Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 22nd, 2005
Synopsis
Set in a girls’ high school, this tells the tale of Min-Ah, who finds a diary written by two of her schoolmates. This is a revealing book, exposing as it does their love affair. Concurrently with Min-Ah reading the diary, that relationship comes to an end, and one of the girls leaps to her death from the school roof. Supernatural events begin almost immediately thereafter.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 14th, 2005
Star Trek: First Contact is light-years ahead of any other Next Generation film. There is virtually every characteristic that makes good Star Trek present here. James Cromwell as Cochrane provides the best comedy relief on Star Trek since the tribbles. The Borg infiltration reminds us of the first Alien film with its shadows and cramped airshaft scenes. The action is ramped up several notches from previous films. The basic crew seems to have found its feature legs and is more comfortable as a unit.
Purists will find some fault with the continuity errors the film brings to the Trek Universe, but after four years of Enterprise, these errors are quite minor. Jonathan Frakes is not, in my opinion, one of the brightest actors in Trek’s world, but here he does show he has the chops to be a first class director. Like Nimoy before him, it took one of the show’s main actors to breathe emotion into the franchise. The atmosphere in the cinematography is the best of any Trek before or since. This is probably technically the finest Trek film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 6th, 2005
What kid growing up in the 60’s and 70’s wasn’t totally and completely captivated by the moon landings? We were equally on the edge of our seats when, for a brief moment in time, it appeared we were going to lose our first men in space. Seldom can a film be successful when the audience has most of the story’s details burned into the core of their memory. After all, we know how this one comes out. Still, the film manages to create the intense tension and anticipation as if we were experiencing it all for the first time. The cast is quite crucial for such a monstrous task. Tom Hanks has arguably never been better. The understated style of Gary Sinise is exactly what the film requires when the suspense mounts. It’s particularly gratifying to have Ed Harris along for the ride, quite possibly an homage to his unforgettable John Glenn in The Right Stuff. Ron Howard should be congratulated on producing a piece of cinematic magic that will likely stand the test of time.
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 2nd, 2005
Synopsis
A monk is found walled up alive in an eccentric monastery, and Inspector Niemans (JeanReno) is on the case. Murders multiply around the country, connecting the cases worked on byNiemans and a young hotshot (Benoit Magimel, whose role is very similar to the one played byVincent Cassell in the original). The victims are all deeply religious, were all disciples of asurvivor who bears a more-than-passing resemblance to Jesus, and have the names andprofessions of the Disciples. They mur...erers are cowled monks possessed of apparentlysuperhuman strength and agility. What does all this have to do with the old underground tunnelsand defences of the Maginot Line? And what role does a German diplomat (Christopher Lee,demonstrating excellent French) have to play in all this?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 31st, 2005
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 28th, 2005
The sophomore effort of Wes Anderson, Rushmore brings together a 15 year old who flunked out of private school, and a steel tycoon in his 40s, and shows the lengths that people go to sometimes to try and win the heart of the one they love.
That would be too easy an effort, wouldn’t it? Well, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman, I Heart Huckabees) is attending Rushmore Academy on scholarship, and he loves Rushmore. So much so, that he creates a club for just about everything that hasn’t had an esta...lished club at Rushmore. Beekeepers’ Society? Check. Model U.N.? Check. He also writes and produces plays at the school. Not your average plays, more along the lines of adaptations. Adaptations which may not be appropriate for younger kids. I mean, why subject an 8 year old to a play that’s adapted from Serpico? The problem with all his extracurriculars is that he neglects his studies, and is threatened with expulsion by the school’s headmaster (Brian Cox, The Rookie). As Max’s father (Seymour Cassel, Stealing Harvard) is only a barber, expulsion would be expulsion, he couldn’t buy his way out of it. Max does find an inspiration, someone that he falls in love with, a 1st grade English teacher named Ms. Cross (Olivia Williams, The Sixth Sense). The problem is that Ms. Cross rejects his flirtations, so he enlists the aid of Herman Blume (Bill Murray, Caddyshack), a self-made tycoon who gains Max’s admiration and respect at a guest speaker engagement at the school, simply telling the poor kids to take the rich kids down. The problem with getting Blume involved is that he eventually falls in love with her also, though he is already unhappily married.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 28th, 2005
The Monterey Pop Festival has been mostly ignored by a lot of people, compared to the two other two large concerts that occurred after it, Woodstock, and Altamont. Those who do remember Monterey always mention the one incident it is most known for, Jimi Hendrix’ appearance on the U.S. stage. Jimi had been tearing it up in England, and he ended by setting his guitar on fire, which turned out to be a defining moment in music history. Criterion brings this event and others back to life in a comprehensive 3 disc set which is designed not only to showcase Jimi’s set during the show, but also breathes new life into the festival in general. Artists who appeared were The Who, Simon and Garfunkel, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin, to name a few.
The festival was shot over 3 days, and the DVD set is broken up into 3 parts: the film of the festival on disc 1, the performances of Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding take up disc 2, and almost 2 hours of outtake performances comprise disc 3. Disc 1 is the film of the festival. The usual components of a music concert documentary are here, including footage of crowds and artists flocking to the show, and some behind the scenes logistics, but that footage is quick, and it runs for about 10 minutes before the performances start. The performances are edited together fairly abruptly with almost no fanfare in between songs. The film is only 79 minutes, so I can‘t understand the need to get everything crammed in here as much as possible, but that helps to make the second and third discs a relief to see.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 22nd, 2005
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 14th, 2005
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 11th, 2005
I don’t remember hearing anything about Heat when it was coming out, but once I saw who was in it, I was hooked. With Al Pacino’s 8 Oscar nominations (with 1 award) and Robert DeNiro’s 6 nominations (and 2 awards), the two have had quintessential acting performances over the past 30 years, and the impact they have had on cinema speaks for itself.
The names of the characters are hardly consequential, as they are used to further storylines more than develop character. But Pacino plays a cop who is tr...cking a group of robbers, among them Val Kilmer (Wonderland) and Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan), a group headed by DeNiro. The group receives offers for work from Jon Voight (Runaway Train), and they rob anything from gold, to coins to bearer bonds. They are all ex-cons, and know all the ropes. They are a highly professional crew, which you see in the opening moments of the movie, despite the addition of a new man to the crew. What also helps to differentiate this from a usual cops and robbers movie are the secondary plotlines of the families involved. Pacino’s is clearly distant and breaking (played by Diane Venora and Natalie Portman), while DeNiro doesn’t have one to speak of, despite an emerging romance with Edy (Amy Brenneman, Judging Amy). At 3 hours, there are some unnecessary scenes involving a banker (played by William Fichtner), but the underlying message is that almost all of the actions in the movie do not involve just the primary characters, but also friends and loved ones of those characters. Kilmer’s wife in the film, played by Ashley Judd, desperately wants to get him out of his line of work, as she wants to start a new life for her family. An ex-con (Dennis Haysbert, 24) is stumbled upon working in a greasy spoon, and offered a chance to work by DeNiro. Haysbert’s character wants to be right, but runs into so many obstacles from it that he takes the job, only to wind up perishing in what results in a massive gunfight in the heart of Los Angeles while a bank robbery is being pulled.
