Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on April 23rd, 2013
“Nobody grows up wanting to be a knuckleball pitcher. It’s born of desperation; it’s born of necessity.”
By the start of the 2011 season, there were only two active knuckleballers in Major League Baseball. One was a failed power-hitting 1B/3B, while the other had been cut by his team at the start of the previous year’s spring training. Knuckleball! — an engaging documentary dedicated to the kookiest pitch in baseball history — illustrates how that desperation extends beyond the few brave souls who have attempted to make a living in the big leagues by throwing very softly.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 22nd, 2013
Donnie Yen continues to deliver one great martial arts film after the other, easily making him the most entertaining martial arts star for quite some time. Sure, there are those who cling to the idea of Bruce Lee being “the best” or perhaps mentioning Jackie Chan or Jet Li for more modern viewers. But for me it’s Yen, and I have no problem saying he may be the best martial arts star of all time. His work with Ip Man, Seven Swords, and Flash Point are staples in a career that has been going since 1984. With Dragon you can check off another hit for Yen; though it may not be as action-packed as some of his previous releases, what we get instead is a fun detective story that asks the question, can a man that has committed atrocious crimes be capable of change?
Dragon opens up in a small village in 1917 China. The village is quaint; everyone has their place in keeping the village alive and running. For money the village makes paper; it’s not enough to exactly have everyone living the high life, but that isn’t what you’d expect in this village that probably hasn’t changed much in the past hundred years. But everything changes when two thieves come into the village and attempt to rob it. Liu Jin-xi (Yen) reluctantly stops the robbery, and in the process a “fight” breaks out which results in the death of the two thieves. Was it simply luck on Jin-xi’s part, or is his simpleminded act of heroism a ruse, and beneath it all could he possibly be a trained killer? This is left to Xu Bai-jiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro Red Cliff and House of Flying Daggers), an investigator sent to the village to decide if it was all an act of self defense.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 22nd, 2013
“I want to talk to you about the war for the soul of Los Angeles.”
This could easily describe the current rivalry between the surging L.A. Clippers and the geriatric Los Angeles Lakers, but Gangster Squad has slightly weightier matters on its mind. The stylish 1940s and 50s cops-and-crooks saga wants to tell a story about corruption and violent men unable — or unwilling — to turn off their capacity for hurting others. Instead, the film winds up being a somewhat shallow 21st century gloss on The Untouchables. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 22nd, 2013
“Whose move is it?”
To be honest, I’m not much of a chess player. I know how all the pieces move and I enjoy the mental challenge, but I never really committed to becoming proficient at the game. (Now, if we’re talking Connect Four, you don’t want to run into me in a dark alley.) Pawn establishes its intriguing chess motif early on, before almost completely abandoning it in favor of becoming more of a generically twisty thriller.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 18th, 2013
“I want to visit a country of dreams, imagination and magic.”
Instead of “dreams, imagination and magic”, the Africa presented in this confounding, family-friendly offering from Spanish filmmaker Jordi Llompart is a place of trippy visuals, head-scratching dialogue and horrid CGI. Magic Journey to Africa — billed as a “giant screen spectacle” — is now available for home consumption, where the film’s dazzling 3D presentation is its only saving grace.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 17th, 2013
The computer-animated feature film has reached the point where you don't have to be one of the big boys to play. While Pixar and to a lesser extent Dreamworks have dominated this feature form pretty much since its inception, there have already been a handful of independent films that have managed to leave their mark on the landscape. Now the foreign market is getting into the act as well. A Monster In Paris, or Un Monstre a' Paris, is the result of that evolution.
The story is a rather weak one, to be sure. It's 1910, and there is a creature running around the streets of Paris. It is the result of a flea's exposure to a scientist's formula to make things grow. Like all of the good monster films of the Universal era, this monster is terribly misunderstood and doesn't want to hurt anyone. He is attracted to a theatre where Lucille (Paradis) is the featured singer and performer. The flea makes himself known to her, and instead of acting in fear, Lucille embraces the flea's musical talents. Together they take the stage by storm.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 16th, 2013
Sometimes a movie comes along that rises above simple entertainment and actually has something to say. The Big Picture is the kind of movie that has profound ideas about love, family, and the pursuit of your dreams. Is it possible to really have it all? The perfect spouse, the perfect family and live out your lifelong passion and dream? Many who have families, especially when starting young, can understand the idea of sacrifice for their families; it doesn’t mean they just cast their hopes and dreams aside, but once marriage and children are involved the direction your life may take was never the direction you had planned at all. And it’s this life and compromise director Eric Lartigau thrusts us into.
When we first meet Paul (Romain Duris) he is a happy family man with a beautiful wife, Sarah (Marina Fois), and two children. Though he is a successful lawyer, his passion is photography. He continues to snap photos and develop them in his personal lab, but he understands the risk of setting out to be a freelance photographer and simply can’t give up the security of his job with the law firm. Unfortunately, though, Sarah is not so content with her idyllic life and has dreams of her own as well as other desires she wishes to fulfill outside of the marriage. As Paul discovers his wife’s infidelity and that it was with a close friend, he begins to crack, and with good reason. Things only get worse when Paul confronts Greg (the man Sarah is having the affair with); their minor altercation leads to Paul accidently killing him.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on April 16th, 2013
“When I get a crush, it’s really bad.”
Everyone has experienced it before: you meet that special someone, and a crush sidelines you. They fill your head when you’re not with them. When they’re near, you act like an idiot. The downside comes when your crush is not reciprocated; or worse, they don’t even know you exist. Most people can move past the disappointment and heartbreak to get over a crush. But for an unlucky few, their crush can turn into a dangerous obsession.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on April 11th, 2013
The boogeyman, who goes by the name Pitch Black, is gaining power by turning children's dreams into nightmares. An alliance of fantasy characters, North (Santa Claus), (the Easter) Bunny, Sandman, and Tooth (Fairy), come together to face this opponent. They call themselves Guardians who have sworn to protect all of the world's children. In this adventure they recruit a new member, Jack Frost, who is on his own personal quest of discovery.
Big budget CG animated films are largely excuses to have enormous chase scenes, or other similarly fast pace sequences, which amount to being the equivalent of a guitar solo for computer animators. This film is no exception. At least here the graphics are justified since that we are dealing with characters who are rooted completely in imagination and fantasy. If we want the Easter Bunny to have super-teleporting abilities and to live in a complex network of tunnels that is populated by various sizes of walking eggs...we can imagine it so. If we want to see the Tooth Fairy work out of a floating palace that is teeming with hummingbird style minions...why not make it happen? Every scene is an enormous spectacle. Our main villain and the Sandman both deal with...well..sand particles that each move in their own pattern on the screen...I can only imagine the animators losing their minds over having to choreograph all of them.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 11th, 2013
Looking back, it’s amazing how far visual effects have come since 1988. I can remember sitting in the theater watching Willow for the first time and believing everything I saw up on the screen wasn’t the work of movie magic, but I believed it to be reality. Perhaps some far off land where there are swordsmen fighting evil sorcerers and trolls lurk in the shadows of abandoned castles. This is a thought I’d like to believe I’m not the only one that hoped this was a reality, but if I am I’m fine with that. Willow came out at a time when Hollywood was trying to bring large-scale fantasy to the screen with other releases like Excalibur, Legend and Conan. Though these films are their own kind of awesome, the digital effects still hadn’t quite reached the level they needed to be to make these worlds as immersive as the Lord of the Rings films, for instance. Where the film may not have held up over the years with the special effects, it’s the story that manages to captivate this viewer 25 years later.
Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis) is not your ordinary hero, and for 1988 seeing a little person as the star of a film is even further for ordinary. But Willow isn’t about ordinary; it’s about a journey of fantastic proportions where even the tiniest of men can be the biggest of heroes. When Willow is tasked to return a baby to her people, he must venture away from his village to a land that seems to be on the verge of war, something Willow and his fellow dwarves want nothing to do with. During Willow’s journey to find a proper protector for the baby, he encounters Madmartigan (Val Kilmer), who claims to be the greatest swordsmen that ever lived; unfortunately when he’s found he’s been left for dead in a cage. This is one of the roles that has me wondering what happened to Kilmer; in this role he is simply fun to watch and dripping with charisma; the guy was meant to be a star. And when we do get to see Madmartigan in action, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if Madmartigan and Aragorn were to ever cross paths.
