Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on November 9th, 2015
Dustin P. Anderson
Our story follows Davide, a scientist who is trying to exorcise aliens out of the bodies of people who have been abducted. One day Davide is visited by a strange girl who says that she is possessed by an alien. Davide and his team look into it and are startled when they find out that this girl is royalty, and possessed by a leader among the aliens. I would love to give you more explanation, but after sitting through this movie twice, I still cannot make heads or tails of what is going on. I have never been so confused while watching a movie. The small bits and pieces I could understand were that there is a guy who is trying to use the human soul to force out aliens who have taken control of a host body. After that I know that the main character used the help of the Catholic Church in order to purify the host body which was taken over by the alien invader. This makes sense in a loose sort of way; church and soul go hand in hand I guess. Still don’t understand how barcodes are supposed to help purify the soul. Still don’t understand why the end scene needed to take place during a rave. Still don’t understand the entire end of the movie. Still don’t understand why heroin was needed to knock the aliens out. After sitting through this movie twice I could only connect two things, the church and the soul. There are times where there is something sexual happening, and it is almost completely unexplained, like when a possessed girl just kisses some other random girl with no lead-up or explanation as to why they are kissing. It seems like things are just sexual for the sake of being sexual, like when someone says ”just a little orgy between kids” in response to a group of our characters randomly making out to hide an alien. It feels as though at least thirty minutes of explanation was missing from this movie. I shouldn’t have been surprised though; the synopsis on the back of the DVD didn’t even make sense.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on November 9th, 2015
“Why, this is getting more farcical by the moment!”
It's easy to point at the 1960s Batman TV series and laugh. For Dark Knight loyalists who insist their hero be gritty and tortured, the show is (at best) a campy amusement. At worst, it's an embarrassing atrocity. The two most important things to note are 1.) the show is very much a product of the Swinging Sixties time period in which it was made, and 2.) the series is *supposed* to be funny. (Batman picked up an Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy nomination during its run.) Keeping those two factors in mind is crucial to enjoying this entertaining, monumentally bizarre run of episodes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 6th, 2015
“Argument is sugar, and the rest of us are flies.”
By now, we've grown numb to the fact that there are simply too many TV channels to count. So it's not surprising that many of them have to take increasingly extreme measures to get our attention. Unfortunately, that line of thinking has extended to television news, which began trending toward sensationalism — and away from reasonable discourse — a long time ago. However, the idea that noise and conflict attracted eyeballs wasn't the status quo during the late 1960s, when viewers had only three channels to choose from. Best of Enemies tells the story of how two towering intellectuals (and one desperate network) helped alter the TV landscape forever.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on November 6th, 2015
For me Haven has always been a quiet-storm series. It was a show that I had heard nothing about when I first started watching, but when I got started, I found it compelling. It’s a mystery series (or at least it used to be) based off a novella from Stephen King. In the beginning, one question was paramount to the series’ lead character: who is the Colorado King? That question took many seasons to answer, but now that the show’s time is limited due to Syfy announcing its decision to cancel the series, with the final episodes to air later this year, another question has arisen as the paramount question: who is Audrey Parker?
Brief recap: Audrey last season for the good of the town went into the barn in order to stop the Troubles, the generational affliction that grants the residents of Haven equally extraordinary and chaotic abilities. Nathan does everything in his power to stop her but ultimately fails, but despite Audrey’s sacrifice the Troubles do not go away, and a destructive meteor shower threatens to destroy the town. Concluding that they need Audrey in order to stop the chaos, they open a portal between worlds with the help of two new faces, Jenny and William. However, William turns out not to be what he represents himself to be and is soon revealed to be one of the original architects of the Troubles. As he continues to bestow dangerous and uncontrollable new Troubles on the masses , he also reveals that the reason that Audrey also returns to Haven to help the Trouble is a punishment because as her original self, Mara, she is the other architect of the Troubles. Eventually, William is captured and thrown into an abyss, but before being thrown he manages to bring back Mara.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 5th, 2015
"Be grateful for your gifts. They are all around you."
This is the gift that has been giving for 20 years. It's a bit hard to believe that it was all the way back in 1996 that we had our first adventure with Pixar's imaginative Toy Story. Since that time we've had two solid theatrical sequels and now a second television/video short. It's a bridge to the fourth theatrical film on its way. But that's still a couple of years down the road, so it's rather nice to be able to spend some time, no matter how brief, with the gang we fell in love with nearly 20 years ago. The Toy Story That Time Forgot is just that warm reunion we needed. It'd intended as a Christmas special, and it just may make those new Christmas tree lights shine a little brighter this season.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Dan Holland on November 4th, 2015
“Seriously, how cliché is this?”
Misunderstood loner: check. Bullies: check. Isolated “camp”: check. Vengeful spirit: check. Looks like we got ourselves a horror movie! Every fan of horror has seen at least some combination of those themes in a film at least once. Now here they are, wrapped up an impressively cohesive package. Although this film thrived on its use of clichés, it made conscious efforts to incorporate a lot of original ideas. Between the clichés that I am tired of and the original ideas that just didn’t work very well (for me), the film finds a balance that makes it enjoyable.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on November 3rd, 2015
Dustin P. Anderson
Our story follows Kitch, one of only a few survivors from a deadly outbreak that has devastated much of the world. Kitch makes his living by taking down drones and stripping them for parts. The most valued part is Arcanum pellets, which have taken over as currency in this bleak future. One day, after trying to sell some Arcanum pellets to reclaim a camera that was stolen from him, he meets a drone marked with DR1 . Kitch thinks that this drone will lead him to his father, who was last seen trying to find a cure for the plague that ravaged the world. On his travels to find his father, he is joined by the niece of a gangster who is hunting them. The two search for Kitch’s dad together while trying to avoid her uncle and protecting DR1.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on November 3rd, 2015
“Sometimes it’s better not to touch your dreams, take it from someone who knows.”
In the first season of Showtime’s Californication, we were introduced to David Duchovny’s character, bitter yet upbeat writer Hank Moody. Hank, after moving to Los Angeles on the heels of his first novel – a critical darling entitled “God Hates Us All” – has recently lost his long-time love and, by extension, his daughter, to a straight-arrow bore who makes his girlfriend Karen (Natascha McElhone) feel safe.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 3rd, 2015
There are no tigers — or any other large cats — to be found in Tiger House. The closest we get is a rather hefty guard dog whose screen time is tragically cut short. (Figured I’d give the animal lovers out there a fair warning.) Instead, the only prowling we see in this low-budget home invasion thriller comes from the violent gang of thieves who bust into a suburban home and hold the unsuspecting family inside hostage. Unfortunately for the crooks, there’s already an uninvited visitor in the house.
That visitor is Kelly (Kaya Scodelario), who has snuck over to see her grounded boyfriend Mark (Daniel Boyd). The movie opens with a flashback to the crossbow-related accident between the young couple that ruined Kelly’s aspirations of becoming a gymnast. Now Mark’s mom Lynn (Julie Summers) considers down-on-her-luck Kelly to be a bad influence on her straight-arrow son, which explains all the sneaking around. Meanwhile, Mark’s stepdad Doug (Andrew Brent) is some sort of financial bigwig, which makes him an attractive target for the group of crooks looking to rob a bank.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on November 2nd, 2015
How much can you accomplish in less than ten minutes? In the case of Noel Clarke, you can prevent a global domination plot. OK, to be fair to the rest of civilization, it wasn’t just one ten-minute period, but a series of ten-minute periods. All things being equal, still extremely impressive, no? Noel Clarke is Ryan Dunn, a former soldier who finds that his consciousness is taken over by another, and he only regains control during a system reboot, as it were. In these brief moments of control, he learns of the plot that his operator (as it were) is putting into motion and does what he can to prevent it. However, this brings us back to the original question: how much can one really accomplish in a ten-minute period?
The film has a good opening as the audience is introduced to Ryan (Noel Clarke), who is just as new to what is happening as the rest of us. It’s always good to be on common ground with the protagonist. He wakes up in the back of a van with a young boy who has been abducted. Like any decent human being, he attempts to help the boy. Unfortunately for him, his counterpart is not a decent human being. As mentioned above, Ryan only has partial control during very short windows of time. During each “reboot”, he learns more about what his counterpart is up to in his absence, which includes a plot with global implications. Every time he wakes up, he finds himself in the company of a mysterious stranger (Ian Somerhalder), who is aiding in the plot.
