Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 21st, 2018
I’m going to go ahead and say Super Troopers is without a doubt one of my favorite comedies of all time. Sure, I know many will disagree with me, and that’s fine. Since I first saw their film back in 2002 when I got the DVD, I was always excited to see what would come next from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. There was Club Dread, which induced a few chuckles as they tackled the slasher genre, and then they had Beerfest, which was pretty funny but simply didn’t hold up to their performances as Vermont’s Highway Patrolmen. The antics from the first film are simply classic to me, and the film is something I manage to quote from on a weekly basis amongst friends, and when I hear that someone has managed to go all these years without experiencing the film, it’s something I feel the need to remedy immediately. It’s more than just a simple stoner comedy, and rumblings about a sequel have been going on for years, but things seemed to always fall apart. Now after all these years, it’s finally happened.
In case you were wondering, just because the film releases on 4/20, this isn’t a movie that requires you to smoke the green dragon to enjoy. The Broken Lizard gang just knows their audience and simply wanted to be part of the joke. For those who saw the first film and couldn’t stand it, well, there’s no sense in even bothering to check out this entry. As for those who have managed to miss the first one, please check out the first before going in so you can enjoy the film for everything it has to offer.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on July 20th, 2018
“I would say I outdid myself, but I'm always this good...so I simply did myself.”
Season 1 of NBC's The Good Place received top marks from me for its inventive, good-hearted, and hilarious approach to comedy. But what really put the show over the top was a game-changing finale twist that rivaled anything we've seen on the big screen in terms of shock value. (There's no way to avoid discussing this swerve going forward, so if you've never seen the show, go binge the first season real quick.) Blowing up everything we thought we knew about an already Good great show was a risky move, but I'm delighted to report that season 2 maintains (and builds upon) the show's excellence.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by John Delia on July 18th, 2018
by Ian Delia
Another one of Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson’s movies is now raising the bar. This new motion picture is filled with intense action. There isn't only shooting and fighting, but there are also new, but unusual, animals. From smaller, slightly lethal, animals into giants of terror with their mission is to take over the world to please their master. All the power of endless destruction is controlled by Claire Wyden, who is played by Malin Akerman.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on July 18th, 2018
“Don't be jealous of a ghost.”
In Ismael's Ghosts, a French filmmaker's wife strolls back into his life 21 years after her sudden disappearance...much to the chagrin of the director and his current girlfriend. The tension created by the long-lost wife's return — combined with the question of where she's been and why she returned — is intriguing enough to carry this film. Unfortunately, Ismael's Ghosts is filled with way too many silly, half-baked tangents and ends up being as messy and frustrating as its main character.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on July 13th, 2018
“This may very well be our last mission, Ethan…make it count.”
You wouldn’t know it from looking at him, but Tom Cruise was 53 years old when he did this film. So it’s only natural to wonder how many more Missions the indomitable superstar has left in him. Well, if Rogue Nation is any indication, the above quote is meant to be more winking than prophetic. Just like its tireless star, the fifth installment of the 19-year-old Mission: Impossible film franchise is spryer, tighter, and more energetic than its age might suggest with the sixth just about to drop at the box office.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 12th, 2018
You might call me jaded, but I am pretty disappointed by the state of horror movies. It's not just the last few years. The truth is I haven't seen 10 really good horror movies in over a decade. Now that I've had a chance to see A Quiet Place, that number isn't going up. A Quiet Place is not a really good horror movie. It ends up making a lot of the same mistakes that filmmakers think define a horror film in the modern age. It relies too heavily on jump scares and characters who do some of the most idiotic things, thus placing them in a somewhat self-created dangerous situation. But I will make the argument that A Quiet Place is still a pretty good horror film because of a rather clever and unique concept and a filming process that allows us care for these characters more than the usual horror film red-shirt fodder that too often leaves me rooting for the monster in a Darwin-like weed-out-the-gene-pool kind of way.
The film takes place in a near-future that newspapers place at about 2020. It's now day 86. We are now in the familiar post-apocalyptic world of deserted streets and a family of characters scrounging through the derelict buildings for scraps on which to survive. The difference here is that this family, a husband and wife with three young kids, are going out of their way to remain as completely silent as possible. They communicate strictly through sign language and walk on bare feet to avoid the sounds of footsteps. Each move is carefully calculated to avoid even the careless sound of placing a pill container on a counter. Silence is golden, and before the title card is revealed, we discover the reason for all of this care. The Earth has been invaded by creatures that are blind but with heightened hearing ability. They hunt strictly by sound and move at lightning speed toward any sound and attack with razor-like appendages. These attacks are over in a second, and the viewer is left with graphic evidence that in this future world, silence isn't golden; it's survival.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 9th, 2018
"The Secretary is dead. The President has invoked Ghost Protocol. We're shut down. No satellite, safe house, support, or extraction. The four of us and the contents of this car are all that remains of the IMF."
The fourth Mission: Impossible entry exchanges digits for a subtitle, and brings in Brad Bird to direct his first live-action feature. So the man whose The Incredibles made fun of the sort of thing that is the bread-and-butter of the M:I franchise is brought in to revitalize said franchise. Result? Job done. Gotcha. You thought I was going to say, “Mission accomplished,” didn’t you?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 8th, 2018
"You can tell a lot about a person's character by how they treat people they don't have to treat well."
It had been a decade since Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible hit theatres to box office success, established a new blockbuster franchise, and added ‘action hero’ to Tom Cruise’s resume, and six years since John Woo’s highly stylized follow-up raised the franchise to new box office heights. In 2006 the long-awaited third installment arrived amidst controversy about Tom Cruise’s crazy off-screen antics. It was feared that the happenings of Cruise’s personal life would somehow bring down this movie; the previous two films did set the bar pretty high. Mission: Impossible 3's U.S. box office take did appear to suffer from the public backlash to its headliner’s wacky rants and questionable actions. J. J. Abrams’ top-notch action flick likely deserved better. But the third film could have put a halt to any future missions by posting the worst box office of the franchise to date. The $134 million box office was down considerably from the expected $200 million that was reached by all of the other films. As it was there would be another nearly six-year gap before the next outing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 5th, 2018
"This is not Mission: Difficult, Mr. Hunt. It's Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you."
After four years and nearly $200 million at the box office, it was only a matter of time before Paramount and Tom Cruise would partner again for a new Mission Impossible film. This time the move would be completely toward the action and stunts and farther away from the television series. The hiring of John Woo to direct the second film put quite a punctuation mark on that move. This time there would be no mistake. Mission: Impossible 2 would be a no-holds-barred action adventure across the globe, and with Tom Cruise once again doing the majority of these hair-raising stunts himself, much to the concern of the new director and crew. The stakes had to be higher, and Woo was the perfect choice for that kind of film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on July 5th, 2018
“Every time a black woman gets mad, she's a stereotype.”
Taraji P. Henson has been a very good and versatile actress for a long time, but she didn’t become a star until she started getting very angry on screen. Her breakout role came in 2015 courtesy of Fox’s Empire, in which Henson’s Cookie Lyon has been known to get into some scraps. So it made sense for Henson to bring her talent for tantrums to the big screen with the help of a filmmaker who once directed a movie called Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Writer/director/producer Tyler Perry seems to be going for “trashy fun”…unfortunately, he only gets halfway there.
