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Genre

Of Mice and Men

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003

Synopsis

Gary Sinise (who also produced and directed) is George, the smart one. John Malkovich (in arole light years from his usual creepy venom) is Lennie, child-like but enormously strong. Thetwo best friends wander Depression-era California, looking for work. They find what seems likea long-term gig at the Tyler Ranch, but trouble rears its head in the form of the unhappy SherilynFenn, trapped in an abusive marriage. It isn’t long before everything goes to hell.

Audio< ...
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Road House

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003

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Road House is one long bar brawl interrupted occasionally by a thread of a plot line. Patrick Swayze is the offered marquee name, but better performances can be found from Ben Gazzara, best known for his portrayal of Al Capone, Sam Elliott, and even Kevin Tigue. The music is the only thing that keeps this one interesting. Jeff Healey stars as the bar’s regular musician and treats us to some of his best music.

Synopsis

Daulton (Swayze) is hired to clean up a rowdy redneck bar.
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Scarlet Diva

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 19th, 2003

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Synopsis

Asia Argento plays Anna Battista, who, when you get down to it, is really Asia Argento inthis intensely autobiographical film. Anna, a popular film star in Italy, stumbles from one bizarreencounter to another, pining for one-night-stand Kirk, in this picaresque tale. There isn’t much ofa plot, as such. Instead, we witness her descent into hell and ultimate redemption. The sex ispretty graphic, which is what caused all the fuss upon the film’s release, but what hasn’t beencommented …
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Wannabes

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 18th, 2003

Synopsis

Angelo’s the good brother, Paulie’s the bad boy. Fed up with waiting tables, Paulieconvinces Angelo and two friends to get into the bookie business. After a few missteps, businessbecomes good. Then it gets very good. Then they hook up with local don, Santo, who issaddled with an extremely volatile son, Vinnie. You can probably guess where all this isheading, and there are certainly no real surprises here. The clearest sign that we’re on familiarterritory is Vinnie, a clone …
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O

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 17th, 2003

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Synopsis

Instead of Othello, great warrior, we have Odin (Mekhi Phifer), basketball star. His loveDesdemona becomes Desi (Julia Stiles), and duplicitous friend Iago is not Hugo (Josh Hartnett).Consumed by jealousy because of Odin’s success, and feeling unloved by his father (MartinSheen), Hugo sets about destroying Odin and everyone else by planting the seeds of jealousy inhis mind. The more familiar you are with Othello, the better this plays, as it follows Shakespearevery closely,…
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Trouble Bound

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2003

Synopsis

Michael Madsen, recently sprung from jail, is determined to stay out of trouble. Things startoff well, when he wins five grand and a Lincoln Continental in a poker game. He heads off forLas Vegas, planning to multiply that money. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a corpse in thetrunk of the car. Then he picks up Patricia Arquette, a sociology major and mob family daughteron a vendetta against another mobster. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose, and does so quiteamusi…
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Asunder

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2003

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Synopsis

After a freak Ferris wheel accident kills his pregnant wife, Chance (Blair Underwood) istaken in by best friends Michael (Michael Beach) and Lauren (Debbi Morgan), friends whosemarriage is already shaky. The thing is, Chance and Lauren previously had an affair, somethingthat wracks Lauren with guilty, but that Chance is increasingly obsessed with reviving.Gradually, things go from bad to worse. Too gradually, in fact: we’re almost 45 minutes in beforethe thriller angle begi…
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Bliss

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2003

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Synopsis

Craig Sheffer and Sheryl Lee are less than a year into their marriage, and already they’re intherapy. It transpires that Lee has never had an orgasm. Sheffer finds out that she is visitingextremely unconventional sex therapist Terence Stamp. Outraged, he confronts Stamp, but windsup listening to him, and then becomes his pupil, hoping that what he learns will lead to sexualhealing for Lee. If this sounds like things are about to get very flaky, well, that depends on yourtak…
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I’ll Do Anything

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2003

Synopsis

Nick Nolte is a down-on-his-luck actor, who suddenly has to look after his six-year-olddaughter (who naturally winds up with a better TV career than he has). This film was a big flopfor writer/director James L. Brooks. It was originally a musical, but all the songs were cut priorto release.

Audio

The audio specifications aren’t really indicated, which smells like 2.0 to me. Theenvironment effect is all right, though not spectacular, and the left-rig…
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Tuck Everlasting

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 14th, 2003

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Synopsis

In the early years of the 20th Century, Winnie Foster (Alexis Bledel) is in the full throes ofadolescence and feeling extremely repressed by her domineering mother. Wandering off into thewoods next to her home, she stumbles upon the Tucks, a family of immortals. She falls in lovewith Jesse (Jonathan Jackson), who is 17, going on 104. Meanwhile, a supremely sinister BenKingsley is tracking the Tucks, hoping to make a mint with their fountain of youth. Kingsley isso dark, his…
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Sordid Lives

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 14th, 2003

Synopsis

An ensemble piece, along the lines of something John Sayles or Robert Altman might do,only on a minuscule budget and played strictly for laughs. A massively dysfunctional Southernfamily meet for the funeral of Grandma Peggy, and all sorts of animosities and such are workedout. The film is based on a play, and boy can you tell — static as hell, boring to watch. There aresome moments of genuine emotion with the gay characters, but for the most part this is just apainful slog…
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Bloody Murder 2

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 12th, 2003

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Synopsis

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A group of camp counsellors is shutting down a campwhere gruesome murders happened years before. They goof around, have sex, and areslaughtered by a masked maniac. Bloody Murder 2 is 90% shameless Friday the 13th plagiarism:the location is “Placid Pines” instead of “Crystal Lake” and the killer is “Trevor Moorehouse”instead of “Jason Voorhees,” but my God, even the number of syllables is the same. The other10% is stolen from Scream: a li…
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Thirst

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 11th, 2003

Synopsis

Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri) is, unbeknownst to her, a descendant of Countess Bathory. Aninternational cabal of vampires kidnap Kate, take her to their industrial blood farm (wherepeople, called “blood cows,” are milked and the product is place in milk cartons). There Kate issubjected to extensive psychological conditioning, the purpose of which is to make her reclaimher heritage. The concept is interesting, taking the idea of the vampire as the upper class bleedingthe low…
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Summer of Fear

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 11th, 2003

Synopsis

Linda Blair plays Rachel, a teenager whose parents take in her cousin Julia when Julia’sparents are killed in a car crash. Julia bewitches everyone but Rachel, who realizes that Julia is,in fact, Evil. This is the European theatrical cut of the TV movie, which aired Stateside asStranger in Our House. Though an important release for those following Craven’s early career,especially his early movies, this remains nonetheless very much a 1978 network TV film, withall the limita…
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Ultimate X

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 10th, 2003

When I was 12 I rode my 10-speed down a huge hill and crashed down a concrete stairwell into a brick wall. I survived. The bike didn’t. If only I had known there was a career in this stuff it might have hurt a little less. Of course, in those days there was no such thing as X games. With this DVD, perhaps the X Games have arrived…with highlights from X Games VII in Philadelphia.

Audio

Ultimate X contains solid Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks. Except for a bit of a bottom boost on the…
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Puphedz: The Tattle-Tale Heart

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 10th, 2003

Synopsis

The story is essentially “The Tell-Tale Heart”: our protagonist, obsessed by an old man’sugly eye, kills him, buries him under the floorboards, but then loses it when he thinks he stillhears the beating heart. The short feature has a lot of affection for Poe (despite misspelling hismiddle name) and actually uses much of the actual prose from the original story, before divertinginto slapstick silliness. Not all of the jokes work, but the care and imagination that went into the…
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Duellists, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 9th, 2003

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Synopsis

Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel are soldiers in Napoleon’s army. The film opens the yearNapoleon has become ruler of France. Keitel is a man of irrational and explosive temper. For noreal reason, he develops a hatred for Carradine, and challenges him to a duel. Over and overagain, during the course of the tumultuous years that follow, the two duel, but never manage tocomplete their battle and both always live to fight another day. Though not without darkness,this film, ba…
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The Bourne Identity

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 8th, 2003

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In 1988 Richard Chamberlin played the signature role of Jason Bourne in a made for TV adaptation of the classic novel The Bourne Identity. The show was a two-part pilot for a projected series that was never picked up. While the TV version might have been more faithful to the novel, the 2002 film with Matt Damon as Bourne effectively brings the spy yarn into the 21st century. Microfilm is replaced with a laser decoder and the awkward doctor is replaced with a more fitting female companion. Damon’s youth is both an asset and a liability.
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City by the Sea

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 8th, 2003

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Synopsis

De Niro is Vincent LaMarca. His father was a kidnapper and accidental murderer. Now hisson, a junkie, has also killed a man. Will LaMarca be able to stop the generational cycle ofviolence? The Long Beach settings are very effective, combining rotting former grandeur withStalinist architecture. So far, so 70s, and the hard-luck characters fit right in. FrancesMcDormand, however, is stuck with a woefully underwritten part as De Niro’s girlfriend. Theplot, as well, is strictly…
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Cardinal, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 7th, 2003

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Synopsis

Tom Tryon, better known today as a novelist (he is the author of, among other works, TheOther, a classic of modern horror), plays the title character. From humble curate in the poorestparish of Massachusetts, he rises, over twenty years, to become a cardinal. Along the way, sincethis is a three hour film, he encounters One Damn Thing After Another, from his sister’s desireto marry outside the faith, to abortion, racism, temptations of the flesh, the Nazis, and so on. Thewho…
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MASH – The Complete Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 6th, 2003

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This set contains all episodes of season 3 from M*A*S*H in broadcast order. This season of M*A*S*H from a critical standpoint was probably one of the best of the 11 seasons, this was the year that the show won the Peabody award, the highest award you can receive in television, and co-producer gene Reynolds won an Emmy award for directing the episode, “O.R.” which is seen here uncut and unedited. Also on this disc are the episodes The General Flipped at Dawn, Officer of the Day, Check-up, and Rainbow Bridge, Iron gut…
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Wasabi

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 6th, 2003

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Synopsis

Jean Reno, playing a Hard-Boiled Cop Who Plays By His Own Rules, is put on forcedvacation, having punched out one person too many. During this break, he finds out that thewoman he loved in Japan 19 years ago has died. Travelling to Japan for the funeral, he discoversa daughter he never knew he had. She happens to be worth $200,000,000, and bad guys are outfor the money. Something like The Professional Lite, Wasabi plays its action strictly for laughs,and it is pretty funny….
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Master of Disguise, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 6th, 2003

Synopsis

Dana Carvey returns to the big screen with the tale of Pistachio Disguise. He plays a waiter at his father’s Italian restaurant who can’t figure out why he compulsively mimics his customers and is always changing his appearance. What he soon learners’ is that these are all traits of the Disguisey family, harnessing the great power of Energico they are able to transform themselves and have used their powers to fight evil for centuries. When his parents are kidnapped Pistachio must learn to us…
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SpongeBob Squarepants: Tales from the Deep

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 6th, 2003

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Synopsis

By this time, you either like this guy or you don’t. There is a lot of fun goofiness here, butthere are also some ill-advised live-action additions (such as in “House Party” and “I Had anAccident”), which are just plain painful.

Audio

The 2.0 sound is crisp, clear, distortion-free and fun. The surround effect is pretty muchlimited to the music, but it’s pretty constant.

Video

As with the other SpongeBob DVDs, the picture is …
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All or Nothing

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 5th, 2003

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Synopsis

A multi-character tale of working class families, All or Nothing’s emotional centre isTimothy Spall’s Phil (a taxi driver) and Lesley Manville’s Penny (a Safeway cashier). They, theirchildren and their friends live lives of quiet desperation and plenty of bleakness, but a certainwry humour lurks just under the surface.

Audio

This is a very quiet film, by and large, so there isn’t a lot by way of sound effects. The musicis very important, however, an…
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