Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 3rd, 2017
"What have you been up to in your little zoo?"
It appears that we have been due for one of those untold stories amid the many tales of courage and bravery both fact and fiction, real and imagined, that have been told of the World War II era. There have been plenty of the battlefield hero films that include last year's exceptional Hacksaw Ridge from Mel Gibson. Then there are the quiet and unlikely heroes. These are people who did incredible things that were often unknown during the war and often even after it was all over. Schindler's List has become the gold standard for these kinds of emotional war movies. The Zookeeper's Wife is set in the mold of that kind of a film, telling essentially that very kind of tale. Here the action begins with the invasion of Poland, which was the spark that ignited a local territorial conflict into a global event. It is here at the moment of that spark we find Antonina Zabinski, played by Jessica Chastain, who used her small local zoo to save nearly 300 Jews from the Nazi extermination machine, failing with only two souls during the entire war. This is that untold story which most of you will discover for the first time.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 30th, 2017
From the vaults of Vestron Video has unleashed The Unholy for horror fans to indulge in for the first time on Blu-ray. Growing up and going to a Catholic school, films like The Exorcist and The Unholy managed to be all the more terrifying to me because the prospect of demons coming from hell was thought to be a possibility. Sure, Freddy and Jason could get the young me nervous at night, but what films like The Unholy presented were the kind of thoughts that had me afraid to keep the lights off at night. But does the film hold up decades later? That’s a tough call, but with the new digitally restored version of the film now hitting the shelves, it’s worth grabbing a little holy water and checking out.
Father Michael (Ben Cross) is simply your typical priest and is called out to a location where a man threatening to jump from a balcony is requesting to speak with the priest. Meeting with the man on the ledge, Father Michael seems to feel he’s gotten through to the suicidal man, and through a bizarre incident, Father Michael is pulled from the safety of the room through a window and falls to what should have been certain death. Yet by a miracle or simple luck, the priest manages to survive nearly unscathed, and the members of the church begin to believe he is special, “the chosen one,” and in the process he is placed in charge of his own parish.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 29th, 2017
When it comes to Writer, Director, Producer, Walter Hill is simply one of the best at doing the traditional tough-guy movies. Films like The Warriors and 48 Hours are simply staples of my childhood; he even was involved with Alien, which I believe is one of the best sci-fi/horror films ever made, yet his star has seemed to fade as the years have passed. His work on the underappreciated Bullet to the Head I felt was a nice throwback to the features he made back in his heyday and had me realize how much his voice is missed in today’s cinema. This week, Shout Factory rolls out a blast from the past with the 1992 film Trespass. I remember this title from my days where I would visit my mom-and-pop video store and just consume all the movies I could, and Trespass was one of those guilty treasures that I just enjoyed the hell out of when everyone else seemed to just ignore it. Does the film hold up over the years? You bet it does.
Vince (Bill Paxton) and Don (William Sadler) are a pair of firemen who discover a treasure map while fighting a fire. With a little digging they discover that the map is to a “treasure”, gold that was stolen decades earlier and then hidden and never recovered. The pair decides to travel to St. Louis and check out the location of this gold and hopefully claim it as their own.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 28th, 2017
"I believe you. Trust me. Listen, you know what, we're gonna help you. You understand? You've served your time."
We've all served 12 years together. Bones has proven itself to be the little show that could. While it has never been exactly a ratings superstar, the show pulled in quite a loyal fanbase that kept it on the air for a surprising 12-year run. There were few years the show didn't finish on the bubble, and they were starting to wrap up everything last year in what was going to be the last. The characters actually went different ways but were brought back together for a shortened Season 12 encore. And that's how you have to look at this final season of Bones. It's a planned encore that should finally satisfy what has been a somewhat shrinking, albeit rabid, group of fans. Season 12 gets an appropriate 12 episodes that actually do not lead to the group splitting up this time. It is an explosive finale that certainly resets the world, but you're not going to get to see how that reset looks. You'll have to satisfy your final Bones jones with the release of the final season on DVD.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 28th, 2017
“First, there is an opportunity. Then…there’s a betrayal.”
It’s been 20 years since the release of Trainspotting, and it’s fair to say a lot has changed in the past two decades. I remember going out to the United Artists Mission Bell Cinemas to see Trainspotting the weekend it came out. I was with my best friend at the time, and neither of us was old enough to buy tickets for the film, so we ended up having to sneak into the film. We’d seen the trailers, and in a time before the internet there just wasn’t much we could find out about it aside from reading articles in the entertainment magazines. To this day, I remember walking out of the auditorium simply floored by the film. Everything from the soundtrack to the visuals just hit me, and this was one of the first times I realized what creative influence a director has on the look and feel of a film. I came out as a fanny of Danny Boyle and the insane kinetic energy he puts into the look of his films. Over the years Danny Boyle has stepped out of the independent film spotlight and become a big-league director with several other award winning films, i.e. Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, and Steve Jobs.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on June 28th, 2017
“Dad, this is my boyfriend Martin…”
The tension generated by the first meeting between a young man and the father of the woman he loves has always been a reliable source of conflict. I mean, Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro managed to squeeze three(!) Focker movies out of that stressful dynamic. All-Nighter fits snugly into that familiar sub-genre while managing to carve out low-key moments of character development and male bonding in between all the noise that comes with this sort of whacky situation.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 25th, 2017
Since 2011, the trio of Blake, Adam, and Ders have been reporting to their telemarketing job and bringing the laughs to Comedy Central on Workaholics. With the final season now released, it’s time to bid a fond farewell to the trio that has shown us the joys of pranking, slacking, and pot in the work place. Does the show go out with a bang, or does it fizzle before reaching that last episode? I was a little concerned how things would end up because of the years I’ve gotten to really like the show and everyone involved. It’s time to punch in that time card and check out what this final season is all about.
The final season kicks off with Blake (Blake Anderson), Adam (Adam Devine), and Anders (Anders Holm) coming into work as new trainees are being brought into the office. The guys crash the training session and decide to tell everyone they are fired, with the exception of the three youngest trainees and one old man they affectionately name sixty-nine. The guys take the new employees under their wing and show them a day in their life at the office, and this ends up backfiring on them. The new trainees take pranks to a whole other level, and it becomes an all-out prank war in the workplace. I loved this episode, but what I wasn’t expecting is how much more I was going to love this season.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Dan Holland on June 25th, 2017
The concept of eternal recurrence was (arguably) brought to the mainstream in 1993 with the release of Groundhog Day (1993). Certain films such as Run Lola Run (1998) and even an episode from The X-Files, “Monday” (1999), have managed to capture the strange, yet sad, philosophical nature behind repeating a single day. Since then, many variations of the concept began to meld with time travel, adding more distractions from the concept itself, only borrowing the basic premise: Just as space and time are infinite, so are our collective existences (in theory). Life of Significant Soil is closer in relation to the former films mentioned; however, it allows the raw emotion of experiencing a traumatic event to helm the ship.
Drawing a significant amount of inspiration from Milan Kundera’s novel, Unbearable Lightness of Being (another text which foregrounds eternal recurrence), the film concerns the failing relationship of Addison and Conor. As they continue to relive the last day of their relationship, they begin to pick up on the fact that their life is indeed repeating, and they begin to take steps to stop the inevitable from taking place. Even after seeking help from their neighbor Jackie, or Conor’s friend, Hue, they can’t seem to find the correct equation to set their life back on course.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 23rd, 2017
If there is a television series in the history of the industry as American or timeless as The Andy Griffith Show, I haven't seen it. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone with strong negative feelings about the series. It was one of those organic and comfortable productions that reached deep into the core of rural America. Even if we lived in a bustling city, there were aspects of the show that still rang true. It was populated with the kind of familiar faces so that it wasn't hard for anyone in the audience to smile in remembrance of a character they've known in real life. And even after 50 years, the series still speaks to that certain aspect of the friendly small southern town. A lot of the credit for that peaceful easy feeling must be credited to the titular star Andy Griffith himself.
It all started as an episode of The Danny Thomas Show called Danny Meets Andy Griffith in February of 1960. In October of that same year, the first episode of the show ran. That was the first time television audiences took a trip down to Mayberry. There they met Andy Taylor (Griffith), a widower with a young son named Opie, played by future Happy Days star and superstar director Ron (it was Ronnie then) Howard. The relationship could be summed up in the popular series opening that found the father and son heading to their favorite fishing hole with poles slung on their shoulders. All the while, the soon-to-be-famous whistled theme put us in just the right mood. Andy was helped out at the house by Aunt Bea (Bavier), who always had something "mighty fine" cooking or baking in the oven.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 22nd, 2017
"You wanted me back. I'm back."
Keanu Reeves has enjoyed somewhat of a career renaissance thanks in no small part to the success of John Wick in 2014. There he teamed up with some stunt friends of his going back to The Matrix, and together they brought a new action hero to the screen that was as much graphic novel as it was action film. It would become the directing debut of the stunt team of Stahelski and David Leitch. Along with their action star, everyone stuck to what they knew and refused to overcomplicate the whole thing. That led to a box office haul of $86 million worldwide and a respectful enough budget to make a sequel seem like a good possibility. It took three years, but that possibility has turned into John Wick: Chapter 2.
