Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on August 16th, 2012
Dan Tanna is a private investigator whose home-base is on and off the mains strip of Sin City itself, Las Vegas. Every week saw Tanna in some sort of deadly adventure chasing bad guys down with his ’57 Thunderbird, or firing at them with his signature Magnum pistol.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 14th, 2012
“Rituals are important. Not just for a serial killer.”
One of my favorite rituals happens about this time every year. That’s when Paramount releases the latest season of Dexter on Blu-ray and DVD. I don’t get Showtime, so it’s the only chance I get to get caught up with everyone’s favorite serial killer. Dexter’s back for more bloody murder and mayhem, and his world is just as dark and creepy as ever.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on August 7th, 2012
“Life is like jazz, son; never resolves.”
Small-scale Christian (or faith-based) films have found modest-yet-passionate audiences in recent years. They also have a reputation among mainstream moviegoers for being overly earnest. Blue Like Jazz — based on the popular 2003 crisis-of-faith best seller by Donald Miller — curiously circumvents that criticism by employing an overly stylish approach and, more importantly, by not billing itself as a “Christian movie.”
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on August 4th, 2012
– “It’s our duty, this is war.”
– “Agreed, but even so let’s remember our manners.”
You know how Citizen Kane is considered by some to be the greatest film of all time? Well, I’m the kind of curious movie nerd who subsequently wonders which film was atop Kane auteur Orson Welles’ personal list. Unfortunately, I can’t ask him, but there’s evidence suggesting the answer was Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion/Grand Illusion.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 1st, 2012
Like a lot of people in general, I strive to get more bang for my buck. Whether it is in grocery shopping, video games or a pizza buffet, I always want to pay the bare minimum and reap the maximum benefit. Another area this holds true is movies. In my collection, there are double packs, triple features and quadruple showings. Today, it just so happens that we have a triple feature from Mill Creek Entertainment that brings us three thrillers: D.O.A, Playing God and Color of Night. This might be a long night.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on August 1st, 2012
We all have That Friend. We’ve known him/her most of our lives, and he/she was a perpetual screw-up even when we were kids. We hoped they’d grow out of it as adults, but they always seem to rope us into their drama or cockamamie schemes. Yet we can’t completely cut them off because, even if it’s sometimes hard to remember why you’re still friends, it’s hard to get rid of anything that’s been a part of our lives for so long. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I regret to inform you that you probably are That Friend.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 30th, 2012
Most people who read my reviews can realize that me and prison films just do not mix. Far too many of them are incredibly hokey and if I hear one more cliché about dropping the soap, I swear I might just go watch about a 12 hour Golden Girls marathon. However, our film today deals with a psychiatric hospital for criminals. It sounds a lot like a prison to me, but perhaps today’s review will take on a much gentler tone and provide us with something just a little different.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on July 21st, 2012
“An Asian man wearing a German uniform was discovered by the U.S. military at Normandy on D-Day. Upon questioning, he was identified as a Korean.”
My Way cannily opens with this bit of real-life information. As the movie reaches its heartbreaking conclusion, we know only one of a pair of lifelong rivals-turned-friends — one Korean, one Japanese — will make it to the end.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on July 18th, 2012
“I will be 100 percent committed to this half the time.”
This offbeat, knowingly unromantic declaration between long-time friends Jason and Julie kicks the plot of Friends with Kids into motion. The platonic pair decide to have a child together after watching the soul-sucking effect parenthood has had on their married friends. The plan is for Jason and Julie to share parental responsibilities right down the middle while living separate romantic lives. Don’t worry.
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Posted in No Huddle by J C on July 15th, 2012
In ranking the popularity of sports in America, there’s football and then there’s everything else. The hierarchy for sports movies, however, is a little more competitive. I’ve got boxing edging out baseball for the top spot due to two Best Picture wins (Rocky, Million Dollar Baby) that should’ve been three (Raging Bull), and the fact that even a recent movie like The Fighter can bank almost $100 million at the domestic box office while snagging a couple of Oscars despite boxing’s profile currently being in the toilet in this country. Boxing and baseball are probably followed by football, hockey and basketball, in some order.
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Posted in No Huddle by J C on July 4th, 2012
Have found footage films jumped the shark? (If the answer is yes, someone’s going to have to hunt down the beast that ate the shark-jumping cameraman so we can retrieve the tape and see exactly what happened.) Though the genre dates all the way back to 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust, it saw a spike with 1999’s Blair Witch Project and has become the horror delivery vehicle du jour thanks to recent hits like The Devil Inside and the Paranormal Activity films. To be fair, The American Dream doesn’t completely qualify as a found footage film — as far as I can tell, no one finds the protagonist’s camera — but the movie is a sign that the genre may have already seen its best days.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 3rd, 2012
“Squeal like a pig…”
It’s one of those lines that you know even if you’ve never seen Deliverance. The line and film have entered our pop culture and have been referenced in hundreds of films that followed. Along with the iconic rendition of Dueling Banjos, taken from the traditional piece Feuding Banjos, well… you might feel like you’ve seen the film even if you haven’t. Deliverance is a film about Americana that has itself become a large part of Americana. Most of us have found ourselves in a situation where we start hearing those familiar notes in the back of our heads. The truth is, they just don’t make them like this anymore.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on June 29th, 2012
“Sometimes things happen in life that turn everybody silent. So silent that nobody dares to talk about it anymore. To no one. Not even themselves.”
Who knew there was a hormone mafia in Flanders (not Homer Simpson’s neighbor, but Flanders is part of Belgium, but unique with its own dialect and culture)? Evidently, shady criminals sell illegal experimental hormones to farmers so they can fatten up their livestock. In Bullhead these are brooding crooks that sit and talk about their problems a lot and seem to resent cows a great deal. The one with the biggest problems happens to be the biggest man among them, Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts)
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 28th, 2012
“The law was made by rich white people. Our job isn’t to follow the law. Our job is to make the law.”
TNT brings us a different kind of legal drama with the first season of Franklin & Bash. These are a couple of young lawyers who don’t let the courtroom rules get in the way of helping out their client. They’ve gotten themselves quite a reputation, and it’s finally paying off.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on June 23rd, 2012
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
That famous proverb comes from a couplet in the Robert Burns poem “To a Mouse.” (“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley”) Simply put, it means that even the most carefully prepared plans can go wrong at any time. The line also provided the title for John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”, the classic 1937 novella that has since become required reading in many high schools, along with “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “The Great Gatsby” and others. Steinbeck tells the tragic story of slow-witted Lenny and his friend/protector George, two migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression. I imagine Steinbeck’s best laid plans probably didn’t involve his story becoming the basis for a British cage fighting movie.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 20th, 2012
“I’m a consulting detective of some repute. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? My name is Sherlock Holmes.”
In 1887, readers of the popular periodical Beeton’s Christmas Annual were to receive quite a special treat. There wasn’t much fanfare or hype to the event. Inside the pages of the magazine was a story called A Study In Scarlet. It was a detective story, perhaps like many published before, except for the detective himself, a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Together with his faithful companion and chronicler Dr. Watson, Holmes would win the hearts of those holiday readers.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on June 20th, 2012
When I saw that Nicolas Cage and January Jones were headlining a little-seen/straight-to-DVD-caliber title, part of me was perversely excited. This had the potential to be a historic summit of bad acting! To be fair, I generally enjoy the — shall we say — avant garde stylings of Cage’s performances, but I’m much less impressed by the relentless joylessness Jones bring to her work (even on the excellent Mad Men). In short, I was prepared to laugh and I was prepared to wince. However, I was not prepared to enjoy this entertaining, preposterous thriller as much as I did.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on June 12th, 2012
-“And what do I say when they ask me why it wasn’t regulated?”
-“No one wanted to. We were making too much money.”
At first glance, sitting down to watch a film about the financial meltdown of 2008 seems only slightly more fun than going through the actual meltdown again. Fortunately, director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) and a towering ensemble cast — I felt like I’d died and gone to Character Actor Heaven — mostly keep Too Big to Fail away from CNBC territory and deliver a brisk, entertaining film.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 1st, 2012
For most of the last decade or more CBS has dominated the primetime drama market on network television. One of the reasons, of course, has been the prevalence of top-flight crime dramas like the NCIS and CSI franchises. From 2003 until 2009 the Thursday line-up on the eye network included the blockbuster pairing of the original CSI and Without A Trace. Both were products of filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer’s television stable. While CSI focused on the science behind a criminal investigation, Without A Trace took the more traditional route of the human element to the FBI’s Missing Persons Unit.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 31st, 2012
At first glance it would be very easy to say that Beyond doesn’t really offer us anything terribly new in the crime drama genre. For the most part I would tend to agree with that criticism. I would counter with the argument that a very good film doesn’t need to be very original to be good. Sometimes the value in a movie lies in the fact that it does what it does do extremely well. That’s how I would describe the sleeper direct-to-video release Beyond.
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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.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on May 28th, 2012
“It’s Memorial Day. What am I supposed to remember?”
Happy Memorial Day, everyone! When I saw that I would be reviewing a movie called Memorial Day, I was afraid Garry Marshall had made another one of his awful ensemble romantic comedies — ala Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve — that stars everyone in Hollywood…and Hector Elizondo. Thankfully, this film is simply an (overly) earnest dedication to the men and women who have served in the Armed Forces, as well as their families.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 17th, 2012
By 1978 the television detective model had been nearly complete and possibly already a cliché. Dan Tanna might have well been the complete model as far as the formula goes. It was almost as if you could go down a checklist and, like Dr. Frankenstein creating a monster, check off the necessary elements. The scripts could then almost write themselves, and you let the show fly on autopilot for three seasons or so until someone decides to look behind the curtain.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on May 15th, 2012
“…So when I walked into the hair cutting place, I was taking a leap. But I wasn’t doing it for a guy — I was doing it for me.”
Season 2 of Felicity features Keri Russell getting one of the most infamous haircuts in TV history. When people think of super-producer J.J. Abrams and his television projects, images from Alias, Fringe and a little show called Lost probably spring to mind. On the other hand, a significantly smaller portion of weirdos the TV-watching population may think of the relationship dramedies Abrams has produced, such as What About Brian, Six Degrees and Felicity, by far the best of this latter group.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 10th, 2012
“My name is Charles Carmichael, and I have one final question for you. Have you ever had to subdue a Basque terrorist on a Swiss train? Or fight your way through the jungles of Southeast Asia? Or, take out an arms dealer with a penchant for murder and ice cream? Well… we have.”
And, if you’ve been a fan of Chuck for the last five years, you know exactly what we’re talking about here. And, for now, the ride has come to a close.
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