Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 18th, 2024
Sequels are a funny thing. Most of the time in modern Hollywood, they come within a breath of the first film, usually after a large box office in order to capitalize on its earnings. Sometimes, they can take years, even decades to make. Blade Runner: 2049 came out in 2017, 35 years after the original film. In addition, many times when a sequel takes so long to materialize, the intended audience has flown the coop, and it has dismal results. See Basic Instinct 2 or The Two Jakes. Other times, it inspires new waves of fans to flock to the theaters, such as Tron: Legacy or The Incredibles 2. Today, we are taking a look at Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia, a sequel to the original Ernest & Celestine movie which was nominated for an Academy Award and took home many other film awards. It's been a decade since the original film; can the sequel keep the spirit of the original and produce a quality film? I'm happy to say, yes, it certainly did. Let's take a look.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 22nd, 2023
"All right, listen up, ladies and gentlemen; our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground, barring injuries, is four miles per hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, hen house, outhouse, and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him."
The Fugitive, since its’ original release in 1993, has always been seen by a majority of people as the defining thriller of the 1990’s. The film stars Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble. Kimble, a very well known Chicago doctor, has just been framed for killing his wife. He claims a one-armed man killed her, which prompts nearly everyone to laugh at him.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Michael Durr on October 23rd, 2023
Full disclaimer: I tend to watch probably too much true crime television. I've watched about every episode of Homicide Hunter (Joe Kenda), Forensic Files, and plenty of other detective shows based on real cases. I find them fascinating, and my wife would seriously like to know what else is on our television. As a result, I tend to also gravitate towards real cases depicted in movies and documentaries as well. Today's film, The Night of the 12th, deals with a real case based in France. However, this one has a hook. Whereas almost every case that we tend to see on television is solved and the murderer goes away to jail, this one has a very different ending. Let's take a look and see if we can still enjoy this experience.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2023
"My Mamma told me to pick the right one."
In 1982, Cheers first broke on the network sitcom circuit. It was a small Boston bar owned by a has-been baseball player living on the glory years he didn't really have. It was the bar where everyone knows your name. Behind the bar there was Woody. Woody was pretty much a kid who looked up to the owner in an almost hero-like way. He was naive and was easily and often taken for a rube. But he was kind, and no matter how out of it he might be, there wasn't an evil bone in that character's body. It was all an act. Of course, it was a television show where Woody was played by Woody Harrelson.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 2nd, 2023
"Have you ever heard of exorcism? It's a stylized ritual in which rabbis or priests try to drive out the so-called invading spirit. It's pretty much discarded these days, except by the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment. It has worked, in fact, although not for the reason they think, of course. It was purely the force of suggestion. The victim's belief in possession helped cause it. And just in the same way, this belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear."
By now we've all heard of The Exorcist. The film was based on a best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty. Blatty himself based the story on a real exorcism of a young boy many years earlier. And that's where the true power of the film begins. The monsters of horror movies often allow us a sense of unreality that protects our inner selves from being truly terrified.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 28th, 2023
Coming up on its 40th anniversary, Staying Alive continues to be one of the most bizarre sequels to be made by a major studio, starring John Travolta and co-written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. The film was intended to be a sequel to the massively popular Saturday Night Fever, but when Staying Alive came out, disco was pretty much dead, and really there isn’t much that connects the films but for the character Tony Manero (John Travolta) and that there is dancing in the film. When the movie came out it was a financial success, but it was pretty well hated by critics of the time to the point that even one of the film’s stars, Finola Hughes, was awarded a Razzie for her performance. Apparently the film has a loyal cult following, but now after 40 years I’m here to give this film a fair shake and decide for myself: is it as bad as people say, or is it a gem from the 80s that will make us all nostalgic for when there were several movies with the cast in leotards, headbands, and over-the-top dance numbers?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 20th, 2023
"This is The Batman we're talkin' about here."
In 1992 Batman: The Animated Series hit television sets all over the country. It was perhaps the biggest comeback for the Dark Knight since Adam West went camp with the cowl in the 1960's. Yes, the Tim Burton film and its sequels went a long way to bringing the bat back into the popular culture, but the series is what took the fans by storm. Kevin Conroy became, for many, the definitive Batman when he was hired to voice the series, and Mark Hamill finally got out of the shadow of Luke Skywalker with his voice rendition of the Joker. The show was a hit, and around the early years it was decided to do a direct-to-video movie called Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm. Somewhere in the production Warner Brothers had a change of heart. They decided to roll the dice on a theatrical release of the animated feature, likely assuming the series fans would flock to their multiplexes in droves.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 2nd, 2023
"Man gets shot that's got a gun, there's room for reasonable doubt. Man gets shot that hasn't got a gun, what would you call it? But, you knew that already; otherwise you wouldn't have set things up the way you did."
Rio Bravo (1959) stars John Wayne as John T. Chance, a small-town sheriff facing the fight of his life. His town is infected by a gang of 30-40 men, professional bad guys on the payroll of Nathan Burdette (John Russell), whose brother, Joe, Chance has locked up for murder. Burdette is dead-set on freeing Joe, and the only help Chance has got is his former deputy, Dude (Dean Martin), who’s been drunk for two years since he got involved with the wrong kind of woman, and Stumpy (Walter Brennan), an old, trigger-happy cripple. The trio has six days until the U.S. Marshall comes to collect Joe, but that’s a long time to wait when you’re surrounded by the enemy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 21st, 2023
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits."
Charles Laughton is known primarily as an actor. He starred in several classics such as Spartacus, Witness For The Prosecution, and the title role in I, Claudius. He was the titular character in a remake of Lon Chaney, Sr's The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. He was the cruel Captain Bligh in Mutiny On The Bounty and the evolutionary mad scientist in Island Of Lost Souls with Bela Lugosi which was based on the H.G. Wells novel The island Of Dr. Moreau and happens to be my favorite of his films. He married the Bride of Frankenstein herself, Elsa Lanchester, in one of those rare Hollywood pairings that lasted from 1929 until death did they part in 1962. They were a kind of royal couple for a while, giving some of the era's most iconic parties. He was quite an accomplished man when he died too soon at 63.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 8th, 2023
For me it’s crazy to see that The Truman Show is turning 25 years old. I was graduating high school when this had come out, and television was just an entirely different landscape back then. In 1998 when this film came out, the only reality shows were pretty much COPS and then The Real World on MTV, I really don’t believe anyone could have expected just how big reality TV would become. The same year in competition for box office dollars was Ed TV. Oddly enough, Ed TV would be a little closer to the mark on what the reality TV landscape would look like, taking a regular guy and making him a star overnight because he was on TV. The Truman Show I always felt was the superior film in just about every aspect. In many ways it is what I had hoped reality TV could be, but unfortunately it seems what viewers wanted in their reality programming was something more scandalous and absurd, more akin to a Jerry Springer episode than someone living in an idyllic world that was out of an episode of Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It To Beaver.
