Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 18th, 2014
"If anybody gets up, they're dead. Anybody moves, they're dead. Anybody makes a sound before I leave this movie, ..."
You get the idea. These are the words of one John Wojtowicz, better known as The Dog. On August 22, 1972 he attempted to rob a Chase Manhattan bank in order to finance his male lover's sex change operation so that he could become a woman. The heist was about as amateur as the come and went horribly wrong from the start. In a matter of minutes the bank was surrounded by a swarm of police units and a growing mob of bystanders.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 11th, 2014
“You sell 100 million records, and see how you handle it.”
If you’ve ever seen an episode of Behind the Music — or followed popular culture at all in the previous century — then you probably know artists tend to not handle that level of success very well. However, the rise and (inevitable) fall of the original Four Seasons lineup is unique for a number reasons. Unfortunately, very few of those reasons are captured in Jersey Boys, Clint Eastwood’s oddly lifeless, workmanlike adaptation of the joyous, wildly popular Broadway musical.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on November 11th, 2014
Personally I’m not a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise, despite the fact that I tend to enjoy films from the genre. For me, I’ll take the old school films like Vanishing Point, Two-Lane Blacktop, and the original Gone in 60 Seconds over these big budget productions any day. All I can figure is that these films that I do enjoy are working with budgets that force the directors to be creative and understand most of their elaborate stunts only get one take and are not polished with CGI, but instead whatever the camera captures that is what we see on the big screen. The stunts are simply incredible, and the cars in my humblest opinion were simply cooler back then.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 10th, 2014
“It's noble work. It is useful. You are angels of mercy...I just never thought that I would end up here.”
The geriatric care wing of a hospital — where the employees are undermanned and overworked, and many of the patients are in a near-catatonic state — is not the most obvious sitcom setting. As a result, HBO's comedy series Getting On isn't exactly what I'd call a gut buster. But even though much of the humor seems hyper-specific to this particular circle of workplace hell, anybody who has ever been underpaid to do a hard, crappy job should be able to relate.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 7th, 2014
- “We don't have the trust of the public anymore.”
- “Get it back!”
The Newsroom took a pretty decent beating during its first season. Sure, plenty of people praised the show's exceptional acting and ambition, but too much of the conversation seemed to revolve around its flaws and its polarizing creator. In this Blu-ray set's bonus material, Aaron Sorkin cops to being “overly earnest” and “aggressively uncool” in his work.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on November 5th, 2014
This has been a review that has taken me a while to get to, not because it’s something I was dreading, but instead it had me revisiting some other Elmore Leonard adaptations to the screen. There have been countless adaptions of Leonard’s work on the big screen as well as television. Whether it’s his westerns 3:10 to Yuma, Justified or Hombre or his work on crime Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, and Get Shorty, there is a good chance at some point you’ve seen Elmore’s work, and those were just a handful of titles I mentioned. I was a teenager when I first discovered Elmore Leonard
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 29th, 2014
"It was the gang that ran amok. You have people who were being extorted, who talked of having a shotgun barrel stuck in their mouths or machine guns pointed at their groin. Body bags were shown by Bulger as he shakes them down. It was absolute terror."
It amazes me that I really had very little idea who James J. Bulger was before I watched this film by director Joe Berlinger. How could I have missed this guy? On the run for over 16 years, Bulger was once #2 on the FBI's most wanted list. Who was #1? That was Osama Bin Laden. So who was this man that came in second only to the world's most infamous terrorist?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 28th, 2014
“That man brings hell with him wherever he goes.”
The “man” is supposed to be Paul Brennan (Jason Patric), a retired mob enforcer-turned-unassuming auto mechanic who reluctantly returns to his violent ways after his daughter goes missing. But the real culprit might be director Brian A. Miller. With The Prince and this year’s The Outsider, the director has made two consecutive sub-Taken crime dramas that lack the cohesion, refinement or energy to work even as satisfyingly junky action movies.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 9th, 2014
“You know what you just did, don’t you? You jumped the shark.”
People have been mocking SyFy original films since the days when the network spelled its own name properly. But staying home on a Saturday night to “MST3K” your way through flicks with D-list actors and Z-grade visual effects has been replaced by Twitter, which practically blew up when the impossibly campy Sharknado premiered last year. SyFy recognized that social media has made it possible for anyone with Internet access to trade yuks and one-liners on a global scale; more importantly, it has allowed the network to be in on the joke in an unprecedented way.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 8th, 2014
"Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true?
Ever since Eric von Daniken released his speculative book and its subsequent 1970 film Chariots of the Gods, there has been an entire field of study created around something commonly called Ancient Astronaut Theory. The idea is that extraterrestrials have visited many of our ancient civilizations. The theory continues that these visitors had a hand in shaping our development, whether it be through technology or even manipulation of our very DNA.
