Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 31st, 2006
Synopsis
Lie With Me is proclaimed in its trailer to be a film in the tradition of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Sex, Lies and Videotape. But at its core, it’s more along the lines of another one of director Clement Virgo’s film influences, Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. The characters in Lie With Me experience each other rather provocatively at the start of their relationship, and work their way outwards.
Based on a book by Tamara Berger, the film tells a story of Le...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 31st, 2006
Synopsis
An item of secret desire for geeks like me was to get Spike Jonze’s videos on DVD. In the mid ‘90s, Jonze arguably was THE director to go to if you wanted your MTV submission to be memorable, talked about, and perhaps most importantly, spur record sales. If you remember the wacky video you saw on MTV that one time, chances are Spike directed it. Even after the critical success in Hollywood with an Oscar nomination for directing Being John Malkovich and before working on Adaptation, he...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 31st, 2006
“Who you gonna call?” By now everyone knows the answer. Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson are the Ghostbusters. As their ad proclaims, they’re ready to believe you. Ghostbusters was originally conceived by Aykroyd as a vehicle for John Belushi and himself. When Belushi died, reportedly from a drug overdose, the project sat on the shelf a few years. Harold Ramis would eventually team up with Aykroyd and finish the script. It’s been said that “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Leave it to these ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 31st, 2006
Arnold Clasen reenters society after time away in a Nazi prison camp, and returns to Hamburg and a life of quiet solitary resistance, in the 1981 war-time drama Your Unknown Brother. Clasen immediately reconnects with his old love Renate, and embarks on a turbulent, dangerous friendship with resistance leader Walter, a man of ulterior motives, who is also in bed with the Nazi regime. Clasen starts to suspect Walter when many of his old comrades are seized by authorities. It seems everyone in the resistance, wh...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2006
John Carpenter can be hit or miss on some of the things he’s done in his career. Vampires may be a good case in point. In his version of The Thing, remade from Howard Hawks’ 1950’s classic, he doesn’t focus on the creature as much as the relationship between the men in the camp, and how the paranoia starts to creep in the group, as they try to figure out who may or may not be infected by the creature. I might have jumped ahead of some people who haven’t seen it, but just to briefly recap for those few w...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2006
Synopsis
Growing up as the oldest son in an upper-middle class neighborhood outside of Washington, DC, I am familiar with rap as much as, or even more than, KRS One, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Public Enemy or NWA. I come from dem hard streets, where I can kill a muhvuggah! Well, maybe not exactly, and in the age where lame musicians become lame actors (or vice versa in the case of Jennifer Lopez), anyone who tries to be the entertainment “double threat” deserves to be subjected to any and all s...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2006
With the original Controversial Classics Collection from Warner Brothers, the studio pulled seven films from their classic film archive that were controversial in their day. Topics included government corruption, racism, troubled youth and the wrongfully accused. Instead of following that set with more classic films based on the same themes, Warner Brothers has done something interesting and varied the focus of their theme. The films this time around, as the title suggests, deal with the role of the news media...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 29th, 2006
Synopsis
One year after causing a destructive panic because he believed the sky was falling, Chicken Little is still living down the embarrassment, and is desperate for his father to be proud of him. Miraculous success at baseball seems mark the turnaround in his life, but then he is bonked on the head by another piece of the sky, and discovers that this fragment is in fact a tile from a flying saucer. Now he and his group of misfits must save the town from possible alien invasion, despite the fact t...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 28th, 2006
Where is Chuck Norris when you need him? The Rangers alluded to in this Babylon 5 film aren’t anything like Walker’s bad boys. These Rangers talk tough but are pretty much dull when it comes to action. The problem with Babylon 5 has always been the convoluted and complicated mythology of the show. I’m a huge science fiction fan who has always wanted to get into this show but just couldn’t wrap my mind around the premise. The Rangers are no exception to this flaw. These guys are charged with basically protecting the...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 28th, 2006
Sliver is a sexy thriller that is neither sexy or at all thrilling. Filmed in the wake of the hugely successful Basic Instinct, Sliver has all of the elements but none of the passion. Call it Basic Instinct lite. Less filling without the great taste. Sharon Stone sleepwalks through her role of Carly. Carly works at a publishing house and has recently moved into one of New York’s plush apartment buildings. She was trying to ride her Basic Instinct wave here, but the truth is she has never really lived up to the pote...
