Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 31st, 2010
For most people in high school, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is required reading. Sometimes more than once. Somehow, whenever it came time to read aloud in class, I always ended up with the part of Romeo. It certainly wasn’t for my striking good looks but apparently for my charming voice. As a result, I remember most of Romeo’s part to this very day. But would I be able to enjoy a fairly recent adaptation of Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann? We shall see.
Somewhere in Verona Beach there are two families who struggling for power, the Montagues and the Capulets. The blood feud has continued for years between Ted Montague (played by Brian Dennehy) and Fulgencio Capulet (played by Paul Sorvino). But everybody from their wives, Caroline Montague and Gloria Capulet (played by Christina Pickles and Diane Venora respectively) to their families have felt the impact.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 27th, 2010
In June of 1987 many of us took to our local theaters to watch two future state governors tackle an alien creature in the jungles of southeast Asia. Director John McTiernan had combined the Rambo mercenary-styled film with that of a creature feature. The result was an impressive $60 million on a mere $15 million budget, and a franchise was born. From its first reveal in those Asian jungles, the Predator was an impressive sight. The creature was highly intelligent, to be sure, but it possessed those baser instincts of hunting and survival. It was a monster, but one who utilized advanced technological weaponry to accent its own fearsome brutal nature. It was the stuff that new nightmares would be made of. A sequel featuring Danny Glover and placing the creature in an urban setting soon followed. While that film is widely disregarded, I found it to be a rather good film. I still think it's an underrated monster movie.
It didn't take very long before the fan boys in Hollywood started getting their imaginations running wild. The inevitable question, since Frankenstein's Monster met up with The Wolfman -- who would win if we put the Predator against the Alien. It was a heavyweight fight just itching to play itself out at the box office. And, it did ... twice. The result might have destroyed both franchises. It seemed that these creatures had finally met their match, and it wasn't each other. Bad writing and wayward filmmaking brought down both creatures. It appeared as if they were both gone, forever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 27th, 2010
"War and me took to each other real well. It felt like it had meaning. The feeling of doing what you thought was right. But it wasn't. Folks can believe what they like, but eventually a man's gotta decide if he's gonna do what's right. That choice cost me more than I bargained for..."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2010
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was the first movie I ever saw on HBO. These were the very early days of the cable network. It was before the dawn of any real home video. It was at my Aunt Shirley's house that several members of the extended family gathered in dining room chairs around a 19-inch television to watch a movie uncut and without commercial interruption for the first time in our lives. A lot has changed since that 1970's afternoon at my aunt's house. Today we have hundreds of such choices on our television dials. I've seen a huge wave of home video technologies since that day that have included CED video discs, VHS/Beta, laserdisc, DVD, and now high-definition Blu-ray and movies on demand. The entire game has changed since that gathering 35 or so years ago. One thing has not changed a bit. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was a dynamic and compelling film that day. It remains so today.
R.P. McMurphy (Nicholson) is a repeat criminal who has caused more than his share of trouble in the system. He is sent to the Oregon State Hospital to have his sanity evaluated. There the head psychiatrist Dr. Spivey (Brooks) doesn't really think he's crazy. But McMurphy is held over for observation. He's placed inside a general population ward where he comes into contact with the resident "crazies" of the hospital. He takes a particular liking to Billy (Dourif) who is a sexually repressed teenager who stutters and lacks any kind of self-confidence. In a big way, he is the opposite of McMurphy himself, who is quite the extrovert and borders on manic most of the time. There is an Indian man who is about as big as a mountain who the staff and inmates simply call Chief (Sampson). At first Chief is the subject of mockery from McMurphy, but the allegedly deaf and dumb Indian soon earns McMurphy's respect, something we quickly understand is a rarity for McMurphy. Other patients include the childish Cheswick (Lassick), the shy and naive Martini (DeVito), the borderline psychotic Taber (Lloyd), and Harding (Redfield) who was pretty much the crew's unofficial leader before McMurphy came along. In charge of the ward is the indominable Nurse Ratched (Fletcher). A battle of wills soon develops between McMurphy and the cold nurse. What McMurphy doesn't know is that she has the power to keep him even after his original jail sentence has expired.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 24th, 2010
Jon Favreau's Iron Man was one of the happy events of 2008. It was a superb piece of super-hero entertainment, one that handled lightning-quick shifts in tone (grimness in Afghanistan, hilarity in Malibu) with a deftness that made the very hard work look very easy. It also reassured comic fans and mainstream audiences alike that there were still terrific movies to be made based on Marvel characters, reassurance that was sorely needed in the wake of the dire Spider-Man 3. So, the question with Iron Man 2 is, given the returning director and cast, was that same magic recaptured? The answer is a delighted yes.
The story picks up with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) basking in his fame as Iron Man. He puts on a showy entrance at the opening of the Stark Expo, thumbs his nose at a Congressional committee that wants to appropriate his suit's technology, and races fast cars. But beneath the levity is a dying man: he is being poisoned by the very element that is keeping his heart ticking. Other problems arise in the form of Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), the embittered son of a former research partner of Howard Stark (Tony's father), and Justin Hammer (a hysterically funny Sam Rockwell), Tony's self-regarding business competitor, who is a devious and corrupt as he is incompetent. Unlike Hammer, Vanko is dangerous, harnessing the same energy source as Stark to power his own super-suit. They join forces to destroy Iron Man. He, meanwhile, seems bent on destroying himself before they can get around to it. His behaviour becomes erratic, forcing best friend James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) to abscond with the War Machine suit, and he turns over his company to Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Into this mix comes SHIELD, embodied by leader Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and agent Natasha Romanoff, AKA the Black Widow (Scarlett Johnansson). Fury sees Stark as a potential asset, but only if he can both sort his life out, and save it. The question is whether he will do so before Hammer and Vanko's plans come to fruition.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on September 17th, 2010
Zeus' mighty bolt has been stolen, and whomever holds it may have the power to topple the king of the Gods. Zeus suspects Poseidon's estranged, half-human son is the Lighting Thief and threatens his wrath upon the entire realm if it is not returned. Percy Jackson is Poseidon's son, making him a Demi-God, but as far as he knows, he is a just a high school student living with Dyslexia, ADHD and struggling to live with his abusive step-father. As mythic monsters and Gods all start to threaten Percy's life, his best friend and his mother both reveal themselves to be protectors of his life, both with connections to Greek Mythology. Percy;s mother is taken to the underworld and so he sets out on a quest to discover the truth about his Demi-God heritage while fighting to get his mother back from the clutches of Hades, as well as discover who the true Lighting Thief is.
The story moves by at a fast pace, which helps keep the attention of younger, easy to bore audiences, but the conflict set-ups and exposition are a bit too been-there, see-that for my liking. We are meant to assume that Percy is an outsider, thus easier to relate to and sympathize with, because he has issues, but his Earthly problems (step-father, dyslexia) seem hastily tacked on and it doesn't take long before his super-human capabilities are revealed. This is especially aggravating during a wickedly illogical training scene where all of the demi-God children of Camp Half-Blood play capture the flag (fighting with real swords for no good reason!) and Percy earns the respect of the entire camp simply by being able to heal from any wound by touching water and inheriting a wondrous fighting ability from his father's side, without having picked up a sword before. The friends who join him on his quest also have amazing agility and skill, so we have a pack of kids with Superman syndrome, but none of them have enough have that 'Clark Kent' side to give them a mien of humility (do enough people reading this understand where I'm going with that analogy?).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 16th, 2010
When I met my husband, and found out he wrote reviews, I never pictured myself writing as well. I had never really played with the concept, other than some short stories. But here I sit, once again, in front of my computer screen with another disc in front of me. And what do we have this time? A romantic comedy. Yes folks, I love the torture. I was asked to do Letters to Juliet as a favor for my busy husband who is adjusting to his busy new job. This has to land me home made waffles in bed sometime in the near future. But was this one really that bad? Could there be a decent romantic comedy out there? Meh, we shall see. And away we go!
We open the movie with a scene of busy New York (A very nice skyline picture I might add). We meet Sophie Hall (Amanda Seyfried), a fact checker for the New Yorker, on her way around town. She stops in at her office to turn in a piece of work on the famous “V-J Day in Times Square” picture (The sailor kissing the nurse), and that's where we find out she is on her way to Verona for a pre-honeymoon. She leaves the office and heads over to a restaurant that looks to be in progress. Meet Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), Sophie's very Italian fiance, who is in the kitchen surrounded by pasta hanging everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean it. A little bit of chatter, and away to Verona!
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on August 22nd, 2010
A renowned street fighter's brother is murdered, so he flees to a small town where his crippled father lives. While there he discovers an underground circuit of Mixed Martial Arts competitions and raw, street fighting prize matches. With the help of a former MMA champ (played by real-life UFC contender Michael Bisping), our hero fights his way up to the top of the underground action in order to pay off the gangster who slayed his brother, earn the respect he deserves, and what the heck...win a new love interest too.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 18th, 2010
"I remember once going on a school trip to the top of the Empire State Building. When I looked down at the crowds of people on the street, they looked like ants. I pulled out a penny and some of us started talking about what would happen if I dropped it from up there and it landed on somebody's head. Of course, I never crossed that line and actually dropped the penny. I don't think Early Grayce even knew there was a line to cross."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 9th, 2010
A good thriller is something that has been absent from my recent viewing experience. One of my favorite thrillers of all time is a movie named Ninth Gate. This movie is directed by Roman Polanski. As luck would have it, Roman Polanski also directed the thriller I am bringing you today, The Ghost Writer. My fingers are crossed and I can only hope that this film is just as good.
When the movie opens, we learn that Ghost (real name never revealed) (played by Ewan McGregor) is made aware of a ghostwriting venture by his agent Rick Ricardelli (played by Jon Bernthal). It involves writing the memoirs of Adam Lang (played by Pierce Brosnan), the former British Prime Minister. Ghost also learns that his predecessor before him was unfortunately found dead, drowned aboard a local ferry.
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