1.85:1 Widescreen

Disneynature: Crimson Wing – The Mystery of the Flamingo (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 26th, 2010

“The flamingo is said to be the inspiration for the crimson-winged Phoenix, the ancient symbol of transformation and rebirth. At the end of its life, the Phoenix is consumed by fire. It is then reborn from the ashes.”

In one of the more specific full-length documentary features that I’ve seen in a long time comes Disney Nature’s The Crimson Wing. Here the focus is on one species of bird.
Read More

“31 Nights Of Terror” 30 Days of Night: Dark Days (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 18th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

“I never wanted a war. I just wanted people to know what happened here. 98 men, women, children … my husband. And yet no one believed. They rebuilt the town. Life went on. But I was already dead inside. I never wanted a war.”

In October 2007 30 Days Of Night was unleashed at the box office to less than stellar numbers. In fact, the film took in only $39 million off of a $30 million budget. That’s not usually a good sign for any potential franchise. But the film was received very well by the folks who did like it. I was one of those people. I found myself defending the film to a lot of others who were obviously not so impressed with the take on the vampire legend.
Read More

“31 Nights Of Terror” The Exorcist (Extended Director’s Cut & Original Theatrical Edition) (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 16th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) is going through more than the usual puberty traumas. She pees on the carpet, curses a blue streak, causes objects to fly around the room, and speaks in the voice of Mercedes McCambridge. Her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) takes her to every medical professional under the sun, to no avail. With her daughter’s life in the balance, she turns to Father Karras (Jason Miller), asking him to perform an exorcism. But not only is he skeptical, he has his own problems, not least of which is losing his faith. Meanwhile, Regan’s symptoms of possession grow steadily worse…
Read More

Two and a Half Men: The Complete Seventh Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Charlie Sheen is an unlikely actor to star in a television sit-com. Even after watching the show, I’m not sure how anyone came up with the idea in the first place. He has little to no comedic timing, and he’s about as funny as a funeral. The thing that works here, however, is that he really doesn’t need to be all that funny to make this show work. Sheen pretty much deadpans his entire performance, which generously enough works rather well teamed with the more manic comedy of Jon Cryer. Throw into the mix a rather extraordinary young child actor in Angus T. Jones
Read More

“31 Nights Of Terror” Troll 2 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 10th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

So Troll 2 hits Blu-ray. That fact is as sure a sign of the coming Apocalypse as any I can think of, and, at the very least, must threaten the entire Blu-ray format with destruction, as judgment rains down from the hands of an angry God. If, Gentle Reader, you come to this review without any foreknowledge of the film, and are actually wondering if a movie called Troll 2 might be good, then please run as fast as you can and hide. Or at the very least, please watch the legendary YouTube clip appended below. What, you’re still here? Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Read More

“31 Nights Of Horror” Open Water / Open Water 2: Adrift (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 8th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Open Water:

An over-worked couple (Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis) whose marriage, while not in danger, has clearly reached some difficult shoals, head off on a diving vacation. A mix-up (which is disturbingly credible) results in the tour ship leaving them behind. Stuck in the middle of the ocean, they float together, hoping against hope for rescue, growing cold and hungry. And then there is the marine life. Like stinging jellyfish. And sharks…
Read More

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was the first movie I ever saw on HBO. These were the very early days of the cable network. It was before the dawn of any real home video. It was at my Aunt Shirley’s house that several members of the extended family gathered in dining room chairs around a 19-inch television to watch a movie uncut and without commercial interruption for the first time in our lives. A lot has changed since that 1970’s afternoon at my aunt’s house. Today we have hundreds of such choices on our television dials.
Read More

Alien Autopsy

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 4th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

“1.2 billion TV viewers saw the home-made autopsy film in 1995. Experts have been divided over its authenticity ever since … until now.”

I think we all remember that night in 1995 when Jonathan Frakes from Star Trek: The Next Generation hosted the television event Alien Autopsy: Fact Or Fiction. The media hype surrounding the event was one of the largest I can recall from the time. I was one of the billion-plus viewers who were curious about this allegedly “found” footage of an actual alien autopsy conducted on one of the bodies found in the Roswell crash of 1947.
Read More

Ondine

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 24th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Written by Diane Tillis

If I had to pick two words to describe Ondine, I would pick hauntingly beautiful. Neil Jordon, the popular Irish director and writer, comes up with an unusual modern fairy tale. Ondine is a film about people from different worlds hoping that dreams really can come true. It is a film about redemption and hope, harsh reality versus fantasy. Ondine is a journey of self discovery to be experienced from the darkness back into the light. It reminds us that enchantment and darkness are a part of every story.
Read More

The Nunsploitation Convent Collection

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 20th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

A nunsploitation box set was always an inevitability, and here the good people at Cult Epics chime in with just such a collection, one limited to 2500 copies. There are only two films here, but they are two good ones, the works of strong directors. One is a distinctively idiosyncratic work, showing the unmistakable hand of its filmmaker. The other will quite simply knock you out the back wall.
Read More

Monamour

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 18th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

After a series of releases from erotic cinema specialist Tinto Brass’s early career, Cult Epics now gives us one of his latest works. Marta (Anna Jimskaia) loves her husband Dario (Max Parodi), but he has become inattentive and selfish in bad, when he shows any interest in sex at all. Feeling lonely and unappreciated, Marta takes in the sights of Mantua, and in a museum she encounters Leon (Riccardo Marino, who is no more French than I am Martian), a sexually aggressive alpha male with whom she begins a passionate affair, with an eye (of course) to re-igniting Dario through jealousy.
Read More

Night Watch

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 17th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Written by Diane Tillis

Only once in a blue moon will a filmmaker come along to change the way films are created…for an entire country! Kazakhstan – born director Timur Bekmambetov is best known in America as the director for Wanted (2008) and for producing 9 (2009) alongside Tim Burton, but in Russia he is known as the man who changed the film industry after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Read More

Jacob’s Ladder (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 17th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

We begin in Vietnam, where the unit of which Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a member comes under attack. Jacob is bayonetted, and as he struggles with his wounds, the film flashes forward to his post-Vietnam life in New York City. He works for the post office, is divorced, is still grieving over the death of his youngest son (Macauley Culkin), and is living with his new girlfriend (Elizabeth Pena). He is also being tormented by visions of demonic figures. And then suddenly this life turns out to be a dream, and he’s at home with his wife and all of his kids are alive. Or is that a dream? And what really happened in Vietnam?
Read More

Wall Street Insider Trading Edition

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 13th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

“Greed is Good.”

No other cinematic phrase described the 1980’s better. And no other movie captures the financial corruption of the 80’s better than Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.

The film celebrates its 20th anniversary with a 2-disc re-release that includes never-before-seen special features. And while Wall Street is very dated (my wife and I cracked up at the fashion and decorating styles), it still works as a morality tale in the era of big business.
Read More

The Lost Skeleton Returns Again/Dark And Stormy Night

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 31st, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Back in 2001 Larry Blamire and his troupe released The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. Blamire was obviously a fan of the science fiction films of the 1950’s and decided to take many of those standard elements and pretty much have a blast with the material. The end result was an over-the-top spoof that left you laughing, not because the material was all that funny. You laughed because they sometimes hit those ludicrous devices so perfectly that you have flashbacks to your favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.
Read More

$5 a Day (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 26th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

“Relationships don’t come cheap.”

I guess I’m pretty much like most film watchers in certain areas. When I saw that $5 A Day was rated PG-13 for sexual content and brief nudity, I did what most red-blooded American guys would do. I took a look at who was in the cast. This might work. I suspected we’d be treated to a little quick peek at Amanda Peet or Sharon Stone in a little birthday suit flash. OK, now I’ve got a little something to look forward to. Little did I know that the brief nudity part referred to
Read More

Dorian Gray (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 25th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

“The truth is, I’ve done dreadful things. My life has been a monstrous corruption. And there will be a price to pay.”

The Picture Of Dorian Gray was actually Oscar Wilde’s only full-length novel. It was quite a controversial subject when it first arrived on the scene in 1890, but not because of the horror element. The book is often sexually explicit and contains more than a flirtation with homosexuality. The main themes have survived, but much of the work itself has been forgotten. We know the work almost exclusively from the classic film from 1945 where Hurd Hatfield played the title character
Read More

Joy

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 23rd, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Supermodel Joy (Claudia Udy) flits from man to man, never satisfied. There’s the photographer who loves her, but he, it seems, is too much of a boy. Far more intriguing for her is the older man (Gerard Antoine Huart) she falls for, and keeps returning to, moth to a flame, despite his refusal to give up the other woman in his life. The root of Joy’s problem seems to be twofold: she is haunted by the memory of having caught her parents in flagrante as a young child, and she is obsessed with her father, who left her when, again, she was very young.
Read More

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 10th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

“Okay, first of all, let me get something straight. This is a journal, not a diary. Yeah, I know what it says on the cover. But, when my mom went out to buy this thing, I specifically told her not to buy one that said ‘diary’ on it. This just proves that Mom doesn’t understand anything about kids my age.”

I guess I missed out on the phenomenon. Apparently in 2007 a guy named Jeff Kinney created a sort of crude comic book. The figures are little better than stick men, and the wit is something from the sixth grade.
Read More

Johnny Handsome (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 4th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Johnny Handsome is based on a rather obscure and dated novel called The Three Worlds Of Johnny Handsome. Walter Hill must have found something in the dated material that attracted him to the project. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to attract audiences. The film made a very paltry $7 million at the box and has been little heard from since. In spite of a solid cast and a script that does tend to move along at a nice clip, the film has never really found an audience and is somewhat of a surprise to be found on Blu-ray.
Read More

Extraordinary Measures

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 1st, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Extraordinary Measures is a moving story about family and a father’s perseverance to find a cure for his children. John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) seeks out the help of an irritable medical researcher (Harrison Ford) whose theory cannot be fully developed without extensive funding. As the time ticks away, so does the probability of finding a cure. This film requires an emotional investment and audiences will be surprised at how invested they become.
Read More

Timer

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 28th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

Timer is an innovative concept. In the film, people can choose to be fitted with a timer which counts down until that person meets their soul mate. The timer will tell you precisely how long you will have to wait to find true love. Oona (Emma Caulfield) is in the rare situation of having a blank timer. Her soul mate has not had one implanted yet and the suspense is getting to her. Oona decides to go out of her comfort zone and begin dating a considerably younger man named Mikey (John Patrick Amedori). The only problem is that Mikey is not slated to meet his soul mate for another four months.
Read More

Lock Up (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 27th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

“This is Hell, and I’m going to give you the guided tour.”

There have been a lot of great prison and prison break films over the years. Who can forget Dustin Hoffman in Papillon or Clint Eastwood in Escape From Alcatraz? Of course, more recently we had The Shawshank Redemption. Lock Up won’t ever taste the rare air of those classic films. In fact, it’s not really a prison break film at all. There is an attempted break, but it’s not quite the focus of the film. I almost felt like I was watching the sequel to a break film.
Read More

Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 26th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

In 2007, nineteen years after a similar uprising was crushed by Burma’s military junta, frustrated citizens once again took to the streets. Led by troops of monks in peaceful demonstrations, they made their voices heard by the generals, demanding freedom and democracy. The reaction was swift and violent. Men with riot gear and guns descended on the demonstrators and after many clouds of tear gas, numerous beatings, and even some shootings, the government quickly broke the spirit of its people again.

Cinema Pride Collection

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 26th, 2010

Buy at Amazon.com

As the name suggests, this is a collection of ten movies on LGBT themes. In chronological order, here’s what we have:

The Children’s Hour (1961): Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn are the headmistresses of a girl’s school, and their lives are turned upside down when one ghastly little child accuses them of being romantically involved. It is clear, though, the MacLaine would very much like to be. This was director William Wyler’s second stab at adapting Lilllian Hellman’s play, and this time was able actually to deal with the play’s central issue, rather than disguise it as he had to
Read More

«< 15 16 17 18 19 >»