Sony Pictures

Covenant, The (2006)

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.
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Incubus

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 5th, 2007

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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 = ?
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The Fifa 2006 World Cup Film – The Grand Finale

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 2nd, 2007

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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 …
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The Grudge 2

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 29th, 2007

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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.

Running With Scissors (2006)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 29th, 2007

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Based on Augusten Burroughsï¿½ 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 Augustenï¿½s life mostly from about age 12 to 16. Part of what makes this film intriguing is that itï¿½s 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, hereï¿½s my very high-level plot summary: Augustenï¿½s parentsï¿½ relatio…
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Gridiron Gang (2006)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 25th, 2007

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The Rock ï¿½ sorry, Dwayne Johnson ï¿½ sure has come a long way from his melodramatic days as a WWE superstar. His first major film role, as the Scorpion King in 2001ï¿½s 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…
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The Celestine Prophecy

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 16th, 2007

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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”.
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Facing the Giants

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 11th, 2007

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Certain Christian churches and organizations in North America preach something often called ï¿½the prosperity gospel.ï¿½ In a nutshell, this refers to the idea that God wants us to be rich, physically, emotionally and materially.

Itï¿½s a pretty controversial message, but also a very attractive one. After all, what could be better than marrying Christianity to the American dream?
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Shottas

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 5th, 2007

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Here we go, with another rise and fall story in the underworld. Two young friends in Jamaica, Biggs and Wayne, grow up separately to become powerful gangsters (the “shottas” of the title). After a prolonged separation, they reunite in Kingston, and the story takes them back and forth between that city and Miami as they climb the drug totem pole, heading for the inevitable fall shown pre-credits.

All the characters speak Jamaican patois, making subtitle necessary.
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Mozart & The Whale

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 22nd, 2006

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In case Rain Man didn’t give you your fill of films about autistic characters, Ron Bass, writer of Rain Man, has decided to give us an unnecessary sequel. OK, this isn’t really a sequel, but it might as well be. Honestly, this film has everything Rain Man had except for a good scripts, solid performances, and oh yeah, Dustin Hoffman. Still, this romantic nonsense utilizes the same theme. Unfortunately autism here is reduced at times to stereotyping that appears grossly unfair to the millions of people who suffer from the disability and their loved ones.
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Seinfeld – Season 7

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2006

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It started as “the show about nothing”, but we really know better. While some say it’s much ado about nothing, they’ve missed the point, haven’t they. Ask some folks, and they’ve got nothing to say. Well. If you can’t say something nice…

Jerry Seinfeld did what so many comics have failed to do well. It seems just about every stand-up out there thinks the stuff will work on television. Some of it does. Those that got the chance owe much to the success of Seinfeld. Like few sit-coms before it, the series was the hot topic at work water coolers.
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The Da Vinci Code

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 9th, 2006

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By the time this film was announced, everyone and their dog had asked me if I’d read The Da Vinci Code. I hadn’t.

Yes, I’d heard it was the bestest book in the whole wide world. No, I didn’t want to borrow their copy. Months later, when I finally sat down to watch this DVD, I had still not read Dan Brown’s masterpiece. See, I decided to be one of the few who could judge the film as completely separate from the novel.

Unfortunately for my personal experiment, it seems that the book was simply
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An Evening With Kevin Smith 2 – Evening Harder

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 7th, 2006

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I can’t imagine anyone who’s not a Kevin Smith fan renting, buying, or otherwise arranging to view this DVD. The gist of this review is simple: if you like Kevin Smith and/or his work, you’ll enjoy An Evening With Kevin Smith 2 – Evening Harder.

Since I haven’t seen the original An Evening With Kevin Smith, I can’t offer a comparison. That said, I’d be willing to guess that this release is both more of the same and a whole new experience.

This sequel DVD set presents two standup “concerts” on two discs
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Population 436

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 1st, 2006

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There are so many sub-genres of horror these days. There is the ever-popular teen slasher flick, there is Japanese horror, gore, zombie, thrillers and even the recent popularity of the 70’s throwback. This one falls into the dramatic slow-burn category. The plot here sounds like something out of one of the better Steven King short stories. Someone in the federal government discovers that the population of little Rockford Falls seems to have remained steady for over a hundred years. An official is sent to investigate this anomaly, and what he finds is a mixture of small-town life, strong religious beliefs and some eerily strange goings-on.

Starsky & Hutch – The Complete Fourth Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 27th, 2006

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The networks finally achieved what drug lords, mobsters and even zombies could not. Year four meant the end of Starsky and Hutch. Unfortunately the show was running out of gas quickly, so this was not near the quality of the previous years. It looks too much like David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser were pretty much ready to move on to other things. Neither of the men would make the impact again they made with Starsky and Hutch. Huggy Bear is not to be found near as often as he had been, so a ton of the humor was mis…
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Little Man (Loaded with Extra Crap Edition)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 22nd, 2006

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I must admit that I fully expected to hate this film. Turns out, I didn’t. The truth is, Little Man, the latest comedy from the Wayans brothers, is too harmless for such a vehement reaction.

Sure, Little Man is not very good, but if you can manage to check your brain at the door, you’ll probably get some laughs out of it. Then again, they’re probably the same laughs you had watching the trailer. My problem with comedy like this is that it’s really much better suited to short sketches than feature films.

Body Double

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 18th, 2006

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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…
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Forever Knight – The Trilogy, Part 3

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2006

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The USA network took over the Forever Knight series for its third year. In a way, you could say they saved the show from cancellation, but they also killed it. In keeping with the nework’s M.O. of the time, it was believed the series wasn’t accessible enough. The obvious grab for the younger audience appeared in the likes of the Andy Garcia clone Ben Bass as the Vachon. Lovable partner Schanke was killed off along with the previous season’s captain. Nick was given a female partner in the likes of sci-fi veteran Li…
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Click

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 27th, 2006

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Synopsis

Adam Sandler plays Michael Newman, stressed-out workaholic who, overwhelmed by his job though he is, is allowing it to interfere with his family life. At the end of his tether one night, he sets out to buy a universal remote, but Christopher Walken (apparently playing Christopher Lloyd) sells him a truly universal remote.

All sorts of gags involving giving the real world the rewind, pause, fast-forward and slow-motion treatment ensue, and a number are funny. But as sure as night f…
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Connors’ War

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 20th, 2006

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Synopsis

Anthony “Treach” Criss of Naughty By Nature plays the title character, a one-man army as part of a vaguely defined intelligence agency. He is the midst of rescuing the President’s wife from a hostage situation when bungling by the Secret Service results in an explosion that blinds him. Three years later, his old boss lures him back to the field with the promise of regained sight. This he gets, but now he can see in the dark. The plan is apparently to steal a satellite component in order to p…
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Woods, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 20th, 2006

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After Heather (Agnes Bruckner) sets her parent’s tree on fire out of boredom, she is shipped off to a strange boarding school run by Ms. Traverse (Patricia Clarkson), where the woods surrounding the school seem to be slowly devouring the building itself. There’s also the standard issue legend surrounding the history of the school that involves a coven of witches who murdered the school’s head-mistress years before.

Does any of this result in an interesting film? Let’s take a step back before we delve into …
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Edison Force

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 12th, 2006

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Mix two parts hip-hop artists, two parts Oscar-winning actors, one part TV actor, and one part bad actor, and what do you get? The stars of Edison Force, that’s what. Now just because I specify one as a bad actor doesn’t let the others off the hook. Of course, Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman are going to be tolerable. They’re phenomenal at their craft. Even the TV actor (Dylan McDermott) does a worthy job of bringing menace to his role as primary leg-breaker. But when it comes to poor performances, Cary …
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Mountain Patrol (Kekexili)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 23rd, 2006

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Synopsis

In the mid 90’s, poachers are decimating the antelope population in the pristine lands of Kekexili. The locals have organized themselves to fight back, and now one of their patrolmen has been murdered by the poachers. Ga Yu, a journalist from Beijing, arrives to cover the story. Initially rejected by the leader of the mountain patrol, Ga Yu is taken in by the group when he suggests his coverage might help turn the area into a wilderness preserve. A long, grueling, dangerous manhunt ensues.>

Robert Ludlum’s Covert One: The Hades Factor

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 23rd, 2006

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Synopsis

Imagine my surprise that there was a miniseries made about the threat of bioterror, and that this cloak and dagger miniseries (that aired at some time on network TV) sported two Oscar winners, neither of them men! Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honor) and Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite) are part of a wide ranging series that is set over several continents, and explores the possibility of a bio-terror attack in the US.

Based on the book by Robert Ludlum, the man responsible for t…
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Don’t Come Knocking

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 22nd, 2006

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Burned out actor Howard Spense (Sam Shepard) has a mid-life crisis, rides off the set of his latest western, and visits his mother (Eva Marie Saint), whom he has not seen in over 30 years. Mother Spense informs Howard that he has a son named Earl, (Gabriel Mann) living in Butte, Montana from a fling he had with Doreen (Jessica Lange), while he was there shooting on location 20 years ago. Upon arriving in Butte (he gravitates there more than actually arriving), Howard also meets Sky (Sarah Polley), a mysterious woman …
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