Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 18th, 2007
Synopsis
The filming world seems to be full of un-original ideas. Everything from endless sequels to the same types of films repeated and repeated until one falls into a deep dark slumber. The Quiet staring Elisha Cuthbert(24, Girl Next Door) as Nina Deer & Camilla Belle(When A Stranger Calls) as Dot from the cover and box description appears to be another teenage high school drama about some new girl and sexual tension sans Cruel Intentions. How...ver, this is not the case once you go through this brilliant movie. It really is the story of a Dot, a deaf and mute who is dealing with the pain of just losing her father in a car accident (and lost her mother to cancer many years ago). She has been sent to her god parents; Paul & Olivia Deer played by Martin Donovan (Weeds, Dead Zone ) & Edie Falco (Sopranos). However, the family is not as they seem. All of them including the daughter Nina (Cuthbert) & Dot harbor deep secrets as it comes together to a satisfying conclusion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 7th, 2007
Boy, this title really came out of left field. I am one of those DVD collectors who picks out their favorite television shows and collects all the full DVD season sets. I did this with Wonder Woman, with Kung Fu and with The West Wing. I also started collecting full season sets of Mad About You just a couple of months after I started with Friends. I finished all ten seasons of Friends in late 2005, yet I was only two seasons in to Mad About You's seven season run. What...gives? The last season of Mad About You that was released was Season Two, which hit store shelves in April of 2003. Two seasons released in 5 years is not exactly the turnaround that fans look for; especially in a show that is no longer on the air. I, as did many fans, naturally assumed that no more seasons would be released after several years passed without a new season dropping.
So, imagine my shock when I read a news item in January of this year that announced Season Three's surprising release. Maybe the "greatest episodes" set they released in 2005 sold better than they expected. Maybe fan chatter reached those with their finger on the metaphorical button. Maybe Sony made enough off of the sale of the Seinfeld season sets to cover the losses on releasing another season of Mad About You (my personal guess). Whatever the reason, it's probably best not to ask too many questions, but to just be happy that this thing has finally shown up in stores at all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 7th, 2007
The prologue to The Covenant tells us of people with supernatural powers. We're told of how these powerful warlocks and witches were hunted throughout Europe and escaped to the New England colonies in the New World. The information is provided with the contradictions of pseudogrunge music and pages of ancient texts. It doesn't take us long to meet young men, descendants from these immigrant families. We discover them flaunting their powers by jumping off a cliff on the way to a teen party. These four special teen boys have the world, or at least their local community, by the short hairs. Soon we are alerted that something has changed. The group feels a strong presence that is disturbing their supernatural force. Newcomer Chase Collins (Stan) has a secret of his own. He is the last of a fifth family once banished from the society. His return means the usual tale of revenge and mayhem is about to unfold. Throw in a generous amount of teen sex, loud music, and fast cars, and we have a quite furious but erratic romp. We're informed in roundabout ways that the society operates under certain rules intended to keep the secret and allow them to remain safe. Unfortunately these rules appear more like suggestions, really, as the boys are usually apt to show off their powers whether being chased by police or merely to remove a girl's pants to win a bet. We also learn that using this force drains the user's life, causing premature aging, if the powers are used too frequently. Of course, there is always a potential workaround to such unfortunate effects. It seems any warlock may will his powers onto another, particularly at their 18th birthday when they come into full possession of their "gifts".
Comparisons to the superior Underworld films can't be helped. The box art invites such comparisons by telling us the film's share producers. The idea of a secret society with sinister history and secrets create a common thread. But warlocks are just not as cool as vampires and werewolves. Blue tints to the cinematography complete the comparisons. The Covenant obviously attempts to stay more grounded in reality and so is far more mundane overall. The film employs an odd combination of complex simplicity. We are treated to hints of this incredibly rich tradition and history, yet it is all cheapened by the one dimensional performance of the cast. We are always tantalizingly close to something larger that never makes its appearance on film. None of these characters exhibit the culture and sophistication that the filmmakers want so badly to convince us they possess. The film wants so much to be epic in its scope, but no power on heaven or earth, supernatural or otherwise, is going to make that happen. Add to these flaws some horrid examples of dialogue looping (dialogue replacement) and one begins to wonder if Renny Harlin was so obsessed with largesse that he simply ignored the critical details. Check out the looping at about 25 minutes into the film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 5th, 2007
Three young couples on a road trip leave their turtled vehicle and march through the dark woods, hoping to find the highway again. (Clearly Mensa candidates, each and every one.) They stumble upon an apparently abandoned secret facility, and naturally blunder in. A psychically powered lunatic uses astral projection to do bad things to them. People start to die. No great loss.
Think through this equation for me, will you? Direct-to-video + walking-around-tunnels-plot + Tara Reid = ? What do you think? That the movie is not a COMPLETELY incompetent mess at the technical level is a minor miracle. That it would be anything other than tedious, however, would have required a major one.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 2nd, 2007
The World Cup is unquestionably the greatest sporting event in the world. No other event, sporting or otherwise, pulls nations together like the World Cup does. Once every four years, the whole of the world (save for the majority of the United States) takes a month off to focus their eyes on the efforts of a group of young men to put a white ball into a white net. This film is the story of the 1996 edition of the famed tournament.
This film does a great job of capturing the story of the tournament, while not ...etting bogged down in the details that could drag a film like this one to a standstill. The entire tournament is discussed, but not every game is shown. In fact, the group of 16 is skipped all together. While this does not make for a complete document of the tournament, it certainly helps to keep the film on task. The first half of the film showcases the road to the final, and the second half focuses on the semi-finals and the final match itself. Impressively, the film does not shy away from touchy subjects, as it discusses referee controversies and “the head-butt” openly. Much of the film showcases field-level images of the gameplay supported only by crowd noise, which brings the beautiful game to life in a very real way. This is a compelling and entertaining film even for those that are casual fans of international sport.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 29th, 2007
Amber Tamblyn, playing Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sister, comes to Tokyo to help Gellar, currently in a hospital and considered insane. The help is too little too late, and soon Tamblyn is contending with the same evil ghosts. Two other storylines intertwine with this one: a young American student goes into the evil house on a dare, and she and her two friends attract the unwelcome attentions of the spectral mother and son. And back in the States, a blended family moving into a new apartment is gradually torn apart by the influence of the malevolent duo.
When Takashi Shimizu revisited Ju-On as The Grudge for Western audience, he did so with a script that, while streamlining the original and making it more comprehensible, still stuck close to the story, and the resulting film was arguably superior to its predecessor. The Grudge 2, on the other hand, jettisons the story of Ju-On 2. That sequel had a pretty convoluted plot, but it built a quite the horrific charge, and was a great spook story. The new film’s storyline starts from a false premise (that the ghosts were previously confined to the house, when they manifestly were not) and proceeds from there to work diligently at creating a result that is nonsensical, repetitive, and dull.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 29th, 2007
Based on Augusten Burroughs� popular biographical memoir of the same name, Running With Scissors is a dark, comedic tale of surviving a bizarre and painful childhood.
The film covers Augusten�s life mostly from about age 12 to 16. Part of what makes this film intriguing is that it�s so outlandish that viewers can hardly anticipate events before they happen, so I will attempt to avoid spoiling it all in this review. With that in mind, here�s my very high-level plot summary: Augusten�s parents� relatio...ship is at best antagonistic. His mother, Deirdre (Annette Bening), is bipolar and becomes worse as the film progresses. His father, Norman (Alec Baldwin), is an alcoholic. The marriage crumbles very early in the film, which leads to Augusten becoming intimately acquainted with his mother�s therapist, Dr. Finch (Brian Cox), and Finch�s family.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 25th, 2007
The Rock � sorry, Dwayne Johnson � sure has come a long way from his melodramatic days as a WWE superstar. His first major film role, as the Scorpion King in 2001�s The Mummy Returns was more about his physical presence than any acting ability. Two years later, he proved he could handle action comedy with The Rundown. Now, with Gridiron Giants, Johnson has added the drama notch to his genre belt.
The film, based on a true story and following a 1993 TV documentary of the same name, tells...the story of a group of juvenile criminals who learn how to turn their lives around through participation in a football team, coached by their detention center supervisor (Johnson).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 16th, 2007
Halfway through The Celestine Prophecy, I was exasperated and ready to turn it off. If I hadn't been watching it for this review, I would have, and would have been better for it.
When this DVD came across my plate, my interest was piqued. I'd never heard of the film, or the worldwide bestselling book it's based on, and the cover quote said, "...a huge leap forward in spiritual adventure films." My first thoughts were, "if it's based on a bestseller, maybe it has a great script" and "hey, I didn't even know there was a spiritual adventure genre".
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 11th, 2007
Certain Christian churches and organizations in North America preach something often called �the prosperity gospel.� In a nutshell, this refers to the idea that God wants us to be rich, physically, emotionally and materially.
It�s a pretty controversial message, but also a very attractive one. After all, what could be better than marrying Christianity to the American dream?
