Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2006
There’s a bunch of people stuck in a bar in the middle of nowhere. Monsters want to eat them. What will they do? That about sums up Feast, a film that’s part comedy, part horror, and all around over the top. This is the winning project from season three of Project Greenlight, a contest and documentary series founded by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck back in 2000. What does that mean? Feast is a low-budget film helmed by a rookie director, based on an amateur script.
Rookie and amateur are often words associated with low quality, but this gore-fest is actually pretty good.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2006
Synopsis
What still surprises me when seeing Fast Times at Ridgemont High almost a quarter century after the film was initially released is the impressive casting. Some veterans did contribute to the film, but check out the laundry list of relative unknowns, and where they’ve gone onto. You’ve got Academy Award nominees (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn and Martin Brest, who received Directing and Best Picture nominations for Scent of a Woman), an Emmy nominee/Golden Globe winner (Anthony Edwards), a ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2006
The USA network took over the Forever Knight series for its third year. In a way, you could say they saved the show from cancellation, but they also killed it. In keeping with the nework’s M.O. of the time, it was believed the series wasn’t accessible enough. The obvious grab for the younger audience appeared in the likes of the Andy Garcia clone Ben Bass as the Vachon. Lovable partner Schanke was killed off along with the previous season’s captain. Nick was given a female partner in the likes of sci-fi veteran Li...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2006
The third entry into the X-Men franchise turned out quite a bit better than I expected. Early script turmoils were only overshadowed by cast problems. It seemed the bottom fell out when Bryan Singer decided to take on The Man of Steel instead of X3. Enter Brett Ratner, best known for the Rush Hour films. Give the man credit for overcoming a ton of problems to deliver a pretty good thrill ride film. Ratner adapted quickly to the f/x driven world of X-Men and managed to fashion a rather compelling tale. The idea of a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 11th, 2006
Synopsis
I first thought that Supernatural was a pointless, stupid show that Jared Padalecki was starring in, because I kind of liked his character on the Gilmore Girls (I’m a married male, by the way), and doing this show that I didn’t know that much about smelled like an instant disaster.
However, when you open up the DVD package, anyone who has seen the shows sees that there are a lot of creative members of the team that come from other shows with supernatural-like themes. Some of...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 11th, 2006
Synopsis
For those who enjoy the films of Warren Beatty, perhaps his quintessential film, the epic Reds has finally arrived on DVD. The film, which earned 12 Oscar nominations in 1981, including a remarkable four for Beatty (as Director, which he won), Actor, Writer and Producer), the film was a clear labor of love for the left-leaning political activist. Beatty plays John Reed, an American political writer who becomes more and more enamored with the ideas and concepts behind a blossoming ideological...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 11th, 2006
Synopsis
About to be married for what he hopes will be the final time, Caveh Zahedi turns to us and reveals his long battle with sex addiction. His story is a difficult one for him to tell, not only for the (very, very funny) personal humiliation it entails, but because he keeps interrupting himself and jumping from one moment in his life to another, but also because he gets tangled up with explaining how the recreations were done in the movie we are now watching. Thus, having just said that he could...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 10th, 2006
Synopsis
In the soulless wasteland of the San Fernando Valley, feeling-her-oats teen Evan Rachel Wood meets cowboy (or something) Edward Norton at a filling station. Despite the creepy age difference, friendship becomes romance, but Wood’s father (David Morse) is understandably less than keen about the relationship. He orders an end to it. Neither of the lovers is happy with that, and the situation is all the more explosive since Norton is far from being right in the head.
The performances ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 10th, 2006
Waist Deep tells the story of a man named Otis Senior (Baby Boy’s Tyrese Gibson), an ex-con who is trying to straighten out his life after being releasing from jail. Otis, known by his previous street name of ‘O2’, is working as a security guard at a place he got from part of his ex-con program. One day O2 goes to pick up his son, Otis Junior, from school when his child and his car get ‘jacked’ in a carjacking. O2 chases down these men and, despite killing two of them, doesn’t get his car back. He then ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 9th, 2006
Peter Bogdanovich’s The All Laughed is a classy, bittersweet film. It’s plot is pretty thin, but here’s the gist: a New York City private detective agency is hired to keep tabs on two women suspected of infidelity. Things get interesting when the gumshoes on the trail begin falling for their lovely targets.
The best part of this film is its cast. Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, John Ritter, Dorothy Stratten, Patti Hansen, Colleen Camp, Blaine Novak and George Morfogen all fit their parts so well, it’s not surprising to learn in the bonus material that Bogdanovich wrote the parts with exactly these actors in mind.
