Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2023
"Jack, we have done our jobs and done them well. This fight was passed down to us and will continue with or without us. But we will always be better than the institutions we serve, and that is what matters when it matters most. There are no heroes in our profession. But occasionally there are good men. Men who act on what is right, not simply doing what they are told to do. I have not always lived my life with honor. But perhaps I have done enough to die with it. I hope the same for you."
Witness the birth of -- actually make that rebirth of --one of the most popular action heroes in literature. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has been a character of many jobs and many faces over the years. Baldwin, Ford, Pine, and Affleck have all stepped into the role of the man who has been a soldier, an analyst, an operative, and a president. What might appear as a clear advantage for this Amazon Prime streaming television show can be just as much a liability. When you throw in the Tom Clancy novels, comic books, and fan fiction, there is a ton of Jack Ryan history that pretty much gives us a story arc from his humble beginnings to extraordinary exploits, and wearing the faces of a few good performers. It's a tall order for the series and perhaps an even taller order for actor John Krasinski, who has created a nice little horror franchise with wife Emily Blunt on the side. I don't really have the time or energy to watch streaming shows and films. There's always a backlog here of discs that need to be watched and reviewed, and I've created a rather comfortable viewing experience with my home theatre I call The Reel World. Our motto: Here there be monsters. So a couple of years ago I had my first experience with this series when Paramount sent the first season on Blu-ray. It was far more of a captivating and compelling series than I expected. Then the second season reached the Blu-ray home platform format, and while I certainly detected a sophomore slump there, there's still enough interesting drama to keep a fan engaged for another year. And what a year it has been. You can find out for yourself with Paramount's release of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season Three on Blu-ray.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2023
"I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes ... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply ... evil."
Blumhouse and David Gordon Green recently finished a sequel/reboot of John Carpenter's Halloween with mixed results. He got Jamie Lee Curtis to return for all three films in the trilogy. Most of the various sequels and reboots did not include the original film's star, but Green was not the first one to get her to return to the role of Laurie Strode. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first film, Curtis returned to the role in the somewhat neglected. It was the seventh overall film in the franchise, and like the recent trilogy, it erased all of the various sequels and claimed to be a continuation of the original film. It produced a respectable $55 million on a $17 million budget and was the next final film in the series before Rob Zombie did his own reboot of the franchise that lasted for two films and finally led up to the David Gordon Green attempt to revisit and pretty much conclude the franchise with three more films. Curtis returned for Halloween Resurrections, which was a kind of meta/reality show take on the material, but Rob Zombie took it back to the beginning. Is that really the end of Michael Myers and company? I doubt it. There's still bank to be made from the franchise, and after a respectable few years, someone else will tackle the tale. Where they will start from is anyone's guess, but they could do worse than look at Halloween H2O: Twenty Years Later as a jumping-off point. I doubt anything like that is going to happen, but the franchise could certainly do worse,... and it has.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2023
"My Mamma told me to pick the right one."
In 1982, Cheers first broke on the network sitcom circuit. It was a small Boston bar owned by a has-been baseball player living on the glory years he didn't really have. It was the bar where everyone knows your name. Behind the bar there was Woody. Woody was pretty much a kid who looked up to the owner in an almost hero-like way. He was naive and was easily and often taken for a rube. But he was kind, and no matter how out of it he might be, there wasn't an evil bone in that character's body. It was all an act. Of course, it was a television show where Woody was played by Woody Harrelson. For crying out loud, even their first names were the same. It wasn't hard for us to believe the two Woodys were one and the same. I know I did. It was an act, sure, but I didn't know it was that good an act. We all found out just how good of an actor Woody Harrelson was when he stripped away kind, innocent Woody the bartender and took on the vicious role of Mickey Knox in in Oliver Stone's brutal film Natural Born Killers. Later we found out that the actor's father was a convicted hitman for the mob and was busted trying to take out a judge. Today Harrelson has proven his awesome range over and over again in dozens of impressive performances. But in 1994, I wasn't prepared for Natural Born Killers or Mickey Knox, and so it's a film that has remained seared in my brain since that day.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 2nd, 2023
"Have you ever heard of exorcism? It's a stylized ritual in which rabbis or priests try to drive out the so-called invading spirit. It's pretty much discarded these days, except by the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment. It has worked, in fact, although not for the reason they think, of course. It was purely the force of suggestion. The victim's belief in possession helped cause it. And just in the same way, this belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear."
By now we've all heard of The Exorcist. The film was based on a best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty. Blatty himself based the story on a real exorcism of a young boy many years earlier. And that's where the true power of the film begins. The monsters of horror movies often allow us a sense of unreality that protects our inner selves from being truly terrified. Yes, they may frighten us, but it's fun to be frightened, isn't it? It's rare that a horror film touches on something inside of us and delivers an experience that is truly terrifying. It's arguable that The Exorcist has done this in a way that has rarely, if ever, been repeated in horror movie history. Whatever your religious beliefs might be, there is that little voice deep in our minds that fears what we call evil and can't deal with the possibility that we can be taken over by such evil. Devil. Demon. Mental illness. It doesn't matter. We're all afraid of losing control of who we are to some invading force within our minds. Within our very souls.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 28th, 2023
Coming up on its 40th anniversary, Staying Alive continues to be one of the most bizarre sequels to be made by a major studio, starring John Travolta and co-written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. The film was intended to be a sequel to the massively popular Saturday Night Fever, but when Staying Alive came out, disco was pretty much dead, and really there isn’t much that connects the films but for the character Tony Manero (John Travolta) and that there is dancing in the film. When the movie came out it was a financial success, but it was pretty well hated by critics of the time to the point that even one of the film’s stars, Finola Hughes, was awarded a Razzie for her performance. Apparently the film has a loyal cult following, but now after 40 years I’m here to give this film a fair shake and decide for myself: is it as bad as people say, or is it a gem from the 80s that will make us all nostalgic for when there were several movies with the cast in leotards, headbands, and over-the-top dance numbers?
It’s been a few years since Tony Manero (John Travolta) was dancing through the disco tournament, and now he is a dance instructor who is trying to make it to the next level of his dancing career to be a part of a Broadway stage production. The biggest change I feel we’ve seen in Tony is that he’s managed to become more arrogant and has coasted by on his good looks and dancing, though he’s pretty far from living the dream. He has a causal relationship with Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes), who is also a dance instructor, and the pair struggle together with auditions for various productions. For the viewers it is easy for us to want Tony to settle down with Jackie. She’s good for him, and in many ways too good for him, but Tony just always has his eyes on something bigger. He expects greatness for himself and will settle for nothing less. His opportunity comes along with the Broadway production of “Satan’s Alley”, where he lands a part and falls for the lead in the performance, Laura (Finola Hughes). She’s out of his league and is only using him for a good time, but Tony is blissfully ignorant, and this only creates drama for the production.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 20th, 2023
“Don’t expect too many mistakes from this man. After all, he does seem rather more interesting than just another reader researcher. For example; has he gone into business for himself? Was he turned around? Does someone operate him? Is he homosexual? Broke? Vulnerable? Could he be a soldier of fortune? Did he arrange the hit? Is that why he’s still in flight? Still, he may be innocent. But why didn’t he come in gently?”
Sydney Pollack might have been channeling the essence of Alfred Hitchcock when he directed 3 Days Of The Condor. It’s hard not to see the similarities to some of Hitch’s work. But he might also have been having a bit of precognition at the same time. The later novels and films about Jason Bourne bear a striking resemblance to this 1975 thriller. Whatever connection Pollack might have been making, he managed to direct a film that was timeless while being very much a product of its time. We are reminded of that long-gone era of the 1970’s with generous shots of the just-built World Trade Center towers. Ads and shots of Eastern Airlines planes bring back some memories. These images securely place the action in a specific time. Still, it works maybe even more today than it did in 1975.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 20th, 2023
"This is The Batman we're talkin' about here."
In 1992 Batman: The Animated Series hit television sets all over the country. It was perhaps the biggest comeback for the Dark Knight since Adam West went camp with the cowl in the 1960's. Yes, the Tim Burton film and its sequels went a long way to bringing the bat back into the popular culture, but the series is what took the fans by storm. Kevin Conroy became, for many, the definitive Batman when he was hired to voice the series, and Mark Hamill finally got out of the shadow of Luke Skywalker with his voice rendition of the Joker. The show was a hit, and around the early years it was decided to do a direct-to-video movie called Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm. Somewhere in the production Warner Brothers had a change of heart. They decided to roll the dice on a theatrical release of the animated feature, likely assuming the series fans would flock to their multiplexes in droves. That didn't happen, and the film lost money even on a modest budget. But in video release it did become a hit. The studio didn't understand that the generation that loved the show would appreciate it more in that setting. It also doesn't help that the mid-production change meant changes to aspect ratios and other animation work that had already begun production. The end might have been a mess at the box office, but it's a solid film that now enjoys a modest upgrade to UHD/4K. The results are admittedly mixed.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 19th, 2023
“Space … the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Nearly 20 years after the original Star Trek left the network airwaves, Gene Roddenberry set out to discover whether he could catch lightning in a bottle once again. Some say he did an even better job with Star Trek: The Next Generation. There are times I tend to agree. The Star Trek sequel series had a lot more advantages from the moment it was conceived. Star Trek, a series that barely registered on the ratings during its three-year primetime voyage, became a huge sensation in syndication. By the time The Next Generation came on the scene, the original show had been syndicated in over 20 different languages all over the world. It had launched an animated series, and a fifth feature film was already in the early stages of consideration. So it isn’t quite fair to judge the success or quality of The Next Generation over the original series. One thing is inarguable. The second would never have existed if not for the first.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 14th, 2023
"Do you give people hope? Are you moving through your city like a guardian angel? Do you make a difference? That bolt of lightning chose you. Don't ever forget it."
There's one thing about being the fastest man alive. You get to the end faster than anyone else ... the finish line, if you will. But not so for Barry Allen, best known in the world of comic books as The Flash. When Arrow debuted back in 2012, no one could have foreseen where it was all going to lead. Greg Berlanti and a few others had created what we all thought was just another comic book hero television show. The Green Arrow wasn't one of the better known heroes, but he was part of the Justice League for many years, and he had a rather interesting origin story that could be told over the longer form of a television series. But it didn't end there. Within a couple of years we had Supergirl, Batwoman, The Legends Of Tomorrow, and, of course The Flash. All of these shows became quickly interconnected, and within another couple of years we all looked forward to a huge crossover event that would involve the casts and crew of all of these shows. These events usually involved some kind of a "crisis" and spread the story out over the various shows themselves. Now Arrow has ended, and the other shows are all gone as well. The Flash was the last hero standing, and that's as it should be, because it was also the best of the shows. Still, all good things come to an end, and after nine seasons, Barry Allen and Team Flash are finally coming to an end. But how can you do something epic when you're the last show standing? You do a crossover all within the confines of your own show and say goodbye with a bang. The final season of The Flash has certainly done that and more. Warner Brothers is now bringing it to a close by releasing the final season of The Flash on Blu-ray, and it's the last one you're going to get, so make sure you savor it a bit. I did.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Michael Durr on September 11th, 2023
Korean horror has picked up in the last twenty years tenfold. From films like Bedevilled and Thirst, they took on the revenge and vampire themes that a lot of classic horror films are built upon. But honestly, I've been most impressed with films like The Wailing and Train to Busan. The latter bred new life into the very tired zombie genre and made a darn watchable film, while The Wailing knew exactly what buttons to push when it comes to religion but then used that to make an interesting and thought-provoking film. That's why when I saw that we had a copy of Seire, I knew I had to review it, even though I probably would be too scared to write about it for a few days. I'm so glad I did.
According to the legend of samchil-il, 21 days after childbirth, the baby is vulnerable to bad luck, curses, and evil spirits. One of the most popular of the methods to keep out those spirits is to wrap the home with rope to keep outsiders out. No taboo is to be broken no matter how difficult it may be. For if you do, then you will suffer a horrible fate.
