Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 9th, 2024
When you look back at 2004, it’s a little hard to imagine just how big an impact Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy would have on the film industry. I’m not trying to say the film invented anything new with this fun, satiric comedy, but what it did do was launch the careers of many and really helped make comedy fun and raunchy for a while, and more importantly, profitable at the box office. I mean, this film is stacked with stars. Sure, there’s Will Ferrell front and center, but this is had a pre-40 Year-Old Virgin Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate, Kathryn Hahn, Seth Rogan, David Koechner, Fred Willard, and numerous others who are in the background or just make cameos. Seriously, this might be the best comedic cast put together of all time, and when you dive into the extras, you get a glimpse at just how talented everyone is. The film may be 20 years old, but it holds up. I’ve seen the film at least a dozen times, and it still makes me laugh. So what makes this film so special?
The film is about Ron Burgundy (Ferrell), who is San Diego’s top news anchor in the 1970’s. He’s a mixed bag of charming and is full of bravado and simply believes every woman would be honored to have him take them to bed. To Will Ferrell’s credit, if anyone else was playing this role, I feel the character would be despised, but Ferrell manages to make him seem more like a loveable buffoon. Surrounding Burgundy are his Channel 4 news team, Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) as the suave man-on-the-street reporter, Champ Kind (David Koechner) as the sports reporter, and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) as the weather reporter. The chemistry these four have is something special, and they play so well off one another. Seriously, I don’t know how they got through some of these scenes without constantly breaking character. The team though is in for a rude awakening when their news director, Ed Harken, wants to inject some diversity to the team and so enters Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), a transfer to their news station who is vying for a reporter job. Corningstone wants to be the first female lead anchor, and, well, let's just say the rest of the news team doesn’t feel a woman belongs behind the news desk.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 3rd, 2024
In 2004 when Team America: World Police was released, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were already well established in the film industry as the guys who created South Park. They had even dipped their toes into doing live action films like Orgazmo and BASEketball, but what the industry knew them for was their animated series South Park that began back in 1997 and is still going strong on Comedy Central. The duo isn’t afraid to take chances, whether it’s insulting celebrities (after all, part of their charm is being equal opportunity offenders) or creating their musical for the stage, The Book of Mormon, so was it a big surprise they’d want to do an action adventure film entirely with puppets? The film is very much a parody of the action films of the 90’s and early 00’s that were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. In case you are unfamiliar with his name, he produced the mega hits like Top Gun, The Rock, Con-Air, and Pearl Harbor. But what this film was also tapping into was the over-the-top patriotic attitudes that the media projected. I mean, everything needed to be patriotic in a post 9-11 world. Not that there is anything wrong with patriotism, but with the amount of people that were cashing in on it, looking back, well, you can see where it wouldn’t be too hard to parody the country. Then you throw in how many believed our country was getting involved in global issues we had no business being in; well, it’s no surprise where the title “World Police” came from. This film showed that Parker and Stone were not afraid to take some major political swings, but at the same time they wanted people to be able to laugh at the absurdity of it all, because that’s just who they are. Needless to say, if you are easily offended, this movie is not for you.
Team America is a group of elite fighters who have their secret base hidden within Mount Rushmore, like something you’d see out of some old James Bond film. Spottswoode (voiced by Daran Norris) leads the group and hands out the missions like a hybrid of Mr. Phelps from Mission Impossible and Bosley from Charlie’s Angels. In the opening scene we meet the team, the all-American former quarterback, Joe (voiced by Trey Parker), the martial arts expert, Chris (voiced by Matt Stone), the psychologist, Lisa (voiced by Kristen Miller), the psychic/empath, Sarah (voiced by Masasa Moyo), and then there’s Carson (also voiced by Parker); they’ve come to Paris to stop a terrorist attack … by stopping this really means shoot and kill everyone and destroy the city in the process (you know, like we’re used to seeing superheroes do in every battle they have). In the process, Carson is killed, which leaves an opening on the team.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on July 2nd, 2024
“I have a ghost to bust.”
When Afterlife was initially announced back in 2021, my thoughts were: why do we keep messing with things instead of preserving them? Ghostbusters was an iconic film franchise that already suffered one failed attempt at reboot. So when I went to see Afterlife, I was expecting the law of diminishing returns to be in effect. However, to my mind, Afterlife, with its homage to the dearly departed Harold Ramis and inclusion of the original crew, was not a reboot, but a continuation. It worked, and brought with it some of the nostalgia from the franchise’s original run. Now as expected, one good turn deserves another, and we now have Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Once again, we were at risk of destroying a good thing, but thankfully we had the right people at the helm who were able to blend the old with the new, which is no surprise given that the film was co-written by the son of the franchise’s original director. Additionally, not only does the film maintain credibility by bringing back the entire cast of Afterlife such as Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, and Finn Wolfhard; it also reaches back in time and brings together the original crew in the form of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd (who also credited with the original story idea), Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and William Atherton. Throw in new cast members like Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanijiani and Patton Oswalt, and you’ve got yourself a party.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 29th, 2024
In 1993 when this film came out, 1962 just seemed like another time that as a teenager I just couldn’t wrap my head around. While the kids in Matinee were excited about these giant monster films, I could sort of relate, as I was getting into horror myself, but instead of atomic bugs, I was getting into the slasher heavy hitters like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. So a film about kids spending most of their time at a movie theater was something I could relate to easily, and as I got older I simply continued to appreciate the film more as I consumed more films from the past and grew to appreciate filmmakers like Val Lewton, William Castle, Roger Corman, and Lloyd Kaufman, the guys who knew how to turn a cheap film into an event experience through a variety of marketing gimmicks. The idea of ambulances being staged outside a theater because audience members may faint or having people in costume lunge at unsuspecting guests. These innovators make going to the movie theater an experience even if the movie wasn’t all that great … and now 30 years after the release of Matinee, I find myself bitten by the bug of nostalgia. I can’t help but miss how I used to consume movies, either spending an entire day at the multiplex sneaking into R rated films or hitting the video store and grabbing a bunch of videos to watch with friends. Now we have streaming, and it just isn’t the same. The movie theaters may not have the sticky floors that we all hated, and to be fair I do like the stadium seating, but it’s just not the way it used to be, and with ticket prices skyrocketing along with crazy rates at the concession stands, well, it isn’t too hard to understand why people want to believe the theater experience is dying.
I don’t mean to be so bleak, especially when Matinee is far from being a downer; instead it is a charming love letter to a time where as a kid things would have been so simple, but for adults the terror of an atomic missile strike kept many parents in fear. Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) is your typical kid, but with his father being in the military his family bounces around a lot, and while his father is deployed he feels the need to be “the man of the house” and look after his mom and his little brother. This new deployment has them brought down to the Florida Keys, and at the worst time imaginable, during “he Cold War, and when the Russians are threatening to drop atomic bombs on the States. We see how the kids are prepping with bombing drills and folks around town are emptying out the store shelves (a scene oddly reminiscent to when the COVID panic recently struck and the nation was in a panic over toilet paper). Gene is eager to simply just leave the base and find his sanctuary at the local theater and just watch movies all day. It’s at the movies he happens to run into one of his idols, Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman), who has come to town to premiere his new film, a B-monster movie called MANT, and he’s going to be presenting the film in what he calls “Atomic Vision”.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 25th, 2024
"Somebody went to a lot of trouble here, and I want to find out, lawsuit or no lawsuit. I'm not the one who's supposed to be caught with his pants down."
The word "classic" gets thrown around a lot. Everybody has their own list. I get that. Whenever someone starts listing films from the last year or so, I just smile and take it with a grain of salt. Because I know they don't know what they're talking about. I don't know how many years it takes to be a classic. Is it 10 ... 20 … or even 30 years? Well, how about 50 for a nice round number? The film has certainly stood the test of time. That's one of those things you can't say about a film under a decade or two old.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 25th, 2024
It’s been about 10 years since Richard Linklater gave us Boyhood, which for me may not be my personal favorite of his films, but it is the one that certainly got the attention of the Academy Awards. Linklater is a director I’ve always been a fan of. It’s hard to really describe his filmography other than to say it is diverse, but at the heart of all his films they are about the characters. It’s no surprise that his new film Hit Man is once again a film about the characters and definitely has more heart than violence, even if the central character is supposed to be a contract killer. The film is loosely based on a true story and was written by Richard Linklater and Glen Powell, who also stars in the film, and my first reaction is this is immediately shooting to the top of my list of my favorite films I’ve seen this year. Though this film has some familiar tropes, I have to say it is a breath of fresh air. A film without CGI, it isn’t an established IP; it’s just a good story that is carried by great performances and was fun start to finish. The first impression I got from the film as the credits rolled is that it reminded me of the fun and cool crime films of the 90s. To be even more specific, this reminded me of Grosse Point Blank and Out of Sight if the films had a love child and for an extra splash of cool blended in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but some how it still manages to be its own thing.
Glen Powell plays Gary Johnson, who is a college professor in New Orleans. On the side he works with the police department as a simple tech guy … that is until he’s put in the position where he has to go undercover and pose as a hit man when the department’s “hit man” is put on a 120-day suspension. To everyone’s surprise it turns out Gary is really good at pretending to be a professional killer, and he is given the full-time gig for as long as the under cover agent, Jasper (Austin Amelio) is under suspension. Gary takes the new job seriously and starts to research the people who are wanting to hire him as a hit man, and he takes on a persona he feels best suits the hit man they are looking for. We get to see Gary take on a wide variety of looks and personalities, and if this was all the film was I would have been happy, but things take a bit of turn when Gary is confronted by Madison (Adria Arjona), a woman looking for someone to kill her husband. The identity Gary uses with Madison is Ron, and under this persona Gary seems to find this untapped confidence and manages to convince Madison to not go through with hiring him for the hit. While this may seem like a bust for the undercover unit, Gary seems to enjoy acting like Ron, and he kind of runs with this personality.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 12th, 2024
"For most of human civilization, we believed that we were Earth's most dominant species. We believed that life could only exist on the surface of the planet. Well, after a certain point of view, you have to wonder what else we were wrong about. In the beginning, Hollow Earth lived in harmony with the surface world. The Titans were the guardians of nature, and the Great Apes became the protectors of humanity. But a great evil threatened the peace. A powerful and ruthless ape desperate to conquer the surface world led his tribe into war against the one they call the Monster Who Ate a Star. The war with the Apes nearly destroyed Godzilla. But after a great battle, he imprisoned the apes in a fiery realm of Hollow Earth. Their false king remains obsessed with reaching the surface. The Iwi call him the Skar King."
That in a nutshell is the plot of the latest Monsterverse film from Legacy and Warner Brothers. It's called Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, and we're told the X is silent. And here I thought it was some kind of a multiplier.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 8th, 2024
It’s summertime, and that means people will of course be flooding the beaches to soak up some rays and enjoy frolicking in the ocean. Because of pop culture and the legacy of Jaws, I’m sure plenty of those beachgoers will have that terrifying thought about what could be lurking beneath the surface, potentially stalking them and ready to strike. The reality is sharks want nothing to do with us; they’d rather feast on a tasty harbor seal or a giant tuna, but that doesn’t change how so many people are afraid of sharks, and Hollywood has happily cashed in on those fears, churning out numerous shark-attack films year after year. Jaws is of course the pinnacle of the genre; then I’d consider The Shallows and Deep Blue Sea to follow behind it. Personally I’m a fan of this sub-genre of creature feature films. No matter how absurd these films may get, if it has a shark turning swimmers into its own little buffet, I have to check it out. To be fair, there have been some duds in the genre, but the only one I wish I could take back and erase from my memory would be last years Black Demon. Yikes, that was a bad one. Right now, though, I’m going to be talking about the new French film that Netflix has released, Under Paris. Is it worth taking the plunge, or does it follow in the footsteps of many previous films from the streaming giant and turn out to be a dud?
The film opens up in the Pacific Ocean, where a group of scientists are exploring the great garbage patch that is floating in the open waters. They are there because they’ve been tracking a mako shark, and they soon realize that there’s something strange about their shark. It has managed to grow double the size it should be. The shark wastes little time before chewing its way through the scientists, leaving behind Sophia (Berenice Bejo), who’s just watched her husband get killed along with the other members of the team. The film jumps ahead three years, and an activist group has been tracking this mako, and they’ve discovered it has found its way into the Seine River and has made the river its new hunting ground. It just so happens Sophia is working at an aquarium not too far from the Seine River. This coincidence does give some heavy Jaws IV: The Revenge vibes, only instead of revenge, perhaps the shark has come to finish what it started.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 4th, 2024
"I, Bass Reeves, do solemnly swear that I will execute all lawful precepts directed to the Marshall of The United States for the Western District of Arkansas without malice or partiality, perform the duties of Deputy Marshall and take only my lawful fees. So help me God."
He was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger. Bass Reeves is one of the biggest icons of the old west and perhaps one of the least remembered. He served for 35 years and managed to bring in over 4000 wanted men for their day in court and likely the noose. It's a huge story, and the filmmakers of Lawmen: Bass Reeves have taken on the enormous task with just 8 episodes of this limited series with no follow-up planned or on the books. Were they able to meet such a challenge? That's going to require some explanation. The series was based on the first two of a series of books written by Sidney Thompson, who serves as a consultant on the series.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on May 29th, 2024
Francis Ford Coppola is one of those directors that you don’t have to love, but you have to at least appreciate his contribution to cinema. Personally my favorite film of his is Apocalypse Now, and then The Godfather II. I know other film geeks out there will argue with what his ‘best” film is, but I think it’s fair to say he’s one of the greatest film directors out there no matter how you may rank his films. When the chance to review One From The Heart came along I jumped at the opportunity, because, well, it’s a film I had never actually seen or even knew that Coppola had done. In watching the bonus features on the disc, I found it amusing that this was supposed to be a simple film for him to do after the insane task of directing Apocalypse Now. This was supposed to be a simple rom-com with a budget of $2 million, but things got out of hand. Coppola bought a studio for his American Zoetrope company and used all the studios stages to build sets for the film, and in the parking lot even had a real jet parked for one of the films sequences. In the end the film’s budget ballooned to over $25 million (that translates to about $88 million in today’s economy), and to make matters worse, the film was a big giant dud at the box office. But is the movie any good? A simple yes or no won’t suffice for this film, but one thing I’m sure of, it is something to marvel at, and you can certainly see where the money went on this production.
As I mentioned, Coppola decided to build all his sets for this film, and that feat alone deserves to be applauded, because he managed to make his version of the Las Vegas strip look like the real thing. He’s created his own dreamlike world and given it a style that is so unique I have to applaud this. The sets on this film are pure Hollywood magic, and they are so good with these practical FX I had to re-remind myself that you cannot believe what you are seeing on TV.
