Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 18th, 2006
After one year of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, television had been forever changed. Hitch proved beyond any doubt that film quality production was practical in the fledgling television format. Nothing changed as the show returned for its second season. Hitch had a remarkable eye for good stories, and he often found them in the most unlikely of places. Take two of this season’s episodes. In The Three Dreams Of Mr. Findlater, a man fantasizes about his nagging wife’s death. In A Man greatly Beloved, we find a small tow... embracing none other than the Boston Strangler. Nothing new in the macabre world of Hitchcock, except perhaps that these tales were born in the same brain that brought us Pooh Bear and Piglet. A.A. Milne provided these wickedly sinister tales. Hitch mastered the art of dark wit. In The Indestructible Mr. Weems, a lodge brotherhood tries to cash in on a dying member, but in the world of Hitch we probably already knew how this was going to end. Hitch himself directed One More Mile To Go, which would eventually provide some of his later inspiration for Psycho. We also find the only multi-episode story of the entire series in I Killed The Count, which aired over three weeks.
Hitch was also a good judge of acting talent. A great number of the show’s performers became household names in one acting medium or another. In season 2 look for Dick York, Barbara Baxley, James Gregory, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Meeker, Rip Torn, Steve Forrest, Claude Rains, Vic Morrow, Jessica Tandy, and many more. Of course, you can count on Hitch himself to continue his tradition of introducing each episode and then wrapping things up, usually with an additional moral epilogue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2006
Japanese horror films are all the rage these days, with the originals hitting DVD in the States, and the remakes showing up in the theaters. Therefore, it stands to reason that even Criterion would get in on the trend, offering up a film from famed director Nobuo Nakagawa, widely regarded as the father of the Japanese horror film.
Jigoku is both strange and fascinating. The film tells the story of two friends that are involved in a hot-and-run accident. While one of the young men is cool, calm and collected, the other is wracked with guilt over their actions. While the family of the murdered man begins to close in on the guilty parties, strange things begin to happen to the man with a conscience.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2006
The Break-Up tells the story of the relationship of Gary (Mr. And Mrs. Smith’s Vince Vaughn) and Brooke (Friend’s Jennifer Aniston. As the film begins, we see Gary at a baseball game as he attempts to ask Brooke out on a date by endless asking her. The film skips forward roughly two years, to a point where Gary and Brooke are now a couple who are living together in a highly desirable condo. Gary is working as a Chicago tour guide with his brothers, while Brooke works at the Marilyn Dean Art Gall...ry. Everything seems to be going fine until a dinner with their respective families. Gary, feeling that Brooke is constantly asking too much of him, yells at Brooke, who feels that Gary never wants what she wants in life, leading to them breaking up (hence the title of the film).
Now that they’re ‘broken-up’, Gary and Brooke tend to play off each other doing little things to annoy each other. Gary is beaten up by Brooke’s brother while Brooke, on the other hand, votes Gary off of her bowling team. All these events occur, as Brooke tells us, in the hopes of getting Gary to change himself so he’ll get back with her. While this plot sounds kind of stupid, the real charm of this film is Vince Vaughn.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 18th, 2006
In 1984 Brian De Palma dusted off his best Alfred Hitchcock imitation in the by now infamous Body Double. We all know the story by now. In fact, if you’ve seen the far superior Vertigo and Rear Window films, you knew the story already. Claustrophobic vampire actor Jake Scully is having a hard time. He’s just been fired because he can’t lie in a coffin, and getting home early, he walks in on his girlfriend in bed with another man. Out of work and homeless, things look up when a fellow actor gets him a sweet housesit...ing gig in a flying saucer shaped condo overlooking the Hollywood valley. There, he is obsessed with a neighbor he spies on with a conveniently provided telescope as she performs all sorts of sordid little things naked in the window. Looks like things are really going well now, until he believes he has witnessed a murder. His investigation into what he saw leads him to the underworld of the porn industry and into the arms of porn queen Holly Body (Griffith). Most of the film takes place at a painfully slow pace. De Palma offers up a lot of stylistic cinematography but not enough action or suspense to keep us all that interested. While the erotic nature of the film was quite shocking in 1985, it just doesn’t pack that kind of a punch today. When De Palma wants to, he can simply ooze atmosphere on film. In Body Double, he oozes something a bit less flattering.
Part of the blame for the film’s awkward pace must be taken up by Craig Wasson. He simply can’t emote beyond a typical movie of the week level. The same can be said for villain Sam (Henry). On one hand, De Palma is trying to dazzle us with the epic scope of the thing, but his two main actors limit that range significantly. Credit should be given to Melanie Griffith, who is miscast in her part, but carries it off with more credibility than one would expect. The stand out has to be Deborah Shelton, who is captivating with little to say. Dennis Franz stands out in his comedy relief portrayal of the director who fires Jake. He’s playing De Palma to a fault, including De Palma’s own clothes. Both men admit in the extras that Rubin was indeed based upon De Palma..
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2006
Synopsis
Michael Caine plays Nicholas Urfe, a self-centred, cynical Englishman who arrives on the Greek island of Phraxos to take a teaching post. He meets Maurice Conchis (Anthony Quinn), a mysterious individual who ensnares Urfe in a complex, psychologically violent mind game, where Urfe is increasingly unable to distinguish truth from lies, reality from illusion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 17th, 2006
Synopsis
Ariel is the rebellious teen daughter of King Triton. She falls in love with a human prince (whom she rescued from drowning), but her father will not hear of it. So she makes a bargain with the evil Ursula – she will be granted legs for three days (but no voice), and if she has not been kissed by then... well... you know how deals with Evil generally go.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 17th, 2006
Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties is a lot better than I thought it would be. Kids would love it, and it’s not too obnoxious for adults.
It’s a decent story for kids. Just before he’s planning to propose to her, Jon Arbuckle’s girlfriend, Liz, announces that she’s been scheduled at the last minute to speak at a conference in London, and she must leave right away. Jon decides to follow her there to pop the question. Garfield wants to interfere, so he and Odie smuggle themselves in Jon’s luggage.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 16th, 2006
Synopsis
A meteor lands in your typical SF/horror movie Small Town (and it could well be the same meteor that brought the original Blob to town). Bullet-headed mug Michael Rooker stumbles over it one drunken night, and promptly becomes infected with carniverous slug-parasites from outer space. He sets about spreading the good news, as it were, and before long the entire town is a chaos of slithering nastiness and zombiefied townspeople.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2006
Synopsis
What still surprises me when seeing Fast Times at Ridgemont High almost a quarter century after the film was initially released is the impressive casting. Some veterans did contribute to the film, but check out the laundry list of relative unknowns, and where they’ve gone onto. You’ve got Academy Award nominees (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn and Martin Brest, who received Directing and Best Picture nominations for Scent of a Woman), an Emmy nominee/Golden Globe winner (Anthony Edwards), a ...ony nominee (Eric Stoltz) a Emmy and Tony winner in Mr. Hand himself, Ray Walston, a Cannes Best Actor and likely Best Actor nominee this year (Forest Whitaker), and to round things out, two Oscar winners in then-Nicolas Coppola, later Nicolas Cage, and for the twenty-something screenwriter/director who turned out to be Cameron Crowe.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2006
After numerous horrible, horrible Batman films (Batman and Robin and Batman Returns are my least favorite), the Batman film’s have finally returned to a place where someone can be proud to have seen and proud to own to this film. Director Christopher Nolan (probably mostly known for Memento) was chosen to helm this latest Batman film while actor Christian Bale (American Psycho, The Machinist) was chosen to portay Mr. Bruce Wayne.
The film mostly follows how ...ruce became Batman. As the film begins we learn how Bruce’s parents were killed, what happened to Bruce to cause his initial fear of bats and how he trained to become Batman. After the death of his parents, something Bruce blames himself for, Bruce continues his life never really feeling like himself. During his early twenties, Bruce decided to head overseas where he gets caught up in a kind of theft ring, which results in his arrest. Turns out that he was stealing from his own company. Once in jail, Bruce decides to stand up to a few guards basically eliminating them quickly. He’s thrown into a cell where he meets Henri Ducard (Schindler’s List’s Liam Neeson). It’s here that Bruce learns the art of stealth and fighting. This gains the eventual attention of a man named Ra’s Al Ghul (The Last Samurai’s Ken Watanabe in a short, but fabulous performance). Bruce eventually returns home and becomes Batman.
![Batman Begins [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/batman-begins-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
