Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on January 3rd, 2014
We’ve been conditioned to expect certain things when it comes to movies about love. The genre has become synonymous with chance encounters, kisses in the rain, and last-second declarations of love. (A tragic/downer ending is purely optional.) The most interesting thing about Last Love is how it explores the sort of deep connection between a man and a woman that isn’t necessarily tied to physicality or even romance. It’s such a refreshing change from the love story norm that it made the parts of the film that don’t quite work more palatable.
Last Love — shortened from its original title, Mr. Morgan’s Last Love, and based on a French novel — opens with an arresting image of a grief-stricken man sitting at his dead wife’s bedside. Even before he opens his mouth to speak, Michael Caine uses every line on his hangdog face to convey immense personal loss. The action flashes forward three years with retired philosophy professor Matthew Morgan (Caine) living alone in his impossibly handsome French apartment and casually/unsuccessfully trying to kill himself by downing a handful of pills.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 4th, 2013
Galactic Adventures from Image Entertainment is a nifty little collection of two Solar System IMAX films both running just under a half hour. The two short documentaries off a 3D ride to both the Sun and Mars. The films were produced in 2007 with 3D Sun opening at The Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum. Both films have made the circuit of science museums throughout the country and come to you now through the modern milestone of home 3D for the first time ever.
3D Sun:
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 28th, 2013
Those of us who love horror movies can remember the first great scare we ever got. (To be fair, those of you who hate horror movies probably remember the first scare you ever got too, since it’s probably why you stopped watching them.) Stephen King’s It wasn’t my first scary flick, but the image of Tim Curry’s Pennywise coaxing poor Georgie into the storm drain seared itself into my brain and became my original childhood freak-out. What I enjoyed most about All Hallows’ Eve is that it tapped into the unique impact a genuinely scary clown movie can have.
The film quickly introduces us to babysitter Sarah (Katie Maguire) and her two bickering young charges, Timmy (Cole Mathewson) and Tia (Sydney Freihofer), on Halloween night. As they go through their trick or treat haul, Timmy discovers an unmarked VHS tape in his bag. The kids convince a hesitant Sarah to let them see what’s on the tape. What follows is a trio of unsettling, woman-in-peril horror tales. Each segment also features appearances by the mute, diabolical Art the Clown (Mike Giannelli). As if that weren’t scary enough, Sarah and the kids start noticing strange happenings in their own house. Is it their active imaginations playing tricks on them or something far more sinister?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 12th, 2013
“When people are desperate, they’ll do horrible things to survive.”
Sci-fi and horror have been exploring the dark side of human nature for as long as those genres have been around. Throw a group of people together in a high-stress situation — whether they’re running from The Walking Dead or hiding from whatever is in The Mist — and the base instinct to survive will eventually lead them to commit unspeakable atrocities. The Colony starts off as the sort of movie that explores the monstrous things people do to each other…and then the actual monsters show up.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 19th, 2013
"After a half century of space exploration we're now being faced with what's long been a staple of science fiction: an orbiting junkyard of space debris."
There's an old saying that what goes up must come down. For most of human history that has been a pretty steadfast axiom. Of course any kid who has ever had a kite or a football stuck in a tree knows there are exceptions to every rule. But in the 1950's we began to place objects in orbit about the Earth. In recent decades the practice has almost become a frenzy. We have all of those cell phones, television networks and GPS devices that require more and more satellite support. It appears that the rule itself has changed. The fact is there are hundreds of thousands of "whats" that have gone up and will not come down at all, at least in our lifetimes. Space Junk 3D examines the ramifications of all of this floating space debris.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 14th, 2013
When the show ended in 1966 it was still one of the most popular shows on television. Both Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore wanted to do something else. Both were made confident by the huge stardom the show provided them, but neither was ever able to reproduce the magic here. Of course, Mary Tyler Moore found great success with a different kind of show in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. That one would go on to become a classic in its own right. CBS didn't want the show to end and continued to run the reruns for another four years before offering them to syndication where they continue to be a hit. Now that final season of classic episodes is available on high-definition Blu-ray for the very first time.
When one thinks of The Dick Van Dyke Show it's hard not to think of its star Dick Van Dyke. After all, it's his name on the opening credits, and he does play the lead character in this groundbreaking television comedy. There's little question that the show became a wonderful vehicle for his many comedic talents. But the genius behind the show wasn't really Dick Van Dyke at all. It was Carl Reiner (yes, Meathead's father) who was the true brains behind the show.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 9th, 2013
When one thinks of The Dick Van Dyke Show it's hard not to think of its star Dick Van Dyke. After all, it's his name on the opening credits, and he does play the lead character in this groundbreaking television comedy. There's little question that the show became a wonderful vehicle for his many comedic talents. But the genius behind the show wasn't really Dick Van Dyke at all. It was Carl Reiner (yes, Meathead's father) who is the true brains behind the show.
Reiner was a popular comedy writer in the early days of television. He made his name with Sid Caesar, writing for the very popular Your Show Of Shows. During that time he had been inundated with ideas for his own show. He wasn't happy with any of them and decided to write his own. The result was Head Of The Family. It starred Reiner as Rob Petrie, a television comedy writer living in the New York suburbs of New Rochelle. In a break from traditional sit-com style, he told his stories both at home and at the office. We got to see Rob with his fellow writers and with his wife and neighbors. If any of this sounds rather familiar...it should. It was a clever idea, but it stank up the ratings and was soon dropped.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on May 29th, 2013
When someone tries to break in and take something from the building you’re in, what do you do? Well, according to “The Official Good Guy Handbook”, you must immediately lock down the building, retreat to a secure room, and try to get help from the outside. Of course, you must do all this while repelling the bad guys, ignoring their threats and bribes, and (of course) watching out for the double cross.
This is the problem CIA agent Emerson Kent (John Cusack, 2012) faces in The Numbers Station. After a botched black-ops mission, Kent is given one last chance. His new assignment: guarding Katherine (Malin Akerman, Watchmen), a code operator at a classified “numbers station” in England. It’s her job to receive coded messages and broadcast them to agents in the field. While bored with his assignment, Kent is always on the lookout for danger. This hyper-awareness is what saves their lives when they are attacked as they show up for their shift one day. Barely making it inside, they find the other team has been killed and a heavily-armed squad is waiting outside to take them out as well. Together, Emerson and Katherine must figure out what their enemies want and how to get out alive.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 13th, 2013
We all know what it feels like to nod off in the middle of a film. It starts with micro-naps that last a few seconds. They’re so short, we don’t even realize we’ve fallen asleep. But when we wake up, we feel totally lost because we’ve missed a line of dialogue or scene transition. I mention this for two reasons: 1.) the confused protagonist of Tomorrow You’re Gone floats through his life in a dream-like state and 2.) watching this incomprehensible mess of a movie constantly made me feel like I’d fallen asleep and missed something. That’s a problem because I was wide awake.
The plot of Tomorrow You’re Gone — based on the novel “Boot Tracks” by Matthew F. Jones, who also wrote the screenplay — is straightforward enough. We meet Charlie Rankin (Stephen Dorff) just as he’s about to be released from prison. He receives an encoded letter from Billy “The Buddha” Pettigrew (Willem Dafoe), Charlie’s former jail-house mentor. The hidden message orders Charlie to carry out a hit, and Charlie agrees because he feels indebted to The Buddha. On his way to do the job, Charlie meets Florence (Michelle Monaghan) a flirty oddball/former porn star, and the two form an uneasy bond. After the hit doesn’t go as planned, Charlie has to dodge an unhappy Buddha. (He also spends an inordinate amount of time dodging Florence’s sexual advances because...actually, it’s not really clear why he keeps rejecting this woman who is throwing herself at him. It flies in the face of everything we know about movie ex-cons.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 18th, 2013
“I want to visit a country of dreams, imagination and magic.”
Instead of “dreams, imagination and magic”, the Africa presented in this confounding, family-friendly offering from Spanish filmmaker Jordi Llompart is a place of trippy visuals, head-scratching dialogue and horrid CGI. Magic Journey to Africa — billed as a “giant screen spectacle” — is now available for home consumption, where the film’s dazzling 3D presentation is its only saving grace.
