Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 28th, 2004
Synopsis
Amoral would-be dance star Roxie Hart (Ginger Rogers) is convinced by her agent and areporter to take the blame for a murder. The thinking is that no woman has ever been convictedof murder in Chicago, and the attendant publicity will do wonders for her career. Truer wordswere never spoke, as the cynical dance of lawyers and media begins.
Many readers will, of course, have seen this story recently in the musical Chicago.Here you get the story with none of the ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 24th, 2004
No surprise that in Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbeanwould trigger the re-release of older pirate movies. And oh look: those two hits are the firstthings mentioned on the blurb!
Synopsis
The title is self-explanatory. What you have here is a series of 15 short film from France. Thelonger vignettes is the expected bag of tricks: straight, lesbian, bondage, threesome, etc.Interspersed amidst the hardcore are short burlesque dances. The case boasts...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 23rd, 2004
Synopsis
Bloodthirsty pirate Henry Morgan (Robert Stevens) is starving Jamaica by seizing almostany ship that tries to make it there. He seems impregnable in his fortress on the island of Tortuga.Privateer Captain Bart (Ken Scott) arrives to find some way to defeat Morgan. His journey to theCaribbean is complicated somewhat by the presence of stowaway Meg (Leticia Roman), aspririted...er... wench... who has dreams of being a lady.
You always thought My Fair Lady would...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 22nd, 2004
Synopsis
Though not Blake Edwards’ best films, these are the movies with which he is most stronglyidentified, and the role of Inspector Clouseau was a career-defining move for Peter Sellers. Attheir best, the movies are fine exemplars of inspired slapstick.
The Pink Panther started it all off, and no one knew what a phenomenon Clouseauwas going to turn out to be. Edwards and Sellers (the trivia track informs us) rewrote the partlate in the game to turn the character i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 15th, 2004
Synopsis
Henry Fonda is Tom Joad, returning home after serving four years in prison for killing aman. He arrives to find the farms of Oklahoma devastated by drought, and all the familiesdispossessed of their land. He and his family become part of the great migration from the DustBowl to the Eden of California. There they face exploitation, persecution and misery, andFonda’s rage at the injustice grows.
John Steinbeck’s enormous novel found a stunning screen incarnation in th...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 11th, 2004
Synopsis
Ryan O’Neal, in a spectacular bit of miscasting, is a drifter with an explosive temper. He isback from Vietnam, moving from job to job. After getting himself fired from a cucumberplantation, he is taken on as a handyman at a motel. He is fascinated by the plantation owner’s“secretary” (Leigh Taylor-Young), and she is just a bad, bad girl. Her quest for kicks lead togreater and greater risk and danger, and O’Neal, smitten, follows along, getting in over hishead.
Th...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
M-3D purports to be a parody of MTV, which is hardly likely, given that the film, inits original form, was made in 1976. Actually Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy, this is apainful slog combining aphrodisiac lollipops with extra footage involving ancient Greek soldiersdoing sad Three Stooges routines. No, it makes no sense. No, it isn’t funny. And with obviouscuts to the sex scenes, the waste of your life is complete.
The Playmates is even more resi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
Robert Hays is a rising corporate star at a major brewery. The company, headed by EddieAlbert, has just taken over some smaller competitors. Hays is sent to streamline one of them,which happens to be in his home town. The city mouse hooks up once again with all his oldcountry mouse friends, and sho’ nuff begins to transform, losing the will to be the corporate hitman he was sent to be.
Did anybody ever find this type of comedy funny? Somebody must have. Now it looks...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 5th, 2004
So many people believe the “buddy cop” routine started with Lethal Weapon, or maybe Running Scared. Truth be told, Starsky and Hutch was quite a breakout from the cop shows of the time. The studio was picketed for the amount of violence portrayed, which by today’s standards wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.
This is typical 70’s from the film stock to the wardrobe. The unique Ford Grand Torino was so popular that Ford ended up manufacturing a limited number of the replicas. David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser had s...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 2nd, 2004
Synopsis
A hectoring principal tells his audience of concerned parents the story, in flashback, of thetragedy that befalls Bill and Mary. The All-American couple is destroyed through the actions ofa drug ring that seduces high school kids with the Devil’s Weed. Marijuana, as portrayed here,works like a combination of LSD, crack and Spanish Fly. When tragedy strikes, and Bill isbrought up on murder charges, the drug ring goes into hiding, but their own addictions threatento break the...
