Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on October 26th, 2023
“Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls, until ...”
Let me preface this by saying that I am in no way the target audience for this film. That said, this film is in no way for the target audience that you may imagine it is for. Initially, I suspected the film was intended for the age bracket that actually plays with Barbies. However, after watching, I’d have to argue that the themes of the film are geared more towards the young adult / early adulthood crowd. Bearing all that in mind, it should go without saying that Barbie was a film that I endured rather than enjoyed until one key moment which I will describe later. To my mind the film was an amalgamation of films that came before it. And while I appreciate the film’s diversity in encompassing a wide range of actors to represent variations of the Barbie and Ken characters, at times it felt as though the film’s agenda was literally punching me in the face.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Michael Durr on October 23rd, 2023
Full disclaimer: I tend to watch probably too much true crime television. I've watched about every episode of Homicide Hunter (Joe Kenda), Forensic Files, and plenty of other detective shows based on real cases. I find them fascinating, and my wife would seriously like to know what else is on our television. As a result, I tend to also gravitate towards real cases depicted in movies and documentaries as well. Today's film, The Night of the 12th, deals with a real case based in France. However, this one has a hook. Whereas almost every case that we tend to see on television is solved and the murderer goes away to jail, this one has a very different ending. Let's take a look and see if we can still enjoy this experience.
Yohan Vives (played by Bastien Bouillon) is cycling around a track alone lap after lap. Since he is doing this at night, he can zone in on his thoughts as his body continues to wrap around the circle of movement.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 19th, 2023
“Where the hell did you come from?”
When you consider just how many films have been made about Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, I’m surprised it has taken this long to get a film like The Last Voyage of the Demeter. I’m not a huge fan of the novel, but the chapter that centers around Dracula’s voyage from Carpathia to London is a section that I always enjoyed. It’s a chapter told through journal entries from the captain of the ship and how the crew is killed one by one by a mysterious menace aboard the ship. In the movies that have come before, this moment of the film is usually mentioned as an afterthought or simply gets a couple of minutes of screen time. So is this the fresh take on the beloved horror icon that cinema goers have been waiting for, or is this just a lame attempt to revive the vampire genre?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 16th, 2023
In 1995, I remember very vividly going to see Mortal Kombat on the big screen during my summer off from college (when very often I had nothing else to do). I was instantly wowed by all of the characters that I had played with in the first two video games and seeing them brought to screen. The music was absolutely fantastic (and still one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard). However, what I have carried with me most from that experience is my utter love of one character. Johnny Cage. Fast forward nearly thirty years, and we finally have a film where he is the main character and no longer some sort of side gag by all those involved. Let's go to the Cage Match! Join me, won't you?
We start off with a jazz tune in the subway played by Santa Claus. A thief decides to steal from Santa Claus. How dare that guy! The criminal then runs to the closest subway car with nobody willing to stand in his way since he has a gun. Nervous, he gets to the top of subway car to get away from everyone else. But someone is following this cutpurse, and that looks to be a mime?! The mime attacks the thief, who soon demands that the performer say something, anything. But all the mime says is "Mime the Gap." Shortly after that, we hear "CUT!" It would appear that was the wrong line in the script.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 16th, 2023
It's a genuinely rewarding experience when you find a new director that you find intriguing. Mostly because as the consumer, it's then a research project to find everything that person has ever done and then dissect which films you can go find to watch immediately. When I watched Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, I had that experience instantly. I wanted to see more of Rysuke Hamaguchi's films. So I bought a Criterion Blu-ray copy of Drive My Car back in July. Shortly after that, I saw that his student film, Passion, was going to be released by Film Movement on Blu-ray, and I was eager to get a copy. Luckily, I didn't have to wait too long, because the opportunity to review presented itself even before the release date. Let's dive into this film and see the early workings of a true master of the conversation.
Note: I apologize in advance that I'm unable to identify several of the actresses (the roles of Sanae, Marie, and Hana) in this film. Usually I'm spot-on about these things (but there is no information on the internet as to who these women are real-name-wise). If someone knows, please contact me or leave a comment.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2023
"Jack, we have done our jobs and done them well. This fight was passed down to us and will continue with or without us. But we will always be better than the institutions we serve, and that is what matters when it matters most. There are no heroes in our profession. But occasionally there are good men. Men who act on what is right, not simply doing what they are told to do. I have not always lived my life with honor. But perhaps I have done enough to die with it. I hope the same for you."
Witness the birth of -- actually make that rebirth of --one of the most popular action heroes in literature. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has been a character of many jobs and many faces over the years. Baldwin, Ford, Pine, and Affleck have all stepped into the role of the man who has been a soldier, an analyst, an operative, and a president. What might appear as a clear advantage for this Amazon Prime streaming television show can be just as much a liability. When you throw in the Tom Clancy novels, comic books, and fan fiction, there is a ton of Jack Ryan history that pretty much gives us a story arc from his humble beginnings to extraordinary exploits, and wearing the faces of a few good performers. It's a tall order for the series and perhaps an even taller order for actor John Krasinski, who has created a nice little horror franchise with wife Emily Blunt on the side. I don't really have the time or energy to watch streaming shows and films. There's always a backlog here of discs that need to be watched and reviewed, and I've created a rather comfortable viewing experience with my home theatre I call The Reel World. Our motto: Here there be monsters. So a couple of years ago I had my first experience with this series when Paramount sent the first season on Blu-ray. It was far more of a captivating and compelling series than I expected. Then the second season reached the Blu-ray home platform format, and while I certainly detected a sophomore slump there, there's still enough interesting drama to keep a fan engaged for another year. And what a year it has been. You can find out for yourself with Paramount's release of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season Three on Blu-ray.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2023
"I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes ... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply ... evil."
Blumhouse and David Gordon Green recently finished a sequel/reboot of John Carpenter's Halloween with mixed results. He got Jamie Lee Curtis to return for all three films in the trilogy. Most of the various sequels and reboots did not include the original film's star, but Green was not the first one to get her to return to the role of Laurie Strode. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first film, Curtis returned to the role in the somewhat neglected. It was the seventh overall film in the franchise, and like the recent trilogy, it erased all of the various sequels and claimed to be a continuation of the original film. It produced a respectable $55 million on a $17 million budget and was the next final film in the series before Rob Zombie did his own reboot of the franchise that lasted for two films and finally led up to the David Gordon Green attempt to revisit and pretty much conclude the franchise with three more films. Curtis returned for Halloween Resurrections, which was a kind of meta/reality show take on the material, but Rob Zombie took it back to the beginning. Is that really the end of Michael Myers and company? I doubt it. There's still bank to be made from the franchise, and after a respectable few years, someone else will tackle the tale. Where they will start from is anyone's guess, but they could do worse than look at Halloween H2O: Twenty Years Later as a jumping-off point. I doubt anything like that is going to happen, but the franchise could certainly do worse,... and it has.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 2nd, 2023
"Have you ever heard of exorcism? It's a stylized ritual in which rabbis or priests try to drive out the so-called invading spirit. It's pretty much discarded these days, except by the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment. It has worked, in fact, although not for the reason they think, of course. It was purely the force of suggestion. The victim's belief in possession helped cause it. And just in the same way, this belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear."
By now we've all heard of The Exorcist. The film was based on a best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty. Blatty himself based the story on a real exorcism of a young boy many years earlier. And that's where the true power of the film begins. The monsters of horror movies often allow us a sense of unreality that protects our inner selves from being truly terrified. Yes, they may frighten us, but it's fun to be frightened, isn't it? It's rare that a horror film touches on something inside of us and delivers an experience that is truly terrifying. It's arguable that The Exorcist has done this in a way that has rarely, if ever, been repeated in horror movie history. Whatever your religious beliefs might be, there is that little voice deep in our minds that fears what we call evil and can't deal with the possibility that we can be taken over by such evil. Devil. Demon. Mental illness. It doesn't matter. We're all afraid of losing control of who we are to some invading force within our minds. Within our very souls.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 28th, 2023
Coming up on its 40th anniversary, Staying Alive continues to be one of the most bizarre sequels to be made by a major studio, starring John Travolta and co-written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. The film was intended to be a sequel to the massively popular Saturday Night Fever, but when Staying Alive came out, disco was pretty much dead, and really there isn’t much that connects the films but for the character Tony Manero (John Travolta) and that there is dancing in the film. When the movie came out it was a financial success, but it was pretty well hated by critics of the time to the point that even one of the film’s stars, Finola Hughes, was awarded a Razzie for her performance. Apparently the film has a loyal cult following, but now after 40 years I’m here to give this film a fair shake and decide for myself: is it as bad as people say, or is it a gem from the 80s that will make us all nostalgic for when there were several movies with the cast in leotards, headbands, and over-the-top dance numbers?
It’s been a few years since Tony Manero (John Travolta) was dancing through the disco tournament, and now he is a dance instructor who is trying to make it to the next level of his dancing career to be a part of a Broadway stage production. The biggest change I feel we’ve seen in Tony is that he’s managed to become more arrogant and has coasted by on his good looks and dancing, though he’s pretty far from living the dream. He has a causal relationship with Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes), who is also a dance instructor, and the pair struggle together with auditions for various productions. For the viewers it is easy for us to want Tony to settle down with Jackie. She’s good for him, and in many ways too good for him, but Tony just always has his eyes on something bigger. He expects greatness for himself and will settle for nothing less. His opportunity comes along with the Broadway production of “Satan’s Alley”, where he lands a part and falls for the lead in the performance, Laura (Finola Hughes). She’s out of his league and is only using him for a good time, but Tony is blissfully ignorant, and this only creates drama for the production.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 20th, 2023
“Don’t expect too many mistakes from this man. After all, he does seem rather more interesting than just another reader researcher. For example; has he gone into business for himself? Was he turned around? Does someone operate him? Is he homosexual? Broke? Vulnerable? Could he be a soldier of fortune? Did he arrange the hit? Is that why he’s still in flight? Still, he may be innocent. But why didn’t he come in gently?”
Sydney Pollack might have been channeling the essence of Alfred Hitchcock when he directed 3 Days Of The Condor. It’s hard not to see the similarities to some of Hitch’s work. But he might also have been having a bit of precognition at the same time. The later novels and films about Jason Bourne bear a striking resemblance to this 1975 thriller. Whatever connection Pollack might have been making, he managed to direct a film that was timeless while being very much a product of its time. We are reminded of that long-gone era of the 1970’s with generous shots of the just-built World Trade Center towers. Ads and shots of Eastern Airlines planes bring back some memories. These images securely place the action in a specific time. Still, it works maybe even more today than it did in 1975.
