and women have wanted to die for him. But did he ever get any credit, or the girl? No! He's what we call the "stuntman", and the reason I'm talking so fondly about him is, well, because it's me, Colt Seavers. Anyway, picture work isn't wall-to-wall employment, so maybe you wonder how a guy keeps his head together. Well, one way is to wait by the phone ... and wait, and wait. The other is to take an occasional job with the court system of the United States of America, where a man is considered innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, sometimes a lot of these people get out of jail on what we call bail, and they'd run like hell ... and that's where I come in. I sometimes pick up rent money trying to find them and bring them back to justice." - Television series open.
Lee Majors performed a pretty solid television hat trick in his television career. Over three decades he starred in three iconic television shows that defined him for three successive generations. In the 1960's he was Heath Barkley on the TV western The Big Valley. Like the Cartwrights in the more popular series Bonanza, the Barkleys faced all of the elements of the Wild West, and Lee Majors was there for it all. From 1965 to 1969 he was in 112 episodes of the hit show. Then the 1970's arrived, which was the decade in which I became acquainted with Majors as Steve Austin, "a man barely alive" until a secret government organization made him "better than he was" as The Six Million Dollar Man. He was "reassembled with a bionic arm, eye, and two legs. It made him "stronger ... faster ..." I spent many a summer afternoon running in slow motion and making that "chichichi" sound as a young boy. The Six Million Dollar Man ran from 1974 to 1978 and went 99 episodes, a couple of spin-offs, and several television movies. The show has been kicked around in Hollywood for decades with several attempts to make it a film franchise, often updated to The Six Billion Dollar Man. I guess a million bucks just doesn't go as far as it used to. Now it takes $126 million to put Majors' third series on the big screen. That happens to be the role of Hollywood stuntman-turned-action-hero Colt Seavers, and it ran from 1981 to 1986 and another 112 episodes. If you're keeping score at home, that's an amazing 323 + episodes of television over three decades. And now it's Colt who beats Steve and Heath to the big screen in The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch and starring Ryan Gosling in Majors' Colt Seaver role and Emily Blunt as his co-star, playing Jody Moreno, originally played by Heather Thomas. But is this a movie that audiences are going to fall for?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 29th, 2024
In 1993 when this film came out, 1962 just seemed like another time that as a teenager I just couldn’t wrap my head around. While the kids in Matinee were excited about these giant monster films, I could sort of relate, as I was getting into horror myself, but instead of atomic bugs, I was getting into the slasher heavy hitters like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. So a film about kids spending most of their time at a movie theater was something I could relate to easily, and as I got older I simply continued to appreciate the film more as I consumed more films from the past and grew to appreciate filmmakers like Val Lewton, William Castle, Roger Corman, and Lloyd Kaufman, the guys who knew how to turn a cheap film into an event experience through a variety of marketing gimmicks. The idea of ambulances being staged outside a theater because audience members may faint or having people in costume lunge at unsuspecting guests. These innovators make going to the movie theater an experience even if the movie wasn’t all that great … and now 30 years after the release of Matinee, I find myself bitten by the bug of nostalgia. I can’t help but miss how I used to consume movies, either spending an entire day at the multiplex sneaking into R rated films or hitting the video store and grabbing a bunch of videos to watch with friends. Now we have streaming, and it just isn’t the same. The movie theaters may not have the sticky floors that we all hated, and to be fair I do like the stadium seating, but it’s just not the way it used to be, and with ticket prices skyrocketing along with crazy rates at the concession stands, well, it isn’t too hard to understand why people want to believe the theater experience is dying.
I don’t mean to be so bleak, especially when Matinee is far from being a downer; instead it is a charming love letter to a time where as a kid things would have been so simple, but for adults the terror of an atomic missile strike kept many parents in fear. Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) is your typical kid, but with his father being in the military his family bounces around a lot, and while his father is deployed he feels the need to be “the man of the house” and look after his mom and his little brother. This new deployment has them brought down to the Florida Keys, and at the worst time imaginable, during “he Cold War, and when the Russians are threatening to drop atomic bombs on the States. We see how the kids are prepping with bombing drills and folks around town are emptying out the store shelves (a scene oddly reminiscent to when the COVID panic recently struck and the nation was in a panic over toilet paper). Gene is eager to simply just leave the base and find his sanctuary at the local theater and just watch movies all day. It’s at the movies he happens to run into one of his idols, Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman), who has come to town to premiere his new film, a B-monster movie called MANT, and he’s going to be presenting the film in what he calls “Atomic Vision”.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 12th, 2024
"For most of human civilization, we believed that we were Earth's most dominant species. We believed that life could only exist on the surface of the planet. Well, after a certain point of view, you have to wonder what else we were wrong about. In the beginning, Hollow Earth lived in harmony with the surface world. The Titans were the guardians of nature, and the Great Apes became the protectors of humanity. But a great evil threatened the peace. A powerful and ruthless ape desperate to conquer the surface world led his tribe into war against the one they call the Monster Who Ate a Star. The war with the Apes nearly destroyed Godzilla. But after a great battle, he imprisoned the apes in a fiery realm of Hollow Earth. Their false king remains obsessed with reaching the surface. The Iwi call him the Skar King."
That in a nutshell is the plot of the latest Monsterverse film from Legacy and Warner Brothers. It's called Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, and we're told the X is silent. And here I thought it was some kind of a multiplier.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 18th, 2024
"Consider what you are about to do."
I first read Frank Herbert's initial Dune book back in the mid 1970's. I was introduced to one of the most complicated and extraordinary universes of literature I have still ever encountered. It's a masterpiece followed by several more books over the years that have more completely brought this world to life. The material's cinematic journey has been somewhat less captivating and quite a disappointment. The 1984 David Lynch film was a train wreck and quite possibly one of the greatest film failures in history. Since then a lot has changed. Today computer-generated images have progressed to the point that with enough money and artistic expertise a filmmaker can depict anything the mind can conceive. Images have become photorealistic, and the worlds of Herbert's Dune universe can finally be brought to the silver screen with almost no limitations. But is that enough? In 2021 Denis Villeneuve gave us the first film in an expected trilogy. Would he be able to capture literature lightning in a bottle in the same way Peter Jackson brought to life the Middle Earth worlds of Tolkien? It was a bit of a strange time. The world was hit with a pandemic that brought our lives to a standstill, and people were finally looking to be coaxed back into the multiplexes ... and they came. Dune delivered an exciting new experience, but it wasn't quite up to par in my book. The film was far too involved in exposition. The characters talked a lot more than they did ... anything. So I was a bit unimpressed even in the face of the technological marvel that the film certainly was. Now it's Part Two, and the chances of the trilogy getting a conclusion depends heavily on what happens here. So what does happen here?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 14th, 2024
"The thing that haunts me are all the guys that I couldn't save."
I have to admit I was a little skeptical that Clint Eastwood followed up his directing stint on Jersey Boys as quickly as he did to shoot American Sniper. The former was far from one of his better efforts, and he looked increasingly out of his element by the time it was said and done. He jumped into his preparation for American Sniper almost immediately, and the results could have been ... underwhelming. Instead Eastwood hit his target with the kind of profound impact I don't think I've seen from him since Unforgiven. Unforgiven won a Best Picture award, and deservedly so. American Sniper was nominated, although Eastwood himself was snubbed in the director category. It didn't win, of course, but this is one that most certainly deserves your attention.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 7th, 2024
As many of you know, there isn't a type of media that I don't enjoy reviewing. Sure, my film reviews are most numerous, but I have also dabbled in books, video games, and music when it comes to critiquing. Music is really fun, because I'm one of the few people I know that will literally dissect every song whether it is a hit or a throwaway. Needless to say, I almost never hold back. So imagine my excitement when I come upon a new anime that blends an interesting story with the amazing style of jazz music. I honestly don't even listen to jazz, but the chance to expand my musical repertoire is something I crave to do. Let's take a look at Blue Giant.
A cold wind is blowing, and somewhere a saxophone is playing. A car whooshes by; Dai Miyamoto (voiced by Yuki Yamada) tries to play, but the weather is so frigid that he is having a lot of trouble. He keeps trying, because one day he will be a famous musician. A black cat slinks by and rests beside him. Dai gasps after playing a difficult note, and the pain is too much to bear, so he takes time out to have a chat with the feline. However, the cat soon leaves him, and he goes back to his playing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on May 3rd, 2024
"The honeybee has always had a special relationship with humanity. A sacred relationship. Why? No bees, no agriculture. No agriculture, no civilization. Our nation is not unlike a beehive, with its complex systems of workers, caretakers, even royalty. If any of the beehive's complex mechanisms are compromised, the hive collapses. Someone, a long time ago, decided that a mechanism was needed to keep our nation safe -- a mechanism outside the chain of command, outside the system. It's one mission -- to keep the system safe. Beekeepers are given all resources, empowered to act on their own judgment. For decades, they have quietly worked to keep the hive safe. That is, until now. It appears that a retired Beekeeper has gone off program, and is acting in what he mistakenly believes is the hive's best interest."
On its surface, The Beekeeper seems to be another mindless action film featuring a retired assassin or skilled operator forced out of retirement to right an injustice. Granted, those themes are central to the overall story; however, in my opinion, the film embraces those themes and provides a measure of excitement and substance to a premise that could have easily become basic. For me, I’d put the film up there with another one of my favorite Jason Statham movies, Homefront. And yes, it is not lost on me that both films feature a retired character who is forced to come out of retirement and take action. For me, in both films Statham’s characters have intrigue. Specifically in The Beekeeper, Statham’s character background is merely hinted at. We know that he was an elite operative. We know his organization operated independently and with a measure of impunity. Beyond that, not much is known about the group. It is left open for interpretation. It also doesn’t hurt that the cast also includes the likes of Jeremy Irons, Josh Hutcherson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, and Phylicia Rashad.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on March 13th, 2024
"They say everybody's good at something. Me? I talk to fish. That's how I met my friend, Storm. He's always there when I need a lift. Some people think that makes me a joke, But I don't care. You know why? 'Cause I'm also good at something else: breaking heads ... I'm Aquaman."
This film release marks the end of the DCEU as we know it (also known as the Snyder-verse). The DCEU has been an interesting ride to say the least, full of ups and downs. And while it never truly challenged Marvel with their multi-phased game plan, it did provide unique opportunities that gave some deserving talents a platform to showcase their abilities. Momoa was one of them. For me, his casting was among the most unique and triumphant. When he was first announced, I had to take a hard look at that decision, as it went against the grain as far as traditional casting for Arthur Curry went. However, it is difficult for me to imagine anyone else who could have brought the same kind of life to the character. Momoa gave the character an exotic and wild-man energy that made for a very entertaining interpretation. Granted this at times made the character seem dimwitted, making his path to the throne seem all the more unlikely. On the other hand, the character was intended to struggle and chafe under the pressure of the crown, thus making Momoa’s performance believable.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on December 14th, 2023
“Let’s go get the s**t kicked out of us by love.”
It’s hard for me to accept that Love Actually is really 20 years old already. I remember being a projectionist when this came out and splicing the film together back when movies were actually shown on film. When I first saw the film, it was after hours in the movie theater, and we had to screen the movies the day before release to make sure it was put together properly, and I was with my girlfriend at the time, so it was just us in the auditorium, and from that moment on I was in love with this film. I’ve seen the film well over a dozen times through different phases of my life, and each experience it hits a little differently, but I still come away from this film feeling a bit schmaltzy and in the Christmas spirit. For those of you who have missed out on this classic and are wondering just what is so great about this sentimental British love fest, the movie is written and directed by Richard Curtis; this would be his first time directing, but he had previously made a name for himself after writing Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones Diary. These were a trio of films that American audiences were ravenous about and basically set up Love Actually to become an instant success, but I don’t think anyone was ready for just how charming and heartwarming this film would actually turn out to be.
