Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 10th, 2006
This is the perfect time for Lion's Gate to release Made on UMD for the PSP. Not only does the film feature such trendy personalities as Faizon Love and Puff Daddy/Puffy/Sean "Puffy" Combs/P-Diddy/Diddy, but it also stars the current comedic genius of the week... Vince Vaughn. That's not to say that I don't like Vince Vaughn, it's just that he is riding such a high wave since his hilarious work in Wedding Crashers that this is the perfect time for the studio to cash in on some of his lesser known films ...s well. In fact, I have been a fan of Vaughn's ever since Swingers.
Which brings me to my point. Made is one of those all-too-rare films that aren't really sequels, but are something of a reimagining of a couple of characters. Vaughn and writer/director/co-star Jon Favreau pretty much play the same two guys they did in Swingers, which I just can't get enough of. While the topic of that film was dating in Los Angeles, this one is about the dull life of lower-level gangsters trying to make it big. These two bumbling idiots decide that the best way to make a name for themselves (and earn some cash to boot) is to act as L.A. muscle for a NYC mob operation. As you can imagine, their failures are comic gold.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 9th, 2006
I think that the studio knew they had a problem with Godsend before it was released in theaters. Sometimes a film can look like a great idea on paper, but the final product is just a mess. The thing is, after the studio has invested millions in a bad property, they have to try to recoup the money somehow. In the case of Godsend, the strategy was to put a well made trailer for the property on every Lions Gate DVD product for months and months. In this way, the studio hoped to build up enough word-of-mouth through minimal promotion to have a big opening weekend; big enough to make back some of the film's budget before the word got out about how bad the thing was.
The plot sounds great. A married couple (Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) have a wonderful son, but he is tragically killed when he is eight years old. Enter Robert De Niro as a doctor who has had a miracle breakthrough in the field of cloning. After some convincing, the three parties enter into an agreement to clone the couples deceased son. The boy is a perfect duplicate of the original until he reaches the age of eight, at which the original child died. That's when the crazy comes out.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 11th, 2005
Stargate is something of a cult phenomenon among sci-fi buffs. It is so popular, in fact, that it produced not one, but three spin-off TV shows. It is amazing that the big business of the Stargate franchise started with a quirky little film. Now there are some big fans of this movie that will surely have strong words of disagreement for me, but this is really not a very good film. The premise alone is enough to make most moviegoers roll their eyes. An Egyptian historian cracks an ancient code on a strange artifact, and discovers a method by which to travel to the other side of the universe. Accompanied by token military-types, the whole crew jets off to a strange and distant land, where they find an alien slave camp run by an Egyptian god and... oh, what's the point. This is all really just the stuff of a 16-year-old geek writing stories in his parents' basement. The real story here is that, for some completely unexplainable reason, the movie actually kind-of works in an odd action adventure sort of way. If viewers can suspend belief and go into this with low expectations, you might find an exciting flick to fill an afternoon.
For those that wish the story in this action thrill ride made more sense, this disc includes the extended cut of the film, though unfortunately this cut extends the film by only five additional minutes. Still, with a film like this one, every little bit helps.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 8th, 2005
Film
“This is not a trend. This is us. This is who we are.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2005
Happy Endings is one of those films that makes you rethink being a DVD reviewer. I sat through this excursion into pretentious observations about the way the world is, and the way "average people" are, and thought, "Yeah, sure, this is a slice-of-life. I bet." Oh, I don't mean to say the characters' lives are way too screwed up to be believable. Lord knows, under every ordinary average guy... or gal... there lurks a whole slew of skeletons banging their bony fists against the inside of the closet door. But the extent to which these screwed-up folks bang into one another like aimless bumper cars at a county fair makes one say, "Enough already."
Lisa Kudrow heads a weak cast, despite name recognition and the merits I'm sure each of the performers possess. With other capable stars such as Laura Dern, Maggie Gyllenhall, Tom Arnold, and Jason Ritter attached, one would think acting is the least of the film's worries. The problem with that? Everyone gets so caught up in the hipness of it all they come across with obnoxious self-indulgence smeared over their faces like the feces permanently plastered to the walls of my old college dorm's public restroom. And it's as if writer-director Don Roos wants to remove it from that wall, but he feels too intimidated to cross the ex-Phoebe Buffay and Mr. Roseanne Barr.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 19th, 2005
Dear Chris Farley, we har'ley knew ye.
What is it with SNL and untimely death? I am pretty surprised that I have never seen a "conspiracy theory" written out about this, like the Wheaties curse or the curse of the Sports Illustrated cover. Jim Belushi, Phil Hartman, Gilda Radner and even the lovable Chris Farley died way before their time.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 8th, 2005
Synopsis
A series of meteor strikes hits a small town in Australia, turning its citizens into ravening zombies. A handful of survivors gather in the home of a survivalist who has previously encountered zombie fish and been abducted by aliens. The fight to survive begins.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 7th, 2005
I actually picked this title up several months ago on DVD, so I was already aware of how funny this disc is. For some reason, Saturday Night Live is one of those shows that nobody finds funny until several years later, at which time its charm is rediscovered. I'm sure this has to do with the fact that the reruns and compilations cut out the majority of the filler and leave only the best bits, but I am, still surprised that the shows gets such little notariety during their initial run. Regardless, I have always been a big fan of this show, as it is one of the finest examples of the power of pure acting talent. It is simply amazing to see the level of skill that these performers bring to the table when the pressure is on and the broadcast goes live.
For my money, Will Ferrell is one of the top SNL performers of all time. There are few comedic actors that have been able to place as many characters and phrases into the everyday lexicon as Ferrell. One of the most wonderful things about watching him perform is that it is often times clear when he has intentionally strayed from the script to attempt to catch his fellow players off guard, a task that he usually succeeds at with hilarious results. Skits and characters such as Celebrity Jeopardy, the Spartan Cheerleaders, the Night at the Roxbury brothers and James Lipton are all here, and in the perfect format for the PSP. It is a cinch to watch one skit here and there throughout your day, and I guarantee that if you do, your whole day will be just that much brighter for it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 26th, 2005
Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme. When is the last time you heard those two names? I'll bet it has been quite some time. Lundgren is the poor man's Schwarzenegger, and Van Damme is best known as the Canadian action superstar that is long on physical talent, but horrid at dialog. These two team up in Universal Soldier, a film that is filled with as much action as possible, with as little actual story as possible. This is the action film equivalent of pornography... give the viewers what they want, and a...d a little story in at the end to loosely tie together all of the set pieces.
The story involves two excellent Vietnam-era solders, who die on the battlefield and are reincarnated as... what?...zombie soldiers?... many years later to become super-soldiers. Unfortunately, the two gradually gain some of their memory back from their past lives, remember that they don't like each other, and go to war. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, a girl shows up. I was really shocked to see how much of this film was "borrowed" from the original Terminator film. For mindless action, this film has plenty of it. Just don't expect to go into this and find anything resembling a cohesive plot.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 23rd, 2005
The 80's was the time of the birth of the mindless action movie. The popularity of this type of film has waned somewhat in recent years, but at the time such movies were all the rage. Perhaps the mother of all mindless action flicks came from 80's film darling Sylvester Stallone, with the ashamedly-fun Rambo series. The first film in this series, First Blood, has recently been released on UMD for Sony's PSP entertainment system.
This is a fitting decision, as the PSP has begun something of a renaissanc... in the over-the-top action flicks of the 80's. Such films are a perfect match for the PSP, as viewers will most likely be watching these movies on the go. Films with lots of action and an easy to follow plot allow viewers to watch a film spread out over three or four different occasions, yet still be entertained.
