Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 5th, 2015
“You want me to fall back in love with you? How do I do that if I never stopped?”
Or, in my case, how do I do that if I never started? Nicholas Sparks’ fans love the author as passionately and unabashedly as the lead characters in his best-selling books fawn over each other. But even though I think The Notebook is the ideal sappy romantic drama, I’ve never been part of that club. In fact, his stories — and the movie adaptations they spawn — seem to be getting worse. And yet I was somewhat intrigued by The Best of Me…at least until the movie’s monumentally dopey conclusion, which likely inspired the release of this “Tears of Joy” mea culpa Edition.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 3rd, 2015
"You like that stuff, but it's kind of a tease."
Give Elijah credit for taking some interesting chances with his acting choices since his long and successful run with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and his subsequent cameos in the Hobbit films as well. No one can accuse the actor of resting on his laurels. His roles have been outside the mainstream. Most of his recent work involves the quirky series Wilfred, where he sees a man in a dog suit instead of his neighbors canine. Add to the list of offbeat roles that of Nick Chambers in Open Windows.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on January 29th, 2015
“Love is an endless act of forgiveness.”
May Brennan is the best-selling author of a successful book centered around Arabic proverbs. She is played by Cherien Dabis, who is also the writer/director/producer of May in the Summer. Both Dabis and her fictional counterpart use short, pithy phrases like the one above as the basis for exploring familial and romantic relationships. But while May encounters rousing success with her (fictitious, unseen) book, Dabis' picturesque, breezy, ultimately disposable film is a little bit more of a mixed bag.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 28th, 2015
"Did that just happen?"
I have to confess that I entered The Judge expecting a different kind of film than I actually saw. After seeing the trailer, I was reminded of some of the classic courtroom dramas I'd seen over the years, from 12 Angry Men through ...And Justice For All. On the ride to the screening I found my mind was swimming with the "closing arguments" Al Pacino delivered in ...And Justice For All and was trying to image how Robert Downey, Jr. was going to try to top that. In the end, Downey didn't top that wonderful monologue. In the end, The Judge simply wasn't that kind of a movie after all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 22nd, 2015
"If we're good today, we'll be better tomorrow."
The final season of Boardwalk Empire breaks the mold of what the show has been for the first four years. The action jumps ahead several years to 1931. It's a necessary plot point if we're going to be ending the popular series in the fifth season. I understand the jump and why it works. I guess my only real question is: why are we jumping ahead to end what is one of the best shows on television? The answers likely lie within the powers that be at either HBO or the show's production staff. There's little point arguing the point. This is your last chance to get some Nucky... Nucky Thompson, that is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 20th, 2015
Boyhood is all the rage right now. With all the hoopla surrounding the film, it should be noted that it is ordinary. It is just about people living their lives. One could even call it boring. One can say that because life is boring. It is not as exciting as it is in the movies. Life is about small moments that add up to memories and then it is over. Boyhood doesn't make grand statements about boyhood, or about motherhood or fatherhood for that matter. It is just about a few people and what happens to them. One could say it's about nothing, or one could say it's about everything. The film is nearly three hours long. It was filmed for a few weeks a year over twelve years. It is a very personal project for its writer/director, Richard Linklater.
I don't like Boyhood because it is messy and unfocused. I love Boyhood because it focuses on all the small moments and makes them seem all so important at the moment they happen. I love Boyhood because it makes us look back on our own lives. I don't like Boyhood because it makes it seem like all life is boring. I like Boyhood because it is unassuming in it's efforts to show us a mirror of ourselves. One could say, I'm conflicted about Boyhood. I can say I love many Richard Linklater films; in fact, I like every one of them. And they are not all the same, but they have one thing in common. None of them are pretentious, and that was after seeing his last film Before Midnight which delved precariously into highfaluting and high-minded bouts of conversation. In fact, Linklater has always been on his own path down in Texas. It was a slacker path, since that was the name of his first film. He was always an indie guy but had big successes over the years like School of Rock, Bad News Bears and Dazed and Confused. But the films that most closely tie to Boyhood are the trilogy of films Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. Those three films starred Ethan Hawke, detailing conversations with one woman (Julie Delpy) over the years. The trilogy was filmed in 1995, 2004 and 2013. Boyhood began filming in May 2002 and also starring Ethan Hawke, but the real star is Ellar Coltrane who ages from 6 to 18 in the film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on January 19th, 2015
What if Elvis Presley had an identical twin brother no one ever knew about? (It would certainly help explain all those Elvis sightings years after the King's death.) That's the kooky conceit at the center of The Identical. Unfortunately, rather than embracing the absurdity of its premise, the movie is an amateurish, uninspiring combination of “by-the-numbers musical biopic” and “painfully-earnest family drama.”
In the Depression-era South, financially-strapped parents William and Helen Hemsley (Brian Geraghty, Amanda Crew) struggle to raise their twin babies. William seeks guidance from tent revival preacher Reece Wade (Ray Liotta), who has been unsuccessfully trying to have a child of his own with wife Louise (Ashley Judd). The Hemsleys decide to let the Wades adopt one of their children, who is given the name Ryan.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on January 15th, 2015
When I think about the swamps of the Louisiana bayou, with the exception of hungry gators lurking beneath the murky depths, I can’t help but think about the connection it has to the supernatural. I blame seeing Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond for this. It’s a film that haunted me when I was a kid, and the imagery has stuck with me over the years. There have been numerous films over the years that have explored the supernatural of the bayou; most successfully we saw this in the Kate Hudson thriller The Skeleton Key. The bayou just seems to be a location that equates to doom for all those naive enough to relocate to it. Jessabelle follows suit in this southern gothic thriller that may look the part of a horror film but simply doesn’t deliver.
In the span of just a few minutes we meet Jessie (Sarah Snook) and her boyfriend, before we even have the chance to get to know or care about this couple, we watch as they are involved in a tragic car accident that not only kills the boyfriend but also Jessie’s unborn child. The tragedy isn’t missed by the viewer, but what is missed is any opportunity to become attached to this couple.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 14th, 2015
"There will be casualties"
Alan Ball got my attention in 2001 with HBO's black comedy Six Feet Under. It was one of the most original shows I had ever seen, and to this day I find it hard to characterize the series when asked to do so. It was there that he also introduced me to Michael C. Hall, who continues to amaze me in the role of Dexter over at Showtime. When Six Feet Under left the airwaves, Ball didn't waste very much time in bringing his quirky style back, this time to the horror genre. True Blood would put a rather strange twist on the lovesick vampire craze, and while that show has not kept up the same kind of clever writing and wickedly brilliant stories, Ball has lent his name and talents to another cable show. This time it's on Cinemax, and the series is Banshee. And while Ball is a producer and not the day-to-day runner of the series, it is nonetheless another pretty strange show that defies any particular genre or characterization.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 13th, 2015
"Since the beginning of civilization, dolls have been beloved by children, cherished by collectors and used in religious rites as conduits for good and evil."
The Conjuring was one of the best horror movies to come along in years. Why? Because it was a good scare with a story that didn't totally insult our intelligence or leave us scratching our heads too many times. The movie also dealt with its own red herring of sorts in a possessed doll kept under wraps by that film's hero couple. We're treated to a tease of her story before we move on to other matters. It was used more or less to establish the expertise of Ed (Wilson) and Lorraine (Farmiga) Warren, who would play a central part in the film. After a rather chilling tease and more than enough establishing shots of the doll in a case with all sorts of ominous warnings, we moved on to the story that film was setting out to tell. No question James Wan delivered yet another frightening film that did not really involve the Annabelle doll at all, as it turned out. For the next 90 minutes we forgot about Annabelle, but after a while we went home, and the creepy image of the doll wouldn't shake from our slumber. There was really only one thing for a studio to do, either to exorcise the distraction from our minds or mine a little coin in the doing. The result is the highly anticipated Annabelle.
