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?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 26th, 2009
“This motion picture is principally based upon the book “Wallace” by Marshall Frady and other historical sources. Certain events, characters, and dialog have, nonetheless, been created or altered for dramatic purposes”.
In other words, this should not be taken as an historical record of the controversial George Wallace. If anything, the film attempts to soften his personality some. One of those created characters is Archie, a trustee attending to the needs of the residents at Alabama’s Governor’s Mansion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 21st, 2009
I have to admit that I’m usually very wary of direct to video sequels to films that weren’t exactly box office smash material to begin with. The original film was a typical and predictable mess of a film that didn’t even make use of a better than average cast for this kind of film. It took me by surprise when Boogeyman 2 came out, but I’m a glutton for punishment, so I rented the title mostly because it had Saw franchise star Tobin Bell in it. I ended up halfway liking the feature, and considerably more than the original film. When I saw the chance to review the third entry, I wanted to see if the DVD franchise was heading forward or backwards. Boy, was I pleased to find out that the answer is both.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 16th, 2009
Here’s the deal. I don’t remember anything about the 2004 release of Without A Paddle. I guess it did some business; however, because someone working at Paramount, or should I say, who used to work at Paramount, came up with the harebrained scheme to deliver a direct to video sequel. This out of work crackpot also seems to have figured that returning any of the original’s cast was not a good idea; in fact, the brainstorm, here was that this film will have nothing at all to do with the first film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 15th, 2009
In the review business, we often get films that we find to be distasteful or just plain rubbish. This is especially true when we receive a popular star’s directorial debut. Usually it is an egotistical pompous piece with no merit outside to try to drive the idea home that the actor is a well-rounded individual. However, once in a while we get a film that was directed by an established star that actually gave birth to his career. This is a self-promotional piece that got the world to know the person’s name. The name of this person I speak of? That would be Vin Diesel. The movie is called Strays.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 15th, 2009
“On 15 December, 1977, after a hiatus of over a year, The Who assembled at Gaumont State Theater in Kilburn, North London, to record a concert for Jeff Stein’s documentary film, The Kids Are Alright. Shot before a select invited audience it would turn out to be Keith Moon’s last, but one live performance. Unusual for live rock at the time, it was shot on 35mm film by six cameras and professionally recorded on a 16 track recorder. Never seen before, the film rested in The Who’s vault for 30 years.”
What young 1970’s pup, learning to play a guitar for the first time, didn’t, at one time or another, attempt to imitate Pete Townsend’s windmill power chord strum?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
Male bonding deep in the heart of the Oregon wilderness is the order of the day in Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling, a direct-to-video sequel to the Seth Green-Dax Shepard-Matthew Lillard comedy of 2004. Unfortunately, it’s more of a training ground for actors and crew than an actual film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
It’s hard being the bad guy, but sometimes you just don’t like a film that seemingly everyone else does. Such is the case for me with Funny Face, the classic Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire teaming that sees a bookish young lady go from the obscurity of her lonely library to the glitzy Paris lights as a high-profile fashion model.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 13th, 2009
A disfigured young man with an unhealthy interest in his sister attacks and kills a woman. Five years later, he is released (by psychiatrist Jess Franco) into his sister’s care, who is helping organize a language school on property owned by her disagreeable, but very rich, aunt. In short order, the female students at the school (and there are ONLY female students, for reasons not explained) start being killed off. But no one other than heroine Olivia Pascal actually believes that anything is going on.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 12th, 2009
The giallo was never a genre that specialized in tight, coherent, logical storylines. But even by the bizarre standards of the form, In the Folds of the Flesh takes some kinda cake. Trying to summarize its plot is next to impossible, as the first two thirds of the plot are incomprehensible, and are cleared up only in the final third, which feels more like a play than a film, and where the revelations and twists pile up to such a degree that they don't induce whiplash – they torque your head clean off. So, for what it's worth, we have a castle (whose interiors look distinctly un-castle-like) where, thirteen years ago, a man was decapitated. His body was disposed of by the woman living there, and she and two children, now grown and thoroughly insane, dispose of anyone else foolish enough to come prying into their lives.
![Without a Paddle: Nature's Calling [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/without-a-paddle-natures-calling-large.jpg)
