Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 16th, 2006
If you ask me, what sitcoms need are fewer contrivances and more realistic humor. That's what made Seinfeld so brilliant. As horrible as those people were, the sad truth is that all of us have a little bit of that twisted humor lurking within us. That's just the kind of thing that happens with The Worst Week of My Life. This amazingly funny BBC series lasts just seven episodes, but I guess that should be expected judging from the show's title. The names of the episodes themselves are “Sunday”, “Monday”, “Tuesday” and so on. By the end of the season, viewers have been treated to what is often-times the worst week of many people's lives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 16th, 2006
Synopsis
Mu-ju is trying to adjust to life again after surviving a terrible accident. Life is still hard, as her eldest daughter suffers from something like autism, and she is having trouble landing a permanent position as a teacher at a music school (plus, a former student has it in for her). The aforementioned eldest daughter becomes obsessed with a cello, and a mute housekeeper moves in, and terrible things begin to happen.
But those terrible things wait far too long to happen. A third o...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 15th, 2006
There is a little more Tracey to go around with Tracey Takes On: The Complete Second Season, so fans of the show shouldn't be disappointed. However, I find her humor quaint and dry in an inescapably British way. No one can deny her talent. But it's hard to like a show when none of the laughs are connecting. Of course, humor - like beauty - is certainly in the eye of the beholder. With that said, I am not one of the lucky ones that can look at this raw oyster of a show and see the pearl. This season, Ullman inc...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 15th, 2006
Tristram Shandy is the oddest and most entertaining sort of film. It is a film about the making of the film that you are watching, hosted by the fictional main character. It is sort-of like American Splendor, and sort-of like Spinal Tap. The film is the story of the life of Tristram Shandy, an 18th century Englishman of particularly stately means. The man's life is of note and worthy of such a film because... well, now that I think of it... I don't really know. You see, there are so many interruptions and different takes during the film that the actors are trying to make, that the viewer never really learns anything.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 15th, 2006
Synopsis
Robert Mitchum shows up twice here, as does Robert Ryan. The two clash in The Racket (1951), where Mitchum is the incorruptible cop, and Ryan is the old-school gangster whose brutally direct methods put him in conflict not only with Mitchum, but with the more sophisticated crime syndicate spreading over the land. The focus of the film is rather split between the two, but is pretty tense, and is further enlivened by a memorably sleazy turn by William Conrad as a VERY corrupt cop.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 14th, 2006
Today, anyone with a credit card and some free time can make a movie. But that doesn't mean it's always a good thing. Case in point is Kisses and Caroms, which sports a massive hard-on for Kevin Smith’s Clerks (it’s Clerks in a billiards store. Brilliant!), but its characters, dialogue and location fail to be funny or engaging. For one, how many oddball customers can a billiards store receive in one day? In Clerks, it was believable, since people from all walks of life need what is readily...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 14th, 2006
Horror films have transformed over the years. We’ve essentially gone from horror films using religion to frighten (The Exorcist, The Omen) to slashers (just about everything in the 80’s), to nothing (the early 90’s void), to post-modern slashers, (Scream, Urban Legends, I Know What You Did Last Summer) to torture (Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes).
With I”ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, we take a short trip back into the slasher genre. And surprisingly, it still looks and fe...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 13th, 2006
I've said it before, and as long as Warner Brothers keeps putting these classic discs out, I am going to keep on saying it. No studio respects their classic film catalog like Warner's. They have done marvelous things with their special editions of classic films, such as their fantastic 2-disc tin box release of King Kong. They have the largest collection of classic films on the planet, including the entire RKO Pictures catalog, and they are succeeding in introducing an entirely new generation of film fans to the best that cinema has to offer.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 12th, 2006
You would have to either be from another planet, been raised by wolves or be under the age of 15 to not have some sort of a personal history with Full House. The show was a staple of Friday night television for eight seasons, defying all logic and proving that the general public doesn't always know quality when they see it. The story about a non-traditional household was inexplicably popular, despite the fact that it got consistently poor reviews year after year. Even more surprising was how many careers came out of the show.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 11th, 2006
I think the fact that Invasion only ran for one season is more of a result of circumstance than anything else. The series starts with a very large hurricane hitting Florida, and the rest of the season dramatizes the aftermath of such a tragic event. Unfortunately, the series made its debut right after the real life hurricane Katrina wiped out much of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. With the 24-hour coverage of the real-life disaster plastered all over the airwaves, audiences just didn't feel much like unwinding with a dramatization of the very same experience.
