Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 22nd, 2005
Synopsis
Well, considering that there were so many different strange film ideas in the 1980s, it was only a matter of time that someone write and produce a film about a dead guy, right? Well, you’re in luck, as two names from the period (Andrew McCarthy, St. Elmo’s Fire and Jonathan Silverman, Brighton Beach Memoirs) fulfill your wish as Weekend at Bernie’s finally comes to DVD.
McCarthy and Silverman play insurance reps with bigger aspirations in a owned by Bernie Lomax (Ter...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 21st, 2005
Synopsis
Michelle Trachetenberg is a gifted science student, and her mother (Joan Cusack), a committed feminist, is pushing her to forge her way through college. But her Trachtenberg’s true love is figure skating, and she manages to combine the two in a physics project, which opens the door to more skating for her. What to do when she turns out to be really good at skating? That or more academic pursuits? Her opposite number is Hayden Panettiere, the stuck-up blonde whose mother (Kim Cattrall) is a f...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 21st, 2005
Synopsis
In the 1920s, heiress Bo Derek (looking wildly anachronistic) seeks to learn the ways of ecstasy. (Don’t get mad at me. I didn’t make this up.) Accompanied by her best friend and faithful chauffeur George Kennedy (here making a huge career step down from such *ahem* highs as The Concorde: Airport ‘79), she hares off to Morocco, inspired by Valentino movies to give her virginity to a sheik. When he fails to come through in the clutch, she next turns her sights on a Spanish bullfighter....
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 15th, 2005
Synopsis
John Woo did not just direct Tom Cruise from a big rock in Mission Impossible:2, nor EVERY recent action movie with featuring either Nicolas Cage or John Travolta. He was only a name you heard about whenever the hot director of the moment (Quentin Tarantino comes to mind) talked about their film influences. Woo was recognized as a top directing talent before his move to the West, and is the one name people consistently mention when talking about the Hong Kong crime/action film genre. This fi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 15th, 2005
Synopsis
Well, I’m unsure how many people would see a romantic comedy involving a 59 year old man and a 26 year old woman (unless you saw Autumn in New York awhile ago), but the romance between Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind) and Sophia Loren (El Cid) in It Started in Naples is just a little creepy for me. Especially when you consider Gable seemed to always appear in his mid-60’s.
But enough about that aspect of it, Gable plays Mike, a lawyer about to be married, who ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 14th, 2005
Synopsis
Expropriated from his castle by the Romanian government (the place is going to be turned into a training facility for Olympic athletes), Count Dracula (George Hamilton) and Renfield (Arte Johnson, mimicking Dwight Frye’s laugh from the 1931 Dracula) make their way to New York. Dracula has fallen for a fashion model (Susan Saint James), convinced that she is the reincarnation of a woman he has loved before. Though something of a fish out of water, Dracula does his best to adapt to his ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 12th, 2005
Synopsis
The opening scene is a montage of a couple in love, while a voice-over reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” – a sure sign that things are not going to end well. Sure enough, in the next scene, the young woman takes a fatal fall while climbing after a kitten. The boyfriend cannot bear to part with the corpse, and off he goes with the body, making his way cross-country to the lake where we first saw them in love, and all the time the corpse and his mind are slowly rotting away.
Chee...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 10th, 2005
Prisoner of Paradise is the haunting story of German film and theatre actor, Kurt Gerron. This Oscar nominated documentary follows his rise and fall. Gerron was one of Germany's most popular stage and screen actors before World War II. He was the original singer, in fact, of "Mack the Knife" in Brecht's "Three Penny Opera". Gerron's popularity, however, took a different turn with the rise of Hitler's Germany. Gerron was Jewish and, eventually, was forced to flee. But later he was captured and then hired...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 9th, 2005
Synopsis
One could make an attempt at witty prose by comparing Jackass to the works of Kubrick, Cassavettes, Scorsese, or what have you. But look, it’s a bunch of guys, some of whom have reputations in other circles, such as skateboarder Bam Margera and acclaimed director Spike Jonze, doing stunts that you may not have thought, dared or remotely considered doing, and keeping parts of the general public off guard. The gang made a huge splash on MTV, and scores of crazed teens wanted to try what these guys we...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 7th, 2005
Here's a blast from the 80's past, remember the Garbage Pail Kids? Remember those cards and stickers? Those gross out cartoon characters? Well...a parental protest put them out of circulation. But here's the movie, called...well...The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. The barebones plot involves a human kid, played by Mackenzie Astin, who works in an antique shop owned by Cap'n Mancini (Anthony Newley). Stay away from the garbage pail, but no. The garbage can spills and enter...the Garbage Pail Kids. These kids...
