Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 9th, 2002
Intro
Wow… Luc Besson, Chis Nahon, Jet Li, Bridget Fonda, and Tcheky Karyo have created one of the few action epics to come out of Hollywood recently. Amidst the never ending river of s...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 5th, 2002
Intro
We’ve just had one recent battle-of-the-rogues release with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Here’s a more recent film in a similar vein, with Martin Lawrence and Danny De Vito duking it out. Curiously, Glenne Headly features in both.
Synopsis
Martin Lawrence is a charming thief. Danny De Vito is a charmless businessman. When De Vito catches Lawrence robbing his home, he turns the tables and steals Lawrence’s precious ring. This, of course, means war, as the two men use all the means at ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 3rd, 2002
It’s one of the oldest childhood nightmares: your parents die, and evil guardians take over your life. The story has been told by countless fairy tales. The Glass House transposes the tale to contemporary California.
When Ruby (Leelee Sobieski) and Rhett (Trevor Morgan) are orphaned, they are taken into the care of Terry and Erin Glass (Stellan Skarsgård and Diane Lane). This couple seems to good to be true, and, of course, they are. Erin is a junkie, and Terry is in hock to the mob.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 30th, 2001
Posted in Disc Reviews by Carly Peters
Intro
I had to dab the drool from the corner of my mouth when I was handed this beauty. The Smashing Pumpkins are considered to be one of the most musically and visually creative bands of the Twentieth century. This DVD features every music video released by the Pumpkins from Gish to Machina, and includes some live footage that was not released previously.
Audio
The audio sounds exactly like CD quality. The music is clear, rich and full, with no auditable distortion. Unfortunately thi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 26th, 2001
Intro
A recent effort from director Nagisa Oshima, perhaps best known for In the Realm of the Sense, Taboo continues his elegant exploration of sexuality and dangerous passions.
Synopsis
Imagine a samurai version of Death in Venice, and you have some sense of Taboo. The year is 1865, and a militia has two new recruits. One of them, Kano, is decidedly adrogynous, and the other recruit, Tashiro, promptly falls in love with him. As time goes on, more and more members of the militia fall u...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 23rd, 2001
Intro
This is a deeply, deeply silly film. But it takes being silly deeply, deeply seriously.
Synopsis
Peter Weller is Buckaroo Banzai: brain surgeon, physicist, rock star, fighter of evil. He and his merry men, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, fight to save the world from destruction caused by a war between the Black Lectroids (good aliens) and the Red Lectroids (bad aliens). The deadpan cast includes good guys Jeff Goldblum and Ellen Barkin, and, on the side of evil, John Lilthgow and Christ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 19th, 2001
Intro
For those who just can’t get enough of the much-loved series on perpetual re-run, now comes the 3-disc set of the first season.
Anyone needing a summary of the premise is clearly not part of the set’s target market. But in case you need a reminder, the setting is a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, and the series revisits the characters introduced by the movie of the same name. Wacky hijinks interweave with the horrors of war. The show is at its tightest when the dialogue i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 15th, 2001
Intro
Ouch… this movie carried such high expectations that its failure on so many levels came as a major disappointment. After such remarkably entertaining schlock-horror epics (and legitimate cinematic masterpieces) as “Hallowe’en,” “ In the Mouth of Madness,” and “Escape from New York,” “Ghosts of Mars (GoM)” came of as a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 12th, 2001
Intro
The most recent film from Tran Anh Hung, writer/director of The Scent of Green Papaya, continues his restrained, low-key examination of human interaction.
Synopsis
In some ways, providing a synopsis for movies like this is to do them a disservice. This is not meant to imply that there is no story. There is: three sisters prepare a feast to mark the anniversary of their parents’ death, and we explore their relationships with each other and with the men in their lives. But above an...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 9th, 2001
Intro
Mean-spirited. Nasty. Spiteful. Evil. All words that apply to this comedy. And they’re compliments.
Synopsis
Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas are Barbara and Oliver Rose. They’ve had seventeen wonderful years together. But their marriage collapses. Their hatred for each other emerges, and a tit for tat battle erupts, each indignity that one inflicts on the other inviting greater retaliation. The war escalates into a total domestic Armageddon. This is uncompromising black comed...
