Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 26th, 2014
"Let me tell you a story."
Remember the tagline in Alien? "In space no one can hear you scream." Gravity begins, appropriately enough, with complete silence. We're treated to a rather spectacular view of the Earth from orbit. Eventually chatter begins to intrude upon our revelry. We soon meet the crew of a space shuttle mission to do repair work on the Hubble telescope. We quickly learn that this is the final mission for retiring astronaut Matt Kowalski, played by George Clooney, although I certainly consider it a bad sign when he's told to enjoy his last walk. He's acting as a mentor of sorts to younger astronaut Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock. There are others on the mission, but we're treated to very little time with them. In a short time, they won't really matter.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2014
"Don't mess with a man of God."
It has been said that an old vaudevillian was on his deathbed and was asked how he was doing. He replied, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard". And no, it wasn't Shia LaBeof. The fact is that comedy is easy. Horror comedy is hard...very hard. One needs only to look at the lame attempts each year to make us laugh at the carnage. For every Shaun Of The Dead there are 100 Vampire In Brooklyn's Let's not even talk about the last Scream entry. Needless to say I was quite a bit overwhelmed when I received Hellbenders 3D. Not only was this some cheap Exorcist knockoff, but it was going to be low-budget 3D. I watched it the night before a surgery figuring it was the most likely film to make me actually look forward to the surgery. Let's face it. You see this stuff coming from a mile away. What I never saw coming was that I had one hell of a good time watching. I'm not going to call it a classic by any means. But Hellbenders delivers like few horror comedies I've seen in a very long time.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 24th, 2014
Bruce Dern is the one generating the greatest praise. June Squibb (About Schmidt) who plays Dern's wife has also gotten multiple nominations. Woody Grant (Dern) is seen at the start of the film walking the winter roads of Billings, Montana. It is his intention to walk to Lincoln, Nebraska. The local police pick him up, and we are introduced to his son, David (Will Forte). The heart and soul of the movie is watching Dern and Forte interact. Forte is best known for acting silly as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, but his performance in this film is perfect. He is dour and forlorn and takes it on himself to be the only family member who tries to care about his father's feelings. He takes his father on a road trip because he believes he is slowly sinking into dementia. His dad believes he has won a million dollars because he received a magazine subscription sweepstakes letter. Everybody but Woody knows that it's a scam, but David wants the chance to spend some time with his dad. Woody's wife Kate (Squibb) thinks they are both insane and doesn't ever mince words for one minute. The film turns into a reunion with many people from the past and an unexpected journey to forgotten places. David doesn't know much about his dad, and he will start to learn a lot. They take an extended stop in Woody's home town of Hawthorne, Nebraska where much of his family still lives. For a time, many people in Hawthorne believe Woody really is rich including his former business partner, Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach). Many members of the family members and friends start to come up with stories about how they lent Woody money over the years.
Through it all David is by his father's side, tenderly finding ways to support him and make him feel good about himself in what is clearly near the end of his life. The whole film is handled with such finesse and subtle wit, filmed in pristine black and white that beautifully makes nearly every image like a classic photograph. Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad) as the other brother, Ross, adds ably to a continuous stream of humorous vignettes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 20th, 2014
“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Even if Game of Thrones had inexplicably wrapped its run after two stellar seasons, the HBO series would’ve gone down as a landmark in television history because of its unprecedented scale and audacious storytelling. But then fans wouldn’t have gotten season 3, an adaptation of (roughly) the first half of “A Storm of Swords”, the third novel in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. “A Storm of Swords” is considered the “Empire Strikes Back” of Martin’s novels, which is a terrifying prospect considering the “Empire” in the world of Thrones has been “striking back” since the very first episode.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 19th, 2014
“Zombies…killer robots…nice town you got here.”
If nothing else, filmmaker Christopher Hatton definitely thought outside the box in his attempt to spice up the lumbering zombie genre. The random appearance of killer robots about halfway through the film is such an out-of-leftfield move — assuming you started watching this movie without looking at its Blu-ray cover (and, no…Dolph Lundgren is *not* one of the robots) — that I actually found it to be inspired. It’s a good thing too because the rest of Battle of the Damned is essentially a low-budget, paint splatter-by-numbers survival flick.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 17th, 2014
“…Super secret spies living next door. They look like us. They speak better English than we do. I mean, come on. Someone’s been reading too many spy novels.”
And now someone has expertly taken the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of a great spy novel, transplanted it onto our television screens, and called it The Americans. While the show is very clearly set during the Reagan era, its complex, multi-layered portrayal of the human beings on both sides of the Cold War makes it feel thrillingly alive today.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 13th, 2014
Paula Patton has managed to stand out on the big screen alongside Hollywood heavyweights like Denzel Washington (Déjà Vu, 2 Guns) and Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), but she’s still probably best known for being married to Beetle-douche. That’s why I was hoping Baggage Claim, her first big solo starring vehicle, would be so much better than it turned out to be. It’s tempting to dismiss it as just another corny, clichéd romantic comedy, and forget about it until it pops up on TBS two years from now. But the film squanders too much appealing talent — and insults the audience’s intelligence too often — to let it off the hook quite so easily.
"My relationships have never been cleared for takeoff."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 11th, 2014
There are two very distinctive schools of thought about Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. There are the Kipling fanatics who have never forgiven Disney for taking a story considered sacred in literary circles and creating something that honestly bears (pardon the pun) little resemblance to the original work. These folks rightfully point out that the story contains almost nothing recognizable about the story and characters from Kipling’s beloved classic. I have often condemned projects that take names like The Night Stalker and Battlestar Galactica and create a vision incompatible with the traditions I associate with them. Therefore this review might seem a bit hypocritical when I tell you I side with the other camp that considers this film to be a milestone, not only in Disney animation, but in animation history itself. The characters might be distantly removed remote ancestors to Kipling’s creatures, but they are truly classic creations in their own right. What better definition of a classic can there be than the influence that The Jungle Book still has 40 years later, not only on our pop culture but on the careers and lives of today’s artists. I venture to say that more people are familiar with Disney’s renderings of these characters than Kipling’s; I agree the caparison isn’t exactly fair, but it is accurate.
So why do I think this isn’t the same as the “reimaginings” I’ve condemned in these very pages? I begin by pointing out that we’re talking about a film that has stood the test of time, perhaps enduring beyond its own roots. The second is the fact that this version is not the same medium as its original. When ABC aired The Night Stalker, it was reinventing its original in the same medium, that of a television series. Disney’s The Jungle Book is an animated film whose audience is nothing like that intended for the stories. This distinction was not lost on Walt Disney himself, who lost a close friend and colleague over his decision to create this vision of The Jungle Book. Long-time “go to” man Bill Peet had originally developed the Kipling story for Disney. He kept quite close to the source material and submitted storyboards that told a decidedly darker story with far more dire consequences and darker characters. The impasse led to his leaving Disney Studios forever. As Peter Jackson discovered, film is a far different presentation than the written word, and what works for one does not often translate verbatim to the other. Ask anyone who’s ever tried to develop a Stephen King novel. Walt Disney was attempting to deliver a children’s film that the whole family could enjoy. He rightly deduced that the compelling tale Kipling intended simply wouldn’t translate into the kind of adventure Disney fans were already expecting by 1966. Instead, Disney ordered his staff to avoid reading Kipling and concentrate on delivering characters that the entire family could enjoy. The result is, simply put, unforgettable.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on February 11th, 2014
“I know many of you are probably wondering, ‘What the hell is Mike Tyson gonna do up here on stage tonight,’ right? Frankly, I’m wondering the same thing too.”
If you or I decided to get a face tattoo, it would almost definitely be the craziest thing that’s ever happened to either of us. On the other hand, I’m not sure Mike Tyson’s now-infamous facial ink even cracks the Top 5 list of most insane things he’s ever said or done. That very unpredictability is what makes him an ideal, endlessly compelling subject for a one-man show.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 10th, 2014
“You have to interfere in what is wrong to make it right.”
When a movie is described as a “timeless classic,” the implication is the film contains a level of artistic merit and cross-generational appeal that has made it relevant decades after its release, and will make it watchable decades from now. The flip side is the type of film that is very much of the time it was created. Despite what ought to be a universal message about caring for one another, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness — making a welcome debut on Blu-ray as part of the Fox Studio Classics series — belongs in the latter category.
