Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 16th, 2005
The second volume of Lost In Space Season 2 is pretty much like the first. I’m still not sure I like the idea of splitting seasons. The reason given was that stores were refusing to carry a higher priced season set. This set does contain one of my favorite of the entire show. “Trip Through The Robot” is an obvious “Fantastic Voyage” rip-off but is a terribly entertaining romp. The stories continued their slide into even sillier tales and lower budget monsters. Gene Roddenberry often told the tale of how CBS pi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 13th, 2005
Synopsis
Pauly Shore’s career spirals down into the toilet in the wake of a disastrous Fox sitcom.Desperate, he fakes his own death, thus boosting his popularity. His plan seems to be working,until the terrible backfire when he is caught and sent to jail.
There’s a halfway clever conceit here, given that Shore co-wrote, co-produced and directedwhat plays partly as an exercise in self-loathing, a perspective that viewers can only heartilysupport. There are some amusing cameos...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 23rd, 2004
”Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed…”. Yes we all know that familiar strain. Now…The Beverly Hillbillies is the movie adaptation of the popular television show. I was never a fan of the original show, but I can see its charm. And I’m not a fan of the movie, which doesn’t have much charm. Penelope Spheeris directs, and the deft comic touch seen in Wayne’s World is not evident here. There are only so many “fish out of water” jokes one can take in 90 minutes. When there are four writers...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 21st, 2004
Synopsis
Set in the near future, well before the Alien films but after the Predatorfranchise, AVP has a group of scientists and security experts in the pay of the LanceHenriksen (Weyland, of the Weyland-Utani Corporation that plays such an important role in theAlien films) arrive in Antarctica. Here they find a pyramid buried deep in the ice, whichturns out to be a Predator training site. A trio of these creatures arrives for training, but thehumans have ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 17th, 2004
Synopsis
We’ve all known (or been -- be honest, now) Napoleon Dynamite at some point in highschool. He’s too tall for his own good, lives in a fantasy world of his own, and is a socialcatastrophe. At home, his thirty-something brother Kip is just as odd, and when their hard-partying grandmother winds up in the hospital, Uncle Rico (permanently reliving his supposedglory days of 1982) comes to look after things, and generally makes everything worse. ButNapoleon is also coming out of ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 11th, 2004
Synopsis
Zach Braff (who also wrote and directed) stars as Andrew Largeman, a young man so heavilymedicated since his childhood that he finds it completely impossible to experience any kind ofemotion. This is true even at his mother’s funeral, for which he returns from LA to New Jersey.There he reconnects with his old friends (chief among them being Peter Sarsgaard), all of whomare living odd, if aimless lives, and encounters Sam (Natalie Portman), whose emotions-on-the-sleeve appro...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 24th, 2004
Synopsis
Anaesthesiologist Judge Reinhold, dreaming of a traditional Thanksgiving holiday with long-lost cousins, packs up his resentful, upper-crust family and heads off to Idaho. The relatives turnout to be a group of hippies with a yard that would horrify the family in The Texas ChainsawMassacre. Cue the culture clash.
But don’t cue the laughs. This is sad, sad stuff, as only a made-for-TV (TBS in this case)version of National Lampoon can be. The gags are old, and ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 23rd, 2004
Synopsis
In a rather sparsely populated Chicago in 2035, Detective Spooner (Will Smith) is called into investigate the death of US Robotics’ top scientist (Jame Cromwell). Spooner has deep-seatedprejudices against robots, and is eager to believe that a robot is the murderer. Evidence suggeststhat he is right, but then the signs build that the problem is much bigger: a general robot rebellionmight be in the works.
Director Alex Proyas, after The Crow, gave us Dark C...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 21st, 2004
Synopsis
Audrey Hepburn is the long-suffering daughter of incorrigible art forger Hugh Griffith. Whena phony Cellini sculpture Griffith has loaned to a museum is going to be subject to anauthenticity test, Hepburn decides to save her father by stealing their own statue. She enlists theaid of Peter O’Toole, whom she believes to be a professional burglar. The stage is set for anelaborate heist at the highly secure museum, not to mention a little bit of romance along theway.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 19th, 2004
There have been umpteen movie adaptations of the Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol”. Some of my favorites include the Alastair Sim version, the Henry Winkler version (yes, the guy who played Fonzie), the Bill Murray version, the Muppet version, and the Mister Magoo version. This 1997 version of A Christmas Carol is an animated feature featuring the voices of Tim Curry, Whoopi Goldberg, Ed Asner, and Michael York. It’s a story that we all know well.
But what makes this different from the other ve...
