Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 19th, 2007
Having previously only seen the theatrical trailer for Derailed, I was pleased to finally get a chance to watch it. The movie seemed to be filled with a lot of suspense, but the redundancy of this type of affair movie sort of detoured me. Ultimately, I went into this with expectations of an impressive thriller.
Charles Schine (Clive Owen) is a well-off advertising executive married to a school teacher. Together, they have a teenage daughter. Due to complications with diabetes the couple has to be co...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 13th, 2007
Written by Jason Smilovic, Lucky Number Slevin is an adaptation from the 1961 Japanesse film Yojimbo. Maybe a more referable title, 1964�s A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood which was also based on Yojimbo, or even another film starring Bruce Willis, Last Man Standing. Basically Lucky Number Slevin keeps the main plot elements, a protagonist playing off both sides of a gang rivalry, but retells the story in modern times along with a handful of notable actors. Among them...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 5th, 2007
Here we go, with another rise and fall story in the underworld. Two young friends in Jamaica, Biggs and Wayne, grow up separately to become powerful gangsters (the “shottas” of the title). After a prolonged separation, they reunite in Kingston, and the story takes them back and forth between that city and Miami as they climb the drug totem pole, heading for the inevitable fall shown pre-credits.
All the characters speak Jamaican patois, making subtitle necessary.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 13th, 2006
Synopsis
Gregory Peck is a Nobel-laureate scientist sent to China to try to recover a new enzyme that allows one to grow any crop in any climate. The operation is being conducted jointly by the Americans, the British and the Russians (!). Peck has a transmitter implanted in his head that relays his physiological conditions and his every word back to base. What he doesn’t know is that the implant is also explosive, and trigger-happy general Arthur Hill might well blow Peck’s top, as it were.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 10th, 2006
Synopsis
George Segal is assigned by spymaster Alec Guinness to find the base of a group of neo-Nazis in Berlin. Head bad guy Max Von Sydow hopes to pry information out of Segal, specifically where the base of the good-guy spies (the precise organization is vague) is located. Segal’s only help is a schoolteacher (Senta Berger) with whom he begins an affair. George Sanders turns up in a couple of scenes for no particular reason.
The script is by Harold Pinter – yes, THAT Harold Pinter, and i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 9th, 2006
By the time this film was announced, everyone and their dog had asked me if I’d read The Da Vinci Code. I hadn’t.
Yes, I’d heard it was the bestest book in the whole wide world. No, I didn’t want to borrow their copy. Months later, when I finally sat down to watch this DVD, I had still not read Dan Brown’s masterpiece. See, I decided to be one of the few who could judge the film as completely separate from the novel.
Unfortunately for my personal experiment, it seems that the book was simply
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 1st, 2006
There are so many sub-genres of horror these days. There is the ever-popular teen slasher flick, there is Japanese horror, gore, zombie, thrillers and even the recent popularity of the 70's throwback. This one falls into the dramatic slow-burn category. The plot here sounds like something out of one of the better Steven King short stories. Someone in the federal government discovers that the population of little Rockford Falls seems to have remained steady for over a hundred years. An official is sent to investigate this anomaly, and what he finds is a mixture of small-town life, strong religious beliefs and some eerily strange goings-on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 30th, 2006
Synopsis
Michael Douglas is a familiar figures: The Hard-Bitten Cop Who Plays By His Own Rules. He is currently under investigation by Internal Affairs. When he and partner Andy Garcia witness a Yakuza killing and nab the killer, they are tasked with escorting him back to Japan. They have barely landed when they lose him, and are pared up with straight-arrow Osaka cop Ken Takakura in the search to track the villain down again. Douglas and Takakura, as expected, engage in considerable culture clashing.
Posted in: 2.35:1 Widescreen, Disc Reviews, Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 (English), Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 (French), HD-DVD, Suspense / Thriller, Universal by Archive Authors on October 25th, 2006
Synopsis
(What can I say, I’m a lazy bastard, so I’ve liberally borrowed from my earlier review of this disc, which can also be found on the site, save for the audio and video information.)
John Carpenter can be hit or miss on some of the things he’s done in his career. Vampires may be a good case in point. In his version of The Thing, remade from Howard Hawks’ 1950’s classic, he doesn’t focus on the creature as much as the relationship between the men in the camp, and how th...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 25th, 2006
Synopsis
Michael Caine is a jewel thief recruited by Eric Portman and wife Giovanna Ralli for a big job. Caine falls in love with Ralli, but that’s fine with Portman, who’s gay. There are yet more secrets that he has yet to reveal, however, and they could jeopardise the success of the partnership.
As an example of how not to make a thriller, this is hard to beat. John Barry is undoubtedly one of the great film score composers, but the music should support the film, and not the other way aro...
![Derailed (Unrated) [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/derailed-unrated-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![The Thing [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-thing-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
