Disc Reviews

“In the 1940’s, a new genre – film noir – emerged from the world of hard-boiled pulp magazines, paperback thrillers, and sensational crime movies. These films, tough and unsentimental, depicted a black and white universe at once brutal, erotic, and morally ambiguous.”

Film Noir officially started in the 40’s, but the movement was well underway by the early 30’s. You can trace its roots to the Great Depression and the arrival of the dime pulp magazines. These were highly stylized, mostly mystery stories that provided cheap escapism for the masses who were not having a good time of it. Writers like Raymond Chandler crafted the mold that was easily transferred to the silver screen. These were low-budget films that were intended to be second billing with the more mainstream releases. They were shot quickly. Many have a very flat look, created intentionally. The lighting was often minimal, crafting odd shadows and unusual textures. The dialog wasn’t intended to be natural or realistic. These characters usually spoke in clichés and had names like Mac, Griff, or Dollface. There was often a shade of gray to these characters.
Read More

“There ain’t any jail of steel or stone that can hold a body prisoner as tight as one built of old age … and lack of money.”

If I Had A million is a rare kind of film for 1932. The industry was barely out of the silent era, and stories needed to be tight and usually short. Short was the word of the day for this film. It became the first feature film to be released as an anthology with plenty of A-list stars and several directors, each taking on their own little piece of the pie. It was a rather brilliant idea for the time, but sadly this style of filmmaking wouldn’t really start to catch on until the 1970’s, starting almost exclusively with horror films and later creating its own little niche genre in mainstream filmmaking.
Read More

“I cannot – yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do “must” and “cannot” meet? Yet I must – but I cannot!”

Often it seems some films were made to collect a mantle-full of awards. For some it’s the Oscars they covet. For others it might be a Golden Globe award or even a People’s Choice Award. As a member of two critics’ guilds, I have to make these assessments every year. I know how important these accolades can be for a film and the people who created it. But there’s one award that films (almost) never set out to obtain. Still it can provide endurance for a film and help new audiences to embrace it. I’m talking about those Golden Turkey awards, and few films ever made deserve the Golden Turkey than 1953’s Robot Monster. When you hear folks talk about how monstrous that movie is … they’re not talking about the creature itself.
Read More

In 2017 What the Waters Left Behind made some waves as a horror film that came out of Argentina.  It was shot on a pretty low budget, but it seems it was successful enough to warrant a sequel. I actually stumbled across What the Waters Left Behind on a streaming service one late night when I couldn’t sleep. The film is pretty much made for late-night viewing; it has a fun midnight movie vibe. The first film follows a group of documentary filmmakers that are traveling to the town of Epecuen that was wiped out in the 80’s, and the filmmakers want to check out the ruins of the town. What follows is a fun Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets The Hills Have Eyes romp filled with plenty of gore and the terrible demise of this film crew that wandered where they didn’t belong. Now it is five years later, and we have the sequel What the Waters Left Behind: Scars.  This was unexpected, but just what did I think about this Latin-flavored bloodfest? Well, it’s pretty much what I expected, and that’s a good thing.
Read More

“Who’s ready for contact poker?”

The first season of Your Honor was very much a contact sport. The first 20 minutes was some of the most compelling television I’ve ever seen. Bryan Cranston started us off as the titular judge Michael Desiato. He’s known as a tough but fair judge. He’s got a pretty good life until his son makes a fatal mistake and sets the series on its course. Adam has an early morning accident where he runs down another teen and leaves him for dead. Michael’s first reaction is of course for Adam to turn himself in to the police. But at the station he learns the victim was the son of the local mob boss, Jimmy Baxter, played ruthlessly by Michael Stuhlberg. Michael knows that if Jimmy finds out who killed his son, he’ll kill Adam. So the first season covers his elaborate plan to cover up the crime. That meant asking his childhood friend, local politician Charlie Figaro, to help get rid of the car.
Read More

Not sure if this film will go down in history for any real significant impact. However, there is one important gem to take away from this film: this is the movie where the king of cool found his queen. That’s right, The Experts is the movie in which John Travolta met Kelly Preston, and the rest, I suppose, is history, as the two went on to have a nearly thirty-year marriage until her tragic death in 2020. In the film, it is quite fitting that the two served as each other’s love interests, despite some clear geopolitical differences. I’d say that is putting it mildly given that Preston is a Russian sleeper agent and Travolta is the unwitting American who is teaching her to pass for American.
Read More

I was expecting a stereotypical action movie chock full of cheesy one-liners. Not quite what I got. There were one or two cheesy one-liners, such as “cleanup on aisle 3.”  However, for the most part, I’d say Stone Cold holds its own in the entertainment category. Serving as the acting debut for former NFL linebacker Brian Bosworth, I’d say the film served as a solid opening to an on-and-off acting career. In this showing, Bosworth stars as a cop with a reputation for excessive force and maverick-like methods for getting the job done. After his latest stunt lands him a three-week suspension, he finds himself at the mercy of the FBI, who want to use him for a undercover operation, which many others would consider a suicide mission. Rounding out the cast are William Forsythe of Sam McMurray, Richard Gant, and Lance Henriksen serving as the film’s big bad. For a 30-year-old movie, I’d say that the film held up well in regards to action and dialog.
Read More

“Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!”

That is all that was heard when George Foreman won his first heavyweight championship. He entered that match an underdog despite his superior size and reach, and he shocked the world when he knocked the then-undefeated Frazier down six times on his way to TKO victory. However, that is just where he journey begins. Thanks to Big George Foreman, we get to see his journey in its entirety, in one of the most accurate and faithful biographical adaptations that I’ve ever seen. Key thing to know about me: I am a big boxing fan, so any opportunity I have to enjoy a movie about a boxing legend is a good day. This is no exception, as my knowledge about this hall-of-famer, such as his hard upbringing and the fact that he gave all his sons the same name, was limited; Big George Foreman, at least for me, shone a light on a boxing figure who probably doesn’t get the recognition he deserves.
Read More

In 1986, long before Luc Besson gave us such classics as Taken, The Fifth Element, or Leon: The Professional, he helped co-write and produce the wacky sci-fi/thriller Kamikaze.  I’m a fan of Besson, and not only had I never seen this film, I had never heard of it, so I was more than happy to check it out. In my opinion Luc Besson is one of the best action filmmakers out there. Whether he is writing, directing, or producing, he manages to put out an enjoyable product on a more consistent basis than many others.  If you are unfamiliar with the guy’s work, go ahead and take a moment to check him out on IMDB, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find a few titles on his resume that you’ve enjoyed.  Now in the 80’s you can say he was still cutting his teeth and trying to make a name for himself and had some moderate success. Subway (1985) is a fun little standout, and in 1988 he had The Big Blue.  In that time he handed off the script for Kamikaze to Didier Grousset, his Assistant Director from Subway, to direct the film, and as they say, the rest is history.
Read More

“The year: 1187 A.D. The Saracens of Asia swept over Jerusalem and the Holy Land, crushing the Christians to death or slavery.”

The Crusades is the name of a 2023 comedy that was recently released, and it’s a comedy in the Animal House tradition, and it’s what you’ll get if you try to do any quick title searches on that name. But buried beneath all of that beer and vomit, you might discover a more obscure (today) film from 1935 directed by the mythic Cecil B. DeMille. And you won’t find any frat parties or beer kegs anywhere in this historical epic. The time and place are the Christian Crusades to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslim tyrant Saladin, the onetime Sultan of Islam.
Read More

This 1975 Burt Reynolds film is nothing like I expected, and for the most part I’d say that is a good thing. When I first picked up the title, I pretty much expected this to be a fun yet somewhat forgettable action film from the 70s, something in the same vein as Stick or Gator, but instead this is a more complex story that takes many strange twists and has an ending that was pretty unexpected. The film was directed by Robert Aldrich, who was fresh off of directing The Longest Yard and also to his credit directed one of my favorite war films, The Dirty Dozen.  Aldrich is one of those directors who I’d put in the same category as Don Siegel who were just fantastic at directing “tough-guy” films that just oozed testosterone in just about every frame.  In other words, directors that Hollywood would try to cancel in a heartbeat if they were working today. That being said, this is one of those films that is a product of the time it was made, and it has enough offensive moments that would make a modern audience want to stand up and protest, and, well, it’s what makes me like this film a little more than I should.
Read More

This remake of the 1936 screwball classic My Man Godfrey very much works as a snapshot of the time and how the wealthy as well as the social elite acted.  In many ways we can still see this behavior on display when we look at some of the modern celebrities (looking at you, Kardashian family) we can view it as harmless privilege or simply an abuse of wealth. Either way, when watching this film, though it has plenty of charm, there is plenty to cringe about when viewing the behavior of some of these characters.  When watching this, it’s best to go into it thinking of it as nothing more than a silly story and just ignore how improbable any of this could actually be. The film opens up with a chase taking place. Irene Bullock (June Allyson) is in hot pursuit of her sister, Cordelia Bullock (Martha Hyer) as they speed through the back streets of New York.  Irene is trying to catch up with her sister who has stolen a goat that she intends on using for a scavenger hunt. It’s when the pursuit is taken to a pier where the ladies encounter Godfrey Smith (David Niven) who is posing as a vagrant but in reality has illegally jumped ship when traveling from Austria in search for a new life.
Read More

“There is an old saying that blood is thicker than water.”

We’ve had Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Gene Simmons with his Family Jewels, and even Snoop Dog’s Father Hood. It’s become a bit of a trend to follow these celebrity families around and watch the drama of their privileged lives unfold on our television screens. You might think it’s a relatively recent phenomenon, but would you believe they were doing it back in the infant days of television when we followed around a musician named Ozzie and his wife way back in 1952? No, we’re not talking about Ozzie Osbourne and his family. I’m talking about Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. They were television’s darling family before we ever heard about Lucy and Desi.
Read More

“This is the territory of Wyoming. The year: 1866. On this soft, solitary day of early summer, men from two different worlds have come together to talk. There is bitterness here, suspicion, and distrust. You remember your friends and loved ones who have been killed. You’ve seen the bleached ribs of their wagons. And still they come, pushing west with a vision, a vision of farms and of towns of land they can call their own. They come by the hundreds to reclaim the wilderness under your protection, the army of the United States.”

George Sherman was one of the most prolific filmmakers in American cinematic history. Between 1938 and 1973, he made over 100 such films, including classics like Big Jake (director) and The Comancheros (as a producer), both with John Wayne
Read More

“In all the bloody pages of history, no bloody chapter was more bloody than the bloody era of the buccaneers. Over the seven seas the Brethren of the Coast, as these bloodthirsty pirates called themselves, roamed at will. Killing, plundering and looting. Writing their names in blood across the bloody record of time. They were a murderous, bloodthirsty crew who feared neither men nor the Devil. But the bloodiest of all these bloodthirsty buccaneers was the bloody pirate: Bloodthirsty Dave.”

There’s more blood in that prologue than the entire Friday the 13th franchise.
Read More

“Till I run up against you, Nazi was just a word in the newspapers to me. Now it’s another way to spell cockroach. Well, this place needs cleaning up, and for the next two minutes, I’m a one-man Board Of Health.” 

Lucky (Ladd) runs a New York crime gang. He’s dealing with two very big problems. His second, Slip Moran (Leonard) is trying to have him killed, so he employs lookalikes and doesn’t let on to Slip that he’s wise to his efforts. Also, his number has come up, but it’s not because of Slip. It’s WWII calling, and he’s trying to dodge the draft. His lawyer tries one scam after another, but nothing is working. He even hires an old lady, Ma (Paige) to pose as his dependent mother but blows the scam when he gives a grand a week as his payments to her. There’s nothing to be done. Lucky is going into the army, and Slip is going to be taking over the mob.
Read More

Last season saw huge changes, and now the sixth season of SEAL Team hits DVD from CBS Home Entertainment. For the first four seasons the show has enjoyed a pretty well-rated run on CBS’s prime time schedule. Season 5 started out exactly the same way until after the first four episodes. The series was switched suddenly from the television network to the Paramount + streaming service, and with the switch there are several huge changes. The first is in the number of episodes shot for each season. On CBS most shows run from 20-24 episodes a season. Last year because of it being a hybrid year, you got 14 episodes. Starting this season, you will get only 10 going forward.
Read More

“During the war between Maximillian and Juarez in 1865 there was a small territory on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River known as Zona Libre – Free Zone. It was dominated by a man who called himself General Eduardo Calleja, and he made it a haven for any man outside the law. This is the story of Zone Libre.”

Clete Mattson (McCrea) is swimming across the Rio Grande to the place Zona Libra with Union cavalry soldiers hot on his tail. They’re shooting at him while men on the Zona Libre side makes bets on whether he’ll make it. One of those bets is placed by Carmelita (De Carlo). She rushes to his side as he collapses on the riverbank. He’s alive and is taken to be cared for. The General (Armendariz) agrees to meet with the man calling himself Jim Lake.
Read More

The name Shirley Temple is about as iconic as it gets when it comes to film history, and despite how many films I’ve seen in my lifetime, I had somehow managed to never see a film with Shirley Temple in it. When I volunteered to check out this film, I honestly thought it was going to be the 1980 version of the film that had Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews, simply because I didn’t realize that there were at least three versions of the film that were made. Despite the mixup, I was happy to get a chance to see the film and find out for myself what made Shirley Temple such a cinematic darling on the screen and made her memorable enough to even have a drink named after her. Personally, I’m not sure if this is the best example of her work, but it is certainly a product of its time.
Read More