Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 22nd, 2015
"If we're good today, we'll be better tomorrow."
The final season of Boardwalk Empire breaks the mold of what the show has been for the first four years. The action jumps ahead several years to 1931. It's a necessary plot point if we're going to be ending the popular series in the fifth season. I understand the jump and why it works. I guess my only real question is: why are we jumping ahead to end what is one of the best shows on television? The answers likely lie within the powers that be at either HBO or the show's production staff. There's little point arguing the point. This is your last chance to get some Nucky... Nucky Thompson, that is.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 20th, 2015
Boyhood is all the rage right now. With all the hoopla surrounding the film, it should be noted that it is ordinary. It is just about people living their lives. One could even call it boring. One can say that because life is boring. It is not as exciting as it is in the movies. Life is about small moments that add up to memories and then it is over. Boyhood doesn't make grand statements about boyhood, or about motherhood or fatherhood for that matter. It is just about a few people and what happens to them. One could say it's about nothing, or one could say it's about everything. The film is nearly three hours long. It was filmed for a few weeks a year over twelve years. It is a very personal project for its writer/director, Richard Linklater.
I don't like Boyhood because it is messy and unfocused. I love Boyhood because it focuses on all the small moments and makes them seem all so important at the moment they happen. I love Boyhood because it makes us look back on our own lives. I don't like Boyhood because it makes it seem like all life is boring. I like Boyhood because it is unassuming in it's efforts to show us a mirror of ourselves. One could say, I'm conflicted about Boyhood. I can say I love many Richard Linklater films; in fact, I like every one of them. And they are not all the same, but they have one thing in common. None of them are pretentious, and that was after seeing his last film Before Midnight which delved precariously into highfaluting and high-minded bouts of conversation. In fact, Linklater has always been on his own path down in Texas. It was a slacker path, since that was the name of his first film. He was always an indie guy but had big successes over the years like School of Rock, Bad News Bears and Dazed and Confused. But the films that most closely tie to Boyhood are the trilogy of films Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. Those three films starred Ethan Hawke, detailing conversations with one woman (Julie Delpy) over the years. The trilogy was filmed in 1995, 2004 and 2013. Boyhood began filming in May 2002 and also starring Ethan Hawke, but the real star is Ellar Coltrane who ages from 6 to 18 in the film.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on January 20th, 2015
We can blame thank Liam Neeson — or “Liam Neesons” — for this recent run of action movies about men of a certain age who tear their way through some part of Europe in the name of their missing or dead children. Viktor — a French/Russian production starring Gerard Depardieu and Elizabeth Hurley — is one of these latest Taken take-offs. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the more inert revenge films you’re likely to see.
It’s a shame because the movie has a lovely, kinetic opening credits sequence featuring a Chechen dance rehearsal. (The sequence is paid off quite nicely at the very end.) Shortly after that opening, we meet Viktor Lambert (Gerard Depardieu) a French art thief who has just finished serving a seven-year prison sentence. Just before getting out, his son Jeremie (Jean Baptiste Fillon) is killed. Viktor arrives in Moscow — where Jeremie was doing work for a diamond smuggler named Anton Belinsky (Denis Karasyov) — looking for answers.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on January 19th, 2015
What if Elvis Presley had an identical twin brother no one ever knew about? (It would certainly help explain all those Elvis sightings years after the King's death.) That's the kooky conceit at the center of The Identical. Unfortunately, rather than embracing the absurdity of its premise, the movie is an amateurish, uninspiring combination of “by-the-numbers musical biopic” and “painfully-earnest family drama.”
In the Depression-era South, financially-strapped parents William and Helen Hemsley (Brian Geraghty, Amanda Crew) struggle to raise their twin babies. William seeks guidance from tent revival preacher Reece Wade (Ray Liotta), who has been unsuccessfully trying to have a child of his own with wife Louise (Ashley Judd). The Hemsleys decide to let the Wades adopt one of their children, who is given the name Ryan.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on January 15th, 2015
When I think about the swamps of the Louisiana bayou, with the exception of hungry gators lurking beneath the murky depths, I can’t help but think about the connection it has to the supernatural. I blame seeing Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond for this. It’s a film that haunted me when I was a kid, and the imagery has stuck with me over the years. There have been numerous films over the years that have explored the supernatural of the bayou; most successfully we saw this in the Kate Hudson thriller The Skeleton Key. The bayou just seems to be a location that equates to doom for all those naive enough to relocate to it. Jessabelle follows suit in this southern gothic thriller that may look the part of a horror film but simply doesn’t deliver.
In the span of just a few minutes we meet Jessie (Sarah Snook) and her boyfriend, before we even have the chance to get to know or care about this couple, we watch as they are involved in a tragic car accident that not only kills the boyfriend but also Jessie’s unborn child. The tragedy isn’t missed by the viewer, but what is missed is any opportunity to become attached to this couple.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on January 15th, 2015
“There are 32 ways to tell a story, but there's only ever one plot...that things are not what they seem.”
Early on in Bad Turn Worse, a character mentions this maxim credited to writer Jim Thompson (“The Grifters”, “The Killer Inside Me”) apropos of almost nothing. It's kind of a clunky, inauthentic interjection, but the message is clear and crafty: directors Simon and Zeke Hawkins know they're not re-inventing the wheel in terms of plot, so where they really hope to grab your attention is in how they present their stylish, well-acted feature film debut.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 14th, 2015
"There will be casualties"
Alan Ball got my attention in 2001 with HBO's black comedy Six Feet Under. It was one of the most original shows I had ever seen, and to this day I find it hard to characterize the series when asked to do so. It was there that he also introduced me to Michael C. Hall, who continues to amaze me in the role of Dexter over at Showtime. When Six Feet Under left the airwaves, Ball didn't waste very much time in bringing his quirky style back, this time to the horror genre. True Blood would put a rather strange twist on the lovesick vampire craze, and while that show has not kept up the same kind of clever writing and wickedly brilliant stories, Ball has lent his name and talents to another cable show. This time it's on Cinemax, and the series is Banshee. And while Ball is a producer and not the day-to-day runner of the series, it is nonetheless another pretty strange show that defies any particular genre or characterization.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on January 13th, 2015
“Those who are feared make peace. Those who are kind get killed.”
Both temperaments are well represented throughout the first season of Tyrant, FX’s Middle East-set family drama. I say “family drama” because even though the show features plenty of political power plays and double-crosses, Tyrant is at its best when it focuses on the rotting and crumbling of the central Al-Fayeed clan. Call it Godfather-lite.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 13th, 2015
"Since the beginning of civilization, dolls have been beloved by children, cherished by collectors and used in religious rites as conduits for good and evil."
The Conjuring was one of the best horror movies to come along in years. Why? Because it was a good scare with a story that didn't totally insult our intelligence or leave us scratching our heads too many times. The movie also dealt with its own red herring of sorts in a possessed doll kept under wraps by that film's hero couple. We're treated to a tease of her story before we move on to other matters. It was used more or less to establish the expertise of Ed (Wilson) and Lorraine (Farmiga) Warren, who would play a central part in the film. After a rather chilling tease and more than enough establishing shots of the doll in a case with all sorts of ominous warnings, we moved on to the story that film was setting out to tell. No question James Wan delivered yet another frightening film that did not really involve the Annabelle doll at all, as it turned out. For the next 90 minutes we forgot about Annabelle, but after a while we went home, and the creepy image of the doll wouldn't shake from our slumber. There was really only one thing for a studio to do, either to exorcise the distraction from our minds or mine a little coin in the doing. The result is the highly anticipated Annabelle.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 13th, 2015
The internet is destroying everything. It seems crazy, but it's true, and most people know it. I mean that so many businesses have been destroyed by the tremendous growth of the internet and its insidious and unchecked influence. The newspaper business, music business, broadcast business and probably the movie business have been fundamentally and permanently altered. Men, Women and Children addresses how it affects each and every one of us on a daily basis. We're all aware of this. It's our lives now, and it wasn't 10 years ago. Texting on iPhones is so addictive with some people that they are oblivious to how obnoxious it is. Most of us are aware, on some level, how much computers and phones are sucking away what used to be our lives. We know it, but the die is cast. That's the problem with Men, Women and Children. We know everything already, and this movie shoves it down our throat. The subject is definitely timely, but too much of what happens in this movie is like a parade of clichés.
Jason Reitman (Juno, Up In The Air, Thank You For Smoking) is a good director, but he has been losing his touch, citing films like Labor Day and Young Adult. This film is packed with good actors, but they all seem wasted, even Adam Sandler. Sandler is the big star here, making another stretch into dramatic territory. Sandler has done very good work in other people's movies before like Punch Drunk Love, Reign On Me and Spanglish, but not here. Here he is a limp, washed-out nothing, which is what the character demands but still is not a good thing to see. Most of the other good actors like Rosemarie DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, J.K. Simmons, Dean Norris, Ansel Elgort, Dennis Haysbert and Emma Thompson here seem wasted with predicable and dreary functions in aid of a boring puzzle.
