Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 2nd, 2009
Robert Calestino hasn’t had a lot of experience as either a writer or director, and it shows in Yonkers Joe. When he’s writing about the things he obviously knows and understands, the film is quite good and extremely engaging. Unfortunately, Calestino felt compelled to bring some heart into his picture in the person of Joe, Jr. While he thinks he’s adding a necessary emotional element to the story, he’s really delivering a distraction that makes the film somewhat less than it ought to be. This is a clear case of more being less. I’m not sure why Calestino the writer or the director felt the need to bog down his brilliantly crafted world of these con artists and attempt to make it about the emotional turmoil between father and son. It only serves to take us out of the movie with each predictable development. My advice for Calestino? Next time, stick with what you know.
Yonkers Joe (Palminteri) is a card and dice mechanic; that’s to say that he’s skilled in manipulating these items for the purposes of cheating. He can deal from almost anywhere in the deck or even switch the deck entirely with flawless precision. Even when you know it’s coming, you just can’t see it. He can do the same with dice. He can switch dice in a game with everyone watching, including a casino’s camera system. He has a dream of taking his skills to the big time. He wants to take down an Atlantic City, or even better, a Vegas casino with his dice skills. His personal life is intruding upon the dream. His son has Down’s Syndrome and has been living in a facility most of his life. Joe’s rarely seen his kid. Now the boy’s about to turn 21 and can no longer live in the juvenile facility. The staff has tried to convince Joe, Jr. (Guiry) that he would be better in a group home where he can get a job and function somewhat normally. Jr. loves where he’s at and is not very good with change. Joe decides to take him home for three weeks and try and convince him to move to the group home. Joe’s partner/lover, Janice (Lahti) develops a soft spot for the boy and thinks the three of them can become a somewhat normal family. Circumstances remind her that none of them can be considered normal. Meanwhile Joe is developing his plan to take down a Vegas casino. He can switch the dice just fine, but the casinos mark their bones with a special dye that shows up on the security cameras. That way they instantly know when a loaded pair show up in the game no matter how clean the switch. Predictably, Jr. becomes an important link in the plan, and eventually he discovers himself in the process.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 2nd, 2009
“A short time ago in a galaxy not so far, far away…
The year is 1998 and it is a period of galactic civil war. Scratch that. There is no civil war. That would be crazy! However, the past 15 years have been a dark time for Star Wars fans. But there is hope. A new Star Wars film is on the horizon. In 199 days, 34 hours, 33 minutes and 28 seconds the most anticipated movie of all time will be released. In the remote state of Ohio, two best friends and lifelong Star Wars fans have drifted apart. Little do they know that on Halloween Night, their paths will cross again.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 29th, 2009
This 4th season release of The Closer would become my first exposure to the rather good series from TNT. I don’t have time for network television these days, so the cable shows often fall by the wayside in my schedule. Of course, I’ve made time for some of the better ones over the years, but The Closer never seemed to find its way onto my radar. It should have. Of all of the cop or detective shows I’ve seen over the years, I can relate to this one better than any of them.
You see, years ago, I was a detective. I wasn’t a cop and mostly did internal investigations for a large Florida retail chain. While I was a fair detective in most areas, I did eventually develop a specialty of sorts. When other detectives ran into a brick wall interviewing their subjects, they’d often call on me to get whatever information they were trying to extract. No, I didn’t beat it out of them. I was never a physically intimidating guy. I was just good at getting them to talk. I guess I was a little bit of a con artist who was working for the good guys instead of preying on hapless marks. I never lied to a subject and never threatened violence. It was a battle of wits, and I always won. That’s exactly how you would describe Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) in The Closer. While the series was, in many ways, your standard procedural police drama, each episode would end with Brenda getting some reluctant perp to spill their guts. She relied on Southern charm. She looked and sounded harmless enough that she could get the person to lower their guard and fall for some rather simple trick or another. Case closed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 28th, 2009
It’s a disc loaded with pilots. No, you won’t find any daring men and their flying machines here. These pilots owe more to Philo T. Farnsworth than The Wright Brothers. Farnsworth transmitted the first televised image in 1927. In case you’re wondering, that image was a dollar bill. These pilots follow in those footsteps; that’s because these pilots are television shows. They’re the first episodes of some of the best action series to appear on CBS over the last few decades. Going back as far as the 1960’s, these shows represent a nice cross section of television action entertainment.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 27th, 2009
Infected is one of those many made for television films that appear on the Sci-Fi, I mean Sy-Fy Channel almost weekly, I mean weakly. Most of them are relatively low budget affairs that utilize very low grade CG f/x and often actors that haven’t been getting a lot of steady work in the legitimate world. It amazes me, actually. How can a network dedicated to science fiction consistently produce some of the worst movies in the genre? You would think that after a hundred of these things that they would have to get it right once in a while. The law of averages almost demands it. Instead, week to week, month to month, and year to year, the worst the genre has to offer finds its way as “original” movies on the network.
Infected is a sort of V meets The Arrival. A band of evil aliens have arrived on Earth to help them to repopulate their species. The somehow arrive at the idea they can best do this by setting up a bottled water company and selling humans plague tainted water. Of course, no one catches on, and the company grows to conglomerate size in no time. Enter a pair of reporters. Ben (Bellows) and Lisa (Roy). Of course, they used to be an item and now have trust issues working together on a tabloid. When the mayor is killed, a sample of his blood is retrieved and finds its way to the couple. Tests prove it is some wacked out hemoglobin. The clues eventually lead to the bottling company and its boss, Peter Whitefield (Dinsmore) who is actually a big insect under his fake human skin. The plot unravels and Ben discovers he has a natural immunity which he can use to fight off those pesky grasshopper things. And we all live happily ever after. Naturally, there’s a government cover up. Invasion? What invasion? We know nothing about no stinkin’ invasion?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 26th, 2009
Aging senator James Stewart and wife Vera Miles arrive in the prosperous town of Shinbone to attend the funeral of an anonymous farmer. The local newsmen want to know why. Stewart tells the story. Cue the flashback, where he arrives in a much more anarchic Shinbone as a naïve lawyer. Held up and beaten by the brutal outlaw Liberty Valance (a psychotic Lee Marvin), he is determined by bring law and justice to the town, but must come to terms with the fact that he cannot do so without the gun of John Wayne (the aforementioned farmer).
For all intents and purposes, this 1962 film was director John Ford's last western. It is an elegiac, melancholy piece (and one that makes Catlow, reviewed here a few days ago, look even more out of step with time). Like Unforgiven, it is a film whose casting is not only perfect, it is necessary. The collisions between the Wayne and Stewart characters are also the collisions between the symbols of American Myth the two icons represent. Vera Miles, as the woman torn between the two men, comes to represent the country itself, which must, for its own sake, choose the civilization and rule of law embodied by Stewart, even as it grieves over abandoning the larger-than-life figure of Wayne. He is the Old West, a figure from a more anarchic time, perhaps the light to Marvin's darkness, but in many ways not that different. He must vanish to make way for the future, but the future cannot come into being without his help and sacrifice.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 25th, 2009
Galaxy Quest is an odd movie. It opened on Christmas Day of 1999 and did alright in the box office gathering roughly 71 million and some change. It was one of those movies that you went to go see and would laugh a lot but wouldn’t tell anybody in fear of people making fun of you. So it did respectable sales, but nobody knew the full potential of the movie until it hit the video format. The movie found a considerable audience and after many years, the movie holds up. Possibly better than it ever did nine years ago in a tiny theater. Now, with the release of a deluxe edition many years later, the movie can reach new audiences. Hopefully, they will be able to appreciate it as much as I did.
Once upon a time, Galaxy Quest was an entertaining space drama. It lasted only four seasons but found an audience that lasted many years later. The cast however has for the most part not been able to find reasonable work, reduced to conventions and lowly promotional work. There is Gwen DeMarco (played by Sigourney Weaver in a blonde wig) who played Tawny, the Computer Officer of the Protector and served as the beauty on the ship. Alexander Dane (played by Alan Rickman) plays Dr. Lazarus serves as the resident Spock/intelligent alien and is positively sick of his catchphrase (By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on May 25th, 2009
Two guys enter a 3-on-3 Basketball tournament, but they stink. They work at a morgue and their crazed former coworker reanimates a gigantic man...they put him on their team...he's good because he's big (almost automatically)...they try to get money, girls and yadda yadda yadda, you can guess how it turns out for them.
This film is a mundane, predictable tale that is low on the laughs and big on the stereotypes. Our two heroes even lure in the zombie giant to be friend's with them with fried chicken and weed! I'm not black but I was feeling rather offended by the amount of lowbrow and unfunny stereotypes being deployed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on May 24th, 2009
Dax Sheppard plays a one-liner filled everyman who loses his job the same day that both his kooky mother and his geeky step-cousin move into his house while he is attempting to lower his sperm count as his wife wants to conceive a child. The setup is their right off the bat, the comic motions not hesitating to begin, and they play out in a traditional comic format that is both familiar and harmless.
Diane Keaton delivers a hearty bit of scenery chewing in every scene she has as the mother, but she manages to be be entertaining so she can hardly be condemned. Granted, the over-bearing mother shtick is not trailblazing but she manages to traverse through it with dedication to her character (as over the top as it can be) and enough of a smirk towards the camera that the audience can realize that she's mainly just having a bit of fun.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 23rd, 2009
Some weeks back, I wrote about Splinter, and opined that director Toby Wilkins showed real skill. I also expressed worry over the fact that this follow-up was this, the third entry in a franchise that began with a remake in the first place. So here we are. Was I right to worry? Sadly, yes.
The Grudge 3 picks up in the aftermath of its predecessor, with the death of the last survivor of that film's massacre. The setting remains the same Chicago apartment building where evil ghosts Kayako and Toshio in the last thrilling episode (apparently have grown bored with Tokyo). The focus now is on the caretaker and his two sisters, the younger of the two being chronically ill. Meanwhile, Kayako's sister arrives in town, determined to put an end to the curse.
