Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 19th, 2024
"We made a film - the one I'm going to show you now. Actually, Jason was the one who wanted to make it. Like that cameraman from Channel 10, he wanted to upload it so that people, you, could be told the truth. The film was shot with a Panasonic HDX-900 and an HBX-200. I did the final cut on Jason's laptop. I've added music occasionally for effect, hoping to scare you. You see, in addition to trying to tell you the truth, I am hoping to scare you so that maybe you'll wake up. Maybe you won't make any of the same mistakes that we made. Anyway, here it is, Jason Creed's The Death of Death."
It’s ironic that 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake (which was originally a George Romero film), have jump-started Romero’s long-running “Dead” series that started in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. Since 28 Days Later and the Dawn remake were released, Romero has released two new installments: Land of the Dead in 2005 and now Diary of the Dead in 2007.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Sean Boelman on July 16th, 2024
Given that Glauber Rocha is considered one of the most important filmmakers in the history of Brazilian cinema — and Latin American cinema in general — it’s surprising that it took this long for one of his films to be released by the Criterion Collection. The filmmaker’s sophomore feature, Black God, White Devil, one of his most acclaimed works, takes the honor of being his first movie to get the Criterion treatment. Black God, White Devil is considered one of the most influential films of the Cinema Novo movement, which happened in Brazilian cinema as a reaction to other social filmmaking movements like Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. In Criterion’s recent quest to expand the label’s Latin American cinema offerings — Victims of Sin and Soy Cuba are notable recent releases — the Cinema Novo movement marks a necessary addition.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 9th, 2024
When you look back at 2004, it’s a little hard to imagine just how big an impact Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy would have on the film industry. I’m not trying to say the film invented anything new with this fun, satiric comedy, but what it did do was launch the careers of many and really helped make comedy fun and raunchy for a while, and more importantly, profitable at the box office. I mean, this film is stacked with stars. Sure, there’s Will Ferrell front and center, but this is had a pre-40 Year-Old Virgin Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate, Kathryn Hahn, Seth Rogan, David Koechner, Fred Willard, and numerous others who are in the background or just make cameos. Seriously, this might be the best comedic cast put together of all time, and when you dive into the extras, you get a glimpse at just how talented everyone is. The film may be 20 years old, but it holds up. I’ve seen the film at least a dozen times, and it still makes me laugh. So what makes this film so special?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 3rd, 2024
In 2004 when Team America: World Police was released, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were already well established in the film industry as the guys who created South Park. They had even dipped their toes into doing live action films like Orgazmo and BASEketball, but what the industry knew them for was their animated series South Park that began back in 1997 and is still going strong on Comedy Central. The duo isn’t afraid to take chances, whether it’s insulting celebrities (after all, part of their charm is being equal opportunity offenders) or creating their musical for the stage, The Book of Mormon, so was it a big surprise they’d want to do an action adventure film entirely with puppets? The film is very much a parody of the action films of the 90’s and early 00’s that were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. In case you are unfamiliar with his name, he produced the mega hits like Top Gun, The Rock, Con-Air, and Pearl Harbor. But what this film was also tapping into was the over-the-top patriotic attitudes that the media projected. I mean, everything needed to be patriotic in a post 9-11 world.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on July 2nd, 2024
“I have a ghost to bust.”
When Afterlife was initially announced back in 2021, my thoughts were: why do we keep messing with things instead of preserving them? Ghostbusters was an iconic film franchise that already suffered one failed attempt at reboot. So when I went to see Afterlife, I was expecting the law of diminishing returns to be in effect. However, to my mind, Afterlife, with its homage to the dearly departed Harold Ramis and inclusion of the original crew, was not a reboot, but a continuation. It worked, and brought with it some of the nostalgia from the franchise’s original run. Now as expected, one good turn deserves another, and we now have Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Once again, we were at risk of destroying a good thing, but thankfully we had the right people at the helm who were able to blend the old with the new, which is no surprise given that the film was co-written by the son of the franchise’s original director.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 29th, 2024
In 1993 when this film came out, 1962 just seemed like another time that as a teenager I just couldn’t wrap my head around. While the kids in Matinee were excited about these giant monster films, I could sort of relate, as I was getting into horror myself, but instead of atomic bugs, I was getting into the slasher heavy hitters like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. So a film about kids spending most of their time at a movie theater was something I could relate to easily, and as I got older I simply continued to appreciate the film more as I consumed more films from the past and grew to appreciate filmmakers like Val Lewton, William Castle, Roger Corman, and Lloyd Kaufman, the guys who knew how to turn a cheap film into an event experience through a variety of marketing gimmicks. The idea of ambulances being staged outside a theater because audience members may faint or having people in costume lunge at unsuspecting guests. These innovators make going to the movie theater an experience even if the movie wasn’t all that great … and now 30 years after the release of Matinee, I find myself bitten by the bug of nostalgia.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 25th, 2024
"Somebody went to a lot of trouble here, and I want to find out, lawsuit or no lawsuit. I'm not the one who's supposed to be caught with his pants down."
The word "classic" gets thrown around a lot. Everybody has their own list. I get that. Whenever someone starts listing films from the last year or so, I just smile and take it with a grain of salt. Because I know they don't know what they're talking about. I don't know how many years it takes to be a classic. Is it 10 ... 20 … or even 30 years? Well, how about 50 for a nice round number? The film has certainly stood the test of time. That's one of those things you can't say about a film under a decade or two old.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 25th, 2024
It’s been about 10 years since Richard Linklater gave us Boyhood, which for me may not be my personal favorite of his films, but it is the one that certainly got the attention of the Academy Awards. Linklater is a director I’ve always been a fan of. It’s hard to really describe his filmography other than to say it is diverse, but at the heart of all his films they are about the characters. It’s no surprise that his new film Hit Man is once again a film about the characters and definitely has more heart than violence, even if the central character is supposed to be a contract killer. The film is loosely based on a true story and was written by Richard Linklater and Glen Powell, who also stars in the film, and my first reaction is this is immediately shooting to the top of my list of my favorite films I’ve seen this year. Though this film has some familiar tropes, I have to say it is a breath of fresh air. A film without CGI, it isn’t an established IP; it’s just a good story that is carried by great performances and was fun start to finish. The first impression I got from the film as the credits rolled is that it reminded me of the fun and cool crime films of the 90s.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 12th, 2024
"For most of human civilization, we believed that we were Earth's most dominant species. We believed that life could only exist on the surface of the planet. Well, after a certain point of view, you have to wonder what else we were wrong about. In the beginning, Hollow Earth lived in harmony with the surface world. The Titans were the guardians of nature, and the Great Apes became the protectors of humanity. But a great evil threatened the peace. A powerful and ruthless ape desperate to conquer the surface world led his tribe into war against the one they call the Monster Who Ate a Star. The war with the Apes nearly destroyed Godzilla. But after a great battle, he imprisoned the apes in a fiery realm of Hollow Earth. Their false king remains obsessed with reaching the surface. The Iwi call him the Skar King."
That in a nutshell is the plot of the latest Monsterverse film from Legacy and Warner Brothers. It's called Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, and we're told the X is silent. And here I thought it was some kind of a multiplier.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 8th, 2024
It’s summertime, and that means people will of course be flooding the beaches to soak up some rays and enjoy frolicking in the ocean. Because of pop culture and the legacy of Jaws, I’m sure plenty of those beachgoers will have that terrifying thought about what could be lurking beneath the surface, potentially stalking them and ready to strike. The reality is sharks want nothing to do with us; they’d rather feast on a tasty harbor seal or a giant tuna, but that doesn’t change how so many people are afraid of sharks, and Hollywood has happily cashed in on those fears, churning out numerous shark-attack films year after year. Jaws is of course the pinnacle of the genre; then I’d consider The Shallows and Deep Blue Sea to follow behind it. Personally I’m a fan of this sub-genre of creature feature films. No matter how absurd these films may get, if it has a shark turning swimmers into its own little buffet, I have to check it out. To be fair, there have been some duds in the genre, but the only one I wish I could take back and erase from my memory would be last years Black Demon. Yikes, that was a bad one. Right now, though, I’m going to be talking about the new French film that Netflix has released, Under Paris. Is it worth taking the plunge, or does it follow in the footsteps of many previous films from the streaming giant and turn out to be a dud?
