Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 28th, 2017
"Everyone outside the family is a mark. Family comes first."
Meet the most dysfunctional crime family since The Sopranos. Not quite at the same level either on-screen or in quality, but once again we're drawn toward another dangerous clan with criminal intent. I guess we could call them The Baritones. Actually Animal Kingdom is an apt description for television's latest baddies. They're about to head into their second season of mayhem on TNT where the series was the network's top ratings winner during its run. Now that first season is out on Blu-ray from Warner Brothers, and it's one crazy ride, of that you can be certain.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 25th, 2017
I have to admit I’m a sucker for cryptozoology, and stories about chupacabras and Bigfoot are fun to talk about. In the reality-TV-show world, there are many shows that have people travelling in the woods in search of evidence of these creatures. The proof is sketchy at best, but still it makes for entertaining television. Now we have the found-footage film Chupacabra Territory that dares to take us on an adventure into chupacabra territory where four hikers manage to get lost in the woods. Is the found footage worth checking out? Well, that all depends how big a fan of the found-footage genre you happen to be.
As a creature that rose in popularity in the 90’s, when I’m watching this film with its ancient texts and stories about possession I’m sort of scratching my head wondering what the hell these people are going on about. I’m fine with taking liberties with this kind of stuff; after all, it’s nothing that has been proven to exist, but it’s as though the filmmakers didn’t know if they were doing a creature-in-the woods film, a disease-outbreak film, an alien film, or a possession film. It’s all over the place, and that frustrated me as a viewer, because the film just doesn’t make sense.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on April 24th, 2017
The WWE is like a dog with a bone, refusing to let this franchise as well as its other one (12 rounds) go. I will give them this: they are maintaining some consistency with Mike “The Miz” Mizanin reprising his role of Jake Carter for the third time for The Marine 5: Battleground. This time around, however, the series won’t just star one WWE superstar, but six. That’s right you read correctly, six WWE superstars have come together for this action film. With the addition of The Mix come Bo Dallas, Heath Slater, Curtis Axel, Naomi, and Maryse Ouellet Mizanin. Didn’t recognize any of those names? Don’t worry; me neither, as my days of watching wrestling ended with the end of the attitude era.
This time around, Jake Carter has returned stateside and is now working as an EMT. Working to make a difference, he finds himself drawn into a conflict with a notorious biker gang. After the murder of the president of their club, biker Alonso (Bo Dallas) is tasked to hunt down the shooter and gain revenge for the club. Accompanied by two more murders in the club (Curtis Axel and Naomi), they track the perpetrators to an underground parking garage at an amusement park. At the same time, Jake and his partner are called to the scene to find one man dead and the other critically wounded. With the bikers on the hunt, Jake must make the difficult choice, which turns out not to be a choice at all, of staying or leaving the man to his fate. I’m sure you all know what decision he made. Keeping them all alive will require all his acquired skills, especially when the bikers’ reinforcements arrive, leaving him severely outnumbered.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 21st, 2017
I was eight years old when Armstrong first stepped on the moon in July of 1969. Like every kid my age, it filled me with a feeling that I was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of humanity's grand exploration of space. By the time I was 15, we had landed the first probes on Mars. We were certainly on our way. The sky literally wasn't the limit anymore. But then it all stopped. By the 80's we had shifted our focus to low Earth orbit, and we haven't explored the limits of space with a manned mission in nearly 50 years. Even the Space Shuttle is gone, and we don't even have the capability to send Americans to the space station that we mostly paid for without hitching a ride with the Russians. And if you've been following world events at all, that ride isn't a sure thing anymore. That 8-year-old with the mile-wide grin would never have believed we'd be so earthbound by the time he reached his mid-50's. Along comes National Geographic with the new mini-series Mars. Is it enough to get today's 8-year-old dreaming once again? I don't know. But it provided enough to give the 8-year-old still here a little bit of hope mixed with more than a little what-might-have-been.
Mars is a six-part series that looks to be returning with more episodes in the future. The focus and drama of the first three episodes is found in the first manned mission to the Red Planet set in 2033. The crew of the Daedalus faces fierce challenges in order to establish a foothold on Mars. Each episode has several components that make it somewhat unique in its storytelling. While we witness the close calls and successes of the crew, we also learn more about the characters and the mission from flashbacks and pre-flight interviews that remind me a little of those "confessional" segments you find on the "reality" television shows. Here we also see the politics of the international crew and the agency that heads the mission. There are also documentary segments found throughout each episode. These bring us back to 2016 and cover the attempts by SpaceX to develop the technology to eventually make the 2033 drama a reality. There are interviews with scientists who talk about the real challenges in that kind of mission and how we are working to resolve them. Of course, many of these pieces deal with issues that the fictional crew encounters. It's very much a standard documentary style during these segments.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 20th, 2017
“As it turns out, there’s a virtually unprecedented tie in the Electoral College.”
If you thought the latest U.S. presidential election cycle was a soul-crushing and unpredictable mess, you should take a peek at what's happening on Veep. (At least we got a definitive real-life result...eventually.) The show's outstanding fifth season begins with President Selina Meyer — who assumed the office after her predecessor resigned — locked in a frustrating Electoral College tie as she seeks to become the first woman to be *elected* to the highest office in the land. President Meyer sums up her predicament in a manner befitting HBO's caustic, constantly-cussing comedy: “didn't those Founding F---ers ever hear of an odd number?!”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 20th, 2017
When it comes to writer/ director M. Night Shyamalan, it’s hard to find a more polarizing director between film critics and film geeks. I was a fan up until he did The Village. It’s not as though I “hated” the film; I just was getting sick of the gimmick plot twists that seemed to go hand in hand with his work. As he continued to release films, I just would shrug at the trailers, and my enthusiasm for his films quickly declined. For me Unbreakable has grown to be my favorite work of his, which is funny to me because the first time I saw it I had a hard time deciding how I felt about the film. It was a comic/ superhero film that showed us perhaps what it would be like in the real world if some regular Joe realized he was perhaps meant for something greater. It’s been 16 years, but Shyamalan has finally released a film in my opinion that can stand toe to toe with Unbreakable, and it’s with his new film Split.
Split is a return to form. Gone are the big budgets and special effects. What Shyamalan delivers is what got us to appreciate him in the first place: great real-world characters caught up in an extreme circumstance. Kevin (James McAvoy) is not your average guy, at first glance he may seem normal, but trapped inside are 22 other personalities who have their own agendas and are wanting to take control of his mind and body. Why he isn’t locked away in some padded cell is a question that is never answered to my satisfaction in the film, but if he were locked away, there wouldn’t be much of a film, so I suppose I’ll have to let this slide. For Kevin and his numerous personalities there is something frightening about to occur: the rise of a new personality, one which has been deeply suppressed and is possibly the most dangerous of them all.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 17th, 2017
Ben Franklin once said that there are two things that no one should see made. He was talking about sausage and laws. In the 18th century most people had little exposure to the workings of their government. Campaigns were waged on the road in public squares, and seldom by the person running for office. Party nominations were held in halls attended only by the party faithful. It was here in the span of a few days that a nomination would be haggled out of the delegates who attended. Since the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the selection of nominees was handed to the registered voters, usually of the party in a series of primary elections that begin in January of each election year. The campaigning has become intense and now often begins nearly a year before that first nomination struggle. It gets earlier with each cycle. We may not get to see how our laws are made, but now we get a long look at how our presidents are selected, and I thing ol’ Dr. Franklin would have been shocked to bear witness to the 2016 primary season. And just in case you missed the weekly debates, attacks, flubs, scandals, and riots, Showtime put together a weekly recap of the events over a 26-week period. They called it The Circus, and it isn't hard to see why.
The show featured two veteran political reporters who work for Bloomberg. John Heilmemann wrote for The New Yorker and Wired over the years. His bias obviously showed toward the Democratic side. He often refers to Trump as running a racist campaign. He often works with Mark Halperin, who calls the Trump election at the show's end the single most catastrophic event in American history since 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. So you won't get any balanced coverage from these two guys. Unfortunately, for them the show doesn't get much of a chance to include the Clinton campaign, because it was the most restrictive to press during the cycle. So the Democratic side is mostly represented by Bernie Sanders, who offered a lot of access to the show. The third member of the show's touring troupe is political analyst Mark McKinnon, who has worked on many Republican campaigns including George W. Bush. It's kind of ironic that he's the one tapped as the analyst and offers less of the bias reporting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 14th, 2017
Every year there are dozens upon dozens of horror films released, each with the intention to make an impact on the genre. Horror is easily my favorite genre in film, but it’s a genre that easily allows itself to spill into other genres. It doesn’t matter to me what the budget is, or whether the special effects are on point; what matters most is if the story holds up. I mention this because going into The Bye Bye Man I had heard some pretty bad things, but I don’t usually let that get in the way of my opinion of a film; after all, everyone has their own tastes. For me the film’s tagline “Don’t think it. Don’t say it.” should have the added line, “Don’t remember it.”
Three friends decide to move in together in an off-campus home, Elliot (Douglas Smith) and his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas) seem to be the happy couple as Elliot’s childhood best friend, John (Lucien Laviscount) seems to be the third wheel. They think they are supposed to be moving into a fully furnished home, yet upon walking through the door, the furniture is out of sight. After investigating the new home they find that all the furniture has been stashed away down inside the basement.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 13th, 2017
“Think inside the box.”
One of the major through lines in season 3 of Silicon Valley is that our heroes at Pied Piper have created a product so ahead of its time that it is failing to connect with consumers, which puts the start-up company in peril. Fortunately, HBO’s brainy and bawdy tech comedy hasn’t had any problems connecting with its audience: the show’s confident and hilarious third season seamlessly mixes talk of “compression algorithms” with outrageous sight gags involving horses getting, um, familiar with each other.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 12th, 2017
The trouble with most holiday films is that once the holiday passes, there is about another year of waiting till it seems right to put the film on again. Everyone knows about A Christmas Story and Polar Express, but really, the staple holiday films are sparse, but they are great. Every year, despite the high probability to fail, studios churn out some holiday films in the hopes that one of these attempted swings will turn out to be a box office giant. I believe it’s safe to say that there hasn’t been a holiday hit for a while, but despite the long odds, Office Christmas Party comes out strong with a big cast and raunchy intentions. Is it enough to lure people into the darkened Cineplex or have you want to go out to Netflix or Redbox to cure those holiday fever blues?
T.J. Miller plays Clay, a childlike CEO who has a big heart for his company and his employees. He’s the likeable boss everyone wants to have, but really, you just can’t picture him ever successfully running a business. As Clay’s right hand man is the serious face of the corporate branch, Josh (Jason Bateman), who has just finalized his divorce in time for the holidays. There is a fun chemistry between Miller and Bateman that seems to fizzle after the first quarter of the film because for some reason there was a need to create romantic tension between Josh and Tracey (Olivia Munn), one of the heads in the tech department. Right out of the gate this film feels familiar and uninspired, as though it served no other purpose than to be a paycheck for all involved. Miller has moments in the film but simply is never given much to really work with.
