Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 16th, 2017
“We did it again!”
I can still remember sitting in a movie theater in Puerto Rico watching Home Alone 2: Lost in New York for the very first time. (With Spanish subtitles, of course.) I was basically the same age as Kevin McCallister — the precocious, pint-sized pre-teen played by Macaulay Culkin — and I’d pretty much worn out my VHS copy of Home Alone by the time the second movie was released. So it’s wild to think that this film is now old enough to rent a car! Fox has released a 25th anniversary Blu-ray of the blockbuster comedy sequel, and it’s a fun, fascinating re-watch for a variety of reasons.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 15th, 2017
“My verses full of curses cuz I'm stuck in dirty Jersey.”
Between 8 Mile and Hustle & Flow, we’ve seen —and heard — our share of hip-hop underdogs. But we’ve never seen one quite like Killa P, aka Patricia Dombrowski…aka “Piggy Azalea” to the haters who want to take shots at her appearance. Either way, she is the white, overweight, wannabe female rapper at the center of Patti Cake$, a Jersey-set indie that became a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on November 10th, 2017
When it comes to Victorian era serial killers, Jack the Ripper is pretty much a household name. Whether you know much about the terror he caused in White Chapel, all these years later you still know the name and what he did. With The Limehouse Golem, the filmmakers create a more sinister serial killer and deliver a Hammer-esque murder mystery. I’m all for a dark murder mystery, and when a film is channeling other successful films like Seven and From Hell, you’d imagine that you’d be witnessing a terrifying gory spectacle. The result, however, left me frustrated, as the film seems to pull from other films but never quite presents an engaging story to go along with the quirky mix of characters.
When we meet Lizzie (Olivia Cooke), she is being accused of murdering her husband. As the film progresses, we get to see how her story unfolds and her aspirations to be a theatrical star. Her tale intertwines with the rise of a brutal serial killer who has been terrifying the city of London who has been dubbed The Golem. To attempt to squash rising fears and solve the murders, Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy) is assigned the case. Kildare is paired with a young detective George Flood (Daniel Mays), who attempts to update Kildare with all the evidence of the case. It seems Flood and his fellow officers were inept in gathering evidence, as Kildare seems to uncover some fairly obvious clues of his own. What ties Lizzie to Kildare is the possibility that she is being charged with murdering Kildare’s prime suspect. All the evidence seems to point to Lizzie’s dead husband, so he goes to her to hear her story. Of course things are more complicated than they originally seem.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 8th, 2017
“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality.”
As things in our world become exponentially more chaotic and inexplicable by the day, the theory that we're all living in a computer simulation becomes a little harder to completely dismiss. The idea that our reality is an illusion dates back to the 17th century but most recently gained traction thanks to a 2003 paper published by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. It's also been a popular theme in classic sci-fi works like Blade Runner, Total Recall, and The Matrix. To that list, we can now add HBO's Westworld, a slick and star-studded sci-fi/Western mash-up that features the requisite shoot-em-ups and pay cable sexcapades, but is actually most interested in exploring the nature of humanity.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 7th, 2017
This is quite a step up for the History Channel folks. They've certainly produced a great number of historical dramatizations and documentaries, but nothing they've ever done before compares with this series. We used to review a ton of their stuff here for years, so you know I've liked a lot of the things they've done. But Vikings puts them in a totally new stratosphere. This is historical drama that you've only seen before in the likes of Rome or The Tudors. Of course, there's a very good reason for that. Michael Hirst created the series and is the creative force behind it. He served the same positions on The Tudors. That puts expectations here very high, and the show has met or exceeded them all.
The final moments of the first half of Season 4 takes a many-years jump forward in time. Ragnor (Fimmel) has abdicated his power and has been missing since the failed siege of Paris. Bjorn (Ludwig) has pretty much taken over as leader of the group. His younger sons have now grown into men and of course are now played by different actors. The most significant of these new castings is Alex Hogh as the grown Iver. The actor bears a rather striking resemblance to Travis Fimmel, and Hogh also does a remarkable job of pulling many of Fimmel's nuances into his character. He may not be able to walk, but it's clear that it is Iver who has inhiereted his father's strengths and personality. This is brought out even more when Ragnor suddenly returns. He has plans to return to England and avenge the slaughtered settlement he left there years ago. Bjorn wishes to follow his own path and explore the fabled Mediterranean Sea. Iver is the lone son who wishes to join his absent father. It becomes the end of Ragnor's story and really the beginning of Iver's to some extent.
The series does a pretty good job of bringing the culture and lifestyle of the Viking people to life for us. There is a great effort toward authenticity. That isn't to say that the show claims to be historically accurate. The Vikings were not a literate people. They did not keep a written record of their lives. What is known has been pieced together through artifacts and stories that were handed down orally from generation to generation. It's not even possible to depict the culture with any precision or accuracy. When you watch a film or a series like this, you need to be mindful of the difference between authenticity and accuracy. They are not the same things and shouldn't be confused here. Authenticity means that there's an attempt to portray the world in a faithful way. We're talking costumes, weapons, beliefs, lifestyles and environment. That's not to say that the film is attempting to tell a "true" story. Only one that feels true. Accuracy is intended to educate. This kind of a show is intended to entertain, and the authentic presentation is there to immerse us realistically in the world in order for us to care about the characters and events. The Vikings does this with a sweeping eye toward detail. The world comes alive for us, and we can be swept up in the events.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 2nd, 2017
“Here’s how it is: the Earth got used up, so we moved out and terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths, some rich and flush with the new technologies…some not so much. The Central Planets, thems formed the Alliance…waged war to bring everyone under their rule. A few idiots tried to fight it, among them myself.”
Sound familiar? A crew of scrappy underdogs skirting the edge of the galaxy to avoid an oppressive interplanetary alliance. Exactly 40 years ago, Star Wars used that formula to capture moviegoers’ imaginations, and it is currently being replicated by the uber-popular Guardians of the Galaxy series. But in between those two behemoths there was a little show called Firefly.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 27th, 2017
Ever since Birdman was released, it seems many filmmakers have been attempting to pull off the continuous take and outdo all the others. It was impressive when we all saw it the first time, but since then everything just seems like a bad knockoff. The newest film to follow this trend is Bushwick. While the camera work in the film does allow for an immersive experience, honestly it felt like I was in a first-person shooter video game, which was cool, but it seemed like the camera work was a distraction from the story. This is a frustrating film. On the technical side there is a lot to appreciate, but the moment you start looking at the story, the film seems to simply fall apart.
The film opens up with Lucy (Brittany Snow) coming home from college to visit her family. What she comes home to is a city at war. Immediately my question is this: in a time of people being so connected through their cell phones and various social media outlets, how is it Lucy seems to be unaware of what is going on? We’re supposed to believe this battle just broke out, but so many of the people battling on the streets seem to be all too organized for this to have just occurred. Why are the streets not packed with cars full of people trying to leave the city? For a while all we see are people shooting at anyone and everyone as Lucy does her best to avoid gunfire and try to reach her grandmother’s house.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 24th, 2017
For a gritty historical epic to get the green light these days, it has to have some sort of easy-to-understand hook. (“Hey, it's sexy King Arthur!”) And it seems like enough people complained about the prevalence of PG-13 action movies that it led to the current boom of R-rated sensations — like Deadpool and the John Wick flicks — that gleefully go to extremes. There is absolutely nothing gleeful about Pilgrimage, and the movie doesn't seem all that interested in hooking the masses (significant portions of the film are in French, Irish, and Latin). In other words, the most striking and impressive thing about Pilgrimage is also what can make it feel like somewhat of a slog: this movie is dead serious.
Pilgrimage opens with a brief, violent prologue in Cappadocia, 55 A.D., where an unnamed man is brutally stoned to death. It's a startling, disorienting cold open...and not just because I have no idea where Cappadocia is without the help of Dr. Google. The movie doesn't bother to explain either, but we eventually learn how this opening sequence crucially ties into the main story, which takes place in 1209 A.D. in Ireland. The nation has been torn apart by centuries of tribal warfare and currently faces the growing influence of Norman invaders.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 18th, 2017
- “You know what they say...the house always wins.”
- “What if we were the house?”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 16th, 2017
For the most part it seems the summer blockbusters tend to be sequels, superhero films, or CGI bonanzas that are simply eye candy to get us to the dark auditoriums to escape the heat. It’s rare that something comes along that is so clever and fresh as Baby Driver. Personally I’ve been a fan of Edgar Wright from the moment I first saw Shaun of the Dead; he was a writer and director who I felt knew how to make films fun. When he was set to direct his dream project Ant-Man, I was excited to see him finally get a chance to do a giant tent-pole studio film, but weeks before filming was set to begin, he got pulled away and replaced. When it was announced he was working on an action-comedy named Baby Driver, well, I was excited, but the film’s title had me scared, fears of him doing something along the lines of Baby’s Day Out ran through my mind, but then as the cast started to assemble, I couldn’t help but get excited. Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal … and these were simply the co-stars. Then when the first trailer dropped, this became the title of the year for me to keep an eye on. While this might not be the kind of film that gets nominated for best picture, for me this had potential to simply be an experience, the kind of fun you hope to have when you see a movie.
So who is Baby? Ansel Elgort heads this film with the title name, and for most he’s a guy who’s come out of nowhere. He’s been in The Divergent series and The Fault in our Stars, but Baby Driver is his first step into the spotlight, and as I mentioned above, he is surrounded by some major talent. The casting of Baby is key. Picking a relative unknown works, because the audience doesn’t know what to expect from this guy, and this works in the film as he’s surrounded by some dangerous heavy hitters in the crime world and they see this kid with his I-pod, they can’t help but wonder what’s up with this guy. Our intro to Baby Driver, wastes no time at showing us just what Baby can do as he is the getaway driver for a bank heist in Atlanta.
