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Direct Contact (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 9th, 2009

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Mike Riggins (Lundgren) has been languishing away in a Russian prison for many years. So he doesn’t have anything to lose when he’s approached by the CIA to help them save a young woman who has been kidnapped. The government needs Riggins’ special set of skills, namely the ability to cause a lot of carnage in a short amount of time. If he rescues the girl, he gets 20 grand and sprung from prison. Of course, everything is not what it seems to be, and the government really just wants Riggins dead.
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Paycheck (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 27th, 2009

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“It’s time to wake up and get a life. We live in a three-dimensional world. Until now, the world of computing has been a flat world consisting of two-dimensional imagery. Now through the use of exclusive breakthrough technology, ARC has made it possible for you to get a life. A-Life, where we can work and play in a lifelike world of three-dimensional reality. A-Life… the living monitor. Impressed?”

You should be.
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Changing Lanes (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 22nd, 2009

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“Life is a tightrope. You’ve got to learn to dance.”

We’ve all had bad days. Everyone can relate to that. We’ve all had moments when we weren’t at our best, when we’ve said or done something in the heat of the moment that wasn’t exactly our most shining moment. We can only hope that these momentary lapses of reason don’t cause permanent harm to ourselves or to others. We can only plead our case that we aren’t ultimately defined by these brief acts of frustration brought about by mitigating circumstances.
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The Machinist (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 22nd, 2009

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Director Brad Anderson and writer Scott Kosar were unable to find backing or support from any of the American studios when they were shopping this movie. Apparently there were worries that it wasn’t very commercially viable. It turns out they were correct. The film made just over $1 million in domestic box office. That’s not a mistake. I meant $1 million. Even the foreign market came up short, coughing up only an additional $7 million total. Because of the lack of interest here in the States,
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Enemy at the Gates (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 21st, 2009

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For many, Saving Private Ryan has been the measure of the perfect war film in the modern era. Without question the Steven Spielberg film is a milestone in depicting battle on the screen. But I’m going to make the possibly unpopular statement that Enemy At The Gates is a better film, and the standard by which war films should now be measured. The movie is at least almost as good technically as Private Ryan.
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3 Days of the Condor (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 21st, 2009

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“Don’t expect too many mistakes from this man. After all he does seem rather more interesting than just another reader researcher. For example; has he gone into business for himself? Was he turned around? Does someone operate him? Is he homosexual? Broke? Vulnerable? Could he be a soldier of fortune? Did he arrange the hit? Is that why he’s still in flight? Still, he may be innocent. But why didn’t he come in gently?”

Sydney Pollack might have been channeling the essence of Alfred Hitchcock when he directed 3 Days Of The Condor.
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Wayne’s World (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2009

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“So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye. So you think you can love me and leave me to die. Oh Baby, just can’t do this to me baby. Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here… Nothing really matters. Anyone cane see. Nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me.”

I don’t think I can ever listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without conjuring up the image of the gang in the Mirth Mobile bobbing their heads up and down and singing to the Queen classic song.
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Wayne’s World 2 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2009

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“White supremist world was cancelled.”

When you talk about Wayne’s World 2 you can’t help but talk about disappointment. I mentioned in my review for the first film that over the span of nearly 20 years the skit had lost some of its luster. I certainly wasn’t nearly as entertained now as I had been when I first saw the film in the early 1990’s. That same principle appears to have been true just a year later when Wayne’s World 2 was released.
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Black Sheep (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2009

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Have you seen the Chris Farley/David Spade film Tommy Boy? If you have, then you’ve also seen Black Sheep. The circumstances might have changed, but the general idea is still there. Farley plays the mentally challenged family member, yet again. This time he’s Mike Donnelly, and his brother Al (Matheson) is running for Governor of Washington state. Spade once again plays the faithful employee who is charged with babysitting Farley’s character and trying to keep him out of trouble.
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The Grudge (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 12th, 2009

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“When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. It never forgives. It never forgets. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury.”

Here we go again with the American remake of the Asian classic. To be fair, The Grudge was one of the first after the great success of The Ring. There are some significant differences between this effort and the countless remakes we’ve encountered over the last decade or so.
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The Da Vinci Code (Two-Disc Extended Cut) (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 6th, 2009

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“Symbols are a language that helps us to understand our past. As the saying goes, a picture says a thousand words, but which words? Understanding our past determines actively our ability to understand the present. So, how do we sift truth from belief? How do we write our own histories, personally and culturally, and thereby define ourselves? How do we penetrate years, centuries of historical distortion to find the original truth? Tonight, that will be our quest.”

Conspiracies can be fun. We all buy into them to one degree or another.
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Dexter: The Complete Second Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 1st, 2009

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Dexter continues his jump to the world of high definition as the second season finally makes its way to Blu-ray. The show is killer, if you’ll pardon the expression. In the first season, Dexter pointed out the contradiction of a crime scene in sunny Miami. The aftermath of brutality appears somewhat surreal in such a colorful and bright surroundings. On Blu-ray you really get to understand what he was talking about. It almost feels like the show shouldn’t look so clean, so crisp, so bright. But, of course, it should, and it does in this release.
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The Uninvited (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 1st, 2009

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The Uninvited is yet another in a long string of Asian films that are translated and retooled for American audiences. It’s been a rather strong and long running trend that was kicked off with the wildly successful The Ring, from the Asian classic, Ringu. But, for every effective spooky thriller that comes out of this Asian pipeline, there appear to be a dozen or more complete failures. Some American directors think that all they need to do is throw fast moving creepy ghosts at us and often have them inhabit some modern electronic device. Presto! You have a horror movie for the purposes of generated cash. I’m happy to report that The Uninvited is a fresh approach
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Arctic Tale (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 23rd, 2009

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Animal films have done quite well at the box office in recent years. Who can forget the astounding appeal of March Of The Penguins. With wonderful cinematography and the commanding narration of Morgan Freeman, the film took the box office by storm. There have been countless efforts to reproduce those results ever since. The latest of these to hit Blu-ray is the indoctrination piece, Arctic Tale. I say indoctrination because this movie is never content with following the natural migration or struggles of the animals it depicts.
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The Last Kiss (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 17th, 2009

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The Last Kiss is based on the internationally acclaimed Italian movie L’ultimo bacio which was written by Gabriele Muccino and adapted for this American version by screenwriter Paul Haggis. From all reports the movie is remarkably similar to the Italian classic with only the ending modified. Haggis tells us in the extras of this release that he attempted to merely translate the original work and performed little in the way of modifications. From the looks of things, the ending was a bit of a struggle for these filmmakers,
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Strange Wilderness (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 17th, 2009

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Everybody who is old enough remembers Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. It was once one of the highest rated shows on television. On NBC it ran from 1963 until 1971. It would continue to run in syndication for decades. An elder Marlin Perkins would host the show, while a young Jim Fowler would be out in the field. Every week they would show us animals in the wild from all over the world. Long before there was a Crocodile Hunter or Nigel, there was Wild Kingdom. Strange Wilderness attempts to urinate all over our fond memories,
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Mean Girls (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 16th, 2009

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Raise your hand if you’re sick and tired of Lindsay Lohan. Fortunately I can type with one hand. Honestly. How did this girl get to be so big? Why is she dominating our entertainment news cycles? Are there more than a handful of folks out there who think she has any talent at all? She’s nothing close to hot. It’s that wonderful modern phenomenon of being famous for being famous. It really does tend to color one’s opinions when you watch her in a film. She’s so overexposed, in more ways than one, that it’s impossible to watch her play any character without seeing the spoiled bratty whiner she has become so perfect at.
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Not Easily Broken (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 14th, 2009

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“I found out that if you wanna know the purpose of a thing, you can’t ask the thing to tell you. A car doesn’t know why it’s a car; only the manufacturer knows what it was meant to do. And I guess that’s the same way it is with God.”

Not Easily Broken was written by a minister, Bishop T.D. Jakes. So you should expect a very spiritual message when you watch this movie. If that’s not your cup of tea, as they say, this really isn’t going to be the film for you.
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Things We Lost in the Fire (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 1st, 2009

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For first time screen writer Allen Loeb, Things We Lost In The Fire is quite an ambitious script. It relies almost completely on the writing and the performances that can be gotten from the acting leads. There’s really no place to hide in this story for anybody. And while I certainly found several elements of the story forced or contrived, there was an underlining emotion to the whole thing that carried through strong enough for the actors to find some very solid grounding. With that grounding Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro delivered what should have been award winning performances.
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A Mighty Heart (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 26th, 2009

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On January 23, 2002 Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and eventually killed by terrorists while working in Pakistan. A Mighty Heart is based on this true story. The narrative comes from the book by his wife Marianne Pearl. While this is certainly the tragic tale of a murdered reporter, this film is more the story of Marianne and her struggle to locate Pearl in the 10 days from his capture until a video tape surfaced depicting his beheading.
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The Kite Runner (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 26th, 2009

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I was very eager to revisit this film now that it has come our way on Blu-ray and high definition. There are issues that I struggled with in my own viewing that I will discuss later in this review. In high definition this film becomes a case study in contradiction. It’s amazing how pretty a thing can be when it really isn’t very pretty at all. We are witness to bad things, but the director chooses to present these things amid a flurry of beauty. It’s a rather striking contrast, made more so on Blu-ray. It actually made for a much more effective experience, even if most of my initial feelings about the film remain unchanged.
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Primal Fear (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 12th, 2009

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Actor Edward Norton first came to my attention in the heist film, The Score. I hadn’t heard a lot about the bright young actor, but I remember that he impressed me quite a bit. When you consider he was playing along with the likes of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, that’s no small achievement. Somewhere along the way I missed the 1996 release of Primal Fear. Based on the William Diehl novel, the film would be the first major feature to star Norton. It was a breakout character and a breakout performance. He deservedly was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, one he likely should have received.
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I’ve Loved You So Long (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 4th, 2009

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The highpoint of I’ve Loved You So Long is a rather brilliant performance by Kristen Scott Thomas. She is able to inhabit a character in ways I’ve rarely seen. You’ll be hard pressed to find any identifiable boundaries between the actor and the character. Now, usually, that’s the foundation for a solid film. The problem is that her character just isn’t that interesting of a person after a while. Of course, there are nuances to observe, and Thomas serves them up well, but after a short time we’ve really come to know this character pretty well. We just don’t find her all that interesting.
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Friday the 13th Uncut (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 13th, 2009

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What a great time it was to be a teen in the late 1970’s. No, I’m not referring to disco music. It was a great time to go to the movies. It was the culmination of the perfect date, and Hollywood was riding the beginning of a trend that remains alive and healthy today. I’m talking, of course, about the slasher film. You could argue that Hitchcock started the ball rolling in 1961 with Psycho, but it would be decades before that film would find its true audience and plethora of imitators. Although The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween came before Friday The 13^th, can it be argued that any horror film franchise is as widely known?
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Election (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 20th, 2009

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There’s something I hate about election season. No, it’s not all of those negative ads. No, it’s not the wall to wall coverage on the news networks, It isn’t even the campaigning that closes streets and makes you late for work. It’s the fact that every studio decides to dust off any title they think is even remotely political in nature and put it out, hoping to cash in on the perceived political craze.
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