Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 27th, 2018
Remember when Steven Soderbergh told us he was retiring from filmmaking? Since that time he has been behind two of Hollywood's most unique films in a long time. Lucky Logan was a refreshing kind of heist film that made it more of a comedy with wonderful character studies. Now comes Unsane, which employs a completely unique form of filmmaking itself. The entire film was shot basically on an iPhone. That's not entirely true, because he did use various lens configurations that aren't exactly standard on the typical cell phone. Still, he used the phone as the actual digital recording device. What makes this more unique is that he did this to produce a near-normal film and not the expected "found footage" kind of project that one would expect from a movie made on a cell phone. All of this made me extremely skeptical going in, and I'll admit to avoiding the film a bit. When it arrived on UHD in 4K/HDR, I was even less interested in seeing the results. I don't mind admitting here that I was rather surprised at the film I ended up seeing.
The plot of the film is actually quite compelling. Claire Foy does a tremendous job of playing Sawyer Valentini. Sawyer has just started a new job in a new town, and she's impressing her boss and coworkers. But when a date goes badly, we discover that Sawyer is a badly damaged woman who is here because she's running from a stalker. She's suffering a kind of PSTD that isn't always evident on the surface. She does the right thing. She goes to a facility to talk to a therapist about her issues. The next thing she knows she's given papers to sign, which she does without actually reading them. There's definitely a lesson to be learned here, and Sawyer learns it the hard way. She's discovered that she's voluntarily committed herself for a week at the facility. But before you can say One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, things get intense and much worse for Sawyer. It appears she might be the victim of an insurance scam that could keep her here until her insurance coverage literally runs out. She's also confronted by the man who has been stalking her, who could now be working on the hospital staff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 26th, 2018
"Who is Jack Reacher? Born Jack, not John. No middle name. He's a ghost. Served in the military police. A brilliant investigator, troublemaker, too. And two years ago he disappears. You don't find this guy unless he wants to be found."
We've found him. The character of Jack Reacher comes from a series of thriller novels written by Lee Child. From the very start you know that this is going to be a different kind of Jack Reacher than fans have come to know and love from the books. He’s described as being 6' 5’’ and about 250 pounds. Tom Cruise doesn't really fit any of those description elements. He does, however, fit two very important descriptive elements when it comes to Hollywood. He's still a big name and a pretty reliable box office draw. He also put up some of his own cash to produce the movie. Now that's how you get cast for a part very physically different from yourself.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on June 25th, 2018
“If you believe in a goal or dream before it happens, is that real?”
There aren’t a lot of inspirational tales out there for young women who aspire to be athletes. At least not that I have seen. That is why I am sure that Alex and Me is bound to make an impact. This is tale for every girl who aspires for greatness. As a father to an amazing little girl, this really hit home for me. Unfortunately, not so much with my daughter, who is a bit too young to grasp the importance of the message this film is conveying, but I fully intend to keep this movie on hand for when she is old enough to understand.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on June 22nd, 2018
“I just need you to not freak anybody out tonight.”
Flower ends up being a pretty strong reflection of its promiscuous protagonist: both the movie and the anti-heroine at its center are sharp, profane, a little all-over-the place, and contain a surprising undercurrent of emotion. The movie is a polarizing experience, to be sure, but I enjoyed going on this particular wild, unpredictable ride.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 20th, 2018
Cinematically speaking, the name Eli Roth has been synonymous with murder and mayhem. The director is best known for his work in the horror genre, bursting on the scene with 2002’s Cabin Fever and upping the ante with Hostel and Hostel: Part II a few years later. So it was a bit surprising to hear he’d be taking on a remake of Death Wish — the iconic 1974 Charles Bronson revenge flick — until I started thinking about the bloody possibilities. If the Hostel films gained notoriety as prime examples of “torture porn,” then it seems like Roth has graduated to “revenge porn” with this slick and (intentionally) silly re-imagining.
“People rely on the police to keep them safe. That’s the problem.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 19th, 2018
When Pacific Rim first came out, I had a blast with the film. It was the ultimate giant-monster-versus-giant-robot film that my inner ten-year-old has wanted to see for so long. Sure, the film had some dialog issues, but the world that Guillermo del Toro created with the film was so over-the-top and beautiful that the bad dialog was easy to forget. It knew what it was, brainless eye candy, and it delivered in a big way. Now we have the sequel coming out; del Toro is no longer at the helm, and in his place we have Steven S. DeKnight whose previous directorial efforts have been episodes from Daredevil and Dollhouse. Does the sequel hold up? Well, to put it bluntly, not even close.
John Boyega has been an actor I’ve appreciated since I first saw him in Attack the Block. Seriously, if you haven’t seen Attack the Block yet, stop wasting time and see this immediately. While I’ve enjoyed seeing him in the new Star Wars films, I just feel he’s an actor who hasn’t gotten the appreciation he deserves, and for a while when I saw he was going to be in Pacific Rim: Uprising I had hopes that this could be the film that put him over the top. He comes into Uprising playing Jake, the son of the famed hero of the jaeger/kaiju Stacker Pentecost who was played by Idris Elba. He wants nothing to do with that legacy and instead has become a thief in the world that is still in ruins from the kaiju attacks that occurred ten years prior. It’s while he is trying to steal tech from an old jaeger that he runs into Amara (Cailee Spaeny), who is stealing jaeger tech of her own so she can finish building one herself. The two, though, are eventually caught, and instead of serving jail time the powers that be decide to send them to Top Gun…I mean jaeger training. How this makes any sense is a stretch at best, but this is a movie about monsters the size of skyscrapers, so logic I suppose should really be left at the ticket counter.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 17th, 2018
Despite falling into the “coming of age genre”, Love, Simon is actually so much more than your typical mainstream teenage film. In the 80’s John Hughes ruled the box office with his films, everything from Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink and of course The Breakfast Club were the films that spoke to the kids of the era. It’s been a while since a film has come along that has fit into the genre that has managed to handle the awkwardness of being a teenager while also toeing the line of being heartfelt and humorous. Over the years there have been attempts to capture the essence of the 80’s John Hughes films, but these seem to always fail by either going to raunchy or attempting to make the lead characters cool and popular. It seems director Greg Berlanti has figured out how to bottle the magic of a John Hughes film and deliver a story Hughes never got to tell, a story about a teen dealing with the struggle of being gay and keeping it a secret from everyone around him. The film is based off the young adult novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, and the result is an unexpected and refreshing tale that has me wonder why it’s taken so long for a LGBT film to hit the mainstream.
When we meet Simon (Nick Robinson), he is introduced to us through narration as he navigates us through his normal life, normal with the exception of the secret he’s hiding from his friends and family about being gay. We can easily sympathize with his character; after all, he’s simply keeping his secret because he loves his life and friends and is concerned that him coming out could cause things to change. He sees how the one openly gay kid at his school is treated, and it’s enough to convince him that perhaps waiting to come out till he’s about to go to college would be the easiest thing. His parents, played by Josh Dummel and Jennifer Garner, are the supportive type, and then he has his friends Leah (Katherine Langford), Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and Abby (Alexandra Shipp) who are part of his tight group as well. There is a good chemistry with everyone involved, and it helps getting to see them as a tight-knit group before Simon’s life takes a dramatic twist.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 17th, 2018
When it comes to the Italian western aka the spaghetti western, the first director who comes to mind is Sergio Leone (The Good The Bad And The Ugly); and then there is Sergio Corbucci. While Leone was blazing a successful career, Corbucci first came onto the scene with his film Django. The film was dirty, violent, and mean. For those who are only familiar with the Quentin Tarantino version of Django, well, you’ll definitely see the films are drastically different aside from them both being revenge films. Much later on Corbucci got the chance to follow up his first big hit with another western, The Great Silence. I had gotten to see this dark western before, though it was in the form of a bootleg copy. There was a lot of grain, and the ending attached to the film was radically different from the one Corbucci had intended. Film Movement Classics has done an amazing job at cleaning this title up and giving it a new 2K restoration. As for the film itself, saddle up, because this is like something many have not seen before.
One of the first striking things you will notice about this western is that it is mostly filmed in the cold and in the snow. We meet Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) as he is jumped by a group of bounty hunters whom he quickly dispatches, and when one surrenders himself, Silence manages to shoot off the man’s thumbs. That’s the thing about Silence that’s pretty cool. He kills in self-defense but seems to enjoy crippling bounty hunters so they won’t be able to kill again. We later get to find out just why Silence has it out for bounty hunters, but also the grisly reason why he’s been given the name Silence.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 15th, 2018
“Americans are loud, aren't they?”
Oh Lucy! earns the exclamation point in its title within the first two minutes. The movie opens with a shocking leap that is meant to jolt the audience, but barely causes our disaffected heroine to raise an eyebrow. It's played off as a throwaway moment, but it establishes the fact that this quirky Japanese/American dramedy with oodles of personality probably isn't going to go where you expect.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 14th, 2018
For some reason, adapting video games into good films has been the nut Hollywood just can’t seem to crack. The Resident Evil series has been successful, but I wouldn’t say it really holds up to the game. Personally, Silent Hill has been the only adaption I’ve really enjoyed, and that film has divided fans as well. As for the Tomb Raider franchise that kicked off in 2001, sure, it had some fun sequences. And with Angelina Jolie becoming a hot commodity at the time, it’s not too much of a surprise that it did well at the box office. Now 17 years later, the time has come for Tomb Raider to get a makeover and work its way through the reboot machine. This is a reboot, though, I don’t mind; after all, the video game gave its featured character a makeover and decided to tell the story of a much younger Lara Croft. As for the film, how did it do as it followed the game’s footsteps by casting a younger actress to fill the role?
Tomb Raider is kind of a big deal for Warner Bros. Sure, they kicked in a lot of money for this film, but, more importantly, this was obviously a potential tentpole franchise that they hoped to squeeze several sequels out of. Because of the franchise potential, it is no surprise that they would cast a younger talent for the role of Lara Croft, and for me Alicia Vikander is great choice. For those unfamiliar with Vikander, I simply can’t recommend Ex Machina enough. Is she Angelina Jolie? No, but that’s okay; times have changed, and, instead of sexualizing the role, we get a more grounded and relatable take on the character.
