Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 16th, 2009
In my life, I have been married and divorced once. Quite simply, I made my share of mistakes and in my opinion, my ex-wife made some mistakes as well. It just never worked like one thinks a marriage should work. Instead, it left me broken but more importantly it left me a lot smarter and a better person. So naturally, I felt some connection to the broken marriage plot of the movie Fireproof. However, would my experience or failure in the art of marriage provide a bias to this film? We will just have to find out.
Caleb Holt (played by Kirk Cameron) works as a fire captain and manages a fire station. He’s a hero among the community and has saved many lives. However, at home he has a troubled marriage with Catherine (played by Erin Bethea) for a number of reasons including internet pornography and simply lack of love. During a particularly heated argument, Caleb gets in Catherine’s face and she declares she wants out of the marriage.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 13th, 2009
What a great time it was to be a teen in the late 1970’s. No, I’m not referring to disco music. It was a great time to go to the movies. It was the culmination of the perfect date, and Hollywood was riding the beginning of a trend that remains alive and healthy today. I’m talking, of course, about the slasher film. You could argue that Hitchcock started the ball rolling in 1961 with Psycho, but it would be decades before that film would find its true audience and plethora of imitators. Although The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween came before Friday The 13th, can it be argued that any horror film franchise is as widely known? The truth is that even the man behind the film, Sean Cunningham, never really knew what it was that he had. It was never his intent to follow the film with a barrage of sequels. He also scoffed at the idea that Jason could become the centerpiece for future films. By now Jason has become such an iconic character that there is an entire generation out there that doesn’t know that Jason wasn’t the culprit in the first film. Jason’s stature has reached the heights of the classic monsters of the Universal days. While some of us hesitate to put his name and hockey mask up there with the likes of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, and The Mummy, the recognition and sheer dollars generated make it difficult not to. By the beginning of the 1980’s names like Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers would be scaring audiences around the world, rendering the classics somewhat silly in the eyes of a more visceral generation of teens.
It’s hard to believe, but in 1980 the slasher formula had yet to be born. And while Halloween laid down the foundation, this was the house that Jason built. By now it’s all old hat. You know exactly how it’s supposed to happen. There have been spoofs like the Scream series where these rules and expectations have been lampooned. It’s a shame, really, if you never got to see Friday The 13th before this style was so bloodily ingrained in your head. A group of teens gather at a lakeside campground in remote New Jersey. The camp was the scene of a horrific accident and subsequent murder rampage some 5 years earlier. Now someone wants to reopen the place the locals refer to as Camp Blood, but which moviegoers would long remember as Camp Crystal Lake. Despite warnings from the townsfolk, the teens gather to whip the place in shape for a summer filled with kids and fun. But on a stormy first night these teens would be eliminated one by one in “Ten Little Indians” fashion at the hands of a brutal killer. Victims would meet their ends under the most bizarre of circumstances. They would find themselves axed, skewered, and slashed. And as you know by now, but didn’t then, one will survive. The film would end with one of the most clever and effective jump scenes in movie history. No one knew then that a short epilogue intended only to deliver one final kick in the spine would give birth to one of the most infamous monsters in screen history.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 12th, 2009
Top Secret comes to DVD in a new "I Love the '80s" edition. The film continues the legacy of David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams as kings of sight gags and the ludicrously unexpected. Made in 1984, the film stars a young Val Kilmer as rocker Nick Rivers, an artist so clearly modeled after Elvis that he even sings potential lover Hillary Flammond a spoof version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight".
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 12th, 2009
"When you give up your dream, you die."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 11th, 2009
Welcome to 1972, when the sexual revolution is simultaneously in full swing, yet also showing signs of exhaustion (all that swinging can wear a body down, don’t you know). Barbi (Anna Biller) is a model housewife who is awakening to the feeling that there is a world outside her four walls. When she and her husband have a falling out, she hooks up with her more extroverted neighbour Sheila (Bridget Brno), who is also in the midst of a marriage crisis, and the two of them seek new love by taking work at an escort agency. What follows is a picaresque series of encounters, with nary a sexploitation angle ignored.
This film is a textbook definition of “labour of love.” Anna Biller no only stars, she directed, scripted, co-produced, edited, and took care of production and costume design. The latter took ages, since she wanted the costumes to match the decor, but the result was worth it – no small part of the film’s humour comes from its rigorous fidelity to the worst of seventies’ sense of aesthetics. Biller has recreated the classic sexploitation film down to the smallest detail. There are just enough winks to the audience to acknowledge the passage of time (and there is one address to the camera, describing the era as a fleeting utopia for the male of the species, that is as incisive as it is hilarious). The performances perfectly nail their models, capturing stilted, unnatural expressions and their forced enthusiasm. But no matter how much fun is poked at those bygone films, Viva also radiates an enormous love for them. As funny as the movie is, though, at 120 minutes, it is simply too long, and the pace is too measured. Lost of fun, all the same.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 9th, 2009
My place of birth was in Jamaica, NY in the summer of 1975. However, my parents decided to move me around a bit and where I grew up was actually a lot more south than that. Many times in my youth I visited New York to see my grandmother and wondered (often aloud) what it would be grow up in New York rather the suburbs of a southern state. My grandparents would tell me stories, my dad would tell me stories as well as people within earshot of my curiosity. Films helped in this respect too and another fine film about that experience ended up in my hands.
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints was released in 2006 and is based on the true story of Dito Montiel.
Dito (played by Robert Downey Jr) is a successful writer and lives in California. His book speaks of his youth, living in the heart of New York. After all of these years, his mother Flori (played by Dianne Wiest) calls Dito up and tells him that his father, Monty (played by Chazz Palminteri) is ill and will not go to the hospital. After calls from friends and family, Dito decides to make the journey to New York. In the film and his mind, he really travels back to 1986 when he was just a teenager struggling to get by.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 9th, 2009
Woody Allen lands a terrific cast with his latest attempt at comedy, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but there is something very off about the way these characters are written. Annoying pretentious dialogue renders a whimsical, fairy-tale-like backdrop ineffectual, causing each moment of silence to come all too slowly.Rebecca Hall is Vicky. Scarlett Johansson is Cristina. They are two differently wired friends enjoying an extended vacation in Barcelona, where they meet up with ruggedly handsome artist Juan Antonio Gonzalo (Javier Bardem), whom both girls can’t seem to resist. Juan Antonio asks both girls to join him in bed the first time he meets them. Vicky is offended, while Cristina finds his approach radically interesting – enough so to decide she’ll take him up on the offer. Unfortunately for Cristina, food poisoning cuts her plans short, and in steps the combative Vicky to fill the empty slot.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 7th, 2009
Christopher Titus lands in stores just in time for Valentine’s Day with his most recent concert tour Love Is Evol. “Tonight could fix your relationship, or end it,” he says at the opening of the performance. “Either way, you’re welcome.”After discussing the recent developments of his life with tongue planted firmly in cheek, he backs this opening promise up with nearly an hour and a half of comedy that is equal parts storytelling, punchline, and attitude.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 3rd, 2009
“Four cops down: two dead, two likely. An NYPD drug bust has gone horribly wrong.”
That’s how this gripping drama opens. Not since the likes of Al Pacino in Serpico has there been a movie anything at all like Pride And Glory. This film doesn’t pull punches, and it looks about as real as any police drama I’ve seen anywhere before. Filmed entirely on location in the seedy streets of New York City’s Washington Heights district, there is enough gritty realism to go around. Director Gavin O’Connor not only used these very dank and atmospheric streets, but he also employed his extras and some of the key cast members from the community. If nothing else, you can’t criticize this film for not taking us into the street and watching the action from street level.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 31st, 2009
It’s 1980. The Reagan Years are upon you. The country is hopeful it will soon come out of the toilet bowl it was in for the last four years, and while things may seem bleak, you’re one of the lucky ones that still have a job, a girl, and a reason to live. As April becomes May and the days grow considerably hotter a little at a time, what better way to take a break from it all than driving you and your sweetie down to the local movie house for opening night of a new horror film you really haven’t heard all that much about entitled Friday the 13th?
![Friday the 13th Uncut [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/friday-the-13th-uncut-blu-ray-large.jpg)
