Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on March 2nd, 2011
Ok...here's the pitch! A movie that's just jokes! Dirty jokes! Story? Maybe sure sure, but its all about jokes! We all love dirty jokes right? We have some actors act them out...one after the other...and that's it...the whole movie is jokes!
That is the theory behind this film, and almost verbatim the opening scene. A sleazy looking producer wants to help resurrect a Hollywood production company with his idea for a movie that is nothing but a series of dirty jokes, played out one after the other. And this is exactly what we the audience received. Chapterised with portions showing the filmmakers trying to create and ultimately punished for making this film, we see a gaggle of actors, and a LOT of topless women, act out dirty jokes. The film compares itself to The Aristocrats in the sense that it is just jokes for the duration of the film, but the main difference is The Aristocrats is a documentary whereas Dirty Movie is almost meta-cinema in how self-aware it is in its presentation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2011
"My money is on you being brutally killed within two days, but what choice do we have?"
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 21st, 2011
It's funny how the zeitgeist works, in that it is hardly unusual for two films with very similar high concepts to hit the screens at close to the same time. Dante's Peak and Volcano. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Hell, The Towering Inferno came about as a result of Fox and Warner cooperating in order to avoid making identical films. And this year, two animated features with super-villains as their protagonists: Despicable Me and our current subject: Megamind.
His childhood consistently ruined by the budding Metro Man (Brad Pitt), Megamind (Will Ferrell) becomes the super-villain he feels he was destined to be. But when his latest scheme actually succeeds in destroying Metro Man, he finds life curiously empty, and so sets about creating a new super-hero: Tighten (Jonah Hill). But Tighten, it turns out, is more villain than hero, while Megamind, thanks in no small part to a budding relationship with reporter Roxanne Ritchie (Tina Fey), moves ever closer to hero territory.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 11th, 2011
Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel, in a knockout performance) is convinced that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, and is determined to live out his life in the same way, right down to getting himself assassinated (“hopefully somewhere warm” his note appends). He also has only three years left to find Lenin, but in the meantime, his attempts to kick-start the revolution are meeting with little success. His struggle to unionize his father's factory manages only to embarrass and anger his father, who retaliates by removing him from private school and packing him off to a public one run by the tyrannical Colm Feore. Delighted to have worth enemy, Leon sets about mobilizing the student body, while trying to romance Alexandra (Emily Hampshire). Not only does she bear the name of Trotsky's first wife, the age gap between the two (she is almost ten years older) is the same. It must be destiny
This is enormous fun. Baruchel's Leon could easily be a figure of ridicule, and though he is funny, he is also possessed of such indomitable will and the desire to change the world for the better, not to mention a complete imperviousness to social humiliation, that it is impossible not to get behind him. Writer/director Jacob Tierney makes good use of his Montreal setting, adding the city's quirks to his characters', and the cast is engaging mix of new faces and veteran Canadian actors (Feore, Geneviève Bujold, Saul Rubinek). Sharp, witty, and unapologetically optimistic, this is about as feel-good as feel-good gets. And, as an added bonus, the film features the most hilarious riff on the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin I have ever seen.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 11th, 2011
Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) once was a musician, but now he is a carpenter and an inveterate writer of letters of complaint (to pet taxis, for instance, for not having a soft carpet for the paws of their passengers). After a stay at a mental institution, he arrives in LA to look after his brother's house and dog while the family is away in Vietnam. He reconnects with an old friend from his band days (Rhys Ifans, a long way from his manic energy in Notting Hill), and circles around a stop-start romance with personal aid and professional doormat Florence (Greta Gerwig).
Stiller's performance here reminds me of Adam Sandler's in Punch-Drunk Love. In both cases, we have actors known for embodying a particular comic type: Sandler is the raging man-child, while Stiller is the sensitive soul prone to social catastrophe. And in both films, we see the actors working with a distinctive auteur (P.T. Anderson, Noah Baumbach) on a low-key comedy that is very much a film of personal expression (to borrow a term from William Bayer). Finally, the borderline art-house trappings and new gravitas notwithstanding, they are still playing recognizable versions of what they've always done. It's just that what is a type of clown perfect for one form of comedy becomes a psychotic in the more realist version. At any rate, I find Stiller's same-yet-different performance very interesting, and very good, and that goes for the other performers too, especially Gerwig, who nails Florence's insecurities, naivete and strength. However, though I found the performances interesting, I didn't find the characters that interesting. Greenberg is thoroughly repellent, and that's fine, but he isn't compelling. I found myself unable to care about what he would do or say next (partly because I had a pretty good idea of what that would be), and wished that Florence were the protagonist instead. Though her self-destructive crush on Greenberg is as inexplicable as it is nonsensical, and so she too tries our patience, she has enough off-beat quirks and surprising resilience to make her worth following around. This is, then, a film that is finely wrought, written and acted, but that is also rather static and distancing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 9th, 2011
One of the most underappreciated films in my opinion in the last ten years is Undercover Brother. Stop looking at me strangely! Seriously, it was a very funny movie. It was because of one man and I don’t mean Neil Patrick Harris (though he was hilarious). That man would be Eddie Griffin. Eddie Griffin has starred in almost fifty different films but he also makes a respectable living doing stand up comedy. One such concert is new to dvd and we get the chance to talk about it my brother.
Live from Oakland, California, we have the star of Malcolm & Eddie, Deuce Bigelow, and Meteor Man (okay, some more than others), the one, the only Eddie Griffin. *waits for crowd applause*. Let’s find out what he has to talk about, shall we? The first thing out of Eddie Griffin’s mouth? Well, it would appear he wants to have his way with Michelle Obama, the president’s first lady.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on February 9th, 2011
In this satire of modern life, Zach Galifianakis plays a man named George Washington Winsterhammerman who has a beautiful wife, a large house, a stable job in the world's most successful corporation, and even a boat. Despite all of this he fears he is showing symptoms (which include dreams) that he might be about to literally explode, a mysterious and unexplained epidemic that is sweeping the country.
This film is jammed very obvious messages and metaphors for how we are living artificiality through celebrity advice books, pills, corporately controlled media and other suppressants for independent thought. The most apparent in the film is when George cannot please his wife sexually she religiously follows the daily advice of her favourite talk show host, dresses and eats just like her in order to change their lives around, and eventually tries to emulate her suicide, that occurred live on her show, when all else fails.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 2nd, 2011
"This used to be a gentleman's game."
I must confess that I had not even heard of the comic book titles created by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. I think that might have been one of the best things that could have happened to me as I sat down to watch the film Red. With a cast this strong, there was little doubt that they would provide a powerful stamp on these characters. No insult intended toward the graphic novels, but I can't imagine these characters any other way now.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 2nd, 2011
This series from Comedy Central began as a low-budget film hosting show in a small television station in Minnesota. It was the brainchild of Joel Hodgson. It ended up running for 11 years and a feature film version.
Mystery Science Theatre is an acquired taste. For me, I’ve really got to be in that certain mood to watch it. That’s the beauty of these DVDs. You pop them in when you’re ready. The idea is pretty whacked. Depending on the season you’ve got, Joel or Mike is trapped in space on the “Satellite of Love”. Doomed to spend his life watching very bad films, our hero makes the best of a bad situation. He uses his resources to construct a couple of robot pals. There's Crow T. Robot (Beaulieu), Tom Servo (Murphy), and Gypsy (Mallon). Part of an experiment together, they watch the films from the front row, constantly ranting throughout. If you’re like me, you’ve invited a few friends over to watch a schlock festival. The movies weren’t as important as the banter you created while watching. That’s exactly what you see here. The silhouettes of our host and his robots dominate the lower portion of the screen, where they provide alternative dialog and sometimes witty commentary on the action. The two evil station owners/mad scientists send them a new bad film each week to observe their reactions to the bombs. The films are broken up by off-the-wall skits and fake commercials to alleviate the tedium. This DVD collection is better than some because it includes films from four different seasons to give you a good sample of the overall series.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on January 27th, 2011
A young man wants to stimulate the economy of his tiny community, mostly for the sake of his parents struggling motel, and inadvertently welcomes what would become the original Woodstock festival into his back yard (literally).
Based on the true origins of this music festival that changed the world, we do not see the happenings of the stars onstage like other Woodstock films might. From beginning to the end, we only witness the muddy setup of the campsites and the infamously congested highway leading to the stage.
![Red (Movie-Only Edition) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/red-movie-only-edition-blu-ray-large.jpg)
