Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 26th, 2006
Jack Nicholson can make a convincing case for being one of the greatest actors of all time. He's had his share of memorable moments in movies, with quoted lines etched in our brains. It took a while for me to get "You can't handle the truth!" out of my head. He has also turned in outstanding performances in lesser known movies that have shown his range and dramatic ability. Alternate viewing recommendations to see Jack in action include Hoffa and The Pledge, among a variety of others....In About Schmidt, the follow-up effort by Alexander Payne (Election), Jack strips away the sunglasses, the eyebrow and the devilish grin, puts on 20 pounds, and gives us a performance that some have labeled as career defining.
Warren Schmidt (Nicholson) has recently retired from his job at Woodman of the World Insurance, in Omaha, Nebraska. While he has put his time and energy into the job, is it of no significance. Warren stops by the office shortly after retiring, to perhaps answer any questions his replacement may have, and he has none. His place in the world almost reflects this insignificance, as he is unable to complete a sentence around his wife Helen (June Squibb, Far From Heaven), and their marriage has emasculated him to the point where he finds himself sitting down in order to urinate. In order to pass the time in retirement, he decides to donate money to a "Save the Children"-type organization, and becomes the foster parent of a 6-year Tanzanian boy named Ndugu. He does have a daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis, Hearts in Atlantis) who is living in Denver, about to be married to Randall (Dermot Mulroney, Point of No Return), a waterbed salesman with a mullet, who also happens to be a fan of pyramid schemes. After Helen dies suddenly from a blood clot, Warren (with the help of a recently purchased Winnebago) heads out to Denver in an attempt to stop Jeannie from making a mistake that she may regret. Not only do we see Warren's adventures in getting to Denver, but he meets Randall's mother Roberta (Kathy Bates, Misery), where the events pick up at a hilarious pace.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 26th, 2006
Let’s face it. Movies released in January usually aren’t very good. Yes, some of these movies are Oscar hopefuls that are released nation-wide, but only after being released in selected cities to quality for those Oscars. No, we’re talking about stinking piles of crap like Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne here. Being that January is Hollywood’s cinematic dumping ground, it comes as no surprise that Tristan & Isolde was released during this very same month in 2006.
Delayed for nearly a year, Tristan & ...solde follows a slew of disappointing historical epics, so common sense would tell you that the studio heads looked at this film and dubbed it a risk, with no bankable stars attached. What the studio heads seemed to forget (or miss, because let’s face it -- they’re more concerned with target audiences and opening weekends than quality) Tristan & Isolde is not half bad. In fact, it’s rather good.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 26th, 2006
Let’s face it. Movies released in January usually aren’t very good. Yes, some of these movies are Oscar hopefuls that are released nation-wide, but only after being released in selected cities to quality for those Oscars. No, we’re talking about stinking piles of crap like Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne here. Being that January is Hollywood’s cinematic dumping ground, it comes as no surprise that Tristan & Isolde was released during this very same month in 2006.
Delayed for nearly a year, Tristan & ...solde follows a slew of disappointing historical epics, so common sense would tell you that the studio heads looked at this film and dubbed it a risk, with no bankable stars attached. What the studio heads seemed to forget (or miss, because let’s face it -- they’re more concerned with target audiences and opening weekends than quality) Tristan & Isolde is not half bad. In fact, it’s rather good.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 25th, 2006
For better or worse, Hugh Grant has carved out a niche in Hollywood as the nervous, awkward, charming, British romantic leading man. He's tried doing other things, paired with Gene Hackman as the protagonist in the thriller Extreme Measures. But attempts such as these are few and far between, and haven't seemed to work. For better or worse, he'll always be the stodgy British guy trying to bed an American chick over the objection of her parents, or some other convoluted romantic comedy plot. To his credit, he has been playing against that stereotype lately, to a lesser degree in Bridget Jones's Diary, but to a larger scale in About a Boy, recently nominated for a Golden Globe in Comedy.
Will (Grant) is the son of a man who recorded a famous, but fictional, Christmas song in the late 1950's, and literally does nothing all day, living off of the royalties of that song. He's a bachelor who likes to avoid any responsibility or relationships, and has an epiphany: relationships with single mothers. He believes that they'll jump on top of you, but they'll always compare you to the guy who gave her the kid/kids that she's trying to raise, and they'll end the relationship first, so Will avoids any unpleasantness in breaking up now. He becomes such a firm believer in this theory, he creates an imaginary son, going as far as buying a childseat to put in his silver Audi sportscar, and uses this to attend support group meetings of other single parents, looking to hook up, and finds success.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 24th, 2006
At the end of the day, The Cavern is an old-school monster movie (of sorts) with some really annoying habits. The shaky camera technique can only take one so far. When a filmmaker tries to use it in place of suspense, it grows old very fast. And when this crew of cave divers enter the mysterious crawlspace of the film's title, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi goes hog wild with every gimmick angle he can think of. The result of such activity is the remnant of a good horror film, which builds mood nicely with...some gritty settings, but quickly descends into shoddiness rather than terror. The plot centers on a cave in the deserts of Central Asia, where a team of explorers coping with a tragedy have reunited to explore a neglected passage deep in the earth's crust. Little do they know, someone - or something - has beaten them to the site, and is now intent on keeping the finding for itself in any violent way possible.
Some of the best films are spawned from the simplest of ideas. And The Cavern has a cast, which does its best to capitalize on such simplicity. Despite the film's budget and obscurity, these performers give it their all, and have nothing to be ashamed of; because, for all the film's failures, they keep it from turning into a laughable college film class production from some obscure midwestern university. They do so by actually knowing how to act, and taking the content seriously... even if it doesn't return the favor. Osunsanmi is the real blame for this missed opportunity. He tries so hard to flex his directorial muscles the entire 81 minutes comes across as numbing and disorienting. And while 81 minutes isn't very long in normal film terms, it seems like a lifetime when you are using every moment to try and figure out what the heck is going on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 23rd, 2006
Synopsis
The Waodani tribe of the Amazon is, we are told, so violent that they have almost hunted each other to extinction. Oops. Anyway, in 1956 a group of missionaries and their families arrive to live with the Waodani and do the missionary thing. A misunderstanding leads to the missionaries being slaughtered, but their wives decide to stay. The film follows the journey of the son of one of the five men, and the whole thing is all about forgiveness.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 20th, 2006
The 60's have become something of a caricature of themselves. Take a girl with straight hair and flowers, throw in a “groovy” and a “man”, add some grainy photography, and you're all ready to go. It is sometimes hard to remember that there was a time when this was not a kitchy formula, it was just the way that it was. This film is so authentically steeped in 60's hippie culture that it almost doesn't seem real when the footage starts rolling. Once the film begins to sink in, though, the viewer is completely drawn in ...o this world than many of the modern era may only know from oldies radio, of all things.
The Monterey Pop Festival was a large music festival held in Monterey California in 1967. The bill included not only some of the top acts of the day, such as the Mammas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane and The Who, but it also launched the careers of such legends as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding. The weekend festival was a defining moment in the history of rock and roll, as well as of the hippie movement.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 20th, 2006
I've seen people quote this film from time to time, and I never understood the attraction because I saw it once and forgot about it. After a bit of intrigue, I finally got my hands on a copy of the US version of this 2 disc set (though the UK version, with the orange cover and silhoulette image of Ewan McGregor on the cover looks much cooler) and gave it a spin, lo and behold, I discovered a pretty good movie.
It's been talked about a lot for awhile I guess, but to sum up, McGregor plays Benton, a heroin addict in Scotland, who spends his days getting high and hanging around with his mates. Spud (Ewen Bremner, Black Hawk Down) wears Nancy Reagan-like glasses from time to time, and seems to be the closest one Renton relates to; Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller, Hackers) is the one that tries to make himself superior to the group, when he's not off spouting weird theories about movies that Sean Connery has starred in; Tommy (Kevin McKidd, Topsy Turvy) is against his buddies using but is curious about it, and then there's Bigbie (Robert Carlyle, The Full Monty), a beer-drinking Scot with an offensive mustache and a penchant for getting into brawls.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 15th, 2006
When the film V For Vendetta was announced, my interest immediate peaked as I found out the Wachowski Brothers would be writing the film. Unlike a majority of fans, I didn’t completely dislike The Matrix Trilogy; in fact, I thought they were a ton of fun. With this new film, the brothers attack the theme of a society where the government has the only voice, similar to the novel 1984. Add in actors Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving, and you have me at the word go.
The year is 2020. A vir...s has run through the world leaving a majority of Americans dead in their shoes, and Britain is ruled by a fascist dictator who promises nothing but security for his people. This dictator never mentions anything about giving his people freedom though. This causes a man simply known as V to rebel. V secretly moves throughout London evading authority figure after authority figure. V wears a mask of the face of Guy Fawkes, a man who tried, in 1605, to blow up the houses of Parliament. On November 5th, the eve of Guy Fawkes Day, many citizens burn fires in a type of effigy toward Fawkes. On this eve in the year 2020, V saves a young reporter named Evey (Natalie Portman) from rape. He forces her to join him and concludes the night by sitting the Old Bailey courtrooms ablaze.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 14th, 2006
I like to call movies like this “exception films”. They are the exception to the rule. Those odd little films that show up every once in a great while that really have no right to be good. You hear the plot, you see the trailer, and you know that this film is mere days away from losing vast sums of money for someone on the left coast. Then the movie comes out and it is... inexplicably entertaining and fantastic.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has carved out a surprisingly strong cult following for itself since it... theatrical release. So here's the plot of this unlikely hit: Robert Downey Jr. plays Harry Lockhart, a clumsy small time criminal who stumbles into a Hollywood acting audition while fleeing the police. Naturally, he gets the part, and is quickly ushered off to La La Land to act in the film. When he gets there, he is assigned an acting coach (Val Kilmer) named Gay Perry (get it?) to help him learn the craft. Throw in an old High School girlfriend and a murder mystery, and there you have it. A movie that is much better than it has any right to be.
