Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on May 20th, 2013
“Never let the truth spoil a good story.” – Charlie Watts, drummer
Ever since they came on the scene in the ‘60s, The Rolling Stones have done things in their own unique and unapologetic style. Widely regarded as the anti-Beatles, The Stones’ blues-infused rock music spoke to many people and inspired many a future musician. They personified the era of sex, drugs and rock & roll...especially the "drugs and rock & roll” part.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 20th, 2013
The problem with casting Ben Kingsley in this film’s title role is that the Oscar-winning actor is anything but common. He’s been a commanding screen presence for four solid decades, starting with his award-winning work in 1982’s Gandhi and continuing through his surprising performance in Iron Man 3. When Kingsley first appears in A Common Man, he immediately stands out in the crowded streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka thanks to a sharp goatee and his signature shorn dome. Turns out Kingsley’s inherent star power is the least of this movie’s problems.
A Common Man is a remake of the 2008 Bollywood hit A Wednesday. The film opens with news reports of recent terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka followed by an effective, nearly dialogue-free sequence of a man (Kingsley) leaving packages at different points — a bus, a shopping mall trash can, etc. — throughout the city of Colombo. The man, who calls himself Vincent, makes his way to his makeshift headquarters on a rooftop and calls overmatched Deputy Inspector General of Police Morris Da Silva (Ben Cross) to inform him he has planted five bombs across the city. He demands the release of four deadly international terrorists and threatens to detonate the bombs if his conditions aren’t met.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 16th, 2013
"Who is Jack Reacher? Born Jack, not John. No middle name. He's a ghost. Served in the military police. A brilliant investigator, troublemaker, too. And two years ago he disappears. You don't find this guy unless he wants to be found."
We've found him. The character of Jack Reacher comes from a series of thriller novels written by Lee Child. From the very start you know that this is going to be a different kind of Jack Reacher than fans have come to know and love from the books. He described as being 6' 5’’ and about 250 pounds. Tom Cruise doesn't really fit any of those description elements. He does, however, fit two very important descriptive elements when it comes to Hollywood. He's still a big name and a pretty reliable box office draw. He also put up some of his own cash to produce the movie. Now that's how you get cast for a part very physically different from yourself.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on May 16th, 2013
“We are your Family. We come before anything, even your own family.”
Everything about Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn — the setting, the storyline, the cast, the title — brings to mind vastly superior crime dramas. To be fair, it’s incredibly difficult to say something in this genre that hasn’t already been said brilliantly by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese or David Chase. So instead of trying to carve out its own turf, this low-budget effort seems to almost revel in how derivative it is. At the very least, the people who made this movie seem to love gangster flicks as much as we do.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on May 15th, 2013
In 1363, the Black Plague had done its damage, leaving most infected areas uninhabitable. Escape — known in Norway as Flukt — is the story of a family that sets out into the countryside to get away from the plague and hopefully find a new place to rebuild their lives. But just as I’m thinking this is going to be a movie about sticking together and fighting to survive the elements, it shifts gears to something far darker but not all that original.
The small family is attacked and most are brutally slain; only Signe (Isabel Christine Andeasen), the daughter, manages to survive. Instead of simply killing the girl, the attackers decide to keep her around. When this decision was made by the attackers my mind instantly went to thinking they were going to torture and rape the girl. It seems extreme, but after seeing these attackers shoot down a young boy with a crossbow, well it should be safe to assume these killers are ruthless. Insert twist; back at their camp they have a little girl named Frigg. It seems all they want is for Frigg to have a sister.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 14th, 2013
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on May 14th, 2013
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 14th, 2013
Most cartoons these days seem to be carbon copies of cartoons gone past just with different settings and characters. You got the superhero cartoon, adventure cartoon, anime cartoon, the really kiddie cartoon and the adult cartoon. Today, we have a classic I want to be a Pokemon imitator cartoon. It goes by the name Monsuno. Let us take a look inside the second volume and see if this one is more than an attempt to sell action figures and trading cards.
John Ceballos did a fine job on the first volume in this series, go check it out:
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 13th, 2013
We all know what it feels like to nod off in the middle of a film. It starts with micro-naps that last a few seconds. They’re so short, we don’t even realize we’ve fallen asleep. But when we wake up, we feel totally lost because we’ve missed a line of dialogue or scene transition. I mention this for two reasons: 1.) the confused protagonist of Tomorrow You’re Gone floats through his life in a dream-like state and 2.) watching this incomprehensible mess of a movie constantly made me feel like I’d fallen asleep and missed something. That’s a problem because I was wide awake.
The plot of Tomorrow You’re Gone — based on the novel “Boot Tracks” by Matthew F. Jones, who also wrote the screenplay — is straightforward enough. We meet Charlie Rankin (Stephen Dorff) just as he’s about to be released from prison. He receives an encoded letter from Billy “The Buddha” Pettigrew (Willem Dafoe), Charlie’s former jail-house mentor. The hidden message orders Charlie to carry out a hit, and Charlie agrees because he feels indebted to The Buddha. On his way to do the job, Charlie meets Florence (Michelle Monaghan) a flirty oddball/former porn star, and the two form an uneasy bond. After the hit doesn’t go as planned, Charlie has to dodge an unhappy Buddha. (He also spends an inordinate amount of time dodging Florence’s sexual advances because...actually, it’s not really clear why he keeps rejecting this woman who is throwing herself at him. It flies in the face of everything we know about movie ex-cons.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 8th, 2013
After a four-month hiatus, I have been called to assignment, a very special assignment indeed. Thankfully, the message did not self-destruct after five seconds. However, the message did have demands and required negotiation tactics. That is when I called in the SRU Unit from the show Flashpoint and they burst onto the scene. While they are handling a memo that has a notebook at gunpoint, they left me with a copy of Season Five of Flashpoint to review. Let’s take a look.
Season Five of Flashpoint in U.S. terms are the first eleven episodes under the ION Television banner (though the dvd package is still put out by Paramount/CBS). In Canada, these are the last eleven episodes of season four. The last thirteen episodes of the series will hopefully be in a Season Six package later this year (and Canada will have it as Season Five). Got it? Good.
