Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 25th, 2011
"In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. I am He. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him, was made nothing that has been made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of man. And the light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness grasped it not. The greatest story ever told..."
Every spring around the time of Easter you could count on several annual films to make their way to televisions across the country for special family presentations. For Easter you had The Greatest Story Ever Told and King Of Kings. For Passover there was always The Ten Commandments. And so it is an appropriate time to see all three of these films make their way unto high definition and Blu-ray for the very first time. We've already reported on the excellent release of The Ten Commandments and King Of Kings. Our review of The Greatest Story Ever Told concludes this Holy Trinity of movies to review.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 11th, 2011
Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) once was a musician, but now he is a carpenter and an inveterate writer of letters of complaint (to pet taxis, for instance, for not having a soft carpet for the paws of their passengers). After a stay at a mental institution, he arrives in LA to look after his brother's house and dog while the family is away in Vietnam. He reconnects with an old friend from his band days (Rhys Ifans, a long way from his manic energy in Notting Hill), and circles around a stop-start romance with personal aid and professional doormat Florence (Greta Gerwig).
Stiller's performance here reminds me of Adam Sandler's in Punch-Drunk Love. In both cases, we have actors known for embodying a particular comic type: Sandler is the raging man-child, while Stiller is the sensitive soul prone to social catastrophe. And in both films, we see the actors working with a distinctive auteur (P.T. Anderson, Noah Baumbach) on a low-key comedy that is very much a film of personal expression (to borrow a term from William Bayer). Finally, the borderline art-house trappings and new gravitas notwithstanding, they are still playing recognizable versions of what they've always done. It's just that what is a type of clown perfect for one form of comedy becomes a psychotic in the more realist version. At any rate, I find Stiller's same-yet-different performance very interesting, and very good, and that goes for the other performers too, especially Gerwig, who nails Florence's insecurities, naivete and strength. However, though I found the performances interesting, I didn't find the characters that interesting. Greenberg is thoroughly repellent, and that's fine, but he isn't compelling. I found myself unable to care about what he would do or say next (partly because I had a pretty good idea of what that would be), and wished that Florence were the protagonist instead. Though her self-destructive crush on Greenberg is as inexplicable as it is nonsensical, and so she too tries our patience, she has enough off-beat quirks and surprising resilience to make her worth following around. This is, then, a film that is finely wrought, written and acted, but that is also rather static and distancing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 13th, 2010
"... It is a dark time for the rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the Galaxy. But, you know this story..."
Know this story, you do. It's the opening of the second, or actually the 5th in sequence, but it is the second one made, unless you count... Never mind. This is the prologue to The Empire Strikes Back, more commonly referred to the 2 hour trailer for Return Of The Jedi. Not so long ago in this Galaxy, Family Guy took a shot across the bow of those Imperial Cruisers with its extremely funny and on the spot spoof of the first Star Wars film, or actually the 4th chapter.... Star Wars: A New Hope. It was only a matter of time before Seth Mac Farlane would steer his own ship back into George Lucas's universe once again. With equal parts faithful adaptation and off the wall detours, he's done it again, delivering another very funny tour into the dark side.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 21st, 2009
“Donnie Darko was killed when a jet engine fell from the sky and crushed him while he was sleeping. The government never located the plane from which the engine fell, nor did they even admit the incident ever occurred. But that was just the beginning of the tragedy… and the mystery”
No truer words were ever spoken. First of all, this prologue is about as close to the original Donnie Darko film that this movie ever gets. S. Darko is indeed the beginning of a tragedy. It’s more a disaster than a tragedy, really. It involves a loss of life -- your life. 103 minutes of your life to be exact, unless of course you’re stupid enough to watch the extras as well. That’s not a tragedy. I’d call that a self inflicted wound. The mystery? That’s an easy one. It’s a mystery to me that this film ever got off the ground, let alone released, albeit as a direct to video affair. Donnie Darko wasn’t a great film, but it was an intriguing one that left the audience with some thought provoking images. But there appears to be a fine line between thought provoking and mind numbing. S. Darko is mired in its own abstractness, a serious movie not to be taken seriously at all. In the end, I’m not even sure what the filmmakers were trying to do. I heard them try to explain it, justify it is likely the more accurate term. Still, I can’t help but suspect that whatever it was they were trying to do they failed miserably. And if you end up watching this film it will be you who pays for their shortcomings. Good cinema deserves to be rewarded. Bad cinema deserves simply to be ignored.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 3rd, 2009
“What you see before you is the first of a new species. I call it experiment 626. He is bullet proof, fireproof, and can think faster than supercomputer. He can see in the dark and move objects 3000 times his size. His only instinct: To destroy everything he touches.”
This affront to nature is none other than one of the staring characters in Disney’s 2002 animation feature Lilo And Stitch. It was created by an alien mad scientist, Dr, Jumba (Stiers). Unfortunately, the Intergalactic Federation considers it dangerous and an abomination. They throw Dr. Jumba in prison and sentence the creature to exile on a desolate asteroid. The elusive creature escapes the transport ship, stealing a police cruiser, the red one. He ends up on a backwater planet called Earth, more specifically a place called Hawaii. It seems that the Federation can’t simply obliterate the planet. It has been designated a protected world, a sanctuary for an endangered species, the mosquito. So the council sends Jumba and their representative, the one-eyed worm, Pleakley (McDonald) to either retrieve or destroy the experiment. Meanwhile, living on Hawaii are two orphan sisters. The teenaged Nani (Carrere) and her younger sister Lilo (Chase). They are having some trouble getting along now that Nani must also become a parent figure to her young sister. It doesn’t help that social services has sent their toughest agent, Cobra Bubbles (Rhames) to decide if Nani is fit to raise Lilo. The truth is Lilo doesn’t fit in at school, and she’s grown incredibly lonely. She prays for an angel to come and be her friend. Since angels are scarce in Hawaii, she suggests a dog. They end up at the pound where experiment 626 happens to be. Lilo falls in love with the alien experiment and names him Stitch, thinking him an exotic species of dog. Of course, the two get themselves in a lot of trouble, not to mention being hunted by Stitch’s pursuers. Still, the two bond and both learn to adapt their natures.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 18th, 2008
The Longshots is one of those sports films that in many ways you see coming from miles away. It certainly feeds upon that against all odds sports cliché that you’ve likely seen a hundred times if you’ve seen it once. But in so many other ways, this is a story with more than a champion’s heart and courage. In many ways it’s about family and redemption. While the film is based loosely on the story of Jasmine Plummer, it is just as much the story of her uncle Curtis, who was saving himself as he was trying to help his niece. I’m not a huge Ice Cube fan. Honestly, I find most of his characters to be an extension of the punk attitude he garnered as a rapper. But this role is significantly better than anything I’ve seen him do before. The part doesn’t necessarily call for a lot of chops to play, but Ice Cube does add a certain amount of sincerity to the role, without having to extend himself all that far. It almost looks effortless, like he’s sleepwalking through the part, but it leads to rather inspirational results when taken as a whole.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 24th, 2007
In Belle Époque Paris, the can-can is all the rage but also illegal, and Shirley MacLaine’s nightclub is cracked down on by uptight judge Louis Jourdan. MacLaine is defended by libertine lawyer Frank Sinatra. Jourdan falls for MacLaine, who is waiting perhaps in vain for Sinatra to marry her. Maurice Chevalier shows up to chuckle indulgently.
The vision of Paris may be no more convincing than MacLaine and Sinatra playing characters named “Simone” and “François,” but this is a musical, so who cares? The sets are bright, the songs are catchy, and the dance numbers energetic. But the storyline itself is stultifying. Maybe Krushchev was right about this thing after all.
![Family Guy Presents: Something Something Something Dark Side [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/family-guy-presents-something-some-large.jpg)
![S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/s-darko-a-donnie-darko-tale-blu--large.jpg)
