Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 24th, 2002
What do you get when you splice together Meet the Parents with Beverly Hills Cop? You get a rarely comedic, intense or interesting action movie that suffers from never finding its own identity. And flat screenwriting. And long lulls.
Detective Preston (Robert DeNiro) and Trey Sellers (Eddie Murphy) are brought together as unlikely partners to star in a new reality TV cop drama, produced by Chase Ransey (Rene Russo) of Maxis TV. As expected, they are at each others throats the entire movie until the end, wh...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 22nd, 2002
We find out early in the film that the term Last Orders is an English tradition along the lines of a last will and testament. There’s really nothing very complicated about this film. There are some wonderful moments of acting particularly by Bob Hoskins. The major complaint is that there are actually four stories being told from four different timelines making it extremely confusing at times.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 15th, 2002
Synopsis
Disney’s villains converge on Mickey’s House of Mouse (his variety theatre). They plan totake it over, but along the way we get to see a bunch of Halloween themed cartoons. The superbanimation in the classics does tend to show up the more limited stuff in the new segments(though this is still better than the Saturday morning variety).
Audio
The soundtrack is technically fine, but you should be aware of something regarding the 5.1mix. The new segment...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 15th, 2002
Synopsis
This is the story of four obnoxious roommates: a hippy, a yuppie, a poseur and a punk. Theygradually demolish their flat and visit violence on each other, all the while yelling at the top oftheir lungs. Though nicely weird at times (check out the talking rats), this often deliberately badcomedy is very much in the acquired taste department.
Audio
Not too much to report here. The TV series was mono, and so is the DVD. It gets the jobdone, and is clea...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 15th, 2002
Synopsis
The story opens with the total disintegration of the Dolls, an all-girl rock band. Not only arethey fighting each other hammer and tongs (some nicely edited moments here), or coma-drunk,but someone in the basement is dead. We then flash back to chart their rise and fall. This isenthusiastic, if raw, work.
Audio
Don’t expect miracles here, not at this kind of a budget. There is a fair bit of buzz on thedialogue, though the music sounds fine. There ar...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 15th, 2002
Miranda flits between four men, trying to find the right lover and husband (to replace the onewho died in during WWII). And so we move from one nicely dressed set to another, for onebadly dubbed sexual encounter after another. Pretty, but dull.Audio
The sound is mono, and gets off to a rocky start, with a lot of hiss and static in thebackground as the credit music plays. The hiss diminishes afterwards, but you will have to put upwith the dubbing and wildly anachronistic dialogue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 11th, 2002
Synopsis
I'll confess, I saw Maiden myself, lo these many years ago on their Powerslave tour, so I was sort of partial to this disc. The big favourites ("Number of the Beast" and "Run to the Hills" among them) are present and correct. As with all concert films, there are only so many ways of filming largely motionless people and making them look interesting, but the main point is the sound, when you get down to it.
Audio
The sound is BIG. A hugely powerful mix. I was suspic...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 10th, 2002
Synopsis
Young Alex O'Connel accidentally brings the Mummy back to life, and has the manacle of Osiris stuck to his wrist. With the help of his parents, and wielding the power of the manacle, he must find the lost scrolls (scattered hither and yon around the world) in order to defeat the Mummy. The animation is strictly Saturday-morning level, and calling these three episodes a feature at 65 minutes is stretching it a bit.
Audio
The sound is nice and clear, with no distorti...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 10th, 2002
Synopsis
Frankie Muniz is the liar of the title, and so is already in plenty of trouble. Then he meets someone even worse than the truth than he is: Paul Giamatti, playing a completely sleazy Hollywood producer, who steals Muniz' creative writing paper and makes a movie from it. Muniz and best friend Amanda Bynes head off for Hollywood to exact revenge -- some of which, I must confess, is pretty damn funny.
Audio
The music sounds terrific, as does the dialogue (no distortio...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 7th, 2002
Nicholas Cage did this film in 1989, long before most of the more famous films he places high atop his resume. He admits this is a film he would not be able to do today but is damn glad he did. Director Robert Bierman was also pretty much a novice when he created this quirky dark comedy.
To be honest I never saw the film when it was originally released and approached the DVD with a lot of skepticism. Most of the performances are way over the top and the cinematography is simple, often resorting to what Hollywood calls "stolen shots" (filming done without any set-up in a public area using real people.)
