Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2003
Synopsis
A city vamp seduces a country man and convinces him to kill his wife. At the moment heis about to commit the crime, he finds he cannot go through with it. We then follow the husbandand wife through the course of their reconciliation. Put this way, the film sounds flat and boring,but the poetry of its simplicity, imagery and performances is overwhelming. (There’s a stormsequence that must be one of the greatest storms in the movies.) This is emphatically one of thegreat clas...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003
Synopsis
A flying saucer lands in Washington, causing widespread paranoia. Emerging from thesaucer are the ominous robot Gort, and the human-looking Klaatu (Michael Rennie). Klaatucomes with a warning for Earth (get your act together or be wiped out), but he will speak only torepresentatives from all nations. This turns out to be a difficult proposition. Klaatu escapes fromthe authorities and blends in with the population as he learns about humans. The questionbecomes whether he wil...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003
Like most folks, I grew up on the Charlie Brown TV specials. What kid hasn’t looked forward to seeing “The Great Pumpkin”? Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown was made more recently then the more notable Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween episodes. The whole Peanuts gang is there and so is most of the charm. The idea just isn’t as compelling; it comes off rather forced. Still, it’s always fun to visit the world of Charles Schultz.
Synopsis
Poor Charlie Brown is dreading another Valentine’s Day.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003
Road House is one long bar brawl interrupted occasionally by a thread of a plot line. Patrick Swayze is the offered marquee name, but better performances can be found from Ben Gazzara, best known for his portrayal of Al Capone, Sam Elliott, and even Kevin Tigue. The music is the only thing that keeps this one interesting. Jeff Healey stars as the bar’s regular musician and treats us to some of his best music.
Synopsis
Daulton (Swayze) is hired to clean up a rowdy redneck bar.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 18th, 2003
Synopsis
Angelo’s the good brother, Paulie’s the bad boy. Fed up with waiting tables, Paulieconvinces Angelo and two friends to get into the bookie business. After a few missteps, businessbecomes good. Then it gets very good. Then they hook up with local don, Santo, who issaddled with an extremely volatile son, Vinnie. You can probably guess where all this isheading, and there are certainly no real surprises here. The clearest sign that we’re on familiarterritory is Vinnie, a clone ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2003
Synopsis
Michael Madsen, recently sprung from jail, is determined to stay out of trouble. Things startoff well, when he wins five grand and a Lincoln Continental in a poker game. He heads off forLas Vegas, planning to multiply that money. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a corpse in thetrunk of the car. Then he picks up Patricia Arquette, a sociology major and mob family daughteron a vendetta against another mobster. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose, and does so quiteamusi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2003
Synopsis
Craig Sheffer and Sheryl Lee are less than a year into their marriage, and already they’re intherapy. It transpires that Lee has never had an orgasm. Sheffer finds out that she is visitingextremely unconventional sex therapist Terence Stamp. Outraged, he confronts Stamp, but windsup listening to him, and then becomes his pupil, hoping that what he learns will lead to sexualhealing for Lee. If this sounds like things are about to get very flaky, well, that depends on yourtak...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2003
Synopsis
Nick Nolte is a down-on-his-luck actor, who suddenly has to look after his six-year-olddaughter (who naturally winds up with a better TV career than he has). This film was a big flopfor writer/director James L. Brooks. It was originally a musical, but all the songs were cut priorto release.
Audio
The audio specifications aren’t really indicated, which smells like 2.0 to me. Theenvironment effect is all right, though not spectacular, and the left-rig...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 12th, 2003
Synopsis
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A group of camp counsellors is shutting down a campwhere gruesome murders happened years before. They goof around, have sex, and areslaughtered by a masked maniac. Bloody Murder 2 is 90% shameless Friday the 13th plagiarism:the location is “Placid Pines” instead of “Crystal Lake” and the killer is “Trevor Moorehouse”instead of “Jason Voorhees,” but my God, even the number of syllables is the same. The other10% is stolen from Scream: a li...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 11th, 2003
Synopsis
Linda Blair plays Rachel, a teenager whose parents take in her cousin Julia when Julia’sparents are killed in a car crash. Julia bewitches everyone but Rachel, who realizes that Julia is,in fact, Evil. This is the European theatrical cut of the TV movie, which aired Stateside asStranger in Our House. Though an important release for those following Craven’s early career,especially his early movies, this remains nonetheless very much a 1978 network TV film, withall the limita...
