1.85:1 Widescreen

My New Gun

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 20th, 2004

Synopsis

Diane Lane’s jerk of a husband, always imitating his best friend, buys her a gun she does notwant. Bizarre neighbour James LeGros asks to borrow the gun. Lane turns down the request, butLeGros helps himself anyway, and a chain of events as bizarre as it is low key is sent inmotion.

Owing some of its dry, absurd humour to David Lynch, My New Gun is also morefirmly grounded in a recognizable world than is Lynch’s work. The pace might be a tad too muchon the l…
Read More

Chastity

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 17th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Chastity (Cher) is a runaway, careening from one encounter to the other in a desperate searchfor herself and an attempt to escape the nightmare of her past. Mostly this means wanderingaround in an extremely sullen mood and treating everyone around her like dirt. How verysympathetic. This 1969 effort pretty much encapsulates everything that could make a sixties filmintolerable. Precious and portentous, it achieves a certain degree of unintentional comedy. SEE!The endless ope…
Read More

Good Times

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 17th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

When sinister businessman George Sanders offers to produce a film starring Sonny and Cher,Sonny can’t wait to get started, though Cher has severe doubts. It turns out the shooting scriptis impossibly bad, and Sonny has ten days to come up with an alternative. We see his fantasiesof various film possibilities (western, mystery, jungle adventure), each one clearly a catastrophein its own right.

This was the directorial debut of William Friedkin. Of course it was! Obvi…
Read More

Unspeakable

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 15th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Psychologist Dina Meyer has a device that, all jargon put aside, permits one to literally seeinto the mind of a subject. Since it has no legal standing, this machine is of no help to aninnocent death-row inmate. Nor, for that matter, is the warden (Dennis Hopper), a fundamentalisttyrant, nor the governor (Jeff Fahey), a greasy political operator who, behind his Family Valuesimage, once got an underage Meyer pregnant. Into the prison comes serial killer Pavan Grover,who is n…
Read More

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 15th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Very much an allegory, the film moves through the seasons of the title, each one representinga season in a man’s life. In Spring, then, he is a little boy. In Summer, an adolescent. And so on(young man, middle-aged man, older man). The scene remains the same: a Buddhist templefloating on a lake, surrounded by mountains. The other characters are the elderly monk who israising the boy, and the young girl who enters his life in adolescence. The story is told with aminimum of d…
Read More

Alfred Hitchcock – The Signature Collection

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 7th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Let’s start with the two biggest titles in the collection, which have a life outside thiscollection. North by Northwest is arguably Hitchcock’s greatest exercise in sheer roller-coaster thriller entertainment. As in so many of the director’s films, an insane chain of eventsis set in motion by the smallest of actions, in this case Cary Grant signalling a bell boy just asthe latter is calling out a name. Grant is thus misidentified by the villains, and he is suddenlyrunning fo…
Read More

Soul Plane

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 3rd, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

After a catastrophic flight, during which his rear end is stuck on the toilet and his dog issucked into an engine, Kevin Hart sues the airline and wins a hundred-million dollar settlement.With this windfall, he establishes a new airline: NWA. The film then follows the maiden voyageof NWA’s purple pimpmobile plane, complete with every hip-hop video stereotypeimaginable.

Clearly aspiring to be an urban Airplane!, this dog rarely rises above the level of thewo…
Read More

Hashish

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 27th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

The focus of this documentary is a small mountain village in Morocco, in an area known asthe Rif. Long a centre of hashish cultivation, the region has recently seen that industry take overeverything. We follow the lives of the villagers, and see the cultivation, preparation and selling ofthe drug. There is no narration, and the camera makes no overt judgment about what we areseeing, but the to-the-camera monologues by the villagers leave one with plenty to thinkabout.

Hardcore

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 20th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

When midwestern Calvinist father George C. Scott’s daughter vanishes on a Church Youthtrip to California, he hires greasy PI Peter Boyle to find her. Boyle discovers a rough and nastyporn loop that she appears in. When Boyle turns out to be untrustworthy, Scott fires him andtravels to California himself, descending into the world of the sex industry in an increasinglydesperate and violent search for his daughter.

Schrader was still very much working out his own issu…
Read More

Candyman

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 18th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Virginia Madsen and Kasi Lemmons are working on a thesis on urban legends. They haveheard several version of the Candyman story, and they trace it back to its origins at the horrificChicago housing project Cabrini Green. Madsen destroys the legend by exposing the truth, whichforces the legend to become real. Candyman (Tony Todd) frames Madsen for his own crimes,and threatens worse unless she voluntarily surrenders to be his victim.

Writer/director Bernard Rose (whos…
Read More

Girl Next Door, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 12th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

On the cusp of graduation, honour student Emile Hirsch’s quiet, orderly life is thrown intochaos when he falls in love with girl next door Elisha Cuthbert, who turns out to be a porn star.Hirsch’s reaction to this revelation drives a wedge between the couple, and pushes Cuthbert backinto the industry. Hirsch’s attempts to redeem himself lead him into deeper and deepertrouble.

This is not another would-be American Pie (though apparently the script started out…
Read More

Past Midnight

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 10th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Released on parole after serving 15 years for the murder of his wife, Rutger Hauer becomesthe new case for social worker Natasha Richardson. This being one of those thrillers we’ve seena million times before, Richardson naturally suspects that Hauer is innocent after all, andpromptly falls in love with him. She begins investigating the case, and someone doesn’t takekindly to the fact that she is digging up the past.

Any viewer who actually falls for the did-he-or-di…
Read More

Predator

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 9th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

When I was a kid in the 80’s, Predator was one of those films that you weren’t supposed to watch, but everybody did anyway. Over-the-top action, invincible heroes, cheesy one-liners and big, big explosions made this a film that was a favorite of pre-pubescent boys everywhere. Going into this disc, I found myself wondering if the film would stand up to the harsh tests of time and maturity.

The answer to that question is both “yes”, and “no”. In the “no” column, it is very apparent early on in the film…
Read More

Village of the Damned / Children of the Damned Double Feature

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 2nd, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Village of the Damned (1960) is the best of the films based on the novels of JohnWyndham (in this case the sources is The Midwich Cuckoos. At 11 o’clock onemorning, every living thing in Midwich falls asleep. Hours later, all awake, apparently none theworse. But shortly thereafter, it turns out that every woman capable of bearing children ispregnant. When the babies are born, they are all blond, eerily similar, and possessed offrightening intelligence and powe…
Read More

Princess Diaries, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 1st, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Anne Hathaway plays 15-year-old (yeah, right) Mia, whose life is a gawky teenagenightmare. Then her life is turned upside down by the arrival in San Francisco of hergrandmother (Julie Andrews), who is queen of the mythical country of Genovia, and she needsMia to shoulder her responsibilities as heir to the throne, or Genovia will cease to exist. Miaundergoes a radical make-over, and clumsily fumbles her way through lessons on how to be aprincess.

You have to wonde…
Read More

Hellboy

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 31st, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Comic book characters have provided a large slate of movie productions in recent years. This really isn’t anything new; both Superman and Batman have each fueled successful film franchises (It should be noted that both are soon to return). Spider-Man’s record take opened a new floodgate. Some have been quite disappointing (The Hulk and The Punisher) while a few (X-Men and Spider-Man) have provided outstanding products. Hellboy fits somewhere in the middle. The character is somewhat lesser known and considerably more …
Read More

Reality Bites

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 29th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

The title says it all as far as our principle characters are concerned. They are coming of age ina world so inimical to them (thank you, Baby Boomers) that their survival response is cynicismand disengagement. The leads are Winona Ryder as a would-be filmmaker in a humiliating job,Ethan Hawke as the slacker who can’t express his true feelings for Ryder, and Ben Stiller as thecareer guy who also courts Ryder. Also here are friends Janeane Garofalo and Steven Zahn asequally c…
Read More

Van Helsing: The London Assignment

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 27th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Young women are being murdered in London. The reference, of course, is to Jack the Ripper,but in this story, the killer is Mr. Hyde, who is collecting their souls so that Dr. Jekyll (no moremoral than his monstrous alter ego) can transform Queen Victoria (with whom he is obsessed)into a young woman. The Vatican sends Van Helsing to London to stop the monster, and theensuing adventure sets the scene for the opening Mr. Hyde battle in the feature film.

Though designed…
Read More

Zorba the Greek

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 26th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Repressed, timid writer Alan Bates arrives in Crete with the goal of re-opening a mine leftto him by his father. On the way to the small village where he will live, he hooks up with theexuberant Zorba (Anthony Quinn, who, as an American of Irish and Mexican extraction, is nomore Greek than Bates). Bates puts Quinn in charge of the mine, and Quinn sets himself themission of teaching Bates how to take risks in life.

The broad arc of the story — repressed Anglo-Saxon …
Read More

Living Hell

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 25th, 2004

Synopsis

One year after the brutal murder of a family, an old woman and her silent granddaughtercome to live with some relatives. We know from the opening that these are the killers, and thatbad times lie ahead. This is especially true for the wheelchair bound Yasu. His father is gone forthe week, his siblings are likewise mostly absent, and they ignore his warnings that the newarrivals are weird. As soon as the house is empty of any who might interfere, the torture sessionsbegin. M…
Read More

Das Boot – The Original Uncut Version

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 17th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

I am sure that many consumers have noticed the disturbing trend taking place in DVD land with regard to the same movie being released in multiple versions. This practice, commonly referred to in the industry as “multiple bites at the apple”, is a cheap way for studios to persuade consumers to buy movies that they already own over and over again, since each new release offers some sort of extra upgrade from the previous versions. Even those of us in the DVD community sometimes get burned on this type of thing, as ther…
Read More

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 14th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Life is hard for Mary (Lindsay Lohan). In the first place, she feels her name should actuallybe “Lola,” and that is how she introduces herself to all and sundry. Then her mother goes andmoves the family from exciting Manhattan to less-than-exciting New Jersey. As if things weren’trough enough, her favourite rock group is about to break up. She is determined to keep glamourin her life, however, not to mention getting to see the band’s farewell concert. Along the way,she will…
Read More

Barbershop 2: Back in Business

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 12th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

There is an interesting trend that seems to be going on in Hollywood right now. Contrary to the record of history, sequels are starting to turn out better, not worse, than their original productions. X2 was better than X-Men, Spidey 2 was better than the first, and each installment in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy built upon the previous episode to an eventual Best Picture climax. I am thrilled that this is the case, since there are more sequels being made now than ever before.

Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 9th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

In the greatest tradition of 1950’s producers like William Castle comes The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. Castle fans will appreciate the “Filmed in Skeletovision” gag on the cover art. This is a wonderful send-up of the 1950’s science fiction genre. Most of the acting is deliberately over the top and the gags are often too obvious… but this is funny stuff. The music cues are dead on. Fans of Mystery Science Fiction Theatre 3000 will also find this film entertaining to the extreme. Andrew Parks steals the show wit…
Read More

Kotch

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 6th, 2004

Buy at Amazon.com

Synopsis

Walter Matthau is Joseph P. Kotcher, a doting grandfather who is rapidly wearing out hiswelcome at the home of his son and daughter-in-law. Increasingly unwanted, Matthau finallyrebels when life in a retirement home looms. He winds up hitting the road with a pregnantteenager, and once again he is needed.

Jack Lemmon made his directorial debut with this piece that simultaneous goes all-out andtakes the easy way in its determined effort to be heartwarming. Matthau, ra…
Read More

«< 49 50 51 52 53 >»