Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 5th, 2006
Synopsis
Game tester Allen Covert is evicted from his apartment, and winds up rooming with his grandmother (Doris Roberts) and her two friends, the stone-on-meds Shirley Knight and the sexually predatory Shirley Jones. He attempts to keep this rather humiliating set-up secret from co-workers and sexy new boss/potential love interest Linda Cardinelli.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 4th, 2006
Swordfish stars Hugh Jackman (X-Men as computer hacker Stanley. Stanley has just spent two years in jail for hacking a program used specifically by the FBI to snoop in on everybody’s email. Enter Halle Berry (also X-Men) as Ginger who has been assigned to recruit Stanley to help stop mastermind Gabriel Shear played by John Travolta (Face-Off). The initial problem here is that Stanley, obviously, doesn’t trust the government. He has been previously forbidden by the courts to come anywhere n...ar a computer. Ginger decides to use a little persuasion in the form of a lap dance and a weapon to give him exactly one-minute to hack into a government computer. It looks like Stanley still has a bit of hacker in him as he completes this task. Stanley is offered $10 Million Dollars to work for Shear as one of his main men. Why on earth Shear would trust Stanley we soon learn.
Shear wants to recruit some of the world’s best hackers, Stanley being one of them, to help him break into a DEA bank account that contains some money. Some money in this cast is being translated into $9.5 Billion Dollars. I must take a quick break here and comment on the work of John Travolta. Ever since becoming a ‘nut-case’ (in the media’s eyes) along with Tom Cruise, it seems like audiences have forgotten how great of an actor he is. Travolta has made some of the best action films in Face-Off and Broken Arrow all while making funny films like Get Shorty. Back to the program though, Shear is able to, through his cunning skill, manipulate and use many people, including us in many scenes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 3rd, 2006
I have been rambling on and on about the merits of this outstanding series to friends, family and innocent bystanders for years. I will continue to do so until the final disc of the final season has hit Amazon.com; and probably for quite some time after that. It is a show that is important, culturally relevant, and surprisingly political without becoming annoyingly partisan.
Season Six is something of a bounceback season for the show. In Season Five, the show floundered a bit. While it was still easily one of...the best things on television, the ship lots its way. Issues were explored, but no one issue really solidified itself as a strong story point. By the time Season Six came around, the show had a natural theme to run with; re-elections. As Bartlet begins to struggle with complicated issues in the Middle East, Presidential hopefuls emerge in the form of Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits. Instead of winding down and fading away, this show picked up steam as it headed toward the end of its seven season run. I, for one, am enjoying every minute of it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 3rd, 2006
Synopsis
FBI agent Martin Lawrence has given up the dangers of field work because of his family responsibilities. Now he’s a safety mascot. But when his first partner is killed, Lawrence surreptitiously dons his Big Momma persona gain, posing as a nanny in the family of the chief suspect, a man who is developing software that could compromise national security.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 2nd, 2006
I will be honest and inform you that I have yet to like a video game based film since 1995’s Mortal Kombat. It seems that no matter how closely they try to follow the story based on the game, the director always fails. One of the more famous director’s in the video-game to movie based series is director Uwe Boll, who has brought us The House of the Dead and the recent Bloodrayne, These movies, as the popular consensus agrees, were extremely awful. They lacked anything redeeming, despite the orig...nal source material being pretty good. When I heard of a film being made on the game series Doom, I began to worry as I figured it would follow the typical trend of terrible video-game based movies. Can Doom reverse the horrible trend of terrible video-game based movies? Read on to find out
Doom begins with a fly in shot over the red planet Mars. We move in more and see the Olduvai Research Station, which is a remote scientific facility on Mars. And that is the last scene we see of the planet Mars. For a movie based on a game that takes place on the red planet Mars, we never fully see the planet except for the opening scene. Maybe this is me wanting what I saw in the game series. But every film director has to take a few creative liberties right? Well, I am very disappointed to report to that director Andrzej Bartkowiak and Universal seem to have taken a few too many creative liberties when making this film as the film is nothing like the game at all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 2nd, 2006
Synopsis
Over 400 years in the future, the remnants of humanity live in one last city. This is under the total control of the Goodchild regime. Innocents are constantly disappearing. The government is fought by the Monican resistance, and super-assassin Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) is sent to assassinate supreme leader Trevor Goodchild. At the moment of her victory, however, she hesitates, and it soon becomes apparent that nothing is as she though it was.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 30th, 2006
Honestly, does the world really need another Steven Segal movie? I think what's even more depressing than the thought of another Segal flick is the fact that he has attached himself to the project as an executive producer. Clearly, this is the failed actor's latest attempt in an ongoing quest to regain the successful film career he enjoyed in the 90's. Of course, his string of hits ended for a very good reason. Sure, there will always be a place for the big, dumb, mindless action movie. The thing is, even mindless ac...ion flicks have been done better than this one. The plot here is pretty much the same kind of thing you would expect. The son of a wealthy arms dealer has been kidnapped, and Segal is called in as a mercenary to rescue the boy and collect a handsome reward. Only, when the mission gets underway, Segal realizes that he has been double-crossed, and he must choose between his reward and doing the right thing.
Do these things still make money? While I certainly understand Segal's desire to want to keep making films, I can't understand the studio's desire to keep funding them. When I was a 15-year-old boy, I was all about going to see Steven Segal karate chop some foreigner. Once I reached an age where I would be legally permitted to go to see such films, however, I had matured beyond this stage in my life. Apparently, I am in the minority, because here he is yet again, killing for a good cause, in this steaming pile of a direct-to-video film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 30th, 2006
There was a day in the not so distant past when there were about six big name comedians in the country, and everybody pretty much knew who they were. In the past several years, however, stand-up has really taken off in the United States, and it has become increasingly more difficult to keep track of who is who. Jeff Cesario is one of those that has garnered some popularity over the past several years, and is starting to make a big name for himself, but has certainly not arrived on the big stage just yet.
Sinc... comedy is so subjective, it doesn't really seem fair for me to say “this guy's funny” or “his show is lame”, because who am I to decide what you are going to think is funny? All I can do is speak for myself, and I personally didn't care for him. I found him pleasant enough, and some of his jokes were very funny, but generally speaking, his brand of humor just wasn't for me. Others may really enjoy him, and that's fantastic, he just happens to not appeal to me. As a result, my advice to you is that if you have not seen Cesario perform before, you might want to rent this title before you buy it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006
Best guess, this is David Lynch's way of showing how crude and tasteless many modern animated shows are. Maybe by creating one of these shows at the truly lowest possible denominator, Lynch is trying to make an artistic comment on what the American public freely accepts as quality entertainment. Shows such as Beavis and Butt-Head have been mocked for their poor animation quality. South Park has frequently been mentioned when strong language is the topic of discussion. This series hits an all-new low in...both categories, not to mention those of extreme violence and gross-out humor. This show truly is the lowest possible artistic medium... and it is that way on purpose. By showing us just how utterly wretched these shows could be, Lynch is sending a powerful message to the ever-growing segment of the American population that thinks it is “cool” to be ignorant; as well as to those networks that put such shows on the air.
While I do not completely agree with his beliefs, he still makes a very valid point. This is a very shrewd way of making an editorial comment, but that doesn't make this disc any more pleasant to watch. Watch this disc if you must, but I beg of you, please, please do not buy it. You will never watch it a second time. In fact, though the entirety of the disc only lasts 35-minutes, you may not even make it that far the first time through.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006
In the era we live in, the eventuality of a movie about war was going to come, whether or not we wanted to see the film. Since the war in Iraq is such a hot button topic with a majority of people, regardless if you were for the war or against the war, Universal thought this would be the perfect moment to capture our interest in war. Enter director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and stars Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) and Academy-Award winning Actor Jamie Foxx (Ray) and you know you have a m...vie that will pique the average person’s curiousity. But was Jarhead made too soon? Would people really want to see what our soliders are going through? Let’s find out shall we?
Jarhead is based on the 2003 memoirs of Anthony Swofford who is portrayed by Gyllenhaal. Swofford served in the first Gulf War. The film is obviously about a war, but what makes the film amazing is that it is a war film that rises way, way above the concept of a war to tell an intriguing story of exhaustion, boredom, lonliness, obession and drama.
![Swordfish [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/swordfish-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Doom [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/doom-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Jarhead [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/jarhead-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
