Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 25th, 2018
“I don’t know how to sing about love when I’m not feeling it.”
I have a surprising confession to make: I’m a huge movie musical nerd (that’s not the surprising part), but I thought the first Mamma Mia movie was absolutely terrible. Obviously, I was in the minority: the 2008 ABBA jukebox musical grossed more than $600 million worldwide. So the second least surprising thing about the perfectly-named sequel, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, is that it took 10 years to get the band back together. The first most surprising thing is that I actually thought this movie was...kinda good.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 25th, 2018
"My father told me about these men, about their natures. All I knew were the stories I was told of monsters and the valiant men sworn to slay them. I fear the stories I've heard may have been clouded, the truth more than clouded. It would seem these monsters are men, sons, brothers, fathers. And it would seem these men face their own monsters..."
Move over, Captain Jack Sparrow.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 24th, 2018
“Why make things simple when they can be painful and difficult?”
The current TV landscape is overflowing with “limited series” and anthologies that reboot themselves each year with new characters and storylines. The Affair, which premiered in 2014, seemed ready-made for that formula: each season could’ve followed different adulterous encounters in a wide variety of settings. Instead, the perspective-shifting Showtime drama has followed the same group of sad sacks through multiple years as they deal with the fallout of a single Long Island dalliance. The good news is this fourth season serves as both a soft reboot for the series and a swan song for a couple of major characters.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 23rd, 2018
It seems there isn’t an action film Bruce Willis can say no to. It feels as though every couple of months there is an action film that has an appearance from Willis, and frankly it’s a little disappointing. He’s a guy who can bring in the major box office dollars, but it seems more and more of the action stars are settling for the direct-to-video route for the simple paycheck and moving on to the next. With the number of films being churned out for the cinemas, DVD and Blu-ray, and the streaming services, it seems the film industry is simply becoming a business of quantity rather than quality due to the amount of demand needed. Reprisal is the latest example of this demand for quantity rather than quality as we get a pedestrian action film that plays by the numbers and will be forgotten by the year’s end, and that’s a shame considering its two leads.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 22nd, 2018
“You came out here city slickers, you’re gonna go home cowboys.”
I still remember pretty clearly my dad suggesting we go check out a matinee of City Slickers. I was visiting him in New York City during the summer of 1991, and my 8-year-old self had no idea what a “city slicker” (or even what a Billy Crystal) was. That being said, I was completely delighted by the movie and have re-watched it many times throughout the years. (The calf birthing scene, in particular, stuck to my innocent, 8-year-old brain.) I recently got a chance to revisit the crowd-pleasing, cowboys-and-yuppies comedy once again thanks to this new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 20th, 2018
From the moment that STARZ announced that they were pulling the plug on Ash vs Evil Dead after its third season, my heart has been a bit crushed. The Evil Dead franchise has always been special to me. Growing up I watched the trilogy of films to the point one may consider I had an unhealthy obsession with these films, and to be fair, they may have had a point, but these movies were a blast. These were the films where writer and director Sam Raimi made a name for himself in the horror genre with his cinematic style, over the top gore, and injecting his love of The Three Stooges. For decades fans had waited patiently for a fourth installment in the franchise, with teases of there even being an Ash vs Freddy vs Jason, but alas that concept fizzled as a film. So when the news came along that STARZ would be bringing Ash (Bruce Campbell) to the small screen for a 10-episode series, well, it was something horror fans could get excited about
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 18th, 2018
This past summer, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was turned upside down in a snap. Avengers: Infinity War was the culmination of 10 years worth of origin stories and world-building. That blockbuster featured (almost) every MCU hero in the galaxy, universe-spanning stakes, and an unforgettable cliffhanger. So you can excuse Marvel for scaling things back (waaaaay back) with its next entry. Of course, any superhero flick that came immediately after Infinity War was going to feel small by comparison, so who better to take on that task than the tiniest hero of them all?
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 17th, 2018
3rd Night is one of those films that sneaks up on you. It’s shot on a low budget, there are no big named actors involved, and it doesn’t have a big studio backing. It’s the kind of film that seems to be released hoping that by word of mouth or sheer luck, people will stumble upon this film. You go to your random Wal-Mart or Target and you see these small, independent titles all the time, and I’ve always wondered how many of these are picked up as a cold buy, simply from the customer looking at the cover and reading the box. 3rd Night is a film that is going to have to go through this struggle, but for those who do decide to pick this up or find it on some other platform, it’ll be a delightful little surprise. It’s a 71-minute horror fest that is better than you’d expect despite having some strange flaws that left me questioning some of the film’s choices; despite that it still works.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 17th, 2018
“I’m sorry…I’m a really good person.”
I absolutely loved The Big Short, which managed to extract smart, insightful comedy from one of the gloomiest chapters in recent American history. But if there’s one minor critique I had, it’s that the 2015 Adam McKay film sort of glossed over the human cost of the nationwide financial collapse. On the other hand, Arizona — a violent, over-the-top black comedy that’s billed as being “from the producers of Eastbound & Down and Brooklyn Nine-Nine” — is set in 2009 and focuses almost exclusively on a handful of hard-luck losers trying to survive the housing crisis.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 15th, 2018
Over the years there have been attempts to adapt Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting at Hill House, but each attempt seemed to fall short of what the book accomplished. So when Netflix announced that they were going to be attempting to turn the novel into a ten-episode TV series, well, to be honest, it didn’t exactly get me excited. Helming the show is Mike Flanagan, who had some success with Netflix before when directing Gerald’s Game and is currently directing Doctor Sleep, a sequel to Stephen King’s The Shining. It wasn’t till a couple weeks ago when a came across a trailer for The Haunting of Hill House that I was convinced that perhaps I should give this show a shot. Once it hit the streaming service and I watched the first episode “Steven Sees a Ghost”, well, I was hooked, and what unfolded over the course of the season resulted in an exceptional television experience.
