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Accident (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on June 14th, 2012

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“A deadly car accident took place at North Point last night; a bus lost control and left two dead and eight injured.”

Every day accident fatalities happen all over the world. These deaths are so obviously accidental that the authorities hardly think twice about them. In director Cheang Pou-Soi’s Accident a team of four assassins, Brain (Louis Koo), Fatty (Suet Lam), Uncle (Fung Shui-Fan) and Woman (Michelle Ye), each a master of the art of the invisible kill, stage their assassinations so perfectly as to appear to be simply “accidents” even under the closest scrutiny.
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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 13th, 2012

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“In the 19th century Jules Verne wrote some of the greatest adventure stories ever told. Novels such as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Journey To The Center Of The Earth and The Mysterious Island. Most consider these works of science fiction. Vernians know otherwise.”

In 2008 Brendan Frasier had himself a rather unexpected hit with Journey To The Center Of The Earth. That film posed the fantastic question: What if the works of Jules Verne were not based on fantasy at all, but rather actual events, people and places
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Entourage: The Complete Eighth and Final Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on June 13th, 2012

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“You’re the good kind of addict. You’re the I-got-messed-up-with-the-wrong-girl-and-ended-up-on-a-blow-bender addict. But Ertz is the Skeevy-old-man-who-got-caught with-a-crack-pipe-and-the-17-year-old-from-Speed-Racer addict.”

Where season seven of Entourage was all about the hard life and times of Vinnie Chase (Adrian Grenier) and company stumbling through the shallow traps of an impossibly expensive Hollywood lifestyle: i.e. growing addictions, porn star girlfriends, and desperate career moves, Entourage: The Complete Eighth Season is all about redemption through hard choices.
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Too Big to Fail (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on June 12th, 2012

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-“And what do I say when they ask me why it wasn’t regulated?”
-“No one wanted to. We were making too much money.”

At first glance, sitting down to watch a film about the financial meltdown of 2008 seems only slightly more fun than going through the actual meltdown again. Fortunately, director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) and a towering ensemble cast — I felt like I’d died and gone to Character Actor Heaven — mostly keep Too Big to Fail away from CNBC territory and deliver a brisk, entertaining film.
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Act of Valor (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 12th, 2012

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“Before my father died, he said that the worst thing about growing old was that other men stopped seeing you as dangerous. I’ve always remembered that, how being dangerous was sacred, a badge of honor. You live your life by a code, an ethos. Everyone does. It’s your shoreline. It’s what guides you home. And, trust me, you’re always trying to go home.”

It would be easy to dismiss Act Of Valor as either a recruiting tool piece of propaganda or yet another in an endless line of war films attempting to capture some form of authenticity.
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Workaholics: Seasons 1 & 2 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on June 11th, 2012

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“Ugh. How many times do I have to explain this to you? If you see the neighbor’s house getting broken into, it’s probably Karl high out of his mind thinking he’s locked out of our house.”

When it comes to office based slacker comedies, Mike Judge’s Office Space still sets the gold standard. Workaholics wishes it could be as quotable and timeless as Office Space, but settles for goofy, instantly forgettable juvenile ramblings suitable for a stoner’s short term memory. Much like the boy’s prank of choice, involving a dollar bill wrapped around poop, Workaholics looks good on the surface, but is pretty much the same old crap underneath.
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Hell On Wheels – The Complete First Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 6th, 2012

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“Make no mistake. Blood will be spilled. Lives will be lost. Fortunes will be made. Men will be ruined. There will be betrayal and scandal and perfidy of epic proportions.”

With a statement like that, how can you not want to check out AMC’s newest drama series Hell On Wheels? I’ve been told the title sounds like it’s about motorcycle gangs, and I couldn’t agree more. The term refers to the mobile tent city that housed the workers on the Union Pacific Railroad and the support entourage the camp attracted. It was a virtual tent city that had all of the essentials: a church, bar, and whorehouse.
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John Carter (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on June 6th, 2012

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“When I saw you, I believed it was a sign… that something new can come into this world.”

John Carter first appeared in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom magazine serial nearly a century ago in 1912. The science fiction pioneering Carter stories captured the imagination of masses and inspired countless authors and directors. For example, George Lucas himself has stated there would be no Star Wars without John Carter of Mars. It took nearly a century to get it to screen and in time countless others have mined the series for inspiration.
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Red Tails (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 5th, 2012

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“Blacks are mentally inferior, by nature subservient, and cowards in the face of danger. They are therefore unfit for combat.” – U.S. Army War College Study 1925

Obviously, there’s another story to be told here. George Lucas says that he’s been wanting to tell this story for over 20 years. It’s a story that has often been told in both film and documentary form. In none of those cases has the movie been made into the kind of spectacle film that we find in Red Tails.
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Tosh.O – Hoodies (Blu-Ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on June 5th, 2012

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YouTube had all but killed off the idea of mailing silly home videos to the likes of America’s Funniest Home Videos. These days, people prefer to stream dozens of videos on their computers and save themselves from the watered down jokes of Bob Saget or current host Tom Bergeron. Tosh.O takes a similar format of displaying such silly videos, but focuses on things that have gone “viral” online. Like AFHV, Tosh.O adds their own commentary and sketches to the presentation but in a much more crass, cable-savvy manner.
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Beyond (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 31st, 2012

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At first glance it would be very easy to say that Beyond doesn’t really offer us anything terribly new in the crime drama genre. For the most part I would tend to agree with that criticism. I would counter with the argument that a very good film doesn’t need to be very original to be good. Sometimes the value in a movie lies in the fact that it does what it does do extremely well. That’s how I would describe the sleeper direct-to-video release Beyond.
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Coriolanus (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on May 29th, 2012

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“This Martius is grown from man to dragon. He has wings. He’s more than a creeping thing. There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger.”

There’s a certain hierarchy when it comes to the amount of cinematic interpretations of William Shakespeare’s plays. At the top tier, we have the endlessly adapted Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello and ~~Macbeth~~ the Scottish Play. A step below that, you’ve probably got your King Lear, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a few more. And about a dozen tiers below that, we finally come across Coriolanus.
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The Adventures of Tintin (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 28th, 2012

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Steven Spielberg’s very-long-in-gestation adaptation of Hergé’s Tintin finally came into being over Christmas. The story, very much in keeping with the globe-trotting adventures of the comic books (drawing heavily, in fact, upon The Secret of the Unicorn), has Tintin (voiced by Jaime Bell) become embroiled in a treasure quest after buying a model ship that has one third of the secret concealed in its mast. Captured by nefarious evil-doers who will stop at nothing to find the treasure, he encounters Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), and a legendary friendship is formed.
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42nd Street Forever (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on May 24th, 2012

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“His name is Samson. He’s big with his cat, with mama and with his stick. Black Samson… he’s mean and clean and rules the scene.”

In the 70s and 80s, filthy little theaters littered New York’s 42^nd Street, sandwiched between adult bookstores, porn theaters, and peepshows. These dens of celluloid sin hosted an endless loop of “B” movies affectionately known as grindhouse films. They ran exploitation films, drive-in double features, and European softcore of every subgenre, ranging from Blaxploitation to Sexploitation, from Euro-crime to Sci-Fi and Horror. Some theaters projected these movies 24 hours a day, seven days a week
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The Secret World of Arrietty (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 24th, 2012

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“It’s funny how you wake up each day and never really know if it will be one that will change your life forever. But that’s what this day was. The day I left the city to spend a week in the house where my mother grew up. A day I’ll never forget.”

The Secret World Of Arrietty comes from the collected works of English writer Mary Norton. The first book, The Borrowers, introduced us to the Clock family. They were a race of tiny humans known as Borrowers. They lived beneath the floorboards of normal-sized humans and lived off the things they could “borrow” from the human family.
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Haywire (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 21st, 2012

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At first glance Haywire appears a bit out of character for the likes of director Steven Soderbergh. It’s not that he hasn’t delivered action films in the past. It’s that he’s never quite tied himself to such a tried and sometimes true formula before. When you first look at the press for Haywire you’re going to pretty much dismiss it as a standard action-hero film that follows in the mold of a Steven Seagal/Chuck Norris mold with a touch of Bourne Identity thrown in to meet the more recent trends.
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The Universe: The Complete Season Six (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 16th, 2012

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“In the beginning there was darkness. And then bang, giving birth to an endless expanding existence of time, space, and matter. Every day new discoveries are unlocking the mysterious, the mind-blowing, the deadly secrets of a place we call The Universe.”

The History series has lasted for six seasons to date. The show uses modern space photography, computer-generated images, and demonstrations along with respected scientists to explore the various aspects of our universe.
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Mother’s Day (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on May 10th, 2012

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“If my family can’t live in this house, you sure as hell can’t either!”

Daniel (Frank Grillo) and Beth (Jaime King) Sohapi picked up a great deal on a recently foreclosed house, and they’ve invited a handful of friends over to celebrate. A tornado threatens the area, but everyone is partying in the basement, which has been recently reinforced as a tornado shelter. Things look great in suburbia until three frantic and deadly bank robbers, Ike (Patrick Flueger), Addley (Warren Kole), and Johnny (Matt O’Leary), return to their childhood home following a botched bank robbery.
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Chuck: The Complete Fifth Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 10th, 2012

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“My name is Charles Carmichael, and I have one final question for you. Have you ever had to subdue a Basque terrorist on a Swiss train? Or fight your way through the jungles of Southeast Asia? Or, take out an arms dealer with a penchant for murder and ice cream? Well… we have.”

And, if you’ve been a fan of Chuck for the last five years, you know exactly what we’re talking about here. And, for now, the ride has come to a close.
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Mimic 3 Film Set (Mimic / Mimic 2 / Mimic 3) (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 8th, 2012

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“Every insect lives for just one purpose: Survival of its own kind.”

In 1997 Guillermo del Toro made his first English-language film. Mimic was based on a rather creepy short story by Donald A. Wollheim. Unfortunately, for del Toro and film fans everywhere, the director had more than his fair share of struggles with the studio powers that be, and he never really had the chance to make the movie he really hoped to make. The result is certainly an atmospheric and interesting film, but one wonders what the movie might have been like if del Toro had had his chance to make his own movie.
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The Front Line (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on May 3rd, 2012

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In terms of major conflicts involving the United States, the Korean War has sort of gotten the short end of the cinematic stick with American audiences. Most people can easily rattle off their favorite movies dealing with World War II, the Vietnam War or the U.S. Civil War, but when it comes to the Korean War the options are comparatively more limited. Off the top of my head, there’s M*A*S*H, the original Manchurian Candidate, and Don Draper suffering one of the most famous cases of identity theft. (I realize Mad Men is a TV show, so forgive me for reaching.)
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Cinema Verite (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on April 25th, 2012

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“One must never let the public behind the scenes for they are easily disillusioned, and then they’re angry with you for it is the illusion they love.”

Sure, this quote is spoken by a very minor character and awkwardly shoehorned into the story, but it still makes its point. I realize it’s almost impossible to imagine now, but there was a time we didn’t have to capitalize the words “Real Housewives” and people were actually ashamed if they came off badly in front of a camera. HBO’s Cinema Verite tells the behind-the-scenes story of the creation of An American Family, the PBS documentary widely considered to be the first reality television show.
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London River (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on April 24th, 2012

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At the very least, London River deserves credit for exposing audiences to a different side of English life beyond “upstairs, downstairs” period drama (Gosford Park, Downton Abbey), twee stories in a small-town setting (Waking Ned Devine, Calendar Girls) or the rich white people problems of Woody Allen’s contemporary London (Match Point, Scoop).
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The Wicker Tree (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on April 23rd, 2012

“Here in Tresock, I believe the old religion of the Celts fits our needs at this time. Isn’t that all you can ask of a religion?”

In 1973 Director Robin Hardy captured lightning in a bottle with the classic The Wicker Man. Based on David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual and loosely adapted into Anthony Shaffer’s sharp screenplay. Shaffer painstakingly researched paganism giving the film an undeniable authenticity, The Wicker Man became a genre of its own known as Folk Horror. The beauty of the film was the war of counter-religions, Christianity vs. Celtic Paganism.
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Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 21st, 2012

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The fourth Mission: Impossible entry exchanges digits for a subtitle, and brings in Brad Bird to direct his first live-action feature. So the man whose The Incredibles made fun of the sort of thing that is the bread-and-butter of the M:I franchise is brought in to revitalize said franchise. Result? Job done.
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