Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on May 22nd, 2013
Ever flip through the pages of a magazine, or perhaps some electronic device where you read your daily world news, and wonder how they got that picture? Maybe on CNN or Fox News you caught a report from behind enemy lines or in some hellish city where Anderson Cooper or Bill O’Reilly would never be caught without an armored escort. Instead the stations rely on a group of brave (or insane) individuals to cover the stories and deliver the video and images needed to hit the audience with shock and awe. What Witness: A World In Conflict Through A Lens delivers is an inside look at the life and risks these men and women take every day so they can capture a moment for the world to see, but unfortunately the world seems to also ignore.
The four-part HBO documentary is cold and unflinching. What we get is by no means sugar-coated or filtered, and it’s because of this honest look at life in four separate hellish locations that it will be hard for some to handle. I’m going to come out and say from the start that this documentary not only sobered me to the reality of the world around us, but damn, did it make me feel lucky to be American.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 20th, 2013
Well, it is that time of the year when we must see what the blood suckers, shape shifters, wolves and the faeries are up to. No, I am not talking about the State of the Union address; I’m talking about the latest season of True Blood. Season Five to be exact. In these twelve episodes, we again travel to the land of Bon Temps, Louisiana and see exactly what delicious trouble and dastardly deeds our characters can get themselves tied up in.
We join Bill Compton (played by Stephen Moyer) and Eric Northman (played by Alexander Skarsgard) cleaning up their little mess (actually Eric is doing the majority of the cleaning while Bill talks on the phone) after they gave Nan Flanagan the true death at the end of Season Four. However, once they leave the mansion, they are immediately captured by Authority security.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 20th, 2013
The conclusion of the wildly popular Twilight saga last fall left a nation of haters high-fiving each other, but it also created a giant, heart-shaped vacuum in Hollywood. Where is the industry’s next big young adult-oriented, human-on-supernatural romance franchise going to come from? This past Valentine’s Day was as good a time as any to find out if Beautiful Creatures — based on Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s “Caster Chronicles” series — was up to the task.
Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) can’t wait to get out of Gatlin, South Carolina. Thanks to some nimble narration, Ethan explains why he feels trapped in his fictional dead-end town, where virtually every important piece of literature is on the banned list and people enthusiastically re-enact the Civil War as if they’re expecting a different result. Ethan’s spirits brighten when he meets moody outsider Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), who is literally the girl of his dreams. You see, Ethan has been having the same dream every night about a mysterious dark-haired beauty; unfortunately, he always dies at the end. After a rocky start (is there any other kind?), the two grow closer and Ethan discovers that Lena is a witch.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on May 20th, 2013
“Never let the truth spoil a good story.” – Charlie Watts, drummer
Ever since they came on the scene in the ‘60s, The Rolling Stones have done things in their own unique and unapologetic style. Widely regarded as the anti-Beatles, The Stones’ blues-infused rock music spoke to many people and inspired many a future musician. They personified the era of sex, drugs and rock & roll...especially the "drugs and rock & roll” part.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 20th, 2013
The problem with casting Ben Kingsley in this film’s title role is that the Oscar-winning actor is anything but common. He’s been a commanding screen presence for four solid decades, starting with his award-winning work in 1982’s Gandhi and continuing through his surprising performance in Iron Man 3. When Kingsley first appears in A Common Man, he immediately stands out in the crowded streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka thanks to a sharp goatee and his signature shorn dome. Turns out Kingsley’s inherent star power is the least of this movie’s problems.
A Common Man is a remake of the 2008 Bollywood hit A Wednesday. The film opens with news reports of recent terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka followed by an effective, nearly dialogue-free sequence of a man (Kingsley) leaving packages at different points — a bus, a shopping mall trash can, etc. — throughout the city of Colombo. The man, who calls himself Vincent, makes his way to his makeshift headquarters on a rooftop and calls overmatched Deputy Inspector General of Police Morris Da Silva (Ben Cross) to inform him he has planted five bombs across the city. He demands the release of four deadly international terrorists and threatens to detonate the bombs if his conditions aren’t met.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 16th, 2013
"Who is Jack Reacher? Born Jack, not John. No middle name. He's a ghost. Served in the military police. A brilliant investigator, troublemaker, too. And two years ago he disappears. You don't find this guy unless he wants to be found."
We've found him. The character of Jack Reacher comes from a series of thriller novels written by Lee Child. From the very start you know that this is going to be a different kind of Jack Reacher than fans have come to know and love from the books. He described as being 6' 5’’ and about 250 pounds. Tom Cruise doesn't really fit any of those description elements. He does, however, fit two very important descriptive elements when it comes to Hollywood. He's still a big name and a pretty reliable box office draw. He also put up some of his own cash to produce the movie. Now that's how you get cast for a part very physically different from yourself.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on May 16th, 2013
“We are your Family. We come before anything, even your own family.”
Everything about Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn — the setting, the storyline, the cast, the title — brings to mind vastly superior crime dramas. To be fair, it’s incredibly difficult to say something in this genre that hasn’t already been said brilliantly by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese or David Chase. So instead of trying to carve out its own turf, this low-budget effort seems to almost revel in how derivative it is. At the very least, the people who made this movie seem to love gangster flicks as much as we do.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 15th, 2013
Even among the crowded field idyllic meadow of big-screen romances, the “Nicholas Sparks movie” has become its own lucrative sub-genre. The only other contemporary authors I can remember achieving that sort of name brand recognition are Stephen King and John Grisham. (When people went to watch a Harry Potter film, they didn’t usually say, “Let’s go see the new J.K. Rowling movie.) It’s easy to spot a Nicholas Sparks movie: the lily white leads usually live in or around one of the Carolinas, where they inevitably get drenched by a romantic, cleansing rain before coming across a pivotal letter.
The fact that Safe Haven hits every single one of these checkpoints should, in theory, make it the ultimate Nicholas Sparks movie experience. Instead, the new film — the eighth big-screen adaptation of the author’s work — comes off as a pale imitator.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2013
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by William O'Donnell on May 15th, 2013
“’Have gun, will travel’ reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land…”
Those words ended every episode of Have Gun Will Travel, sung by Johnny Western in a time that such words could be sung without irony. Outside of Richard Boone’s black-clad, craggy Rhett-Butler-gone-to-seed gunfighter, that song was all I could really recall about this venerable Western from television’s golden age. Would it, like so many revisited shows from my youth, ultimately disappoint? Or would it hold up fifty years after it was originally broadcast, viewed as it would be by the far more jaded, cynical man I’ve grown into?
