Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 21st, 2004
Synopsis
Daryl Hannah plays CJ, a world-weary hired assassin. She wants out of the life, but hercurrent job goes awry when the drugs she is suppossed to recover for mob boss Alex Rocco gomissing. They have wound up in the hands of nervous Brad Renfro and his very pregantgirlfriend, Dominique Swain. CJ finds it difficult to kill these two young people, and this gets herinto trouble herself. Meanwhile, she begins to succumb to the overtures of a former priest (EricMabius), who wants a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 15th, 2004
Slam is one of the rarest of films, an intelligent urban drama. These days, most films that deal with inner city African American youth either glorify the violent world that they live in, or turn into an After School Special on just saying "no". Slam disses both of these paths, and instead, forges its own path. Luckily, this path leads to truth, to knowledge, and to awards at Sundance.
This is the story of one young man coming to grips with his time and place in the history of the world. Being pinche...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 6th, 2004
Sometimes, movies are just inexplicably bad, and as a DVD reviewer, I get to see a lot of them. These are films that are so horrible that I sometimes don’t know where to begin. It is often times hard to place blame in one are or another, when the whole production is flawed.
In the case of Lost and Delirious, however, the blame is easy to place. This film is not half bad… the premise is decent, the film looks and sounds better than expected, and the acting, while not fantastic, is respectable. The pro...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 3rd, 2004
Synopsis
Benny Walsh (Frank Gorshin) wins big at a poker game, but then is murdered as he driveshome with his winnings. His son Clyde (Robert Dubac) comes into town looking for answers.Before long he is at odds with the sinister casino owner Frank (Stanley DeSantis). Clyde is moreand more convinced that Frank is responsible for Benny’s death. His struggle for justice iscomplicated by the presence of other parties fighting over the casino and a big bag ofcocaine.
Not...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 20th, 2003
I often wonder what would make a good actor star in a bad film. Of course, the true answer almost always involves money, but I still hold out the hope that there is a greater purpose behind these little thespian mysteries. Did the actor know ahead of time that it was going to be a bad film? Was it a risk that just didn’t pay off? Did he owe someone a favor? Just what exactly would cause an actor to put his career at risk for a paycheck?
Shadow Fury boasts Karate Kid’s Pat Morita on it’s front-...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 20th, 2003
Synopsis
A group of college friends head off into the woods for a holiday in a remote cabin. They havean bloody encounter with a gruesomely sick stranger, and he passes his infection on to them. Oneby one, they fall ill, and their friendships are violently torn asunder as they uninfected try toquarantine, by any means necessary, the infected.
Riddled with references to other horror movies, mostly from the 70s (the theme song fromLast House on the Left keeps pla...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 17th, 2003
I hate to see great ideas go to waste. These days, it's rare that anyone ever has any new ideas in Hollywood. Everything has been done before, usually more than once. Sometimes concepts are adapted, and sometimes whole films are re-done… the most blatant slap in the face of creativity. When a film comes along that actually is original, I get excited. In fact, I'll even settle for a new twist on an old story. I get so tired of the same old thing, that even an ounce of creativity goes a long way with me.
It i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 16th, 2003
Generally speaking, I am not a fan of trendy relationship films. Cameron Crowe's Singles aside, they are just not my kind of thing. They typically embody too much neurosis and whining from the female characters, and either overly sensitive or overly dense men. Plot elements are rarely believable (the two main characters often bump into each other at some all-too-fortuitous locale), and I frequently leave the theater feeling as if I have been manipulated into believing the story would actually be possible if it...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 22nd, 2003
Synopsis
In contemporary New York City, a young man named Edge breaks into an old woman’sapartment. Far from helpless, she wallops him and, at gunpoint, forces him to listen to her tale.She wants him to bury her where she was born. Her story is of two brothers at the start of the 20thCentury: the violent Luke (David Wenham) and the religious Elijah (Joseph Fiennes). A fightover a woman leads Luke to leave the States, and he winds up in Macedonia, a member of aviolent gang of ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 18th, 2003
Synopsis
