Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 14th, 2006
I like to call movies like this “exception films”. They are the exception to the rule. Those odd little films that show up every once in a great while that really have no right to be good. You hear the plot, you see the trailer, and you know that this film is mere days away from losing vast sums of money for someone on the left coast. Then the movie comes out and it is... inexplicably entertaining and fantastic.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has carved out a surprisingly strong cult following for itself since it... theatrical release. So here's the plot of this unlikely hit: Robert Downey Jr. plays Harry Lockhart, a clumsy small time criminal who stumbles into a Hollywood acting audition while fleeing the police. Naturally, he gets the part, and is quickly ushered off to La La Land to act in the film. When he gets there, he is assigned an acting coach (Val Kilmer) named Gay Perry (get it?) to help him learn the craft. Throw in an old High School girlfriend and a murder mystery, and there you have it. A movie that is much better than it has any right to be.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 7th, 2006
In 16 Blocks, Bruce Willis plays Jack Mosley, a NYPD detective who seems to be annoyed and tired of he job. He looks lethargic 90% of the time never wanting to really do his job. Jack is told that his boss wants him for another job; which is the last possible thing Jack wants right now. Jack has been told to transport a key witness 16 Blocks to a grand jury hearing. The witness must arrive in two hours before the grand jury's term expires. The witness is Eddie Bunker (Mos Def), who seems to have more lines tha... probably all of his film's combined as Eddie is constantly speaking his mind.
Luckily for Jack, the overall premise of the job seems rather easy. All he has to do is get in a car and drive a guy 16 Blocks. Not too difficult no. Well, this is a movie and nothing is ever easy. Poor old Jack can't drive even 16 Blocks without a quick stop. This quick stop is at a liquor store. When Jack leaves the liquor store, he sees the wrong kind of guy, and proceeds to shoot this guy. We soon learn that Jack's boss, Frank Nugent (David Morse) has two jobs, the first being Jack's boss and the second being the linchpin of a ring of corruption and drug dealing within his department. Sounds like an honest cop right? For some reason, Eddie and Jack seem to connect. As Jack quickly learns from Frank, a lot of people don't want Eddie to testify in Court a man named Jerry Shue will be going down on numerous charges. Just as Eddie is about to get shot in a plausible scenario Frank creates for Jack, Jack shoots a cop in the leg thus throwing himself on the same side of the law that Eddie is on. Now it's up to Jack as he must evade the police and get Eddie to the courthouse.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 5th, 2006
It is exceedingly strange to me that in this unprecedented age of media availability, movies on demand and theaters in our very own homes, more and more men have not seen those movies that were a staple of manhood for so many years. Movies like Bullitt, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and even The Godfather are less and less familiar to male audiences than ever. There is a reason that these films were so popular amongst men. They are movies about tough guys who weren't afraid to rearrange some fac...s to get the job done. Heavy drinking and hard living men. With more and more of these films being released in Special Edition DVD packages, this is a prime time to see these films, and reacquaint yourself with your male heritage. For the women that may be reading this, I'll just tell you now, you might as well stop reading. This is not a film for you.
The Dirty Dozen is a film filled with true tough guys. Lee Marvin. Telly Savalas. Jim Brown... Charles Bronson, for goodness sake! The biggest tough guys in the movies these days are Vin Diesel, Bruce Willis and The Rock. Willis is cut from the old mold, but he is truly the last of his breed. Somewhere along the way, Hollywood turned its back on the man's man. I feel that the male population in this country is the worse for it.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 30th, 2006
Wolfgang Petersen is obviously a director who seems to love using boats or making films that have tons of boats. We had his masterpiece Das Boot about submarines, this film, his film Troy about the Trojan War, and his most recent remake Poseidon about another doomed ship. Unlike the most recent two films, The Perfect Storm is a pure sensation rollercoaster ride from beginning to end. The film doesn’t even attempt to tell a long drawn out story, but rather a very simplistic story about the ...vents surrounding this ‘perfect storm’ and how it deeply affected everyone around the town of Gloucester, regardless is you lost someone due to the storm.
Wolfgang Petersen’s 2000 vision of The Perfect Storm is based on the best-selling book by Sebastian Junger. The book and the film tells of the fishing ship named the Andrea Gail who, in 1991, in Gloucester, MA ran into the middle of a massive storm when three big storms collided in the middle of the Atlantic. The film tells us all about the economic pressures that the town goes through due to its sword-fishing industry. Instead of Petersen presenting the film about the men and their families, he decides to focus the entire film on this ship, and the oncoming storm. To add even more suspense to an already suspenseful card, Wolfgang decided to include the story about the family whose luxury boat was in distress.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 27th, 2006
The Adult Swim series of shows from Cartoon Network are sometimes amazingly hilarious, sometimes overly bizarre, but always creative. While some of the shows, such as Robot Chicken are roll-on-the-floor funny, others are just too strange for me. Lucky for me, The Venture Bros. falls into the first category. While not a constant source of laughter, this show is always clever and contains a few big laughs in each episode.
The Venture brothers are the sons of a moderately-successful scientis.... His feelings about the keen (and possibly homosexual) gents are not exactly warm and fuzzy. While he doesn't want anything to happen to them (as evidenced by the fact that they have a bodyguard that feels like he is right out of a Sin City comic), this is really more of a “Dr. Evil / Scott Evil” relationship. The episodes also largely see the boys as an obstacle to the Dr.'s plots at becoming the world's greatest scientist, which makes me wonder why they have become the shows namesake.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 27th, 2006
It seems like I keep saying this, but here we go again... Jennifer Anniston is way too good of an actress to be stuck in this film. Now, that's certainly not to imply that Shirley Maclaine isn't fantastic as well, but that's a given. Anniston is clearly the star of this film, and it's easy to see what attracted her to it. Not only is it a romantic comedy directed by Rob Reiner, but the premise is a really clever one. While in town for her sister's wedding, Sarah (Anniston) discovers that her family was the inspirati...n for the book The Graduate. How could something with a plot this clever not work out?
This film may be the ultimate example of a great premise wasted. There are so many different things wrong with this film, but many of them can be boiled down to this; too many coincidences. Scene after scene is filled with conversations that work out in just the right way so as the actors get just the information they were looking for at just the right time. The plot is forced on the story, instead of the story leading the plot. The result is a movie that is a big, clumsy train wreck, instead of the fascinating and smart story that it should have been.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 22nd, 2006
The Fugitive, since its’ original release in 1993, has always been seen by a majority of people as the defining thriller of the 1990’s. The film stars Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble. Kimble, a very well known Chicago doctor, has just been framed for killing his wife. He claims a one-armed man killed her, which prompts nearly everyone to laugh at him. Kimble is immediately arrested and sentenced to death in a cold courtroom scene that doesn’t even give Kimble time to defend himself.
Kimble is th...own onto a bus that is to take him to his pending execution. Along the way, an inmate starts to choke, which turns out to be a distraction as he breaks free. A melee ensues and the driver of the bus, naturally, is shot causing the bus to overturn. The bus rolls and rolls down a big hill finally coming to a stop on a set of railroad tracks. Everything seems fine, until one of the guards hears an oncoming train. Kimble, being the type of man he is, decides to save himself and a guard all while literally escaping an oncoming train crash. This sequence, even though it has been over 11 years since I first saw it, it still one of the more impressive action sequences in modern film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 19th, 2006
The world of politically charged films has certainly grown in the past few years. Films like Farhenheit 911 have seen big success, while other films like Rupert Murdoch’s OutFoxed have seen more of a critical success. Both of these films had extreme media attention, one obviously more than the other, prior and after their releases. Both asked questions and demanded answers to topics and issues we, as people, wondered about but never really asked about as a simple person can’t really enact a high success...rate in terms of results. However, if you have a name like Michael Moore or Rupert Murdoch attached to the bill, people will probably pay attention. A similar note is given to the recent political thriller Syriana starring George Clooney. Even though Syriana had actors like Matt Damon and George Clooney attached to the bill, would this be enough to make the film’s questions seem important enough to make an impact?
Syriana, to sum up the film in three words, is about oil and money. The film begins with one of the Gulf States agreeing to supply the up and coming China with some of its oil. Texas based company Connex, views this deal as a huge defeat. At the exact same time as this deal is happening with Connex, another company, Killen, has signed a deal to drill for oil in Kazakhstan. Connex, obviously, announces an immediate merger with Killen, thus giving them the oil. Wait one second. This sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it? Naturally the Justice Department intervenes and the movie starts to accelerate.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 13th, 2006
Like it or not, you can't talk about this show without talking about the C.S.I. phenomenon. The extreme popularity of that single show has launched an entire genre of hour-long police investigation shows that are showing up on every network, every night. There are now three different C.S.I. programs on the air, as well as military crime programs, FBI profiler programs... even a mathematical approach to crime solving with Numbers.
The latest show in this trend is The Closer, a TNT ...riginal program staring Kyra Sedgewick. The twist on this program is that Sedgewick's character is a sweet southern investigator from Atlanta who becomes the head of the Priority Murder Squad in Los Angeles. As one could discern from the title, her specialty is suspect interrogation. Despised by her colleagues because she is a female southern outsider, she must fight against criminals as well as the members of her own department to solve the crime.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 11th, 2006
Training Day stars Academy Award Winning Actor Denzel Washington in the role of Alonzo Harris. Harris, who is one of the meanest, baddest cops in the city of LA, is a person who cruises the streets in his customized Caddy. Harris, in one of the film's opening scenes, meets Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), a young cop whose dream is to be promoted to the elite narc squad. Naturally, this is Jake's first day of training and he is thrown into the arms of Harris. Alonzo tries to show him the streets so he can understand e...erything. He has Jake smoke pot just because he can. In one interesting scene, possibly Alonzo being a tough ass to Jake, doesn't arrest two rapists like Jake wants to, but, instead, proceeds to beat the living crap out of them.
For Alonzo, acting the way he does is simply because this is the way Alonzo feels he should act. As he tells Jake in one scene "If you turn down gifts on the street, you'll be dead." Jake, who has just learned his pot has been laced with PCP, has just awoken to find out that he is now involved with a raid on a drug dealer's house. Alonzo continues to take Jake on these various trips, which all seem to be teaching Jake more and more about the type of cop Alonzo truly is. It makes me wonder if all LA cops are truly this evil, not necessarily as a poke at LA and the crime, but possibly a look into the corruption of the cop field in itself.
![The Fugitive [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-fugitive-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Training Day [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/training-day-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
