Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 27th, 2025
"It's rare, but sometimes, there's this moment in the car where everything goes quiet, my heartbeat slows, it's peaceful, and I can see everything, and no one, no one can touch me. And I am chasing that moment every time I get in the car. I don't know when I'll find it again, but, man, I want to. I want to. 'Cause in that moment, I'm flying."
The first think I noticed when the writer/director John Kosinski-led F1 arrived here in UHD Blu-ray from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment was that they had changed the film's name. when it was available for screenings, it was simply called F1. I guess someone in marketing thought the name was somewhat confusing so they decided to add "The Movie" to the title. I guess this was in case any of you out there got confused and was not aware you were watching a movie instead of an actual race somewhere. I'll never claim to understand exactly what studio marketing people really do for a living that doesn't involve a set of darts and a target with various "ideas" spread out in the landing area.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 17th, 2025
You often hear it said that Tom Cruise is the hardest working actor in Hollywood. I don't want to take anything away from Cruise, but I'd like to nominate Bob Odenkirk for the title. Yes, that Bob Odenkirk from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame. He's been wanting to do an action film through most of his career, and it would appear to have been a rather farfetched idea at best. But he buddied up to the guys at 87North and 87Eleven Productions. Those are the stunt folks who brought us films like the John Wick series. They didn't laugh at the idea. So Odenkirk trained for four years starting in 2017 to build up his body and learn to do all of those action stunts. The reward came in 2021 with the release of Nobody. It was an action/comedy that gave us the kind of stuff you might expect from a John Wick group.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 16th, 2025
"Good evening, Ethan. This is your president. Since you won't reply to anyone else, I thought I'd reach out directly. First, I want to thank you for a lifetime of devoted and unrelenting service; were it not for the tireless dedication of you and your team, the Earth would be a very different place. It might not even be here at all. Every risk you've taken, every comrade you've lost in the field, every personal sacrifice you made, has brought this world another sunrise. It's been 35 years since circumstances brought you to us and you were given the choice -- since the IMF saved you from a life in prison. And though you never followed orders, you never let us down. You were always the best of men in the worst of times. I need you to be that man now."
I imagine this is how it happened. It's January of 2019, and Tom Cruise has just popped into the bathroom to shave. He opens up that can of Barbasol just to make sure there isn't any dinosaur DNA left in the can, but as he takes off the cap, an authoritative voice begins to speak: “Good morning, Mr. Cruise. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to make a two-part film of the Mission Impossible franchise.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 8th, 2025
"The thing I love about Valentine's Day is the expectation of the unexpected. That something magical could happen, and maybe that special someone will come back into your life and change its course for the better."
Valentine's Day is one of those Hallmark holidays that leave us with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Unless, of course, you happen to be alone, or a member of the Bugs Moran gang in Chicago in 1929. So it really means a lot of things to a lot of people, but I really do question the use of that particular day for the setting for first-time director Jonathan Eusebio's action film Love Hurts. The Valentine's Day angle is pretty weak, and a think gimmick for what is basically a comic martial arts film that gives Vietnamese actor Ke Huy Quan his first starring role. The gimmick pretty much failed, and the film tanked after just a short time at the box office, bringing in a measly $15 million with a budget of over $18 million.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 4th, 2025
"We work 364 days a year because on that one day we deliver presents to several billion individual domiciles across 37 time zones without ever being detected by a single human being. We prep, we rehearse every moment, every stop down to the last chimney. So yeah, it's a lot of work."
At first glance, it would appear that the crew for Red One is made up of folks who have had long associations with Dwayne Johnson, from Director Jack Kasdan, who also directed two of the Jumanji films, to writer Chris Morgan, who wrote many of The Fast And Furious films including the Johnson-led spinoff Hobbs And Shaw. He also wrote the last Shazam film, which led to Johnson's spinoff black hole Black Adam. It's a working environment friendly to the actor.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2024
“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.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2024
"This is the story of one of America's great unsung heroes. I mean, you've seen him, but you never knew who he was. You've cheered for him and cried for him, and women have wanted to die for him. But did he ever get any credit, or the girl? No! He's what we call the "stuntman", and the reason I'm talking so fondly about him is, well, because it's me, Colt Seavers. Anyway, picture work isn't wall-to-wall employment, so maybe you wonder how a guy keeps his head together. Well, one way is to wait by the phone ... and wait, and wait. The other is to take an occasional job with the court system of the United States of America, where a man is considered innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, sometimes a lot of these people get out of jail on what we call bail, and they'd run like hell ... and that's where I come in. I sometimes pick up rent money trying to find them and bring them back to justice." - Television series open.
Lee Majors performed a pretty solid television hat trick in his television career.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on May 3rd, 2024
"The honeybee has always had a special relationship with humanity. A sacred relationship. Why? No bees, no agriculture. No agriculture, no civilization. Our nation is not unlike a beehive, with its complex systems of workers, caretakers, even royalty. If any of the beehive's complex mechanisms are compromised, the hive collapses. Someone, a long time ago, decided that a mechanism was needed to keep our nation safe -- a mechanism outside the chain of command, outside the system. It's one mission -- to keep the system safe. Beekeepers are given all resources, empowered to act on their own judgment. For decades, they have quietly worked to keep the hive safe. That is, until now. It appears that a retired Beekeeper has gone off program, and is acting in what he mistakenly believes is the hive's best interest."
On its surface, The Beekeeper seems to be another mindless action film featuring a retired assassin or skilled operator forced out of retirement to right an injustice. Granted, those themes are central to the overall story; however, in my opinion, the film embraces those themes and provides a measure of excitement and substance to a premise that could have easily become basic.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 17th, 2024
"Jack, we have done our jobs and done them well. This fight was passed down to us and will continue with or without us. But we will always be better than the institutions we serve, and that is what matters when it matters most. There are no heroes in our profession. But occasionally there are good men. Men who act on what is right, not simply doing what they are told to do. I have not always lived my life with honor. But perhaps I have done enough to die with it. I hope the same for you."
Witness the birth of -- actually make that rebirth of --one of the most popular action heroes in literature. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has been a character of many jobs and many faces over the years.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 5th, 2023
Most people, when asked to provide the best Korean film in modern times, would probably answer Oldboy or Parasite. Others might respond Memories of Murder or Train to Busan. Maybe A Tale of Two Sisters or The Wailing. I, on the other hand, always respond with the same title, The Man from Nowhere, which to this point in the US has only been released on Blu-ray from Well Go. That Blu-ray was also the victim of a bunch of discs from Well Go that came away with a quick dose of rot, infecting my copy as well as many others. For the last couple of years, I've been working with a bootleg, which I'm not exactly proud of, but felt necessary because I loved this film so much. However, that changed, as Well Go has released a 4Kcopy of this sensational film (and also of The Wailing, which I will get to later in the week). I thankfully received it a little bit earlier than expected and took it for a spin. Let's see how it does.
