Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 31st, 2004
I have had the pleasure of reviewing better films than Home Room; and I’ve certainly suffered through worse. But I am not sure I’ve reviewed a more important film. I’ve been a public high school teacher for over 8 years. Ask any educator and you’ll find that Columbine changed things for everyone, so I wasn’t sure how I would find this study of that kind of violence. The subject is handled with extreme care in Home Room. In a wise decision, the shooting occurs to a black screen. We don’t really pick up the story until after the event.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 28th, 2004
Synopsis
Ed Harris is the coach of a small-town high school football team in 1976. He takes an interestin Cuba Gooding, Jr. after the mentally challenged young man is tormented by some of thethoughtless players. Harris takes Gooding under his wing as a kind of team mascot (orsomething). A friendship grows between the two men, and Gooding gradually blooms. Thoughnot quite as gruesomely “inspirational” as the trailers implied, this still comes very close, like anafter-school TV specia...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 27th, 2004
Synopsis
Wrong side of the tracks gal Julia Roberts (now there’s casting for you) is hired by leukemia-ridden Campbell Scott to be his nurse. He’s educated and rich, she ain’t. He’s dying, she ain’t.Cue every cliché in the book as the romance wends its inevitable way. Suspension of disbeliefis not helped by the fact that Scott is supposedly doing his PhD on German Impressionist art, andwhen shows Roberts a slide show of his subjects, Pre-Raphaelite Victorian Dante GabrielRossetti is...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 22nd, 2004
Synopsis
During the German occupation of Holland, two Jewish families take refuge in an Amsterdamattic. After some months, they are joined by a dentist. The tensions and friendships ebb and flowin this confined space, and the two-year period is chronicled in her diary by Anne, who is thirteenwhen the hiding beings.
Given that the film is scripted by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, from their Broadwayplay, and the film’s locations are essentially limited to this one set,...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 20th, 2004
Synopsis
Richard Harris is Oliver Cromwell, reluctant revolutionary, every more reluctant dictator.Alec Guinness is Charles I, the King of England who is given very bad advice, but makes somestupid decisions all on his own. The English Civil War is played out for us, with a cast offamiliar faces (Robert Morley, Timothy Dalton, Charles Gray, etc. etc.) and some prettyimpressive battle scenes. (Though those of you fresh from a screening of The Return of theKing should please re...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 15th, 2004
Synopsis
Evan Rachel Wood plays Tracy. As our tale begins, the 13-year-old is still on good terms with her mum (Holly Hunter), and is very much one of the nice girls in junior high. In that environment, you get devoured, and it isn’t long before she resorts to theft to befriend the popular Evie (co-writer Nikki Reed). Cue the rapid descent into crime, sex and drugs.
These are the teen years as chronicled from the lower circles of Hell. The handheld camera matches the high energy...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 15th, 2004
Slam is one of the rarest of films, an intelligent urban drama. These days, most films that deal with inner city African American youth either glorify the violent world that they live in, or turn into an After School Special on just saying "no". Slam disses both of these paths, and instead, forges its own path. Luckily, this path leads to truth, to knowledge, and to awards at Sundance.
This is the story of one young man coming to grips with his time and place in the history of the world. Being pinche...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 10th, 2004
Synopsis
Cecilia Roth’s husband disappears at the airport. Shortly thereafter, she receives messagesfrom his kidnappers, demanded payment of 20 million pesos. Roth is hugely surprised todiscover that there is that huge sum of money in her husband’s safety deposit box. As the mysterydeepens, she forms fast friendships with an elderly neighbour from downstairs (Carlos AlvarezNovoa) and the young man from upstairs (Kuno Becker).
For the first half-hour, the film shows every pro...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 6th, 2004
Sometimes, movies are just inexplicably bad, and as a DVD reviewer, I get to see a lot of them. These are films that are so horrible that I sometimes don’t know where to begin. It is often times hard to place blame in one are or another, when the whole production is flawed.
In the case of Lost and Delirious, however, the blame is easy to place. This film is not half bad… the premise is decent, the film looks and sounds better than expected, and the acting, while not fantastic, is respectable. The pro...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 3rd, 2004
Synopsis
Loretta Young plays, from all available evidence, a high-class call girl. When her son isknocked down by a truck driven by milk industry tycoon Cary Grant (hardly the “dairy farmer”the blurb says he is), Young tries to extort a huge settlement from the company. The schemebackfires, and she loses custody of her son to Grant and his wife. But Young hasn’t given upyet...
A wildly improbable melodrama, which contorts itself with all kinds of dubious pretzel logic...
