Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 30th, 2011
I never had a big momma growing up. My mother and each of my grandmothers were never what I would call big. My mom and her mom barely cleared 5 feet tall and my grandma on my dad’s side while pretty tall was very wiry and thin. So I never had the huge momma experience and it was probably for the best. However, I am not foreign to the concept of Martin Lawrence playing a Big Momma as I saw the first movie. Two movies later, does it still have its magic?
Malcolm Turner (played by Martin Lawrence) is a FBI agent who specializes in the art of disguise and witness protection. But today, he is threatening his local mailman (played by Ken Jeong) to pull the postal vehicle over. Eventually he does and then the two get into a fight because the mailman has to deliver the mail. Malcolm gets the letter he was looking for. His son has just been accepted to go to the school he went as young adult, Duke University.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 22nd, 2011
One of the most commonly asked what if questions, is the question about superpowers. If you were a superhero, what would be your superpower? My initial reaction is X-Ray vision because I am after all a dirty old man. After some thoughtful moments, I do however come up with the ability to instantly adapt. There are many moments where I might feel out of place or unable to help. But with that power, I could change that. Or maybe I will just wear a green amulet and fight bad guys like Callan in the film: Cross.
The movie opens to the pages of a comic book flipping. Wait, is this a Marvel Comics presentation? Okay, not exactly. They mention that amulets are some of the most powerful source of power in the universe. The strongest amulet, that would be the Cross of the Isles. It is green, it glows a lot. Hey, was that Machete (Danny Trejo)? Doesn’t matter, he isn’t in the rest of the movie. We also learn about the Staff of Sekhmet which has the potential to kill the whole word.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on June 20th, 2011
Brendan Fraser plays Mo, a man who has the special power of a “silver tongue” which means he has the ability to bring characters and elements from books into the real world by reading their stories out loud. There is a serious catch to this power. Someone from the real world must go into the book in exchange. Mo discovered this by accidentally reading his wife into a story called Inkheart while pulling three of its characters out. Nine years after this event, and with his daughter and a couple of heroic literary characters at his side, he finally tracks down a copy of the rare book to try and bring her back.
The mashing of literary references does not get its legs until the monstrous climax of the film. Until then, the adventure seems a bit light and lacking in the essential energy to gain our full interest. There are also issues with establishing the mood of the film. The disappearance of Mo's wife seems tragic at times, as indeed the loss of a loved one should be, but at other s\times it simply seems like a reference in their fantastic quest amongst outrageous characters of fiction. No character seems to get enough times to dwell on the uncanny, such as an author meeting one of his characters face to face, or the heartbreaking, such as the aforementioned disappearance.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 4th, 2011
The other day, I was taking a look at my past reviews and I realized that I have been reviewing on this site for over six years. If you have been reading my reviews for that long and you aren’t married to me, bless you for sticking it out that long. Heck, I’ve only known my wife for almost 4 of those years. Anyhow, I have reviewed a plethora of subjects. One of the hardest things to do is to review a dvd season in the middle of its run. It becomes even harder when that show is True Blood
Before we go anywhere with Season 3, we need to take a step back in time and analyze the last couple of episodes of Season 2.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 23rd, 2011
When I was a kid, I always wished and hoped I had super powers. Frankly, I did not even think my parents were my parents, rather hosts for somebody who would eventually change the world. Somewhere along the way, I grew up (kinda) but always wondered what would happen if things were different. I Am Number Four explores the story of a teenager who could change the world with his powers if he can simply stay alive long enough. By the way, I still don’t think my parents were my parents.
Two men (played by Greg Townley and Reuben Langdon) are asleep in some remote part of the world. All of the sudden, they feel something is wrong and wake up. They find nothing, but then suddenly one of the men is grabbed by an unknown monster and taken out of the cabin by force. The other man witnessing this horrid event has no choice but to try and run to safety.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 19th, 2011
When I got to college, I had no idea what I wanted to be. I had signed up for computer science so I could go on to be a video game programmer. The truth is, I placed that as my major because I did not know what else to put. As luck would find it, five years later would get me a degree in Finance which I have never used in the professional world. But there was one thing in college I knew for sure. I wanted nothing to do with any fraternity and I am guessing Brotherhood is not going to change this opinion.
We start off the story with four frat guys in a van (if that van was down by a river, I’m out of here). Frank (played by Jon Foster), the pledge leader puts on a mask and runs out to rob a convenience store and comes back. He demonstrates that he wouldn’t ask the pledges to do anything he wouldn’t first. The other three are noticeably frightened because they think they will be arrested. Eventually one of the pledges decides to do it and when they hit the next store, he completes his task quickly.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 29th, 2011
Craig, played by Keor Gilchrist, is facing a lot of stress in his sixteenth year on this planet and he becomes convinced that he wants to kill himself and checks himself into a psych ward. During his mandatory 5 day trial stay he undergoes a less-than common journey of self-discovery with the aid of his fellow patients.
What could have easily been a very contrived teen comedy turns out to be a refreshing coming-of-age tale that does not need to pander to the audience with an over-abundance of lowbrow humour and/or romance drama. Mind you, it is not that this film is lacking in either of those departments completely as we do get a couple naughty jokes snuck in, and our protagonist does find himself in a “girl trouble” dilemma that motivated his self-institutionalizing. Thankfully the focus continuously draws back to Craig and his attempts to heal, making him the ever present nucleus of the film for interesting character subplots to float around him.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 25th, 2011
(What follows is my cohort Gino Sassani's review, as it was written for the Blu Ray release of this same film. I have only added changes for the Video and Audio sections as DVD is naturally different than Blu Ray).
The Picture Of Dorian Gray was actually Oscar Wilde’s only full-length novel. It was quite a controversial subject when it first arrived on the scene in 1890, but not because of the horror element. The book is often sexually explicit and contains more than a flirtation with homosexuality. The main themes have survived, but much of the work itself has been forgotten. We know the work almost exclusively from the classic film from 1945 where Hurd Hatfield played the title character. The more notable members of that cast included Peter Lawford, Donna Reed, and Angela Lansbury. That film downplayed the debauchery elements and focused on the one element that appears to remain strongest in our collective memories, that of the picture aging instead of the man. It’s that deal with the devil that most of us think about when we hear the name Dorian Gray, or Dick Clark for that matter.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 25th, 2011
Dicky Eklund was the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts. While he constantly reminds the neighbourhood of his glorious fight against Sugar Ray Leonard, he has descended into a crack addiction that is breaking his family apart, and hindering the training of his up-and-coming brother, Mickey. As Micky inches closer to big opportunities in the fighting world, he must also battle the demons his family place upon him.
Part sports movie, and part character drama, this film's story is the sort of underdog tale that will be familiar to Rocky fans, and being a boxing film, it is readily susceptible to being compared to that series. If I may start with a focus on the sports movie angle, it diverges from the Rocky series most obviously by having less focus on the training (no big musical montages here) and the 'big' fights. Another divergence involving the fights this film has, one that is even more important to me,is a difference in how the actual fights were choreographed. I have never cared for the simplistic trading of head-shots, with little blocking, in the Rocky films. The Fighter has blood and blocking the way a true fight would have. The camera quality changes to something hand held looking when inside the ring with Micky and Dicky, and there are frequent flashes to the real life fight of Eklund vs Leonard, both of which help to make it seem like Mark Walhberg (who plays Mickey) is in an actual bout.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 23rd, 2011
Boxing has never been a particularly popular sport for me to watch. The boxing world has always seemed to be one of lies and politics. But on the other hand, I will watch with interest any movie that has boxing as a major subject. Rocky, Raging Bull, heck The Great White Hype are all fine examples of exciting boxing movies. That is why when I received Knockout with Steve Austin, my interest was peaked a little to say the least. Let us see how it goes.
Matthew Miller (played by Daniel Magder) chews his nails and doesn’t like the fact that he is in the middle of nowhere (Tacoma, Washington). His mother, Christine (played by Janet Kidder) gets after him for his nail biting and tells him that he had to drop out of private school and go to public school because times are tight. She does it in a rather melodramatic manner and it is no wonder that Matthew didn’t just punch out her lights right there. That would have been a boxing movie to be proud of.
![Big Mommas: Like Father Like Son [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/big-mommas-like-father-like-son-b-large.jpg)
