Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 16th, 2013
"You know, there's been a heap of legends and tall tales about Robin Hood. All different, too. Well, we folks of the animal kingdom have our own version. It's the story of what really happened in Sherwood Forest."
It didn't even start as a Robin Hood story at all. Walt Disney had many ideas and plans for fables and fairy tales that he hoped to bring to life with a feature animation film
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 12th, 2013
Let's face facts. War is heck. Sure, we can go back to ancient times with the Romans or more modern offerings such as the World Wars or even Vietnam, but perhaps more recent offerings between smaller countries and territories can be just as brutal. But what can be surprising is the emotional and physical toll it takes on those soldiers even years after it happens. Our film today, Killing Season takes us into two different sides in the aftermath of a very brutal altercation, the Serbs and the Bosnians.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 7th, 2013
For those who don't know, I have been married twice in my life. I am currently going through my second divorce. At nearly thirty eight years old, I have lived the relationship life of arguably several lifetimes but something usually keeps me coming back. Am I done with love? Only time will tell. Today's blu-ray review is about a six year old girl who sees life through the divorce of her mother and father. Something tells me we are in for a very long and bumpy ride.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on July 25th, 2013
I don’t care if it makes me sound like an awful human being, but I wanted The Demented to be much nastier than it actually was. The packaging for this straight-to-Blu-ray offering trumpets the fact that it’s “from a co-producer of A Nightmare on Elm Street” and producer Steven Monroe, who directed the I Spit on Your Grave remake. Since I’m not delusional, I didn’t expect this film to be nearly as good as a horror classic like Elm Street. But I also didn’t think it was unreasonable to expect the competent thrills of the Spit remake. Instead, the filmmakers have given us a sub-SyFy gloss on 28 Days Later... and dozens of other (infinitely superior) horror movies.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on July 2nd, 2013
A fish has to swim, a bird has to fly, and a film has to entertain; those are the defining attributes for each of the listed subjects, and in my opinion The Rambler didn’t meet its obligation as a film. The Dermot Mulroney-led film is a series of happenings, each of which are unconnected and wide open for interpretation, only tied together by one monosyllabic character. It seems that the story is whatever you want to make it, but therein lies the rub: many people don’t go to films that require them to form their own interpretation. They are looking to have a story told to them, not tell it to themselves.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on June 25th, 2013
Every generation since “X” has lionized its slackers and frat boys with films (perhaps earlier if you look to Animal House as the beginning). Workaholics dances between this honouring of the stoner/slacker lifestyle and satirizing it. This show's third season is just like the previous two. Three best friends, Adam, Anders and Blake, spend their work days with pranks, pot and parties on their minds, and each episode showcases their adventures therein.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on June 18th, 2013
Enigma: something hard to explain or understand: well, that about sums up Charlie Zone. The story itself is mildly interesting but takes its time building traction. I was expecting to be introduced to a film about underground fighting and instead was introduced to a film about two people who were dealt a bad hand and are thrust into a life-or-death situation. At odds at first, the two must work together in order to survive. Does this plot theme sound familiar to anyone else?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 17th, 2013
Earlier this year, Warm Bodies become a solid box office hit by giving its zombie hero a heart. The Amazing Adventures of the Living Corpse seeks to carve its own uniquely bloody path by saddling its undead protagonist with a soul. It’s a clever way to go considering there’s not much new territory to cover in zombie fiction 45 years after George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead shambled into pop culture immortality. I just wish this provocative promise had yielded a better movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 10th, 2013
I don’t like remakes for probably the same reasons you don’t like them — they’re lazy and creatively bankrupt — but I’m also not completely against the idea of revisiting an older film. When the older film isn’t a beloved classic that shouldn’t be touched or when a story can be more effectively presented using technology that simply didn’t exist when the original movie was made, remakes aren’t such a bad idea. By those standards, 1984’s The Philadelphia Experiment is actually an excellent choice to receive the remake treatment. And that’s why I’m so disappointed to see it go so wrong.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 3rd, 2013
Bringing big-screen action and spectacle to the small screen is almost always a losing proposition. (A moment of silence for Terra Nova.) It’s just too hard to maintain on a week-to-week basis over the course of multiple seasons. Falling Skies — which, like Terra Nova, counts Steven Spielberg as one of its executive producers — may not be terribly original, but it’s one of the more successful attempts at consistently bringing large-scale thrills to television.
