Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 13th, 2012
People make fun of us Floridians for a variety of reasons. (Some of them don’t even involve our performance in presidential elections.) One of the most popular ways out-of-staters in the northern part of the country — as well as our Canadian readers — mock us is by chuckling whenever we dash to our closets and dust off our winter wear as soon as the weather dips below 60 degrees. So I can’t even imagine how we’d handle a full-blown Snowmageddon!
Snowmageddon is the latest disaster — in every sense of the word — courtesy of SyFy Original films, which has already brightened countless Saturday nights with tastefully-titled flicks like Stonehenge Apocalypse, Piranhaconda and Snipers vs. Vipers. (Have fun figuring out which one of those I made up. No Googling allowed!)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 20th, 2012
"Long story short, I want to reshape my navel, and allowance won't cover it."
Long story short is precisely the words I would use to describe Excision. You see, it started out as a short subject film and writer/director Richard Bates, Jr. decided to make it his first feature film. That was his first mistake. While I have never seen the short film that inspired this feature, I get the strong feeling that this was better served in that format.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 19th, 2012
"I'm so proud of my boys. They never forget their Momma."
What did you do for your mother the last Mother's Day? Did you buy her some flowers and candy? Perhaps you took her out for a little adventure. You might have even cooked her a special meal. If you're like Ike (Coffin) and his brothers, you treat your mom to a show. You torture, rape, and kill a few women who happen to find themselves in the woods. Good times, right?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2012
"Every ambition has a dark side."
And that includes the world of the cable television series. The world of cable series has brought us some of the most ambitious and compelling television shows we've ever seen. There's no censor board to answer to, so that means the shows have the freedom to expand into visual areas that have long been taboo on network shows. Nudity, sexuality, language, and even violence are often huge parts of these kinds of shows. Because there isn't really a ratings pressure, the shows can also cater to more specialized audiences. Of course, it's not completely true there are no ratings issues. For these networks it's getting the carriers to distribute their networks, and for some it's signing up premium members. There's little doubt that HBO did enjoy subscriptions completely tied to having The Sopranos. But that kind of programming is no longer rare. It no longer shocks us with its novelty, and the standards for quality have been established at a high level. When you watch a cable show, you don't just expect R material. You expect film-quality production values on the small screen. You also expect quality writing and compelling drama. In the case of Starz new Magic City, you'll have to settle for 2 out of 3. You get the edgy R material and outstanding production values. Unfortunately, the series misses more than it connects on the compelling drama front.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on September 12th, 2012
There is a long line of adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and here we have a modern re-telling of the classic horror tale. Like the original, Dr. Jekyll is experimenting on a wild potion, but while experimenting on himself a malevolent alter-ego named Mr. Hyde emerges from within him to go on killing sprees.
The original tale is told from the point of view of the attorney enlisted to help solve this problem. In this film, the attorney is both an aid to Jekyll and a love interest. While this added romantic element does make for some added moments of increased tension when Hyde attacks the woman Jekyll is falling for, it mostly just makes the movie feel more cliché and makes the flow of the story much more boring and predictable with the plot falling into the usual "final-girl" or "boy must save girl" trappings when relying on their relationship to be the anchor of the conflict, when there are so many more interesting elements at play.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 31st, 2012
Anyone who has watched enough of the SyFy original movies has a pretty good idea of what they're getting. The network has made a bit of a name for itself with low-budget to no-budget monster movies. Most of the creatures are mutant and large and appear like they escaped from a bad 1950's drive-in theater. The computer generated stuff usually looks like a kid drew it up on their pocket computer, and the cast is going to be made up of unknowns with a few known names to give the whole thing some street cred. The movies are usually good for a few laughs; some of them might even be intentional. It's all usually harmless fun. But, after watching Jersey Shore Shark Attack I believe that Steven Spielberg must be rolling over in his grave. He's still alive, you say? Wait until he catches this movie on his Tivo. In fact, if he's got it on his Netflix queue, I'm taking Steve in the next dead pool that comes out. Unfairly harsh? A bit too critical? See for yourself, I dare you. I double dog dare you.
The movie is a combination of Jaws meets Jersey Shore meets The Sopranos. And in case you didn't get it yourself, the cast includes Jersey Shore's Vinny Guadagnino in a cameo as a television reporter and The Sopranos’ own Paulie "Walnuts" Tony Sirico in what is basically an extended cameo as a beach club owner.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on August 30th, 2012
It’s impossible for me to discuss what I feel didn’t work in Touchback without talking about the movie’s big plot twist. I’m not even sure it’s accurate to refer to it as a “twist” since it comes in the first half hour and is an essential component of the film. On the other hand, the movie’s official plot description is intentionally vague — for the record, the film’s trailer is considerably more forthcoming — and seems designed to conceal a major part of the story. Having considered all that, I’m only issuing a Mild Spoiler Alert.
Touchback is the story of former high school football hero Scott Murphy (Brian Presley), who led his tiny Coldwater High School team to a state championship in 1991. Unfortunately, Scott shattered his leg when he scored the game-winning touchdown, derailing his collegiate and professional football dreams. Twenty years later, he’s a broken man in more ways than one. He has become a disheveled, bitter soybean farmer who is married to Macy (Melanie Lynskey), the compassionate girl who fell in love with him after his injury, and is jealous of Chris (Marc Blucas), his wildly successful former teammate.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 30th, 2012
George Romero created the modern zombie movie in 1968 with his low-budget masterpiece The Night Of The Living Dead. While we can debate the direction the genre has gone in the last 40 years, it's hard to argue that Romero defined the rules of the game with that first film and the series that followed. And while zombies have been populating the comic scene since the early days of Creepy and Eerie, it took the likes of Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore to give us a compelling interpretation of the Romero zombie in the form of a comic book series. That vision is the foundation for the first effort to populate a television series with zombies as the ongoing antagonists. It took American Movie Classics to have the vision to allow this creative team to dream big and put it all on our television screens on a weekly basis.
The first thing you should know about The Walking Dead is that it's unlike any television series you have ever seen before. The images here are intense, and the crew has been given a blank check to create this vision without the burden of censors looking over their shoulders. There are plenty of blood-and-gore effects that rival any of the Hollywood zombie films you've seen in the last few years. The makeup effects are handled by the very capable hands of KNB and supervised personally by Greg Nicotero (the N from KNB). KNB isn't treating this like a television production, and while I personally get tired of the cliché about making a movie each week, this one lives up to the hype. They aren't doing anything different here than they would do for a big-budget film. The zombies look incredible, and the effects are completely first-rate.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 28th, 2012
"This is where society dumps its worst nightmares."
In 1978 John Carpenter created a landmark horror film in Halloween. While it certainly can't be called the first slasher film, it was absolutely the first commercially successful slasher movie and set up the pattern that we're still following today. Carpenter created a new kind of Hollywood monster: the mindless human-shaped killing machine. Michael Myers with his William Shatner rubber mask would eventually give birth to the likes of Jason and Freddy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 28th, 2012
"They should ban Halloween in this town."
By the time we got to the 5th installment of the Halloween film franchise, there might have been fans thinking it might be time to ban its sequels. Even the return of young Danielle Harris and Donald Pleasence couldn't save this train wreck of a movie. It ranks as the worst of all 10 Halloween films at the box office and has been conveniently forgotten by the fans of the franchise. Yes, it even made less money than Season Of The Witch. It looks like we're about to be reminded of just how horrible horror can really be.
