Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 13th, 2004
Synopsis
Many years ago, a murder was committed in a fashionable home on a fashionable square inLondon. The murderer was looking for priceless jewels. Years later, a young woman and herdashing new husband move into the house. Bit by bit, the woman appears to be losing her mind.She forgets where she puts things, and moves paintings around without remembering she hasdone so. Or so it appears. In fact, she is being driven out of her mind by her husband. Could hebe the murderer? And wha...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 9th, 2004
Synopsis
In 1787, the HMS Bounty sets sail for Tahiti. The journey is long and dangerous, but thecommander, Captain Bligh (Charles Laughton) is an extremely skilled seaman. He is also abrutal, corrupt sadist. Resentment builds amongst the crew, until finally mutiny erupts, led byfirst officer Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable).
Never mind that most of the leads are Americans playing Brits. This is one of the great seaadventures. Its release on DVD is most welcome, what with th...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 8th, 2004
SynopsisFive films here, making a very coherent package.Persona is probably the most famous of the bunch, and is arguably Bergman’s mosticonic film. The images are among the most famous in cinema, though they are slightly moredifficult to take seriously thanks to SCTV’s parody. The plot concerns Liv Ullmann as an actresswho has suddenly fallen silent, and Bibi Andersson as the nurse hired to look after her. In theface of Ullmann’s silence, Andersson talks and talks ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 5th, 2004
Synopsis
Jane Fonda is recently widowed, and works at a baked good factory. Robert De Niro is thecafeteria cook. He is illiterate, and loses his job when this is discovered. He turns to Fonda,asking her to teach him to read. Slowly, tentatively, romance blossoms.
Plenty of gritty realism in the first half of the film, and the portrayal of the hard lives thesepeople face is pretty unsparing. In this bleak landscape, their relationship becomes a real beaconof hope. One can onl...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 3rd, 2004
The times, they were a-changin’ during the mid-sixties in America. The Vietnam War was heating up, the civil rights movement was making major strides, and it seemed that the whole country would soon be vastly different than it was just a few short years earlier. It was in the midst of these turbulent times that the first episode of Green Acres hit the airwaves.
The idea of metaphorically moving the average American family from the madness of the modern urban landscape and returning them to the simpli...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 2nd, 2004
Synopsis
Well – this qualifies as one of the most bizarre examples of casting and scripting that I have ever seen in my life. Kelsey Grammer plays what is supposed to be a near-unemployable submarine captain whose insane antics are about to get him kicked out of the naval submarine command program. The movie chronicles his “return,” so to speak, as he overcomes insurmountable odds in a naval war game exercise to win a respectable submarine to command. His weapon – a WWII sub against the modern Americ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 31st, 2004
I am just old enough to remember when my favorite childhood television channel, Nickelodeon, took on a new evening persona called Nick at Night. “What were they doing to my beloved cartoons?”, I pondered. I still remember those first few weeks of the new format, tuning in during the evening hours after my father had returned home from a long day at work. I was amazed to see that not only were my parents interested in what I was watching, but they actually knew what it was before I did! How was this possible!?
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 31st, 2004
I have had the pleasure of reviewing better films than Home Room; and I’ve certainly suffered through worse. But I am not sure I’ve reviewed a more important film. I’ve been a public high school teacher for over 8 years. Ask any educator and you’ll find that Columbine changed things for everyone, so I wasn’t sure how I would find this study of that kind of violence. The subject is handled with extreme care in Home Room. In a wise decision, the shooting occurs to a black screen. We don’t really pick up the story until after the event.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 30th, 2004
Synopsis
Theresa Russell seduces rich men by conforming to their dreams in terms of appearance andbehaviour, marries them, and then kills them. She thinks her means are undetectable. But JusticeDepartment investigator Debra Winger has noticed a pattern, and becomes obsessed withtracking Russell down. She follows her to Hawaii (where she is working on her latest target),befriends her, and the stage is set for a psychological chess game.
The idea is promising, but the executio...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 30th, 2004
Timothy Olyphant, in the movie Go, refers to the comic strip The Family Circus in this manner: “it’s always there, in the lower right hand corner, just waiting to suck.” This is one of my all-time favorite movie quotes, and it applies quite nicely when discussing Marci X. Completed in 2000, this is the film that the studio put on the shelf, all the while knowing that eventually they would have to do something with it, because there it was, looming in the corner, waiting to suck.
Finally...
