Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 7th, 2009
Christmas is a long way off, but many people look forward to jingling bells all year round. For them, it’s a wonderful time with family, friends, exchanging of gifts and general merriment. For many others, though, Christmas can be a depressing time of the year. There’s even a long-running myth that suicide rates increase significantly over the holidays. Yes, it’s a myth, but it endures because it’s easy to imagine why people might hit rock bottom when others around them are so darn happy.
Midnight Clear is a film inspired by the myth, but it feels no less poignant in light of the facts. It’s a universal story with an understated message, about the difference small acts of kindness can make in people’s lives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 5th, 2009
Breaking Bad could be the best show on television. I say “could be” because I haven’t seen enough of its competition to make a fair and adequate comparison. But one look at the beginning of Vince Gilligan and Mark Johnson’s breakthrough new series will have you undeniably hooked.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 5th, 2009
Ace Ventura’s back, sort of. It’s a new day. A new cast and crew. A new movie. And, unfortunately, a new Ace Ventura. This is Ace Ventura, Jr. Emphasis is on the junior. Without Jim Carrey, this thing was doomed from the start. Still, if you’re going to do it, I would have hoped that at least some kind of an effort would be in order. Alas, it seems that everyone involved knew this one wasn’t going anywhere so they just decided to have a great time and not worry so much what actually made it on to the film.
Director David Evans is best known for killing the Beethoven franchise with its third and fourth direct to video films. He did the same with the abysmally bad Sandlot 2. Evans is the place where mediocre comedy franchises go to die, or at least end up in direct to video cheap imitations of their former selves. If he had torn himself away from playing with the kids and animals long enough, he might have realized that he was killing yet another franchise. In the previous cases, I’d say he had a shot at 2nd degree murder, or negligent homicide. This time it’s a clear case of premeditation. He needs to be sentenced to life…away from a movie set.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 4th, 2009
What happens when a television series depends on a title character, but that character is completely uninteresting? The answer is you get a 6 episode run, and then you’re over. That’s exactly the story with Canterbury’s law. I have no doubt that Julianna Margulies is a better actress than she showed on this show. I mean, she has to be, right? Margulies walked through her role as lawyer Liz Canterbury. The character had tons of potential. She was a bit of a rebel. She wasn’t afraid to bend…all right, break … the rules for her client. That kind of a maverick character usually means high ratings. But not if the actress playing the part refuses to invest anything into playing the character. Even when Canterbury is fired up, which, honestly, is most of the time, there’s almost no expression on Margulies’ face. Her voice fails to lift the dialog to the level of passion the material might be calling for. In short, she plays a charismatic character with no charisma. To make matters worse, the team was made up of unknowns, likely to remain such. Not that I really blame the actors. The parts were pretty bad. Ben Shenkman stars as Liz’s partner, Russell. Russell was once on the DA side of things. What makes him decide to partner up with Canterbury is a mystery deeper than any case the show explored. He disagrees with her nearly 100% of the time. He doesn’t appear to be happy most of the time. The firm appears to be struggling, so he’s not in it for the bucks. Liz, for her part, is always waiting for him to cut and run. It seems he’s there only to prove he’s loyal. Her associates are made up of Keith Robinson as Chester. Chester’s dad is running for the Senate and is a powerful man who doesn’t like the idea of his son in such a dead end firm. Chester’s trying to prove he’s got street cred and distances himself from his influential father. Finally you have Trieste Dunn as Molly, the attorney who has yet to pass the bar. She’s the budding idealist who was just beginning to develop somewhat when the show’s bottom fell out. Liz is dealing with a lot in her personal life as well. Her son was abducted three years ago, and it’s caused a strain on her marriage. The infidelities she’s had didn’t help much either. She’s in a pissing contest with one of the DAs who is out to bring her down at any price. She happily assists by doing things like suborning perjury and tampering with a jury. Did I miss anything?
Each episode of Canterbury’s Law is presented in its original broadcast 1.78:1 aspect ratio. I hope this show looked better when it was on the air. This stuff is a mess. Colors are often unnatural and heavy on the reds and yellows. They also run and appear blurred. Flesh tones are hampered by some odd soft focus that makes it look like a kid was running the camera. There’s an excessive amount of grain, particularly in the pilot episode. If it looked this bad in HD broadcast, it likely improved the odds of it not surviving. This is a very bad video presentation.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 2nd, 2009
Autism is commonly defined as a brain development disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. Sometimes, due to that lack of social interaction and repetitive behavior, the people affected develop a special skill or heightened senses. The results can be amazing. However, in film, autism is rarely shown as what it truly is, a disorder. To find a film that not only embraces the special skill as well as show the difficulty it takes to exist and function normally is pretty rare.
Zin (played by Ammara Siripong) is involved with Yakuza Boss Masashi (played by Hiroshi Abe). There is just one problem with that. She was previously the girlfriend of a gangster simply known as No. 8 (played by Pongpat Wachirabunjong). No. 8 in his own jealous rage decided to shoot his own toe and forbid Zin from ever seeing Masashi again. She decides to flee and tells Masashi to not follow.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 27th, 2009
This is actually a very charming situation comedy that harkens back to the days of The Cosby Show, but is actually far more honest and less about one liners. While everybody loves the Cos, the show got cluttered and rarely dealt with real life issues in any serious way. In My Wife And Kids, I get the sense of a real family here. The cast makes it work, but credit the writers for coming up with a comedy that did not rely on one liners. Don’t get me wrong, the jokes are there, and they sometimes fly fast and furious, but one always feels there’s more to any given scene or situation. The show is completely family friendly. I’m a little sorry that I stumbled on it after it was already gone.
Michael Kyle (Wayans) lives a comfortable life. He’s quite content. He makes good money, so they live in comfortable style. His wife, Jay (Campbell) is pretty much a stay at home mom and day trader. They have three children: Kady (Posey), Junior (Gore II), and Claire (Raycole). The younger child has a Hispanic nanny, Rosa (Forte), who doesn’t like Michael at all. But life is about to change in the Kyle household. Jay’s trading skills have gotten so good that she’s offered a job as a full time broker. Michael wants to be supportive, but he’s gotten used to having a housewife around. Now Michael will have to adapt and share some of the parenting. His own brand of common sense and efforts to advise the children tend to be where much of the show’s comedy is mined.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 26th, 2009
Popular gaming franchise Resident Evil is no stranger to the world of film. With a trilogy already in the bag from writer-producer Paul W.S. Anderson (Death Race), and starring Milla Jovovich, our favourite perfect being from The Fifth Element, audiences are pretty familiar with the RE brand. Well, the ones who go for schlocky zombie-fests, at least.
You can count me in that company. Every once in a while, a junk-food movie like Resident Evil just hits the spot. The question is, does Resident Evil: Degeneration deliver the goods?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 24th, 2009
“A movie filled with so much terrible horribleness, you’ll crap someone else’s pants”
Bruce Campbell has carved out himself quite a little niche in the acting game. No one would consider him a superstar, and the films he’s most notable for are the kind of cult favorite films that critics tend to hate, all except this particular critic. What’s kind of funny about the whole thing is that Campbell has appeared in some seriously successful films, including all three Spider-Man movies. His parts in these affairs might have been small, but Sam Raimi fans know that it wouldn’t be a Raimi film if it didn’t have Bruce Campbell somewhere. Campbell got his start with the Raimi brothers doing little backyard films with them as children. When Raimi got the opportunity to create something a little higher profile, his first choice as the lead was Bruce. That film became the fan favorite Evil Dead and spawned two sequels. The Evil Dead films don’t take themselves or the zombie genre very seriously. They’re a farce, and a failure to recognize that is why the critics hate those films so much. Just take another look at them. The blood effects border on the ridiculous, and Campbell plays such an anti-hero that we laughed far more than we screamed at those movies. For Raimi it meant the chance to become one of the best selling directors out there. For Bruce Campbell it meant wearing the title of schlock king for the next 30 years. If you understand what I just said about The Evil Dead films, than you understand Bruce. And you simply have to understand Bruce, or you will hate this movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 24th, 2009
Escape To Chimp Eden tastes a lot like Orangutan Island. Both shows deal with the rescue of captive abused primates. In both shows the animals are taken to a rehabilitation center where the goal is to teach the animals basic survival skills. The hope is that they might one day return to the wild and be able to survive and socialize with other wild primates. That’s about as far as the similarities go, however. In Orangutan Island, the show is very much about the apes themselves and their growing skills. In Chimp Eden, however, the spotlight is almost always on the incredibly melodramatic Eugene Cussons. This guy could give William Shatner lessons in overacting.
In the show’s opening credits, Cussons announces that he once intended to have a “normal” life. He considered being a software “king”, whatever that is, and settle into a 9-5 job. However he was so touched by images of abused and neglected chimps in captivity that he felt a calling to perform these self-described rescue “missions”. First of all, my wife is an IT person, and I don’t know who told Cussons it was a 9-5 job, because it most certainly is not. If it is, someone forgot to fill my wife’s employers in on that rule. You IT folks should feel just a tad insulted here. I was, and I’m not even an IT guy. Anyway, Cussons walks around treating these “missions” as if he were James Bond on some dangerous espionage case. At many points he turns to the camera and tells us how exhausted he is now. He looks mentally shot in almost every frame he’s in. The man’s a drama queen in the extreme. In one frame he has to lift the door on a transfer cage, and then let it drop. That’s all he has to do. When he’s done he sprawls out over the cage, wiping imaginary blood and sweat from his face, and tells us how he’s drained and exhausted. He refers to one place where he keeps a couple of chimps until he can get his paperwork in order as a “Chimp Safe House”, then he shows us how he has to let the owner know all about chimp care. Apparently this was the first case for that safe house. He details his paperwork efforts as if he were Indiana Jones trying to get to the Holy Grail. He has no respect for the humans he interacts with. He constantly condescends and yells at them, telling them “I’m giving the orders here”. If you have a low tolerance for this kind of showboating, “watch me suffer for my work” mentality, this show will wear thin for you before you really get to see the chimps in action at all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 23rd, 2009
There are many shows out there that never make it past the original pilot episode. Most of them fail because there isn’t anything original about the plot or perhaps the cast chosen isn’t strong enough to bring out a good character. Heck, it could even be as trivial as the locale chosen to whether or not the network executives give it a nod. So the question remains, what exactly happens to these pilots that either fail or haven’t been picked up yet for next season? They get released on dvd. A little publicity never hurts.
Joseph Armstrong (played by Keith David) is the head of the SIS, the Special Investigation Section. The SIS is a secret department of the Los Angeles Police Department that seeks out the worst of the worst habitual offenders and brings them to justice. One way or another. After one of the squad dies in a violent gunfight, Assistant Chief Armstrong needs to find a replacement, one that won’t cause anymore problems and won’t make mistakes.
![My Name Is Bruce [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/my-name-is-bruce-blu-ray-large.jpg)
