Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 11th, 2012
Holy chick flicks, Batman! Aye, the torture! Even all of the previews on this disc are chick flicks. There are very few that I can stand. Mostly, because they do not follow the usual chick flick script. Will this one be one I can get behind? I guess we will see. If anything I can get behind watching Hugh Jackman for a few hours. Though, looking at the cover, I prefer him as Wolverine. Oh yes. Enough drooling, on with the show.
We start with a man giving a speech about time in an earlier century. Leopold (Hugh Jackman) is in the crowd doing a sketch drawing of the monument behind the speaker. Stewart (Liev Schreiber) is laughing because the man speaking is talking wildly about the “erection” of this new monument. Heh heh, hey Beavis... He said... Erection! Leopold goes home and gets ready for a party. He is getting dressed and his uncle is talking about his need to take on a wife. He tells him what a failure he is and how he needs to marry someone with a lot of money in order to make himself useful to the family. This kind of sounds familiar... Anywho, he is told to announce his bride tonight. Or else! Dun dun dun!
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 10th, 2012
Ben Affleck's dating life wreaked plenty of havoc on the moviegoing public during the early part of the 2000s. We all know about the infamous Gigli and Jersey Girl debacles with Jennifer Lopez. (It didn't even matter that J. Lo was barely in Jersey Girl — which actually has a few cute moments — or that the indefensible Gigli was just a deeply weird flick which happened to star two of the world's most famous, romantically-involved movie stars.) The film usually left off this dubious category is Bounce, a soggy romantic drama starring Affleck and former squeeze Gwyneth Paltrow. Although the pair — who, to be fair, also appeared together in the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love — keep this movie watchable, there's a reason Affleck mostly focuses on directing these days and hasn't made a movie with Jennifer Garner since they got married.
Affleck stars as hot-shot ad man Buddy Amaral. (We know he's a hot-shot because he speaks quickly, brashly and constantly has a drink in his hand...Mad Men taught me that.) After scoring a major account with an airline in Chicago, Buddy is stranded at the airport with a hottie (Natasha Henstridge) and friendly family man Greg (Tony Goldwyn). Greg allows himself to get bumped from the flight so he can use the airline compensation to take his family on vacation at a later date. Once the flight starts boarding, Buddy gives Greg his ticket so Greg can go home to his family sooner, but mostly so Buddy can hook up with the hottie at the airport hotel. The plane crashes, killing everyone on board.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 30th, 2012
When I was in the fifth and sixth grade, I learned how to play a cello. Despite my attempts at learning the instrument, it was a constant struggle to be able to read sheet music and get my hands to cooperate in an appropriate manner. Personally, I think it had something to do with the fact that instrument spent half the time in the shop (school provided) rather than in my hands. Today’s review explores a similar subject, the movie: The Piano. Let’s see how well Holly Hunter does with her instrument.
We hear a voice. But it is not a speaking voice, rather a voice inside a female’s head. That female is Ada McGrath (played by Holly Hunter). She’s been a mute since she was six years old. For a little while now, she’s been without a spouse and unfortunately for her, she’s been promised to a man in New Zealand who has never met her. All of her belongings included her prized possession, a piano and her eleven year old daughter by the name of Flora (played by Anna Paquin) are put on a boat and the crew sets sail for the island.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 13th, 2012
It would still be two years before Kate Beckinsale would don her fangs, blue contacts, and black cat suit and become a blip on the radar for the guys among us. Yes, she had done Pearl Harbor, but how many guys thought that was just a romance story that happened to revolve around a particular historic event. Can anyone say Titanic? Serendipity came out the same year as Pearl Harbor, so 2001 was likely the year that Beckinsale really came out, at least to the women in the audience. Of course, Serendipity didn't bring in near the kind of cash that Pearl Harbor did, and honestly, it's kind of fallen by the wayside in the last decade. Mirimax is doing something about that with the new Blu-ray release of John Cusak and Kate Beckinsale in Serendipity.
Jonathan Trager (Cusak) and Sara Thomas (Beckinsale) are both doing a little Christmas shopping for their significant others. In a department store they both attempt to lay claim to the last pair of black gloves on the counter, each tugging on a separate glove. They share a little laugh and conversation and Jonathan offers to allow Sara to have the gloves in exchange for a coffee together. While they both are in relationships, they begin to have feelings for each other. They appear to keep bumping into each other, and Sara is a believer in fate, or serendipity, if you will. She decides to leave their future in the hands of chance. She will write her name and number on a book and sell it to a random bookstore the next day. He puts his information on the back of a five dollar bill, and she spends it at a newsstand without peeking. The idea is that if they were meant to be together, the information will find itself back to them.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 19th, 2011
In case you were not already aware, the makers of Cinema Paradiso wanted you to know just how acclaimed their film happens to be. So, before the film itself starts there's something akin to a credit roll with a long list of awards and acclaims the film has received since its release in 1988. To say that it is a film held in high regard would be a terribly unfair understatement. The movie is an undisputed classic and for good reason.
The film tells the story of one Salvatore "Toto" Di Vita, played by three different actors representing three stages of his life. Salvatore Cascio plays the young boy. Marco Leonardi plays the teenage years. And Jacques Perrin plays the elder version of Toto.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on September 13th, 2011
“One – you can't do it. You just can't. This isn't a personal attack towards you, I'm just saying that no man can do it, it goes against nature. The male was biologically designed to spread his seed. You're gonna piss off the seeds, Matt! It goes against science! You wanna be the guy who goes against science?”
In 1988, director Michael Lehman brought us Heathers, one of the great, all time classic black comedies so ballsy it could never get made our current post 9/11 and Columbine culture. Then something happened to him and began to spit out tepid, careful comedies like Hudson Hawk and The Truth about Cats and Dogs. 40 Days and 40 Nights taps into the abstaining-from-sex-and-keeping-the-reason-from-one's-potential- mate premise Judd Apatow mastered with the far superior 40 Year Old Virgin.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 31st, 2010
There’s a quote by author Kent Nerburn that says: “It is much easier to become a father than to be one.” The Boys Are Back, based on a memoir by Simon Carr, is the best example of that sentiment on film that I’ve personally seen in a few years. Clive Owen plays sportswriter Joe Warr. He’s good at becoming a father, but not at being one. His one-the-go job keeps him from spending any real quality time with his family, leaving his wife Katy (Laura Fraser) to raise their son Artie (Nicholas McAnulty). When Katy becomes fatally ill, Joe must step up to the plate to take care of his 6-year-old son. His mother-in-law (Julia Blake) tries to offer her advice, but Joe is determined to do it on his own.
Widower Joe must deal with Artie, a firecracker of a boy he knows nothing about, foreign events like parent-teacher conferences, and keeping on the ball with his deadlines at the newspaper. He adopts a hands-free parenting philosophy that allows Artie to have the run of the house with as few rules as possible. That plan is full of flaws from the start.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 29th, 2009
By day, this reviewer is not just a writer but a glorified cubicle jockey. For lack of a detailed job description, I am a computer software administrator. So as many cubicle jockeys, I've watched Office Space. To be honest, I'm not in love with it. I did find it mildly funny and there were a few “I've been in that situation before” moments. But interestingly enough, I was pretty excited to see Extract (Mike Judge had directed both). Perhaps it was my infatuation with Mila Kunis or seeing how Jason Bateman has progressed in comedic films or maybe I just wanted to see Ben Affleck in a full grown beard.
Joel (played by Jason Bateman) built the Reynolds extract factory from the ground up. His is still in charge of the factory but does yearn to sell the factory to somebody like General Mills and retire. However, he has other issues more pressing at the moment. His wife, Suzie (played by Kristen Wiig) works at home and once she puts on the sweat pants (8pm), Jason has no chance of getting any from his wife.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 24th, 2009
Do you know what’s worse than watching a bad movie? It has to be watching three bad movies. Worse than that is watching three bad movies where it’s obvious to everyone involved in the films that they know they’re bad movies. It doesn’t take long until you begin to think that you’re the one everyone is really laughing about. You can picture a couple members of the cast sitting with the director all laughing their rear ends off at the poor rube who actually spends good money, and more importantly, their time, watching the piece of crap you just dropped into their DVD or Blu-ray player. It’ll take forever to get that stink out of my home theater.
Lately there has been a push to avoid crowds. There’s the whole H1N1 scare out there. Even the Vice-President says he wouldn’t be caught out in a crowd for nothing right now. Way to give us confidence there, Joe. If you too are afraid of crowds, going to a Kevin Smith film is the surest way to avoid them. I have been told by a few, and I do mean very few, Kevin Smith fans I’ve talked to that it’s not at all that the films suck. The problem, so they say, is that I just don’t get it. The idea is that Smith is some kind of artistic genius and a pedestrian reviewer like myself just doesn’t have the sophistication to understand his superior humor. I know that people like Smith likely believe it’s true. But, if I’m the one who just doesn’t get it, I’m not alone. The only folks who are alone are the unfortunate saps that went to see these films at the box office. The numbers don’t lie. These films fared horribly, and that’s being generous. The second Smithite argument is that, while the box office results were indeed pitiful, the films themselves were very low budget, so they did make more than they cost. Another bogus argument. No budget films have taken the world by storm. Look at the recent success of Paranormal Activity. That film cost less than any of these movies, a modest $15,000, and has raked in nearly a $150 million in box. Clerks pulled in just over $3 million. Chasing Amy just about $12 million. Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back broke the bank at just about $30 million. None of the films broke the top 100 for the year in which they were released. Yeah, I don’t get it. Apparently, a lot of people don’t get it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 22nd, 2009
This was the final of Miramax 4 martial arts classics released as a collection or separately on Blu-ray. The collection featured some extraordinary action and top line star power for the most part. Zatoichi, for the most part, is the weakest of the four films. It is almost a solo effort by renowned Japanese actor Takeshi Kitano. He participated in writing the script. He is also the director, editor, and star of this rather off the wall martial arts film. The character of Zatoichi has appeared in many films and is as much a part of martial arts culture as Jackie Chan. Kitano does quite a superb job in portraying the blind swordsman, but it is in the other areas that he falls considerably short of the intended mark. Instead of reaching for the classic staples of the genre, he decides to take this tale in a far more fantastical direction. Swords blaze with such speed it’s impossible to really appreciate the skills, because you never actually see the sword. It’s out, slice and dice, and resheathed all in a blink of an eye. Rather impressive the first 20 times it occurs in the film, but before long it’s merely an old punch line that’s been repeated one too many times by a desperate comedian who doesn’t really have anything else. It’s sad, really. Because, Kitano does have something else to offer, and we certainly get glimpses of that. In the end, however, Kitano pushes the boundaries too often for me to take this film seriously at all.
The film is really a Western guised in the form of a martial arts film. The plot rings of Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter. When a blind masseur wonders into a village, he finds that it has been terrorized by a gang that extorts shop owners for protection and runs the local gambling and geisha houses. The blind drifter has startling skill with a sword he hides sheathed in his seeing eye cane. He has an uncanny ability to hear enough from his environment to counter any blow raised toward him and cut up his opponent quickly and quite efficiently. He meets up with Genosuke (Asano) who supplies the comic relief here. Genosuke is a degenerate gambler who can’t seem to catch a break in the local dice parlor. But he is impressed with the uncanny ability the masseur has of hearing the correct lay of the dice. The two of them clean up at the game. Deciding to spend some of their winnings at the geisha house, the pair meet two geisha girls who are actually more than meets the eye. They are the sole surviving children of a family slaughtered by the mob kingpin running the local gang. Together they plot to discover the identity of the boss and rid the village of the gang forever. The gang has employed the services of a very skilled samurai to enforce their will on the people. It doesn’t take much time to figure out that all of this is leading to a wild west style showdown between the samurai and the masseur.
![The Piano [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-piano-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Serendipity [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/serendipity-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Cinema Paradiso [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/cinema-paradiso-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![40 Days and 40 Nights [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/40-days-and-40-nights-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Extract [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/extract-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Kevin Smith Box Set (Clerks | Chasing Amy | Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/kevin-smith-box-set-clerks-chasi-large.jpg)
![The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-blind-swordsman-zatoichi-blu--large.jpg)
