Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 6th, 2004
Synopsis
A young couple (Stephen Wastell and Paula Ficara) move from the East Coast to LA withdreams of writing screenplays. Their new house is on a hill that was once part of Tom Mix’sHollywood studio, and all their neighbours are in the movie business in one way or another.Ficara is recovering from a nervous breakdown, and when she begins to see ghosts, she assumes,at first, that she is having a relapse. But then Wastell not only becomes inhumanly productive,banging out a script i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 20th, 2004
The Whole Nine Yards was a pretty funny film. It wasn’t outstanding. It wasn’t classic cinema. It certainly didn’t cry out for a sequel. The Whole Ten Yards goes one yard too far. Most of the original cast is back, but the film has no life. Even the laughs are forced. By now the novelty of the characters has long since worn thin. Bruce Willis seems to be acting for acting’s sake. The mood swings and unnecessary facial exaggerations seem to provide Willis with some distraction from how empty the rest of the film is. I...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 20th, 2004
Synopsis
Treat Williams is Dr. Andrew Brown, a high-powered NYC neurosurgeon. When his wife iskilled in a traffic accident, Williams re-evaluates his life, and the fact that he had put his familyvery much on the backburner with reference to his career, and on the spur of the moment movesthe family to Everwood, Colorado, a small town he was once told was idyllic. So begins a newlife, an effort to avoid making the same mistakes, and an effort to re-connect with his alienatedteenaged s...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 15th, 2004
Synopsis
Into Transylvania come a doddering and incompetent Van Helsing figure (Jack MacGowran)and his timorous, clumsy assistant (Roman Polanski). When Sharon Tate, the daughter of thelocal innkeeper, is abducted by vampire Count Von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne), MacGowran andPolanski travel to the vampire’s castle, where plenty of misadventures ensue.
Polanski’s affection for the films he is parodying is evident, and this is a much better filmthan, say, Dracula: Dead and Lovin...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 14th, 2004
Paul McCartney once implored John Lennon’s son Julian to “take a sad song and make it better”. The same basic concept is at work here, but the words “sad song” should be replaced with “bad cartoon”. Sealab 2021 is a clever show from Cartoon Network that takes a bad old show, Sealab 2020, and replaces the dialog track with something much more enjoyable. Think of it as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 approach to creating a cartoon.
Admittedly, the results are sometimes mixed. When a gag ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 13th, 2004
Scooby-Doo 2 is pretty-much the same as the original film. Oh, sure, the plot differs slightly, but for the most part, this is the same film. If you liked the first one, you will like this one. However, if you hated the first one, like I did, then this is regrettably more of the same mindless fluff.
Recently, movie studios have caught on to the idea that if they make children’s movies with subtle in-jokes for adults, their profits will rise. This was the case with Finding Nemo, Shrek an...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 11th, 2004
Synopsis
In a totally enclosed dystopia, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall) gradually begins to rebel againstthe completely controlled and drug-managed existence. He dares to think, and to have an affair,and, after a nightmarish imprisonment in a featureless white limbo, he attempts an escape.
It’s hard to believe that this dark, almost abstract film with its elliptical narrative approachcould have been made by the same man who has assaulted us with such pap as The PhantomMenace and
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 7th, 2004
Synopsis
Let’s start with the two biggest titles in the collection, which have a life outside thiscollection. North by Northwest is arguably Hitchcock’s greatest exercise in sheer roller-coaster thriller entertainment. As in so many of the director’s films, an insane chain of eventsis set in motion by the smallest of actions, in this case Cary Grant signalling a bell boy just asthe latter is calling out a name. Grant is thus misidentified by the villains, and he is suddenlyrunning fo...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 2nd, 2004
The fifth season of Babylon 5 would prove to be the show’s last. Fans had clamored at the end of the third season for a fourth, and they succeeded. At the end of the fourth, the clamoring began again, and they earned the show yet another reprieve. The fifth try finally sounded the death knell on this show, however. It’s really all for the best, though, since the series had unquestionably been driving toward this conclusion for some time. To go on any longer would have been unfair to the integrity of the show i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 2nd, 2004
If you think about it, it’s a little surprising that Wonder Woman lasted for three full seasons. To my knowledge, there really hadn’t been any popular female super heroes before this show. Obviously there were a couple peppered around here and there in comics, but as far as movies and television go, it was pretty hard to find any kind of super female hero. Of course, Lynda Carter and that tiny patriotic costume may have had something to do with it.
Almost 40 years later, it’s a little more understandable wh...
