Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 14th, 2006
Take every Catholic movie cliché you can find, wrap them up in a weak and predictable murder-mystery, throw in Christian Slater and Stephen Rea as they struggle for some semblance of the glory their careers once held, release direct-to-DVD, and you have The Confessor. Slater plays a priest struggling with his own faith, to the point he hasn’t prayed in years. His primary purpose to the Catholic Church is as a fundraiser for whatever causes they deem necessary to support. Of course, all of his higher-ups are st...dgy old men more grounded in public relations than decent living, and he grows more at odds with them as he delves deeper into the death of a disgraced (but, of course, innocent) priest, who is accused of a murder he didn’t commit, which leads to his mysterious death while awaiting trial. When Slater takes over the priest’s parish, he comes to terms with his own human frailties and finds out all his suspicions about the dead predecessor’s innocence are true – but if he didn’t do it, who did? That’s an answer you shouldn’t have any difficulty figuring out.
While the film lacks entertainment value, it is a useful training ground for Molly Parker, the lead actress (or “actor in a female role” for you strict readers). As the love interest of Slater, she commands attention, more so than any of the rest of this washed-up cast. And as for the rest of the cast, it isn’t that their performances are awful – they are simply too bored with the script to inject any passion into it. Everyone but Parker is doing no more than collecting a paycheck, and I certainly can’t blame them, because the script – with its amateurish expository dialogue containing lines that reiterate exactly what you’re seeing through the characters’ actions – is too poor to secure a green-light for production, much less the attached talent’s hard work and ingenuity. Now grant it, with horror stories about Hollywood ruining good scripts being a dime a dozen, it may not have been the writer’s fault – but the fact remains, the script is the film’s greatest drawback.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 7th, 2006
Synopsis
Christmas in Wichita Falls, but there’s not much comfort and joy going around. John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton have just stolen two million bucks from mob boss Randy Quaid. If they can keep things together for just a few hours, they will be home free and off to warmer climes with their loot. But a huge thug is looking for them, Cusack keeps drawing attention to himself, and then there’s the question of whether these two can really trust each other.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 3rd, 2006
Synopsis
In the late fifties, Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth) are a top-rated comedy duo, hosts of a polio telethon. At the height of their career, everything comes crashing down when the body of a young woman is discovered in the bathtub of their hotel suite. They have cast-iron alibis, but the team is dissolved. Fifteen years later, up-and-coming journalist Karen O’Connor (Alison Lohman) lands a sweetheart deal to write a book about Vince, and he is being paid a million d...llars to agree to in-depth interview. What Karen really wants to know is what really happened to that young woman, but she also quickly becomes ensnared in the angled web of guilt shared by the two men.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 1st, 2006
Echoes of Innocence calls itself an ultimate tale of good vs.evil. Don’t expect Exorcist level of evil quality in this one. Don’t even expect the good fight. Sarah (Simmonds) has a Joan Of Ark complex of sorts. She’s having religious visions, apparently inspired by the disappearance of a boy she once promised to save herself for. He publicly proclaims her commitment to virginity and frequently fasts to the point of near collapse. This is the film’s “good”. The evil is represented in the character of Alec (Vodvarka). He teases folks and is a bit of a womanizer but no head turns or horns to be found. Mostly Alec wants to break Sarah’s virginity vow. You can see how exciting this is going to be. Ho hum.
Put aside the forced religious symbolism and you have no film. The acting is absolutely horrid. Everyone is pretty much a one dimensional symbol. It might have been better to label them and save us two hours of film. That’s a long time for virtually nothing to happen.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 28th, 2006
Synopsis
Dana Andrews was never an actor who radiated warmth, and here he is perfectly cast as a hardboiled con artist on the lookout for number one. He arrives in a small town and falls hard for sultry waitress Linda Darnell. She is holding out for marriage, but marriage with financial stability, which Andrew can’t offer. So he sets about seducing Alice Faye with the idea of fleecing her of her fortune.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 28th, 2006
Synopsis
Valentina Cortesa plays a survivor of the Belsen concentration camp. She has lost everything in the war. Her best friend in the camp is a woman whose infant child is being looked after in the USA, and when this woman dies shortly before liberation, Cortesa decides to adopt her identity, since no one alive would remember what she looks like. Once in the States, she meets and falls in love with Richard Basehart, the guardian of her “son.” Moving into their home in San Francisco, she sense host...lity on the part of the nanny (Fay Baker). She soon begins to fear for her life, and grows terrified of her husband.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 21st, 2006
Synopsis
Lydia (Sara Wiseman) is in her thirties, is a costume designer, and is desperately in love and lust with her childhood friend Christian (Philip Brown), though he clearly doesn’t think of her in the same way. One day, on the run from an angry pursuer, Luella Miller (Sia Trokenheim) turns up in Lydia’s home, and our heroine gives the interloper shelter. She soon comes to regret this kindness, as Luella begins to weave a destructively sexual web around all the men in the small town, including C...ristian.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 28th, 2006
Last year, Warner Brothers put out a great ten-disc set of all of the Hitchcock films in their catalog. While not the ultimate Hitchcock collection, it was still an excellent representation of the Master's work, including many films that have received a well-deserved second look as a result of their inclusion in the set. It was especially rewarding to be given the opportunity to see Montgomery Clift's amazing portrayal of a Priest caught in the middle of a murder scandal in I Confess.
Not to be outdo...e, Universal has now decided to showcase its Hitchcock films as well. After all, nobody can out-Hitchcock Universal's deep catalog, and they hit back hard at Warner's with a staggering fifteen disc set of their own. While the WB set set is well worth purchasing, as the saying goes, "if you only buy one Hitchcock boxed set this year... make Universal's The Masterpiece Collection be it." These are the classics. The films that Hitch is known for. The hit list is as follows; Saboteur, Rear Window, Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, Rope, Shadow of a Doubt, Marnie, Frenzy, The Trouble With Harry, Family Plot, Torn Curtain, Topaz and The Man Who Knew Too Much. While pieces like Topaz and The Trouble With Harry may not be well known films, there is no denying the important place in cinema history that so many of the others possess. This is an instant film school in a box, and thanks to packaging multiple discs in each case, Universal has kept the cost relatively low. If you order through Amazon, this set can be picked up for about $6 per film, and that doesn't even include the book or the bonus disc.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 17th, 2006
Jodie Foster stars in this film as a propulsion engineer named Kyle Pratt who decides to take her six year old daughter Julia on a transatlantic flight aboard a brand new jumbo jet (which she helped design). Aboard the plane, her daughter goes missing. Naturally she has no clue what is going on as the captain (Sean Bean), nor the sky marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) are of any assistance. Foster calmly looks around the plane for her daughter wondering what has happened to her. We learn more and more facts about the daughte... as the movie progresses, some of which will definitely surprise you. That is what makes this film so overly effective. How it takes a fairly common plot but adds more flare and spark to the plot by having certain areas jump out at us.
Flightplan is being compared to Foster 2002 film Panic Room due to the similar concepts (Woman and a daughter are in peril). However, the problem Foster faces in Flightplan is far more inquisitive and far more interesting. Did her daughter suddenly disappear or was she kidnapping? How could all of this occur on a airplane with tons of passengers? Foster is a usual form in this film. She comes off a resourceful and extremely brave woman. As the plot progresses forward, Foster’s response continues to change as do her overall tactics. She tends to scream out, as would any of us in a similar situation. The director, who I will get to later, seems to know how an audience’s mind work as he constantly has Foster’s character think ahead of what she will do, almost anticipating the next development of the film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 9th, 2006
I think that the studio knew they had a problem with Godsend before it was released in theaters. Sometimes a film can look like a great idea on paper, but the final product is just a mess. The thing is, after the studio has invested millions in a bad property, they have to try to recoup the money somehow. In the case of Godsend, the strategy was to put a well made trailer for the property on every Lions Gate DVD product for months and months. In this way, the studio hoped to build up enough word-of-mouth through minimal promotion to have a big opening weekend; big enough to make back some of the film's budget before the word got out about how bad the thing was.
The plot sounds great. A married couple (Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) have a wonderful son, but he is tragically killed when he is eight years old. Enter Robert De Niro as a doctor who has had a miracle breakthrough in the field of cloning. After some convincing, the three parties enter into an agreement to clone the couples deceased son. The boy is a perfect duplicate of the original until he reaches the age of eight, at which the original child died. That's when the crazy comes out.
