Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 26th, 2005
Synopsis
Miner’s daughter Barbara Stanwyck sets her cap for John Boles, a New England aristocrat who has fled financial disgrace and sought honest work far from home. She lands him, and they marry, but almost immediately their very different backgrounds create tension. When he finds work in New York, she refuses to move with him, and they grow further apart. Meanwhile, their daughter spends most of her time with Stanwyck, but her visits to New York become more and more wonderful, as far as she is con...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 15th, 2005
Synopsis
Harvey Keitel is making a film about a relationship that disintegrates into terrible violence.His cast are James Russo and Madonna, and they have a pretty fraught relationship themselvesoff the set. Physical and mental brutality ooze from the film into real life, and Keitel descendsinto this hell, too.
Fresh off Bad Lieutenant, director Abel Ferrara, writer Nicholas St. John and Keitelplunge into the heart of darkness yet again. The shooting of the film has a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 15th, 2005
Synopsis
Down-on-their-luck adventurers Chuck Norris and Louis Gosset are approached by theslightly flaky Melody Anderson to help her track down a horde of Aztec gold. They proceed totraipse about Central America, experiencing one sub-Indiana Jones adventure after another,racing to reach the treasure before a villain with (yes) an eye-patch.
J. Lee Thompson’s film doesn’t take itself seriously for a moment, but that doesn’t mean it’sactually funny. It isn’t, much, and the by...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 13th, 2005
Synopsis
Robert Redford narrates this documentary look at the remote human cultures that are livingin harmony with the planet, rather than conquering (or raping and pillaging, if you will) nature.Think of this as a 47-minute lite version of the Koyanisqatsi trilogy. Everything is verydreamy and beautiful, and this is hardly a rigorous work. But the images are absolutelybreathtaking. Produced for IMAX, this has all the earmarks of those features: short in runningtime and subst...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 4th, 2005
I’ll start this review with a disclaimer about my Astro Boy knowledge level – for those Astro Boy fans reading this, I’m not an Astro Boy die-hard, and while I have some hazy recollections from my youth, until a few days ago, that’s about where my AB knowledge ended.
Astro Boy Backgrounder
The box set reviewed here contains 50 new episodes, released on television in their entirety overseas in, and in part in North America, in 2003. This is in fact the third incarnation of Astro Boy:
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 3rd, 2005
If you’re not the type who enjoys watching complete seasons of your favorite show on DVD, this set was made for you. Mad About You has already had its complete first and second seasons released on DVD, but this collection takes the best episodes from the show entire run, and slams them out in this “Best of” collection.
I for one, as a completist, prefer complete seasons over these best-of collections. I find the flow very disjointed, with each episode having very little to do with each other.
...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 31st, 2005
Synopsis
In the present, in a nursing home, we meet two residents: James Garner and Gena Rowlands.She is afflicted with Alzheimer’s, and cannot remember her past. He reads to her from anotebook, telling the tale (which is their story) of two young people (Ryan Gosling and RacelMcAdams) who meet, fall in love, but are driven apart by class prejudice (she’s upper class, he’sworking class). He never gives up on her, and the story charts more heartbreaking reunions andtravails.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 29th, 2005
Synopsis
Director Joel Gilbert, who could charitably be said to be obsessed with Bob Dylan (he playsthe Dylan role in the Highway 61 tribute band, whose performances provide the film’ssoundtrack), travels about, visiting places and people that had something to do with this period ofDylan’s career (or at least something to do with chronicling it). The primary focus isphotographer Barry Feinstein, and plenty of his pictures are on display here. Part history, partpersonal odyssey, this...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 29th, 2005
Synopsis
The Rugrats extend their pop culture empire with this TV series, where the kids are now inearly adolescence. The central story here involves a trip to summer camp, with all the usualassortment of spooky plot elements (combined with the fact that one of our heroes is trying tomake a horror movie). There are also two other episodes. No one is going to compare the level ofwit on display with The Simpsons or The Family Guy, but I’ve seen worse. Muchworse.
Aud...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 29th, 2005
Synopsis
“They keep falling in and out of love,” reads the tagline, and that quite nicely sums up thefilm. David Steinberg is the neurotic manager of an art-house cinema, and Susan Sarandon hascome to NYC to become a journalist. They are different, but there’s chemistry, BUT sometimesthe chemistry is of the wrong kind, and the movie charts the ups and downs of their relationship.“In the tradition of Annie Hall” the case boasts, and the case could be made that it is alittle to...
