Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 11th, 2009
The Soloist is based on a book written by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez. The book was based on a series of columns the writer assembled involving his relationship with a street musician he happened upon while searching for material. Lopez was touched by the musician, Nathaniel Ayers, who was playing a violin with only two remaining strings. Still he was able to produce music that made the writer do a double take and begin to wonder what he was doing out on the street. Ayers’ ramblings made it immediately obvious that the man was suffering from mental illness. Their first contact revealed that the street performer was once a student at Juilliard. Lopez took a personal interest in the story, resulting in a series of columns that got him a bit of attention and a personal relationship with Nathaniel Ayers. When he finds out that Ayers was a classically trained cellist, his column ends up providing a nice cello for the musician to play. Lopez attempts to use the instrument as a way to coax Ayers inside and off the street. He exposes him to music instructors in the hopes of cultivating his talent more completely. Together they grow, in a way.
There really isn’t much more of a story than that. Credit director Joe Wright for not attempting to add the usual Hollywood flares in an attempt to make the film more of a commercial success. The story is very true to the real life events and never attempts the usual over the top approach that has become trendy in Hollywood today. Unfortunately, while the decision might have been an honorable one, it might not have been the right one for the film. It did rather poorly at the box office, pulling in a little over $30 million, which didn’t even cover the budgets costs. You have to look at this one strictly as a character study, because you won’t find a satisfying enough story in the film. It just kind of sits there and never really develops into any kind of cohesive form. It’s obviously the product of a series of loosely related pieces of work. We get the idea that Lopez is moved by this man and that he decides at some sacrifice to get involved, but where is the whole thing going? Again, they decide to forego the warm and fuzzy Hollywood ending that wraps things up in a nice tidy bow for everybody. Most of the story hasn’t been told; the relationship is, apparently, ongoing. Perhaps the story needed a proper ending before making its way to a movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 11th, 2009
Why does every Adam Sandler character seem to be Happy Gilmore? I don’t know if there’s an actor out there, comedian or otherwise, who has made so many movies essentially playing the same character. If it seems at times like I really hate Sandler, believe it or not, I don’t. The guy has a charm and natural ability that can, when he works at it, come off as a very entertaining couple of hours at the movies. Unfortunately, he’s not willing to work at it, and so continues to bombard us with new versions of the same character and story.
You’ve seen it all before. Young guy with some kind of a mental problem or at least simplemindedness ends up overcoming his self esteem issues and becomes a hero. It’s no different here. This time the guy is Bobby Boucher (Sandler) who takes his waterboy duties with the local college football team a little too seriously. Taste testing the water and making sure the serving temperature is just right are just a couple of ways that Bobby looks like an idiot to the team’s players and coaches. He’s picked on, and for good reason. Finally the coach considers him too much of a distraction and fires the kid. Bobby’s thrown into a deep depression and no one seems to understand him. That goes doubly for the moviegoers caught paying out good money for the movie. He ends up getting another, non-paying gig at SCLSU, the losingest school in the state. Once again he’s picked on. This time the frustration builds, and Bobby ends up tackling one of his tormentors on the team. When Coach Klein (Winkler) sees the amazing tackle he decides to give Bobby a shot to make the team. Predictably, Bobby becomes a star, elevating the crappy team into the championship. Of course, just as easy to predict, you know what team they face in the big game. Yes, it’s Bobby’s old team. It just so happens the coaches are old rivals, and so it’s personal all around. The rival coach tries to get Bobby disqualified for the big game, but of course we have to have that moment when Bobby realizes everybody is counting on him and that he’s a hero. Again, the operative word here is predictable.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
Who doesn’t remember the original Witch Mountain films from Disney back in the 1970’s. They were clever family films. They were camp, to be sure. But, most of us remember them fondly, if not as particularly outstanding films. While Disney’s reimagining of the franchise doesn’t have a great deal in common with those earlier films, you can pretty much describe the reaction as being spot on. Race To Witch Mountain isn’t going to be breaking any box office records, but it is the kind of film you get a pretty warm feeling for, and like its predecessors, you’ll end up remembering it with fondness.
A flying saucer crashes in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas. The crash just so happens to coincide with the arrival of a huge UFO convention in Sin City. The Defense Department has secured the crash site. They quickly discover that the ship’s passengers have slipped through their perimeter. Now it’s a race to find the extraterrestrials before they can hatch whatever nefarious plan has brought them to our planet. The investigation is spearheaded by Henry Burke (Hinds). Meanwhile Vegas cabdriver Jack Bruno (Johnson) is busy ferrying the “nut jobs” to the UFO convention. Bruno was once a gifted race car driver as well as excelling in demotion derby driving. He had once worked a stint as a mob driver and has gotten out of the business. But, as we all know by now, you don’t just retire from the mob. So, there are some goons after him to “persuade” him to return to the job. All of a sudden a pair of teens appears in his car loaded with a huge wad of cash and a mysterious electronic device. The teens request to be taken to a remote location that appears to be being directed by the unknown gizmo. When his cab is assaulted by a convoy of black SUV’s, Bruno thinks it’s his old mob heavies, but it’s Burke and his ET hunters after the kids, who happen to be the escaped aliens. For the rest of the film Bruno and his unusual passengers, Sara (Robb) and Seth (Ludwig) try to locate a device that contains information that will stop an impending attack on the Earth. The kids must find the device, get their ship out of Burke’s hands, and return to their own planet before an all out invasion is launched at our planet. All the while the group is being pursued by the mob, Burke’s boys, and an alien bounty hunter with a ton of weapons at its disposal. They have two weapons of their own. First, the kids have some remarkable powers. Sara can move objects with her mind and talk to animals, and Seth can manipulate the density of his molecular structure, thus enabling him to pass through solid objects or withstand a head-on collision by an oil tanker. The second weapon is Dr. Alex Friedman (Gugino), an attractive scientist who speaks at these UFO conventions for a living, who happened to be one of Bruno’s earlier “nut jobs”. Together they race against time to save the planet, interacting with some peculiar characters along the way.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
An ancient facility beneath Antarctica becomes the launching platform to the lost city of Atlantis. Atlantis is buried beneath an ocean in another galaxy and can only be reached with an additional symbol on the Stargate. Because of power limitations this trip, at least for the time being, is a one-way adventure. A crew of scientists and military officers from many countries assemble to explore the Pegasus Galaxy from the Atlantis gate. Led by scientist Dr. Weir (Higginson) and Maj. John Sheppard (Flanigan) they take over the Atlantian command center and begin to explore. In their initial investigations they accidentally awaken the area’s top bad guys, The Wraith. These vampire-like beings suck the life-force out of humans.
When Stargate SG-1 was about to enter its ninth year, there was speculation that after season 8 the series would bow out gracefully with the anticipated exit of Richard Dean Anderson. With that plan in mind, the folks at Stargate Command decided it was time to spin off the franchise, and so was born Atlantis. Stargate Atlantis boasts pretty much the same production team as SG-1. The quality of the production and tight storytelling have translated well to this sister series. Stargate Atlantis took a little getting used to. I wasn’t sure the characters had enough chemistry or were even dynamic enough to carry the high expectations for a Stargate series. Those concerns eventually evaporated by the time Atlantis began to live without the SG-1 companion series. These characters really took off, and they’ve developed into nearly as strong a group as SG-1 ever was. Now with the very first Atlantis content available on high definition Blu-ray, you’ll have the chance to explore where the show began and ended. This single disc contains the first and last episodes of the 5 year journey that was Atlantis.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
“In a time before many can remember, our planet faced its greatest challenge. A warlord named Piccolo came from beyond the stars, bringing darkness and chaos to our once peaceful world. Aided by his disciple Oozaru, the evil pair brought the human race to the brink of annihilation. Cities and countries crumbled beneath them. Countless lives were lost, but finally a group of brave warriors created the Ma Fu Ba, a powerful enchantment that imprisoned Piccolo deep with in the Earth. With his master captured, Oozaru disappeared and balance was slowly restored to our world. And so it has remained for thousands of years…until now.”
Let me begin by stating that I have not had more than a passing exposure to the hugely popular Dragonball anime works. I suspect that this film bears little resemblance to that material, again from what little I had seen of it. That likely means there are more than a few angry fans out there. I won’t be offering any comparisons. I will merely review this film as a standalone production, as it was apparently intended to be, which in itself might have been a mistake.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 6th, 2009
“Nobody has everything they want. It’s a survival pattern. You get what you want, you want something else, something more extreme, something more specific, something perfect….”
A Joss Whedon universe is always a strange and fantastical place to visit. It doesn’t matter if it’s populated by vampires and demons or space cowboys. If Whedon’s name appears anywhere on the credits, you know you’re going to be in for one hell of a ride. It’s been a little while since Whedon’s been back in the saddle. His most recent series, Firefly, was fraught with problems with the network. It was very badly handled, and the show died an undeserved swift death after just a few episodes. Whedon appeared somewhat bitter after all of that and disappeared from the television radar for a few years. They say you can’t keep a good man down, and now Whedon is back with his latest mythology heavy series, Dollhouse.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 5th, 2009
As a kid, I was a huge Lost In Space fan. We loved Dr. Smith in particular and would go around our neighborhoods moaning, “The pain, oh the pain” in some mock imitation of the deliciously bad character. I think I finally know what he was talking about. I’m a man, and so I won’t even begin to pretend that I can understand what labor pains feel like. I believe it when I’m told there’s no worse suffering in the human experience, except for one. Yes, my gentle female readers, no matter how much torture childbirth might be for you, I bet it can’t compare to the mental anguish of having to sit through Labor Pains. Since this film was written and directed by women, I suspect it just might actually be some female plot to get guys like me to appreciate true suffering.
In the first place, we have Lindsay Lohan. I mean seriously. Is there anyone out there who actually thinks she’s a gifted actress? Is she really on anyone’s dream cast? Name one good movie she’s been involved in. I hear someone in the back screaming out Mean Girls. Forget about it. She has a reputation of showing up whenever she feels like it, arguing or downright fighting with cast and crew. She’s been known to “accidentally” walk off with stuff that doesn’t belong to her, and she’s pretty much a temper tantrum throwing brat when she doesn’t get her way. I’m tired of the press hanging on each and every emotion implosion like it was actually important. Do you really care how many times she splits up and gets back together with her lesbian DJ friend? How many pictures do we need of her crying on the lady’s front porch beggin’ for another chance, only to be dropping F bombs in anger a day later? The woman’s a train wreck. Is it any surprise at all that her films are crap? I can honestly say knowing all of these gross intimate details has not improved the quality of my life. What would help my job as a reviewer is if she’d stop trying to make movies. In a nice piece of irony, a character asks Thea if she wants people to see her as a “wayward skank”. Well…Lindsay?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 3rd, 2009
“What is Echelon? It’s NSA’s central computer. It filters all global communications. Echelon’s a juggernaut. It can access any security system on the planet… Echelon’s been compromised.”
In 1948 British author George Orwell delivered a sobering science fiction novel about a future society where the State has become a parent figure to its people. It watches over everything that you say or do like a …big brother. That term originated with the novel 1984. The work has added such words as “big brother” and “Orwellian” to our lexicon. It was intended as warning against intrusions that weren’t yet possible. Today we’ve moved beyond 1984 both in linear time and in Orwellian technology. You’re not paranoid. Someone is pretty much always watching you. From ATM’s to supermarkets, you are on camera pretty much anytime you’re out in public.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 7th, 2009
I tend to wince a bit when I see these films that star wrestling names and are produced in conjunction with one of the WW A-Z’s. I’ve come to believe that WW means “Won’t Wow”. Along comes John Cena and this latest cooperative film, 12 Rounds. I have to say I was somewhat surprised to find that it was a pretty good action thriller, if a bit implausible. I’m willing to overlook certain aspects of inplauability, if you take me on a thrilling enough ride and try not to totally insult my intelligence. For the most part I found that to be the case here. Cena doesn’t feel the need to work in impractical wrestling moves on his opponents. In fact most of the action is not the hand to hand tripe these movies tend to lean toward. You’ll find plenty of action sequences. There’s a pretty cool runaway rail car, plenty of car chases with the expected carnage that follows, and enough gun play to drive home the point. Renny Harlin, the director, worked on the second Die Hard film, so you know he has a good eye for this kind of action. And while no one will confuse him with John Woo, I think you’ll get enough of an adrenaline hit here to make the 2 hours worthwhile… until we get to the end. More on that later.
A sting to bring down a dangerous terrorist goes horribly awry when the fed’s informant has a sudden change of heart. The result is a lot of shooting, chasing, and dead guys on both sides of the law. Patrol officer Danny Fisher (Cena) is one of the cops drawn into the chase and eventual takedown of the chief terrorist, Miles Jackson (Gillen). In the mayhem that follows, Jackson’s wife is killed. Jackson blames Fisher for the death and vows his revenge.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 2nd, 2009
How do you like your eggs? Scrambled or easy over? Hitchcock despised eggs and thought they were absolutely disgusting, to the point of intentionally mutilating a plate in many of his films. What about Easter Eggs? No, I’m not talking about hidden features in your latest DVD or Blu-ray release. I’m talking those colored hardboiled variety left by a furry bunny during the Easter season. When I was a kid they came in all sizes and varieties, and even though I really don’t like hardboiled eggs all that much I was a whiz at finding the things, and I’d hoard them as if I suspected an approaching Armageddon and these babies might be the only food left for thousands of miles. Now the Russians. They knew a little something about their eggs, particularly the last two reigning monarchs in the famed Romanov Dynasty. They had consigned Easter Eggs from the world renowned jeweler Carl Faberge. These eggs were extraordinary examples of luxury and excess. They were adorned in precious metals and rare gems and stones. Two of these eggs play a vital role in the latest release from Revolution and First Look Studio’s The Code.
Gabriel Martin (Banderas) is a thief. In the middle of his latest job he is approached by Keith Ripley (Freeman), yet another world renowned thief. Ripley needs a partner for his latest heist. He has a buyer for two Faberge Eggs that are previously unknown and worth an estimated $40 million. The eggs are kept in a high end security vault by the appropriately named Romanov Company. Gabriel is reluctant to do the job but is eventually persuaded to join the effort. He’s helped in no small part to join by meeting Ripley’s goddaughter, Alex (Mitchell). They have an immediate attraction, much to the displeasure of the all business Ripley. Together they mastermind the heist.
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