Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 16th, 2015
For your safety you should keep him away from the booze and doughnuts.”
Wolf Cop wasn’t a film haphazardly thrown together; instead its path to being made was epic in its own right as the filmmakers entered their concept into a Canadian online competition where people voted week after week on what potential film would be lucky enough to get made. Wolf Cop slayed the competition, and as they say, the rest is history. Now audiences around the globe can take in this campy, B-cinema darling from the comfort of their living room. But is it all just a gimmick for a title, or is there more than meets the eye? Well, it’s a gimmick for sure; as for there being a story, it depends how hard you look.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 16th, 2015
“2,000 years ago, the Bible prophesied the return of Christ...but only after God inflicts seven years of torment on the world to test the faith of mankind.”
It's not quite seven years long, but this two-part, three-hour TV movie — History's latest foray into original filmmaking — is likely to test the faith (and patience) of anyone who watches it. Revelation: The End of Days is intentionally less glossy than previous network offerings like Bonnie & Clyde and Houdini because it takes a ground-level look at the apocalypse. But in scaling back to achieve that aesthetic, the result is both frustrating and amateurish.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on March 16th, 2015
Here’s a movie that took me by surprise, and for anyone who knows me that is a high bar to clear. I was not expecting much from the picture and miraculously found myself hanging on every second. It is not your traditional horror film with a clear-cut antagonist; in fact, at some point it becomes difficult to determine who the real enemy in the film is. Which is not to say that the presumed antagonist is in any way redeemable; it just means that once you know the story there comes the possibility, no matter how slight, that you may find yourself sympathetic to their plight.
The film gets off to a good start; there is definite intrigue in the estranged relationship between Lara (Eleanor Tomlinson) and her father Dr. Hill (Stephen Rea). The film does not immediately clue us in to what has caused the rift in the relationship, but we are treated to glimpses. Based off the brief moments that allude to the strain, we gather that the mother is not in the picture, father and daughter do not spend much time together, and that the reunion is due to something the daughter was suspected of doing at her boarding school. Consider me intrigued.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 12th, 2015
When you think about the biblical stories that have made it onto the big (or small) screen, they tend to focus on names like Jesus, Moses and Noah. (And Moses again, just for good measure.) To be honest, I didn't even realize how few Bible adaptations focus on women until I popped in The Red Tent, a Lifetime miniseries based on Anita Diamant's best-selling novel of the same name. While The Red Tent certainly shouldn't be taken as gospel, it deserves credit for exploring biblical events from a different perspective.
“For thousands of years, I've been lost to the world. My name means nothing to you.”
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on March 11th, 2015
I have multiple bones to pick with this film. Normally I would start at the bottom and work my way up. However, this time I simply feel the need to address what I believe the film’s biggest flaw: giving me a false sense of hope that it might actually turn out to be a decent film. I know, I know, part of this transgression is my own fault given that I am supposed to remain impartial. However, the blame for the monumental disappointment I felt when the credits rolled cannot be put on me alone. To clarify, the reason this the biggest transgression for me is because it had all the makings of a decent movie and squandered its runtime trying to be a bigger production than it was with cheesy special effects, conflicting and underdeveloped storylines, and unnecessary characters that the story could have simply gone without.
The film started with a decent introduction. An actress diva (in every sense of the word) throws a hissy fit on set and stomps off to her dressing room and a few minutes later is found dead with two punctures in her neck. So from that point on, you know what kind of movie to expect (if your answer is not vampire, you shouldn’t be reading this review). This introduction, albeit somewhat overdone, is fine as far intros go. It gets to the point, no muss no fuss. It also allows a little bit of mystery into the plot as we are now thrown into a who-done-it scenario. From there we are introduced to one of our leads, Detective Hung. Now I can’t explain why, but I thought he was going to be the breakout star of this production. He was calm and centered, he was aware of what was happening in the city, and he endeavored to do something about it. I will touch on this character more later; as I stated, this was not a great intro, but it was solid enough to lead into the rest of the film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 11th, 2015
"I'm Leonardo da Vinci. Revolutionary painter, artist and visionary, of the Republic of Florence."
The term “Renaissance man” is often used to describe a person who has a very wide range of interests in which they have become quite skilled. It's taken from the traits of the many artists, innovators and writers of the 15th century. And while the term might well apply to any number of such historical figures, there is none for whom it is more apt than Leonardo DaVinci.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 10th, 2015
I’m starting to wonder if it is time we officially made a sub-genre for kidnapping films. It’s a storyline that has been played out for decades but continues to offer up some engaging and oftentimes heart-wrenching tales that for the most part have happy endings but that seems to be a far stretch from reality, though I doubt audiences are looking for these bleak realistic endings and mostly prefer the Hollywood ending where everyone is rescued in just the nick of time. When Prisoners came out, I had hopes that it would be a film that wouldn’t shy away from the harsh realities, and for the most part it succeeded, but I still felt it held back. Now we have Atom Egoyan throwing his hat into the murky subject matter. Let’s face it; kidnapping is a horror no parent wants to experience and would much rather not think about.
Matthew (Ryan Reynolds) is the unfortunate parent who in the moment of doing something as trivial as running into the shop to grab dinner for the family, his daughter is taken without so much as a trace of evidence. Not only does he have to face the guilt of losing his daughter while being only yards away from her, but we see how he is on the receiving end of blame from his wife Tina (Mireille Enos) and a suspect by the police. Sometimes films like to dangle the shadow of doubt that the parent could be involved with the disappearance. Though in this case where we know Matthew’s innocence, we are able to feel his frustration as all this time wasted while looking at him as a suspect and the real criminals are only slipping farther away.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 9th, 2015
Even though one of the main characters in The Red Road is a police officer, the show's six-episode first season plays less like your typical cop drama and more like an extended profile of two strained communities. There's the fictional town of Walpole, N.J. and the Lenape tribe that lives in the neighboring Ramapo Mountains. While the show certainly touches on the tension between the two communities, too much time here is devoted to multi-generational family drama that we've seen before. In other words, the show too often neglects the things that make it unique.
“Bad things happen in those mountains.”
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 8th, 2015
I’m going to come right out and say that before I got season 3 to review, all I had previously seen of Longmire was through advertisements I would catch every now and again. It was a show that seemed to have a lot of promise, but with the amount of DVD watching that comes with writing for the site, you have to be a bit picky about what you want to watch in your “spare time”. Thanks to the help of the internet I was able to watch some season 1 and 2 recaps and surprisingly when I started up season 3 there wasn’t much difficulty in catching up and getting into the groove of the show.
Sheriff Longmire (Robert Taylor) is a brooding character who by the time season 3 has rolled around not only has he lost his wife, but his best friend Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips) is about to go to prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Season 3 wastes no time jumping into the drama as Longmire is thrust into action to save Deputy Branch Connally (Bailey Chase) who has been shot. When the deputy is finally able to speak, the man he is able to identify as a shooter is a White Warrior Indian who is believed to be dead. To help with these claims, while removing a bullet the doctors remove a crow’s feather that had been stuffed into the wounded deputy.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 6th, 2015
When Stephen King wrote The Running Man back in 1982, he might very well have been looking through a crystal ball at the television landscape of the 21st century. While we haven't started executing criminals in game-show fashion ...yet … reality television has had a huge impact on our pop culture. From Big Brother to Survivor, Americans continue to get their kicks watching attention-needy "contestants" engage in silly little dramas and the occasional shoving match. Maybe we should blame it all on Jerry Springer. One of the latest reality shows to come along has been Breaking Amish. That show was soon followed by Breaking Amish: Los Angeles. Both are no longer on the air, and after spending a season with Breaking Amish Los Angeles, I can't say I'm at all surprised.
The idea appears to be a simple one. Young Amish folks are offered a chance to try the "English" (it's what they call the rest of us) lifestyle. They are taken to LA where they live together and experience all of those things that are taboo in their own cultures. They risk being shunned when they return, but they go along with the idea. Now here's where the show differs from any other reality series I've seen to date. Usually there is some competition or elimination process with some kind of a prize or goal at the end of the show. That's not the case here. When it starts we don't even know how long they are to do this, and "contestants" appear to come and go in the house. There is no cash or apprentices awaiting a winner. A couple of the participants do get to meet people in a field they wish to pursue, but it's a dropped thread that doesn't really lead anywhere for either. No one gets voted out, although a couple are asked to leave at different times, only one being permanent.
