Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 24th, 2011
Underwater tremors open up a cave that has been sealed off from the rest of Lake Victoria for millions of years, unleashing a ravenous school of giant piranha. Making short work of a cameoing Richard Dreyfuss (in his Matt Hooper clothes), the fish descend on a resort town in the middle of Spring Break celebrations and so, naturally, the financially-minded authorities Won't Close The Beaches. As Sheriff Elizabeth Shue tries to find out what's going on with all the bodies showing up, her son (Adam Scott) unwisely volunteers to act as location guide for Jerry O'Connell (sleazing it up as the director of a Girls Gone Wild clone production), and winds up far from help when the fish launch their attack in earnest.
Alexandre (High Tension) Aja's remake is nowhere near as clever as the original, but it is highly entertaining, at least once the rampage is properly underway. This is easily the goriest summer movie in recent memory, and everyone involved seems determined to deliver on the trash value as thoroughly as possible. And while I have plenty of fondness for the retro-grindhouse trend, there is something going a little awry when the supposedly arch, self-conscious, post-modern films are more exploitive than the movies they're echoing. So while Piranha does boast one of the best severed penis gags I've seen in ages (one that loses some of its awesomeness by being reduced back to 2D), the endless parade of naked breasts, the obsessive need to mutilate them, and the clear expectation that the audience laugh at the result, is more than a little off-putting coming from filmmakers who surely know better but decide to indulge themselves all the same. In the end, what Piranha does well, it does very well indeed, but its lapses in judgment are pretty noticeable, too.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2011
"In training they give you an F. Out here you get killed."
When was the last time you saw a good train movie? There have been a few classics. Most of the best merely happened on a train with the drama having to do with what was happening on the train. I can't really remember when I saw a good train film where a train itself was the source of the tension. Yes, there have been several films where terrorists hijack a train and threaten something bad if their demands weren't met. But in Unstoppable, the threat really is just the train. There's no political agenda at all going on here. It's really quite a clever threat when you think about it. The train doesn't "want" anything. It's powered by its own laws of "nature" and can't be talked down or reasoned with in any way. There's no emotion to get in the way. It just drives forward at its own pace. It doesn't care what is in front of it or what it's left behind. It merely is. In fact, Unstoppable can be a metaphor for runaway technology, the machine that can't be stopped. What a rather nice old-school device for one of society's deepest philosophical quandaries.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2011
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
Of course, that declaration would be heard the world over as thirteen small British colonies began an experiment that would change the face of the world. The words came out of a Continental Congress, more specifically a committee that included Ben Franklin and John Adams. But it is neither of those men from whose pen came the liberating words of the Declaration of Independence. That honor belonged exclusively to the young wordsmith Thomas Jefferson. He would put words to the spirit of rebellion that consumed a small corner of a great continent. He would become our third president and the first to expand the country by more than double with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Bonaparte in France. His concept of the separation of church and state would become known as Jefferson's Wall and become one of the most abused and misunderstood rights of the Constitution. He was an inventor. He was a naturalist, cataloging hundreds of new species of plants and animals. He was a meteorologist, leaving us the first accurate records of America's climate. He would die on the Fourth of July at the 50th anniversary of his famous document.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2011
"My money is on you being brutally killed within two days, but what choice do we have?"
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on February 23rd, 2011
A young couple are drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse when they investigate a piece of real estate and a psychopath starts to trail them. Brazen Bull is the title of the film and the killer's mantra, which means he acts as if he has nothing to lose, when in fact he's already lost everything.
The first act is a plodding mess of abysmal dialogue and weak acting from everyone. It was a genuine struggle for me to become invested in the story when there was nothing drawing me in. By the time it's poor Michael Madsen's turn to phone in another performance, I could care less about the torture his victims receive. There is something almost tragic about the fact that it was lack of talent that made me so callous to the lives of these fictional characters. A man's hand is slowly sawed off, and I'm yawning.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 21st, 2011
It's funny how the zeitgeist works, in that it is hardly unusual for two films with very similar high concepts to hit the screens at close to the same time. Dante's Peak and Volcano. Deep Impact and Armageddon. Hell, The Towering Inferno came about as a result of Fox and Warner cooperating in order to avoid making identical films. And this year, two animated features with super-villains as their protagonists: Despicable Me and our current subject: Megamind.
His childhood consistently ruined by the budding Metro Man (Brad Pitt), Megamind (Will Ferrell) becomes the super-villain he feels he was destined to be. But when his latest scheme actually succeeds in destroying Metro Man, he finds life curiously empty, and so sets about creating a new super-hero: Tighten (Jonah Hill). But Tighten, it turns out, is more villain than hero, while Megamind, thanks in no small part to a budding relationship with reporter Roxanne Ritchie (Tina Fey), moves ever closer to hero territory.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on February 16th, 2011
A Chicago man has a strange genetic disorder that makes him involuntarily travel through time. This film follows the unimaginably complicated romance he has with a woman who he has known since she was a little girl and they never get to age chronologically together, and sometimes share different memories of the past (which might be the future for the other...I know...I told you its complicated).
Based on the extremely popular book of the same name, this film sometimes seems to be more an exercise in adapting a very challenging screenplay than it is an engrossing romance. Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana do glow when interacting, as they make the love their characters share convincing and helps us stay with the story when the time line gets a bit convoluted. Meanwhile, the dialogue doesn't do them any favours and occasionally bogs things down.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2011
"I've always believed that, done properly, armed robbery doesn't have to be a totally unpleasant experience."
You would think that Thelma And Louise would have been a blockbuster film. It's certainly become entrenched in our pop culture. The famous ending has been spoofed to death in other films and television shows, including the latest Star Trek, if you can believe that. You would think, but you'd be completely wrong. This was one of the movies that got a ton of critical attention and even some Academy Award attention. Ridley Scott, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon all got nominated for statues. The film ended up only taking one for the screenplay. Silence Of The Lambs took the actress and director Oscars that year. The film only pulled in $45 million, hardly a blockbuster but more than enough to cover the $17 million budget. The truth is that 28 films finished with better numbers in 1991, but few of them still have the enduring fame that Thelma And Louise has in 2010.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2011
"This despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film, I Spit On Your Grave adds yet another offense: a phony moral equivalency."
Roger Ebert is at it again. Over thirty years ago he pretty much hated the original film, but he didn't stop there. He extended his hatred to the fellow movie-goers he encountered as well. The 2010 remake appears to retain his disgust, and couldn't be prouder of the slight. Go figure.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2011
"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead your next stop, the Twilight Zone."
![Unstoppable [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/unstoppable-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Thelma & Louise (20th Anniversary) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/thelma-louise-20th-anniversary-large.jpg)
![I Spit on Your Grave [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/i-spit-on-your-grave-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Twilight Zone: Season 3 [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-twilight-zone-season-3-blu-ra-large.jpg)
