Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 25th, 2006
Battle For The Planet Of The Apes was the last of the original Apes films. It has been far too frequently maligned. While I will admit that some of the high concepts are a little too undisguised, there was still some life left in the franchise. Of course, the novelty had worn off by now. It didn’t help that the films’ budgets kept falling as Fox was looking for cheaper ways to sell the same ideas. “Battle” was a violent film, but it was really a film about peace and the violent rite of passage often necessary to ac...ieve any long-term tranquility.
Roddy McDowell was, in fact, Planet Of The Apes. He appeared in four of the original films as well as the short-lived television series. The series was a victim not of its viewership, but rather a strong anti-violence movement aimed at the television industry at the time. While it was no more violent than most shows, it seemed to draw the most fire. Whether playing Cornelius in the first film, Caesar in the final two, or Galen in the series, McDowell had an uncanny ability to bring emotion and strength of character to the Apes make-up. He brought a realistic animation to a risky business. The Apes films might have easily become farces with laughable characters that no one took seriously enough to listen to the social commentary being offered. With the help of brilliant makeup artist Chambers, these characters were real. Paul Williams was a surprising cast choice. Better known for writing syrupy love songs, the singer did a fine job as the cynical brain trust, Virgil. Claude Akins brings the gruffness of gorilla Aldo exactly what it needs. The cast is pretty solid.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 25th, 2006
Synopsis
Judi Dench is the Mrs. Henderson of the title. Newly widowed in 1937, she decides to put her considerable fortune into owning a theatre. She buys a dilapidated building, has it redone, and hires Bob Hoskins to run it. He is just as headstrong as she is, but their memorable clashes work out to the benefit of their musical revue. When the box office begins to flag, Dench suggests having naked women on stage. A phenomenon is born, one that will not close even during the worst of the Blitz.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 24th, 2006
Synopsis
In a New York happily riddled in sin, Frank Sinatra is Nathan Detroit, who runs a notorious floating crap game. But since the cops are breathing down his neck, he is having trouble finding a location for his game. He finds one, but needs a thousand dollars cash to get the space. Enter Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson, gambler extraordinaire. Sinatra bets him a grand that he can’t seduce missionary Jean Simmons, and the romantic complications are on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 24th, 2006
Steven Spielberg has always been a surefire type of director to go to if you want a high quality film. I was first introduced to Spielberg’s work via his groundbreaking film Jaws. Since then, Spielberg has continued to churn out hit after hit from 1993’s Schindler’s List which was awarded a Best Picture Oscar to his most recent film 2005’s Munich. Both of these particular films have gained numerous political and critical praise for the messages and raw power they both contained via the film’s int...nse imagery and story. I’ve always viewed Schindler’s List as my favorite film simply because of the impact the film had on me. After watching Spielberg’s latest masterpiece Munich, I can now say that the film is high up on my list nearly dethroning Schindler’s List.
Munich opens with the 1972 events that took place at the Munich Olympics where terrorists took hostages and killed them for the simple goal of wanting peace for their homeland. The event is re-enacted in near heart-stopping moments due the raw silent scenery that Spielberg creates. We then move to a room where we meet Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) sitting with her cabinet. She utters the line “Forget peace for now.” We learn that Meir has decided to establish a secret Israeli revenge squad. What’s the goal of this squad? Why simply to kill the men who were responsible for these heinous attacks. The question that was eventually raised, long after the events in the film, was why kill these men? Men who will simply be replaced by more and more powerful and intense men who will want to do even more harm.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 23rd, 2006
When I received Bachelor Party Vegas in for review, I took a quick glance at the cover and the basic plot and thought to myself ‘Oh, I haven’t seen something like this before.’ I suppose a film like this is a guaranteed profit maker since these films are usually pretty cheap to make and don’t need to involve much big talent or production.
The film beings with the apparent 10 Commandments of the Bachelor World. Some of them are amusing barely cracking a smile, while others are down right bordering st...pidity. We meet five best friends who want to take their best buddy played by Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls) out to Las Vegas for “the wildest, craziest weekend of their lives”. Along the way, we get many a scene that seemingly gets dumber as the film progresses. First up, when the boys arrive in Las Vegas, it appears they’re going to get a lap dance from a stripper. Turns out that this stripper is a old woman. The rest of the scenes, including another lap dance from a bald, fat guy, should have be thrown on the editing floor.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 22nd, 2006
A critically acclaimed Adam Sandler film? I’d never would I have thought I’d see the day. I guess if The Truman Show is one of Jim Carrey’s dramatic stabs, then the star of Big Daddy can give a romantic comedy a try. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), using a story from the “Strange But True” category, combined with adding a touching tenderness to his characters, wrapped up with Sandler, playing a quiet, soft spoken man prone to fits of blind rage.
Sander is Barry ...gan, a novelty toilet plunger salesman with 7 sisters, who don’t hesitate in bullying him at every opportunity. Barry has times where he has periods of anger that cause him to destroy things, such as a sliding glass door at one of his sister’s houses. One morning, while at work, Barry discovers a harmonium that is left abandoned outside of the warehouse where he works. The harmonium becomes a metaphor for Barry’s pursuit to reclaim his life, as he periodically tries to play it through the film. Barry soon meets Lena (Emily Watson, Breaking the Waves) who drops her car off at the mechanic next to Barry’s office, but her intent is to meet him. Barry is attracted to Lena, and his awkwardness around her is cute to see, as if he’s a 13 year old trying to figure out what to do and say. Barry’s conflict in the movie is when he calls a phone sex company. He’s very awkward, and even confused, when talking with the girl on the other line. She decides to extort money from him, and enlists the help of Dean (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote), the owner of the company, and 3 crazed brothers.Through this, Barry is inspired by Lena, and when he finds out about a business trip she has to take to Hawaii, he takes advantage of a loophole in a Healthy Choice Promotional Campaign, which allows him to collect over 1 million frequent flyer miles from pudding purchases. He’s unable to redeem the miles in time, but he goes to meet her anyway.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 21st, 2006
Hollywood can sometimes be so enthused to cash in on a certain type of film many decent projects looking to explore a worthwhile subject topple under the weight of the cash-grabbing, money-hungry throng. Such is the case with Director John Woo’s Windtalkers, coming to DVD a third time on April 25 in this director’s cut. Though it’s sometimes overly melodramatic, this Nicolas Cage vehicle makes good use of its characters to forge an intriguing story about Navajo code talkers, and the presumed military practice ...f protecting the code and not the man. Cage plays Joe Enders, a soldier with a death wish and a lot of survivor’s guilt for having made it through battle-after-battle, only to receive another medal, while all of his friends die around him. He has grown to hate the medals because they remind him of this fact, and it seems like his whole mission is to die in battle with honor… not to go on living in a world so terrible that it welcomes the horrors of war. Then, he receives a peculiar mission: the U.S. has found luck with a form of code based on the Navajo language. It’s vital the Japanese do not get their hands on any of the Navajo code talkers, and Enders must do everything in his power to protect the code… even if that means taking the life of a fellow soldier to do it.
Such a situation lends itself to great drama; however, this is still a John Woo film, and his enslavement to self-imposed convention does cause the film to have a few problems. For one, I would like to see Woo – just once – shoot an entire film, edit, and release it, without the use of one slow-motion moment. The reason for this: if the technique is an option, he will abuse it with zero regard – or knowledge of – having done so. After seeing film-after-film of his resort to this overused tactic, I’d say it’s time he laid off. He has a good story, and characters viewers can get emotionally involved with – so why does each fallen soldier have to take an hour to hit the ground? Also, just about every war movie cliché there is turns up at some point, whether it be the bigoted soldier with a change of heart, or the loving husband telling his buddy to make sure his wife gets his wedding band “should anything happen.” (On a side note, any time a soldier says a variation of this in a war film, you know “should anything happen” actually means “when something happens.”) Lastly, there is the clunky dialogue, mostly given to Adam Beach as the featured code talker Enders must protect. With these things said, something intrinsic about the film still manages to hold everything together in a respectable narrative. And I think whatever it is, the stellar cast consisting of Nicolas Cage, Christian Slater, Noah Emmerich, Mark Ruffalo, and Jason Isaacs, has something to do with it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 20th, 2006
Synopsis
I’m late coming to this series about a fractious family and the funeral home they run. These are the first episodes I’ve ever seen, so I’m not going to pretend I have the faintest idea what’s going on here. All the various plot lines are clearly working to a conclusion, and for the benefit of those who know these characters, some of the things that are dealt with are James Cromwell’s depression and the difficulty in treating it, and the imminent arrival of a baby (which sets up the final epi...ode’s variation on the opening: instead of starting the show off with a death, it begins with a birth).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 19th, 2006
Mel Gibson stars as reluctant guerilla fighter Benjamin Martin in this story of courage, passion, and war, which dramatizes elements from the American Revolution into a gripping fictional narrative that will manipulate every emotion you have until its rousing finale. Martin endures great personal tragedies at the hands of the British - in particular, the despicable Colonel William Tavington (played with the vile gusto of a demon from Hell by Jason Isaacs). Tavington has already killed one of Martin's sons, and it is ...enjamin's concern for his other - as well as his insatiable lust for revenge - that drives him to take up arms for the Continentals and lead them into battle... and perhaps, freedom.
Whether it's tugging at heart strings, or planting viewers right in the middle of primitive warfare (no type of warfare is capable of being anything but), The Patriot maintains control of its audience, and only lets go at the final credits. Be forewarned, if you've never seen it. There will be times when you want to stop the film for fear of what might happen to Benjamin at Tavington's brutal hands. Then, other moments are "damn the torpedoes," kill that expletive-expletive, if it's the last thing you ever do. The point is, it will involve you the way few films can, and will actually have a physical effect on you - of some kind - by the time it reaches its conclusion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 19th, 2006
The only thing worse than films about filmmaking are artsy films about filmmaking. These are hazardous affairs at best. Don’t get me wrong; I thrive on a steady diet of behind the scenes features and film trade magazines. But a film in that vein can’t help but become pretentious. Enter I Love Your Work. It’s very hard to tell when Adam Goldberg is trying to be serious and when he’s aiming for satire. I hope it was mostly the latter.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not really out to g...t you. Gray Evans (Ribisi) is one of those quick-rising stars. He’s obviously more in love with himself than his legions of adoring fans. His self-loving world, however, is turned upside down when it appears he is being stalked by a crazy fan. The film allows for the chance this is all in his head, and there’s the fatal flaw. Much of this film appears to occur in Gray’s head, and it’s not a terribly exciting place to hang out. In a predictable spin, the couple he thinks might be stalking him reminds him of an earlier relationship before he was a big star. Now it seems Gray is the real stalker. The film is all style and absolutely no substance. At one point in the film Gray is watching snow on his television. I knew I was in trouble when I started to know exactly how he felt just then. This is also the kind of indy film where many of the actors are the filmmaker’s friends. Goldberg takes some pride in this point. The end result is watching sub par actors pretending to be actors who are pretending to be actors. Make it stop. Cameos by Vince Vaughn and Elvis Costello can’t even save this mess.
