Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 19th, 2012
"Nikolai Petrovich Rachenko...our warrior elite...a very powerful and valuable tool...if he can be controlled."
It's no secret that they just don't make action movies like they used to. (Sylvester Stallone just shot a brawny arm into the air in protest. I see you, Sly!) These days the odds of seeing a pretty boy like Matt Damon and a perennial tough guy like Bruce Willis headlining an action flick are just about even. You're just as likely to see Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in family fare like Journey 2: The Mysterious Island as you are in an manly romp like Fast Five. Heck, the Arnold Schwarzenegger role in the upcoming Total Recall remake is being played by...Colin Farrell.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 18th, 2012
Did you know that Power Rangers Samurai is the nineteenth season of Power Rangers? But the difference here is that Saban Brands bought back the franchise and have promised a more fun and humorous Power Rangers, similar to older seasons when they last owned the product. So, today I have for you folks a look at the first two volumes of this new series. Let us see if the new team holds a candle to the heroes of old.
47,48,49,50. Ready or not, here we go. So begins another game of hide and seek. However, this school yard game is cut way short when the Nighloks (an evil alien force) ATTACK! All of the sudden, we see the Red Ranger, Jayden (played by Alex Heartman) with his Mentor Ji (played by Rene Naufahu) heading off the pack. Ji offers the Nighlok pack the option to retreat but the Red Ranger is in no mood to give retreat this day.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 18th, 2012
Did you know that Power Rangers Samurai is the nineteenth season of Power Rangers? But the difference here is that Saban Brands bought back the franchise and have promised a more fun and humorous Power Rangers, similar to older seasons when they last owned the product. So, today I have for you folks a look at the first two volumes of this new series. Let us see if the new team holds a candle to the heroes of old.
47,48,49,50. Ready or not, here we go. So begins another game of hide and seek. However, this school yard game is cut way short when the Nighloks (an evil alien force) ATTACK! All of the sudden, we see the Red Ranger, Jayden (played by Alex Heartman) with his Mentor Ji (played by Rene Naufahu) heading off the pack. Ji offers the Nighlok pack the option to retreat but the Red Ranger is in no mood to give retreat this day.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 14th, 2012
Cult movies are some of my favorite kinds of movies. I am a complete sucker for Rocky Horror Picture Show and films like the Warriors or Duel. These movies are often a product of their time but are not fully appreciated until many years later. Today, I am reviewing The FP, a film that attempts to be a cult classic but without going through the usual hoops of society. As we go to the film, one has to wonder if that is even remotely possible.
For Years, an underground war has raged for dominance over the small town of Frazier Park between two clans: the 248 from the North and the 245 from the South. Now…with a skirmish between the two clan leaders imminent, the battle for the FP has only just begun.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on June 14th, 2012
“A deadly car accident took place at North Point last night; a bus lost control and left two dead and eight injured.”
Every day accident fatalities happen all over the world. These deaths are so obviously accidental that the authorities hardly think twice about them. In director Cheang Pou-Soi’s Accident a team of four assassins, Brain (Louis Koo), Fatty (Suet Lam), Uncle (Fung Shui-Fan) and Woman (Michelle Ye), each a master of the art of the invisible kill, stage their assassinations so perfectly as to appear to be simply “accidents” even under the closest scrutiny.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 29th, 2012
"This Martius is grown from man to dragon. He has wings. He's more than a creeping thing. There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger."
There's a certain hierarchy when it comes to the amount of cinematic interpretations of William Shakespeare's plays. At the top tier, we have the endlessly adapted Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth the Scottish Play. A step below that, you've probably got your King Lear, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream and a few more. And about a dozen tiers below that, we finally come across Coriolanus.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 28th, 2012
Steven Spielberg’s very-long-in-gestation adaptation of Hergé’s Tintin finally came into being over Christmas. The story, very much in keeping with the globe-trotting adventures of the comic books (drawing heavily, in fact, upon The Secret of the Unicorn), has Tintin (voiced by Jaime Bell) become embroiled in a treasure quest after buying a model ship that has one third of the secret concealed in its mast. Captured by nefarious evil-doers who will stop at nothing to find the treasure, he encounters Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), and a legendary friendship is formed.
Spielberg’s affection for the character is present in every frame of the film, and the story hurtles along from location to location, our heroes making one hair’s breadth escape after another. The characters are all very recognizable versions of their 2D comic book incarnations, and the animation is stunning in its meticulous detail.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 21st, 2012
At first glance Haywire appears a bit out of character for the likes of director Steven Soderbergh. It's not that he hasn't delivered action films in the past. It's that he's never quite tied himself to such a tried and sometimes true formula before. When you first look at the press for Haywire you're going to pretty much dismiss it as a standard action-hero film that follows in the mold of a Steven Seagal/Chuck Norris mold with a touch of Bourne Identity thrown in to meet the more recent trends. If that's what you think, then you've pretty much called it, because that's exactly what it is. But that's not a good reason to dismiss the film either.
I won't lie. The film pretty much follows the path you expect it to follow. Mallory (Carano) stumbles into a bar in an isolated town where she's meeting with a contact. But she's wary because something has gone wrong and she's not sure exactly who she can trust. She's right. No surprise there, is there? She takes Scott (Angarano) hostage for his wheels and makes her getaway. During their flight she begins to tell him the story of how she got to where she is. It's through this narrative that the story unfolds for us. This is where Soderbergh offers up a little of his own tweaks to the story and, for the most part, there's enough of his wit here to keep the narrative humming along. Of course, she's out to find the guys who tried to get her killed, and there's a ton of carnage in the wake.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 21st, 2012
The fourth Mission: Impossible entry exchanges digits for a subtitle, and brings in Brad Bird to direct his first live-action feature. So the man whose The Incredibles made fun of the sort of thing that is the bread-and-butter of the M:I franchise is brought in to revitalize said franchise. Result? Job done.
Gotcha. You thought I was going to say, “Mission accomplished,” didn’t you?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 31st, 2012
I think most of us can agree that being buried alive would be a horrible way to go. Several movies — Kill Bill: Vol. 2, The Vanishing (not the soft American remake) and, of course, Buried — have exploited that terror to varying degrees of success. Though the action in A Lonely Place to Die centers around a girl found buried in the Scottish Highlands, the camera frequently pulls way back to show us the desolate beauty (and danger) of the mountainous setting. I really wish director Julian Gilbey had kept the action on those mountains.
A group of climbers, led by Melissa George (The Amityville Horror, TV's Alias), discover an Eastern European girl named Anna buried in an underground chamber. Anna is unable to explain what happened because she can't speak English, but the group correctly surmises that the girl was kidnapped and being kept alive by the breathing pipe sticking out of the ground. Eventually, the group has to deal with the vicious pair of kidnappers, as well as the mercenaries hired by the girl's war criminal father to get her back.
