Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on November 20th, 2013
The line between hilarious raunchy comedy and over-the-top raunchy comedy is very fine, and We’re the Millers tends to dance on both sides of it. In time such action will be revealed to be both a blessing and a curse, I suspect. With the young crowd, I believe the film will fall right into place with such movies as Horrible Bosses (a comedy which coincidently starred Aniston and Sudeikis) and to be more recent, This is the End. With more mature audiences, the raunchiness may prove to be slightly more than they were expecting to see. With me, I find myself on the side of the young.
David (Jason Sudeikis) is a small town pot dealer in Denver, an occupation he has held since college without moving forward or backward. Hesitant to admit it, he has grown stagnant with the life he’s leading and wants more out of life. Those desires are put on hold after he is robbed, with both his stash and all of his cash including the money intended for his supplier Brad (Ed Helms, The Hangover). Deep in debt with no prospect of paying it back, Brad offers David one opportunity to erase his debt: smuggle a smidge and a half (inside joke, have to see the movie to understand) of marijuana from Mexico across the border back to Denver.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 19th, 2013
“Five years ago, I stood on this stage and I said goodbye. Five years later, I'm standing on this stage and I say, 'Hello.'”
I'd honestly never even heard of Saga before popping in this Blu-ray, but it was impossible to miss the family reunion atmosphere of this show. The Canadian prog rockers released their self-titled debut album in 1978, but — like many successful, long-running bands — have undergone a number of lineup changes. (Including a non-lethal, Spinal Tap-esque run of drummers in the early part of this century.) Saga, in its various forms, has found some of its greatest success in Germany, so there was no better place to get the band back together for a concert movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on November 18th, 2013
Kenny Rogers…chances are that is a name you have heard throughout your life regardless of whether you are a fan or not; regardless whether you have ever heard any of his music, which happens to be the case when it comes to me. His name just has a way of sticking with you, and that can be doubly said of his song “The Gambler.” See, even now I bet the mere mention of the song’s name has the chorus of “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,” playing in your head. Well, here is the film version for Rogers’ most infamous song; however, I doubt that the movie will have the same effect on you as the song.
The first in a series of five television movies (so far; there is talk of a sixth addition being in the works), in The Gambler, Kenny Rogers plays Brady Hawkes, a veteran card player with a magnificent beard and a stellar reputation as one of greatest gamblers ever to live. Despite making his living in the cutthroat world of gambling, Brady possesses a strong sense of morals evident in his constant intervention in affairs that have nothing to do with him, which is essentially what begins our story: while playing a high-stakes game on the other side of the country, Brady receives a letter from a son he never knew he had, alerting him that the boy as well as his mother are in a bad way with a local crime boss.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 18th, 2013
“On November 22, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, made a political trip to Dallas, Texas with his wife, Jacqueline, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.”
Of course, you don't have to be an American History buff to know what happened next. The circumstances surrounding President Kennedy's assassination instantly seared themselves into the country's collective consciousness. This month marks the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's death, which has brought along the expected number of tributes, TV specials and movies breaking down the crime and its corresponding conspiracy theories. Parkland, however, serves as a microcosm of how Kennedy's assassination affected an entire nation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 16th, 2013
In the Florida everglades, the Wedloe family have a 650-pound tame bear for a loyal pet. A very young Clint Howard stars as Mark, the son of a game warden (played by Dennis Weaver),who leads Ben around on several adventures and merry mishaps. Though “merry” may be the wrong word as Mark and Ben encounter their fair share of real life dangers.
Right off the bat, this show leaps into stories that are far more intense than one might expect from a family program from the 1960s. In the debut episode, the entire community faces a deadly hurricane. The characters spend the entire hollaring at eachother in the driving rain as things get torn apart around them. As the season continues, the high stakes hardly let up as members of the Wedloe family are threatened by poachers, wrestle with alligators, get trapped by wild fire, and square off against a huge number of malevolent hunters, voodoo doctors, and wildlife in every single episode. At one point little Mark is trying to help Burt Reynolds get out of a crashed plane while fighting away a tiger with a fire extinguisher...you read that correctly. Each tale was always moral and wholesome, but never exactly soft.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 15th, 2013
On paper, the premise of Prince Avalanche sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry. The film follows a pair of squabbling workers whose job it is to paint yellow lines in the middle of a country road in the aftermath of a devastating wildfire. They're basically the only two characters in the movie, and the story never moves away from their desolate surroundings. Although his film is occasionally self-indulgent (by design, I suspect), director David Gordon Green finds the strange beauty in that desolate landscape. He's also armed with stars who bring this meandering character study to life.
Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch star as Alvin and Lance. Alvin (Rudd) revels in the isolation of his work and appreciates the benefits of outdoor physical labor. Meanwhile, Lance (Hirsch) is the lazy, immature, inexplicably charming brother of Alvin's girlfriend. Alvin hired Lance to work with him on the road project as a favor to Lance's sister (who we never see) and as a way to whip some masculinity into the younger man. The pair experience some emotional ups and downs, and it turns out they both have plenty they can learn from one another.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 14th, 2013
"What if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended? What if a child aspired to something greater?"
It's appropriate that exactly 75 years ago this very month Superman was born at the hands of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. He was born to be the patriotic hero symbol for a nation on the brink of a devastating world war. The war came and went as many others would since the hero's inception. Styles would change. Technology would come and go. Superman would find himself invading each and every medium that has come along since. Television shows, cartoons, comics, novels and even previous films have all continued the ongoing adventures of the man from Krypton. In those years styles have changed so much that the symbols of the hero himself have become quite dated. But in any time there will always be a need for larger-than-life heroes. They don't come any larger than Superman, The Man Of Steel. Can he be as relevant today as he was in 1938?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 13th, 2013
Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol is vastly re-imagined with characters from Dora. Swiper replaces Scrooge as the one who travels through time in order to learn the true meaning of Christmas. This special is twice the length of a normal episode.
Music and singalongs have always been a part of the Dora the Explorer experience but this particular special is formatted more like a typical children's musical. There are fewer moments where the characters do that unnerving pause in anticipation of the audience to talk to the television, and more time spent on songs. Sometimes they merge the audience participation/pausing moments with the music during a reoccuring tune about swiper not swiping. Repetition is a staple of children's programming...it can also be a device that forges madness in the mind of adult viewers.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 12th, 2013
“To this day, there's no record of an orca doing any harm to any human...in the wild.”
Orcas are sometimes referred to as “blackfish,” but Gabriela Cowperthwaite's thrilling, thought-provoking documentary examines why they're most commonly known as “killer whales.” The movie's obvious standout moments involve breathtaking footage of these massive animals violently turning on their trainers. Although some viewers will undoubtedly make the leap to wondering whether it's ok to keep any animal in captivity, the thing that elevates this film is that it serves as an eloquent argument against keeping this particularly majestic, highly-social beast in a concrete pool.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on November 11th, 2013
The most surprising thing about Ambushed is that it's not quite as generic as its completely uninspired title might suggest. (Off the top of my head, I can think of at least 15 movies that could credibly be re-titled Ambushed; I'm sure you can too.) This particular straight-to-DVD action thriller is being sold as The Expendables-lite, with tough guy supporting players (and Ambushed producers) Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture — along with Vinnie Jones, who really should've been in an Expendables movie by now — glowering from the Blu-ray cover. But this stylish L.A. drama — which liberally borrows from superior crime flicks — has a few tricks of its own.
Despite the presence of Lundgren, Couture and Jones, Ambushed is technically the story of Frank (Daniel Bonjour), who narrates the film. Frank is a strip club owner in downtown Los Angeles who is also involved in the cocaine business along with best friend/brash Scotsman Eddie (Gianni Capaldi). Frank also has a sweet, staggeringly gullible girlfriend named Ashley (Cinthya Bornacelli), who is the only pure thing in his life. Since Frank eventually wants to leave the drug business and make a life with Ashley, he makes a bold, violent play to move up the cocaine food chain.
