Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on April 1st, 2008
Aqua Teen Hunger Force has hit mainstream, well for the most part. The Tv Show has been on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim for a few seasons now and they even released a theatrical film. The film entitled Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film wasn't exactly a run away success. The film only made 5.5 million dollars nationwide. However, this was also about 7 times the budget which made the film a profitable success. So with the movie behind them, would the fame of past efforts fill their minds and make the creators' (Dave Willis & Matt Maiellaro) heads swell with pride? Let's turn into Volume 5 (Season 4) and find out.
For those new to the game (then why are you starting out with the fifth dvd set?), Aqua Teen Hunger Force is the story of three characters who look like they came from a Happy Meal; well a Happy Meal from a place that serves meatballs. Master Shake, Frylock & Meatwad return for 13 episodes (one is a 2-parter) to fight crime, bad advertising & just make sure that nobody gets Carl's favorite appendage if you know what I mean. Who's Carl? Ahh, that would be their next door neighbor who spends a lot of his time listening to classic rock, eating hot wings and getting raped by artificially created dogs. It's in episode 4, you'll have to see it for yourself.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 28th, 2008
Three female friends are there for each other’s personal storms. One is a coke-addled sensation addict, one aspires to be an artist (and does her share of powder too) and the third is taking refuge from an unhappy marriage and questioning her sexual identity. Many scenes of heightened emotion are the order of the day.
The title (translated as “On the Edge”) recalls Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, but Teresa Suarez isn’t quite in Pedro Almodovar’s league. The film has some fine comic moments (I’m thinking of one dream sequence in particular), and plenty of energy, but some of that is second-hand: a coke-frenzied drive early in the film more than slightly recalls Ray Liotta’s paranoid excursion in GoodFellas. Further, despite the universally vile male characters in the film, many of the protagonists’ problems are so obviously of their own making that they are hard to care for.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 25th, 2008
“Are you retarded or something?” is the line that stands out the most for me from
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 25th, 2008
Do you ever look at some covers in disbelief and wonder why this ever got made? Okay, some directors are trying to break into the business or perhaps an actor is taking on an indie release that one can show their acting range with. But if a movie looks, smells and feels like a B movie; then most likely you are in for a rough ride. At the end, you might come out okay. A lot of times however, you might not. I witnessed such an example in Killer Pad. A movie directed by Robert Englund. Yes, the "Freddy" guy. The box sports some clueless guys and a hot devil lady. Oh and a spooky house behind it all. I'm scared, mainly cause I have to watch it.
Three friends; Doug, Craig & Brody (played by Daniel Franzese, Eric Jungmann, & Shane McRae) decide to leave their small midwest lives and head for the Hollywood Hills. After some searching, they meet up with a landlord named Winnie (played by Bobby Lee)who gets them to a sign a deed to 666 Perdition Lane (gee I wonder if it could be evil). Once they get there, they realize it is the house of their dreams and decide to host a party at their "killer pad." Little do they know that the house is haunted and foul things are a foot. The rest of the adventure is spent finding out the answer to various supernatural occurrences and trying to still host the most awesome party ever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 21st, 2008
A tough-as-nails cowboy (James Denton) unwillingly hooks up with a naive greenhorn (Chris Kattan) when they have a run-in with a bent sheriff. They may think they have some problems now, but things are much worse than they think, as the town and the surrounding countryside are in the initial stages of a zombie plague.
Simon Pegg and company might well be starting to rue the day they came up with Shaun of the Dead. Though not the first zombie comedy (that would probably be Return of the Living Dead if we exclude some non-cannibal zombies appearing in some 30s horror-comedies), their magnificent film and its success are the proximate cause of the current flood of would be “zombedies” (as this flick labels itself). A western zombie comedy might seem like a promising mix, until one realizes how few western comedies have actually worked, and this one isn’t breaking the trend. Its opening scene (a clumsy zombie attacking his family) veers uncertainly from the tired slapstick to the truly distasteful, and the rest of the film has all the comedic zing of dragged out SNL skit (Chris Kattan, I am casting my baleful eye at YOU). Turgid stuff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 19th, 2008
It seems like foodies are everywhere these days. Maybe Emeril is to blame, maybe it's Paula Dean, maybe it's the Food Network as a whole.I have even been sucked in my Anthony Bourdain myself (whose show is ironically also named No Reservations). Wherever there is a trend, there is guaranteed to be a romantic comedy to follow. Enter Aaron Eckhart and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Eckhart has been doing some fantastic work lately, from his work in Thank You for Smoking to lesser known films such as Conversations With Other Women, he is quickly becoming one of the best actors on the scene today.
I have no problems with romantic comedies whatsoever. The problem is that the vast majority of them are just the same film over and over again. A girl who is a cute mess is pursued by a surprisingly understanding man who loves her just the way she is, and the whole thing is wrapped up with some dialog that thinks it is much more clever than it actually is. In this case, the girl is a chef, and the man is her new sous chef. Sure, the not-so-clever is here just as you would expect, but in this film, the serious dialog is no good either. The film is filled with poor imitations of life in a kitchen, not to mention some amazingly bad acting. It is obvious that everybody here phoned it in, which leads me to ask the question of why anybody signed on to do this film at all. In doing some background research, I discovered that Catherine Zeta-Jones worked for exactly one day as a waitress in preparation for her role... as a chef. Believe me, it shows, in the way that an actor who spent one day playing guitar would be completely unconvincing as a musician.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 16th, 2008
I now realize that the funniest funny is found in awkwardness. This is why Curb Your Enthusiasm is so popular. The main characters do things that make you cringe, often to the point where you even cover your eyes because it’s just too painful to watch. You say aloud to yourself, “Oh my god, no he didn’t just get a boner while hugging that old woman,” or “why are you talking to the TiVo guy when your wife might die?!” But with all due respect to the people that hate Larry’s character (Larry David) because he’s so rude and does stupid stuff, he often gets the short stick and apologizes when he shouldn’t have to.
If the unscripted show didn’t already shoot from the hip, the sixth season of Curb adds new potential for cringe-worthy activities. This 10-episode season introduces the Blacks (including Vivica A. Fox), an African-American family displaced by Hurricane Katrina Edna who altruistic Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) wanted to take in while the family’s house was being rebuilt. I was surprised by the few issues that actually sprung up with the new additions.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 14th, 2008
If Matt Stone and Trey Parker have learned anything in their long run with
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 14th, 2008
Let’s make the point right from the start, that
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 14th, 2008
Here are four films from renowned maverick Jean-Luc Godard. Insofar as these films have plots in the conventional sense of the word, Passion is about a filmmaker struggling to rediscover his love for his profession, First Name: Carmen plays with the tale of that same name to tell another story of filmmaking and bank robbery, Detective is an idiosyncratic tribute to films noirs, and Oh, Woe Is Me is about a man who may or may not be possessed by a god wanting to seduce his wife.
Samuel Johnson once remarked that anyone reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa for its plot would be moved to suicide, and that is certainly the case for anyone trying to watch Godard for story. That is not what he’s interested in. These films, all from his late period (ranging from 1982 to 1993), are postmodern, allegorico-politico-philosophical musings on the human condition. Narratives fragment; soundtracks are multi-layered, with dialogue that is dense, sometimes obscured, and often opaque; and there is plenty of provocation. These are films that are probably not terribly inviting for newcomers to Godard. If you already have the likes of Weekend under your belt, you’ll be fine. If this is your first time, your might well reject the filmmaker as a pretentious twit.
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