Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 23rd, 2005
I Love Lucy changed the fledgling television industry in the 1950’s. This was a time when network television was less than a decade old. Most folks had never heard of television just 15 years earlier. I Love Lucy defined the concept of a sitcom. The show was driven by the very strong personalities of the cast. Desi Arnaz was considered a charismatic Latin lover by American women. Lucy played the perfect foil and found a mountain of gold to mine in strong physical comedy. So many modern shows owe their roots to this classic that it would be impossible to mention them all here. With that said, the fifth season was a letdown. The simple truth is they were running out of ideas in the simplistic environment of this once very funny comedy. All of this season is spent taking the cast on a whirlwind tour of Europe with its forced situations. The lack of perceived spontaneity was gone. Lucy was no longer the fly in Ricky’s ointment. Oddly enough, the season does begin with one of the funniest stories of the series: Lucy stealing John Wayne’s footprints, and of course, his feet. If only that quality could have been maintained instead of a hokey tour of the Old Country.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 22nd, 2005
This is the kind of film that usually comes from the English or the French... not the Germans. Let's face it, Germany is not known for a stable of modern intellectual comedies. If you need a beer, or a fine automobile, you go to the Germans. If you need an entertaining art film, you go to France. Still, this is a film that bucks the trend... and will hopefully start a new one.
The Schultze of the title is a retired German miner that finds himself lost in his newfound abundance of free time. Eventually,...he turns to his accordion playing as a release from the banality of everyday life. This pursuit eventually leads him to discover Louisiana Zydeco music, and his world is turned upside-down. If you have seen About Schmitt, then you are on the right track with the tone of this film. Personally, however, I preferred this picture much more than the Jack Nicholson vehicle.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 21st, 2005
This is the story of the most successful porn film ever made. While the documentary's claim that Deep Throat has made over 600 million dollars has been challenged, there is no denying that it WAS a huge success, and was a cause c�l�bre. We meet all the major players in the making of the film (minus, of course, the late Linda Lovelace), its distribution, and its prosecution. There are also plenty of interviews with cultural commentators of one sort or another, ranging from Annie Sprinke to Camille Paglia to Erica Jong to Wes Craven and Hugh Hefner.Though the directors make their feelings pretty clear in the commentary, to their credit, they leave some room for argument in the film (in other words, there is a level of ambiguity and unanswered questions of the non-rhetorical variety that Michael Moore would find intolerable). There are times when I felt a bit frustrated, where I wanted some issues explore a bit more fully, but any film that leaves me thinking as hard as this one does deserves serious plaudits. There are also some truly hilarious moments - the interviewees are a right lot of characters, all right. All in all, a vital document of the ongoing culture wars in the US.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 20th, 2005
The great thing about DVDs produced under the Criterion moniker is that they can't really be compared to much else. Usually, I can just whip out a peppy little monologue about the film I have just watched, but Criterion always makes things a bit more difficult... which is great for film fans that have seen it all before.
Naked is, of course, no different. There is no easy summation for this piece of art, which won awards for Best Actor and Best Director at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. This is ... simply fantastic dark comedy, filled with superb performances and brilliantly witty dialog. While many American audiences live and die by the easy-to-follow plot, this is more of a collection of character studies, with Johnny (played by David Thewlis) serving as the tour guide. Microcosms of relationships, criminal minds, malicious intent and the curse of intelligence are all explored here, in a film that may severely expand the viewer's beliefs about those that live on the fringe of society, and their own lives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 20th, 2005
Synopsis
In the rural south of the 1930s, a black man is charged with the rape and beating of a white woman. Defending him is Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), and the events surrounding the case are seen through the eyes of Finch’s two children. The film is thus just as much about children’s fears (embodied by Boo Rradley [Robert Duvall], the boogeyman next door) and perceptions of the world as it is about race and unequal justice.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 19th, 2005
Synopsis
Robert Redford is a small-time con man who swindles a runner working for big-time gangster Robert Shaw. When Redford’s partner is killed in retribution, Redford swears revenge, and hooks up with Paul Newman, a veteran at the con game who has fallen on hard times. They put together a veritable army of operators, determined to bring Shaw to his knees in the ultimate con.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 19th, 2005
Synopsis
A young boy murders his mother’s abusive lover while his little sister watches the act in a mirror. Years later, the siblings are grown up. The brother is mute, and the sister (Susanna Love) is haunted by nightmares of that night. Seeking to purge the past, she revisits her old home, and sees the lover in the mirror. In terror, she smashes the mirror, thus unleashing the evil contained therein. Wherever fragments of the mirror show up, terrible deaths occur.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 17th, 2005
Synopsis
Seth Brundle (David Goldblum) is on the cusp of perfecting an functioning teleporter, a device that will transform the world. Eager to share his creation with someone, he strikes up an acquaintance with science journalist Geena Davis. She is initially skeptical, but is soon converted, and as the work progresses, the two fall in love. Then, in a fit of misplaced jealousy (he believes that Davis is seeing ex-boyfriend John Goetz), Goldblum teleports while drunk, not knowing a fly is also in th... machine with him. Their DNA is fused, and the man slowly starts transforming into a fly, his relationship and his identity crumbling along with his flesh.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 16th, 2005
Fever Pitch is an American-ized version of the Nick Hornby novel and subsequent British Film. American-ized usually means “watered downâ€, and there’s no doubt a lot of the bite from the original source material is missing. But I am a big fan of the movies High Fidelity and About a Boy. Instead of soccer, the protagonist’s obsession, in this Fever Pitch is baseball (in particular the Red Sox). This obsession gets in the way of having healthy relationships. I think the change of...sport still works; pitch is an apt baseball term. And the correlation between heartbreak in love and heartbreak in Red Sox fans is also relevant. But how is the movie?
Well, the movie is directed by the Farrelly Brothers. So there’s the typical physical and gross out humor one might expect from the fraternal duo. But this is a more, shall we say, “mature†work? The Farrelly’s are really subdued here (sometimes bordering on tepid). Shallow Hal this ain’t. But the material doesn’t lend itself to their hi-jinks. Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore are the stars of this truthful romantic comedy. After the embarrassing Taxi, Fallon shows some range here. Barrymore also surprises with the degree of emotional truth in some scenes. The movie gains steam as it goes along, much like a baseball season, and the combination of smarts and schmaltz (from veteran writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) did win me over in the end. And I’m a Red Sox fan.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 15th, 2005
The classics become the classics for a reason. True, this may be a collection of classic cartoons, but they are classics all the same. This disc contains four different cartoons that introduce children to the stories of “The Ugly Duckling”, “Ferdinand the Bull”, “The Country Cousin” and “The Wind in the Willows”. Parents can rest easy by putting their children in front of something like this for an hour, as children will not only be be entertained, but they will learn a little something along the way as well. These s...orts are from the golden age of Disney animation, back when everything was drawn by hand, and the true creative artists practiced their craft. This is animation as an art form.
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