Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 7th, 2009
“Believe me, that weren’t no shark.”
Sea Beast began life with the title Troglodyte, but I’m not sure what that had to do with anything on this movie. Perhaps someone just thought it was a clever name, but realizing they didn’t have a clever film to go with it, they decided on the more mundane Sea Beast. Whatever the reason and whatever the title, nothing can change the fact that this is one really bad horror film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 6th, 2009
When Terence Malick's latest effort hit the theatres, he had trimmed it down to 135 minutes. Early critics had seen a version running 150 minutes. This version is longer yet, clocking it at 172 minutes. Most of what I said about the previous DVD release holds, and so I'm reproducing it here, with additional comments as necessary.
Virginia, 1607. English ships arrive and a colony is set up, but with considerable difficulty. Famine and disease take their toll. Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) heads off to seek help from the Powhatan. He is captured, sentenced to death, but waved by Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher, whose character is never actually given that name). So begins a fateful relationship.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 6th, 2009
“Out here the rules are different.”
Corporate retreats have come a long way from the closed door seminars where you’re asked to fall backwards and trust your colleagues to catch you. Well… the backwards part still applies, but here that describes the locals at the isolated camp where 8 hapless video game company executives are planning a weekend of paintball and bonding. These locals are straight out of Deliverance. (Insert your favorite banjo lick here.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on July 4th, 2009
At first glance, it is quite easy to see why this show has been compared to Sex and the City by many critics, and is about to again by yours truly. Mainly this comparison occurs because of the shows’ similarly humorous approach to sex, never wavering from any sort of topic therein. The first similarly I noticed though was the meta-cinematic use of our heroine Hannah (who escorts under the moniker “Belle”) when she talks to the audience directly. This device was only utilized in Sex and the City’s first season but we still see a similar mix of voice-over narration (which would take over Sex and the City) and the viewer being acknowledged (used more often than not with Secret Diary…).
This second season of Hannah’s trails dealing with having a secret life is changed in typical sitcom fashions, that is, introducing a main love interest (a man named Alex whom she mistakes for a client in the season opener) as well as a goofy pseudo-side kick by way of a young girl calling herself Bambi who wants to prostitute simply for the money. The drama revolves mainly around Hannah and Alex’s romance as Hannah loses the thrill of escorting in exchange for the desire to build something ‘real’ with Alex. At the same time, Hannah does face some moral questions throughout the season regarding her profession. Of course, these internal dilemmas (often accompanied by slow-motion shots of a Hannah/Belle looking about blankly) are mainly squashed immediately, or else the show would stop all-together. With the season lasting only 8 quick episodes, thankfully her brooding bits don't get enough time to became too tiresome to witness, although the drama certainly amplifies (less wink-at-the-camera moments) as the season passes the halfway point.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 2nd, 2009
Behind the on-screen title of 1968 Tunnel Rats lurks a vision of Hell. We first get to know a unit of American soldiers tasked with clearing out the networks of underground tunnels constructed by the Viet Cong. Even before the action shifts to the tunnels, the terrible toll of war is on display, with the Lieutenant (Michael Paré) ordering brutal executions and morale very low. Then the operation begins, and everything goes to horribly wrong very quickly.
I haven't noticed the sun turning black or any angels breaking seals today, but the Apocalypse must be upon us, because I have now seen a good Uwe Boll film. The picture succeeds admirably on two fronts. In the first act, as we get to know the troops, Boll turned his cast loose to improvise dialogue and come up with character back stories. While there are no fully rounded characters here, and clichés abound, there is certainly enough here to make these men recognizable human beings. One shot in particular is striking: a prolonged close-up of the sympathetic sergeant breaking down in tears. Then the real lesson about the hellishness of war kicks in, and does so with a vengeance. No character is safe from gruesome demise, and the claustrophobic horror of the setting is milked for all its worth (if you're not reduced to the cold sweats by a scene where a solider finds himself trapped in a tunnel between two corpses, you're already dead). But there are no monsters here – the Viet Cong are not faceless automatons. Instead, we see a group of people, trapped on opposite sides of a ghastly conflict, struggle to stay alive.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 1st, 2009
Released just in time for the global financial meltdown, this hymn to designer products features Isla Fisher, who demonstrated her comedic talent by stealing Wedding Crashers from both Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson – no small achievement. Here she plays Rebecca Bloomwood, a compulsive shopper who, while hoping to land a job working at a fashion magazine, accidentally finds herself hired on a columnist at the sister publication, a rather less glamorous financial mag. Her columns, couching financial advice in shopping metaphors, become a surprising hit, and sparks begin to fly with her editor (Hugh Dancy). Meanwhile, a relentless debt collector is dogging her heels.
Combining Sex and the City voice-overs and clothes with Bridget Jones insecurities, the film sets out to be, I suppose, some sort of female fantasy. And sure, just as we are expected to buy Seth Rogen as a babe magnet in the male POV rom-coms, one can be fairly asked to do some heavy suspension of disbelief exercises when it comes to the match here, too. But why, as seems to be so often the case, are the female characters presented as ADD idiots? It becomes very hard to like Rebecca when, with her career (and quite possibly that of the man who is giving her a shot at the journalistic brass ring) hanging in the balance, she would rather rampage at a sample sale then do her work. Fisher throws herself into the part with enormous energy, but she is working with empty, predictable, numbing material.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 29th, 2009
Teenagers go through a lot. They hit puberty and a multitude of decisions at the same time. Some of them take on adult decisions way too soon such as sex, pregnancy, drugs and just figuring how to fit in. ABC Family is the home of a teenage drama called The Secret Life of the American Teenager which is made by the same people as 7th Heaven which lasted 11 seasons. The show has gained more viewers episode by episode and a copy of the 2nd season showed up in my mailbox to review. We'll see if the show is complete cheese or hopefully it has a good dose of story telling and family values.
As Season Two opens, Amy Juergens (played by Shailene Woodley) is fifteen & very pregnant. Her boyfriend is Ben Boykewich (played by Kenny Baumann) is also fifteen and not the father of the child. The father of the prospective child is Ricky Underwood (played by Daren Kagasoff), the school bad boy who had a one-night stand with Amy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 24th, 2009
“Just because our parents keep telling us that Jason was only a legend, doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. What if he did come back here looking for the camp counselor that caused him to drown as a boy, searching for the one that decapitated his vengeful mother? And you do know what today’s date is, don’t you?...Happy Friday the 13th.”
Legend or not, Jason’s back in the 6th Friday the 13th film, and he’s out for more blood than ever before. Filmed under the fake name of Aladdin’s Sane, in an overt tribute to director Tom McLoughlin’s favorite musician, David Bowie, the new film was a return to the franchise’s more established roots. Gone are the psychological thriller aspects of the previous disaster. Jason is back, and there’s no mistaking him for anyone else again. As the titles implies: Jason Lives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 23rd, 2009
Racism seems to be one of those words that people like to throw around without a care to meaning or the concept of right and wrong. Many groups of people like to throw around this word for a variety of reasons but mostly to benefit themselves and not help the greater good. Spinning into Butter takes on the task of a white Dean of Students named Sarah Daniels who must examine her own beliefs when a black student named Simon finds racist notes that read “Little Black Sambo” and the aftermath that soon follows. It sounds like the premise for a rather simplistic race relations movie. However, what really comes next is something far different and has a couple of twists to boot.
Sarah Daniels (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) is the Dean of Students at a small college in Belmont, Vermont. When the movie opens, she is trying to convince Patrick Chibas (played by Victor Rasuk) to change his ethnic choice in a scholarship application from Nuyorican (of Puerto Rican descent who is born and raised in New York) to Hispanic. Finally they agree on Puerto Rican because it is determined that the board will not understand what a Nuyorican is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 22nd, 2009
We were all told that the fourth film in the Friday The 13th series was going to be the last. From the cast and crew to the studio execs it was official: Jason was dead and gone. Time to move on. But it took less than a year for a new chapter to be tacked on to that final one. The fifth entry into the franchise would contain one of the more limited budgets. But it wasn’t the budget cuts that has made this one of the most highly criticized films of the series. It’s the total disregard for the tradition of the films and the poor choices that were made in making this film. The movie was filmed with little fanfare. This was in the days before the internet made such things all but impossible. It was made under the name Repetition to hide the true nature of the shoot from anyone who caught wind of the production. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to try and diminish the film’s buzz. It brought in a very disappointing $21 million at the box office. That might have had a better chance of truly killing Jason than anything else.
Director Danny Steinmann’s only real credit was a porno film. You can’t mistake the tendencies in this outing. It certainly contains a greater amount of nudity than any of the other films. The sexual scenes are by far more graphic. It was also the last we'd hear of the troubled director. Meanwhile Jason was relegated to an almost non-existent part in the film. The kills all are very quick and happen mostly outside of camera range. The obvious excuse is that the MPAA had reined down hard on these films, and to an extent that was true. The real problem here was a lack of both imagination and money. Tom Savini was again gone from the scene, and his replacement couldn’t carry Savini’s latex jockstrap. The series went from using barrels of stage blood to a couple of toothpaste tubes’ worth. Finally the killer isn’t even necessarily Jason at all. It’s almost impossible to criticize this kind of a film for being ridiculous, but the series reached a low point with this outing.
![Confessions of a Shopaholic (Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/confessions-of-a-shopaholic-two-di-large.jpg)
