Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 21st, 2023
Even though I consider myself to be well-rounded when it comes to films, I admit my personal viewing history of French film to be a little lacking. Go Google any top 20 list of French films, and I've probably seen maybe two or three of the films. This is very contradictory to say Chinese, Japanese, English (UK), Australian, etc. where I've seen hundreds of films. But I'm always willing to expand my repertoire, so I jumped when I saw there was a French crime thriller named L'Homme Du Train or The Man on the Train available for review. Let's see how it plays out.
As we start, A train runs along the tracks and whips by various locales. We see a man named Milan (played by Johnny Hallyday) who tries to relax, but obviously he can't. The train finally comes to a stop, and he is only one to get off. He walks through the town, which is somewhat desolate, and finally ends up at a pharmacy. There he asks for some aspirin, which he finally receives. (Unfortunately it's water-soluble, so he also requires a glass of water).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 21st, 2023
"Them clothes got laundry numbers on them. You remember your number and always wear the ones that has your number. Any man forgets his number spends a night in the box. These here spoons you keep with you. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box. There's no playing grab-ass or fighting in the building. You got a grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any man playing grab-ass or fighting in the building spends a night in the box. First bell's at five minutes of eight when you will get in your bunk. Last bell is at eight. Any man not in his bunk at eight spends the night in the box. There is no smoking in the prone position in bed. To smoke you must have both legs over the side of your bunk. Any man caught smoking in the prone position in bed ... spends a night in the box. You get two sheets. Every Saturday, you put the clean sheet on the top ... the top sheet on the bottom ... and the bottom sheet you turn in to the laundry boy. Any man turns in the wrong sheet spends a night in the box. No one'll sit in the bunks with dirty pants on. Any man with dirty pants on sitting on the bunks spends a night in the box. Any man don't bring back his empty pop bottle spends a night in the box. Any man loud talking spends a night in the box. You got questions, you come to me. I'm Carr, the floor walker. I'm responsible for order in here. Any man don't keep order spends a night in..."
You guessed it ... the box. Enter our anti-hero, Luke. The anti-hero has become somewhat cliche today. What was once an artistic expression of the gray line between good and bad guys has morphed to the glorification of the just plain bad guy. We end up loving and rooting for such vicious characters like Vic Mackey, Tony Soprano, and Dexter Morgan. These are killers with nary a pang of conscience. Their deeds are always self-serving no matter what they pretend they might be. But if you go back far enough -- most credit Marlon Brando's coda performance in The Wild One -- you'll find there was once a far more nuanced kind of anti-hero. One of the industries best examples of this was Paul Newman's troubled teenager, Luke. Luke wins us over with a charm and an honest belief that he's a good guy. The archetype would later be pruned to perfection by Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest several years later. McNulty and Luke have a lot in common, and their environments and motivations aren't all that different. In the end they're both "broken" by the establishment, conforming to a code that did not allow guys like this to live happily ever after. Times and sensibilities have certainly changed, but performances like Paul Newman's Luke remain to remind of us of a time when audiences just wouldn't have been ready for the likes of Hill Street's Detective Buntz. Ironically, it would be Marlon Brando again who would be the first to make us root for a cold-hearted killer named Vito Corleone.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 18th, 2023
Most anime fans, particularly those in the west, would probably consider Cowboy Bebop one of the greatest series of all time. Before it got bastardized in a clueless live-action remake, it was a wonderful story of a bounty hunter crew down on their luck who never made any money but always had one hell of an adventure. Set to some wonderful jazz numbers. So naturally, when I heard about a new anime movie about an once powerful god who is now down on his luck as a penniless bounty hunter, my curiosity was certainly piqued. Let's check out New Gods: Yang Jian.
Oh boy, we start off with some narration. Let's see ... a long long time ago, a calamity (wait, I have to look this one up; OK, got it) broke out between Heaven and Earth. Life hung in the balance (woah, heavy), and there was violence and destruction. Forces of Shang and Zhou fought for supremacy. Humans and Gods united in order to stand tall against opposing forces. After the battles ended, they went back to their respective realms. And the world was at peace. (Awwww.)
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on April 14th, 2023
I usually don’t say this about a movie, as they are my passion, but this film was unwatchable. I usually don’t take this stance, as I generally believe that every movie has something to offer, but in the case of The Weapon, this was not a movie that I enjoyed. It was a movie that I endured. This took me by surprise, as I was expecting to be moderately entertained given the sheer number of recognizable faces: Cuba Gooding Jr., Bruce Dern, Annalynne McCord, Jack Kesy, and the list goes on. The film even had Richard Grieco, who if I’m being honest, I didn’t recognize until the end credits. However, despite all of this, the film had no real substance, not to mention the cutting between character storylines and time periods, enough to make me want to ask for a roadmap just to keep up. I not sure what the intent was, but I feel safe in saying that this film missed it. Even the action sequences, of which there are many, did not hold my interest. That is saying something, because I love good action film. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what this was.
At its core, I believe that the film was a revenge story. Our protagonist, Dallas, played by the film’s director, Tony Schiena, for reasons that are eventually made clear, is on a solo rampage mission against biker gangs and meth labs. While his motivations do eventually come to light, they aren’t what I would call sufficient for his vendetta. Not to mention, there are also conflicting motivations, as he appears to also have a woman that he genuinely cares for who is mixed up in things as well. This is further complicated by another potential love interest, who sees him like a knight-in-shining-armor type. Dallas seems to be a complex individual, as he clearly does not seem himself as noble or deserving of happiness. Given the ruthlessness that he is capable of, I can see why. This could have played well for the film with some fine tuning. In my opinion, we never get a clear view of Dallas. He is a man of few words, whose past weighs heavily on him, devoted to someone who in my opinion is not worthy of such affection. It’s hard to root for this relationship given the type of person he is trying to protect. She is calculating and willing to do whatever it takes to survive. While her own actions are also explained, once again it was not sufficient. The devotion is clearly one-sided, which in turn takes a character which could have at least been likable and makes him kind of pitiful.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 11th, 2023
"In 1539 The Knight Templars of Malta paid tribute to Charles V of Spain by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels --- but pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token, and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day."
What is not a mystery today is the significant role that The Maltese Falcon has played in cinema history. The film itself was a remake. In fact, it was actually Warner's third attempt to film the Dashiell Hammett novel in a single decade. The first version came in 1931 and starred Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. That film also featured Dwight Frye as Wilmer Cook. The film was a moderate success but never really delivered on the potential of the source material. Five years later Warner would attempt a comedy version of the story in Satan Met A Lady. It was a total flop. It would only take another five years before the studio took its third crack at the material. In this case, the third time certainly was a charm.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 11th, 2023
12 Angry Men is one of those rare films that appears to defy all the Hollywood constants and yet become one of the best films of its kind ever made. The setting is entirely too claustrophobic. With the exception of two bookend scenes, the entire film takes place in the tight quarters of a jury deliberation room. The story had only a couple of years earlier been the subject of a live television drama, so the story was far from a fresh idea. The director was a complete unknown who had not at that point directed a major picture. Enter Henry Fonda, the only member of the cast who was a strong A-list name. He was also the driving force behind getting the film made. He produced the film and was involved with most of the major decisions. With all of these elements going against it, you would expect the film to fail miserably, and that’s exactly what it did. During its premier run, the film only lasted a week and was a complete financial failure. It happens all the time, and we would expect the story to end there, but it didn’t.
Enter the 1970’s. There was a rush of independent television stations that were looking for anything and everything to fill up air time. This constant need for programming meant pretty much any film that could be had cheaply was bought and aired, often for an almost nauseating number of showings. 12 Angry Men was one such film, but something amazing happened. People began to notice just how brilliant the film actually was. By then that first time director, Sidney Lumet, had gone on to rather remarkable success. Films like Fail-Safe, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Murder On The Orient Express, and Network had exposed just how much talent the young man actually had. Suddenly the kid from Philly was hot, and the public became interested in his earliest work. Everyone discovered what Fonda already knew back in 1957: Lumet was a genius. These television airings led to revival screenings at local movie houses, and before the first year of the 1980’s this one-time failed film was an admired classic.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 31st, 2023
"Him is he who bays and slavers forever outside time and space, who shambled down out of the stars when Earth was new and spawned abominations in the seas and blights upon the land. Woe to man when He comes again. To gaze upon his form is to invite madness. That is why in order to serve Him I chose to make some adjustments. Him, The Lurker is on the threshold, and behold, He is coming..."
The latest release from the Warner Brothers animation team in the world of DC Comics is Batman: Doom That Came To Gotham. This series of animated films is no longer part of any shared universe as the many that came before might have been. At least for now these animated adventures are standalone stories, often with their own atmosphere and universe. That's certainly true of Batman: Doom That Came To Gotham. This is likely the most uniquely-styled entry in the series of animated feature films.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 30th, 2023
"Space...The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before!"
Since the relaunch of Star Trek on television via the Paramount + streaming service, I must admit to being a little underwhelmed. It's truly bad when Alex Kurtzman makes me pine for the days of Rick Berman. There have been some pretty good moments in the various new Trek shows. Picard has shown promise and has improved with a third season that looks very exciting. Lower Decks is just too campy for my tastes, and Discovery has so many ups and downs I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster. So along comes Strange New Worlds, and this is the Star Trek I've been waiting for these last decades.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 23rd, 2023
Damien Chazelle seems to have a thing for dreamers, or at least those who want to be larger than life. Whether it is a drummer aspiring to reach perfection in Whiplash, or an actress wanting to be a star in La La Land, to even being the first man to walk on the moon in First Man, he’s always made these films with an enthusiasm and energy that we can’t help but want to see them succeed. In his new film Babylon, he seems to be doing something a little different and on a grander scale as he explores the early days of Hollywood as it made the transition from the silent film era to the “talkies” (basically what we’re used to seeing on the big screen today, just minus all the CGI effects). A lot of money was injected into the production of this film, and you see it in every frame of this movie that is certainly a love letter to a time when Hollywood was trying to figure things out and entertain its audiences. But what I don’t think anyone was expecting is how deep this film was willing to go into the drug abuse and the sordid debauchery that went on in these early days of cinema.
The film opens innocently enough with Manny Torres (Diego Calva) simply trying to get an elephant to a big Hollywood party. Manny is a Mexican-American who is just trying to get his foot in the door, and we get to see these early struggles pay off, but first we get to experience this party that is lavish and epic with a strong Caligula-on-cocaine vibe. It’s at the party where we meet the rest of the cast we’ll be following over the course of the film. There’s Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), who believes she is a star who just simply hasn’t been discovered yet; there is also Sidney (Jovan Adepo), a horn player who is just trying to get by; there is Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), a Hollywood gossip reporter, and then there is Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), the biggest silent film actor in the business. Then we get to see the moment where Manny first meets Nellie and the moment where he falls in love with her; then moments later see how Nellie is simply plucked from the crowd to become a star, This sequence is so well crafted at letting the audience experience the party while getting to know these characters and several others, all while we are subjected to various sex acts and body fluids and drugs that when it ends we can feel the hangovers that these characters are experiencing. Unfortunately for most of these characters, they are due on set in just a matter of hours.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 18th, 2023
“You got everything money can buy, except what it can’t. It’s pride. Pride is what got you here. Losing is what brung you back. But people like you, they need to be tested. They need a challenge.”
There have been a ton of boxing films. They’ve been popular going back to the silent era. Most of them have many of the same themes. But there was always something about Rocky that stood out above all of the rest. That “something” can’t really be described or defined. As the Supreme Court once said about the definition of obscenity: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” That’s all you can say about Rocky. Some might call it heart. That’s about as good a word for it as anything else. Rocky himself would call it “stuff in the basement”. It almost demeans it to put a word on it at all. Whatever you call it, you don’t necessarily see it in Rocky … you feel it. Now the first 4 films are out together on UHD Blu-ray in 4K.
