Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 25th, 2008
Director David Cronenberg’s masterpiece, A History of Violence catapulted him to the upper-echelon of today’s directors. Until AHOV, he’d previously worked on offbeat films that got mixed reviews, like Crash (1996), eXistenZ, and Spider, with the occasional brush with “commercial” films like The Fly.
His follow-up to AHOV is Eastern Promises, which features the same actor from AHOV (Viggo Mortensen) in another mysteriously dark role that has earned the actor a well-deserved Oscar Nomination for Best Actor although he will almost certainly lose to frontrunner Daniel Day-Lewis of There Will Be Blood.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 22nd, 2008
Screwball comedies can be fun, sometimes. The comedy where the main cast members have the intelligence of a three-toed sloth...combined. Dumb & Dumber was a good example. Gags that get created simply on the premise of their inadequate brain power. However, Dumb & Dumber created an awful sequel. What's worse is that created a few wannabes in the process. One of those films arguably is Brothers Solomon. However, this viewer hoped just for a second that I wouldn't be holding my head in my lap the entire ninety three minutes asking for my very painful headache to go away.
John & Dean Solomon (played by Will Arnett & Will Forte) are brothers whose mother had died and were brought up in the arctic by their father Ed(played by Lee Majors). However, Ed goes ill and lapses into a coma. According to the doctor, his last wish is to have a grandbaby. However, John & Dean are not exactly very bright nor very lucky in love. After a few crappy dates, they decide to explore other methods of having a baby. They decide to contact a lady, Janine (played by Kristen Wiig) who was interested in carrying a baby for them to term. After brief negotiations (which somehow ended higher than the price Janine started out at), the brothers end up in a sperm donor bank. Janine is successfully impregnated and the journey really begins as the brothers learn to become fathers and hilarity ensues.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 21st, 2008
This is one of those wholesome movies the entire family can enjoy. From veteran director Michael Apted (Coal Miner’s Daughter), Amazing Grace is the true story of William Wilberforce, the 18th Century political activist who spent nearly his entire adult life campaigning to end the British slave trade. It’s a simple but compelling story wonderfully told, with a superb cast including Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four), relative newcomer Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement) and stage and screen legends Albert Finney (Big Fish) and Sir Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).
The film picks up some time in 1797, well into Wilberforce’s political crusade. The man is in shambles, sick with colitis, addicted to some sort of opiate (for medicinal use only, of course) and suffering nightmares. He has given up the fight to abolish slavery in his beloved Britain, and it will take the introduction of his bride-to-be to get him back on track.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 17th, 2008
Honestly, is adding a cinematic volume onto a series when one film seemed to have addressed it is beyond me. You've got Carlito's Way, a film whose main character (played by Al Pacino) died at the end, yet in Carlito's Way - Rise to Power, we're getting a prequel? I think that all that could have been answered was done so in the Pacino film, but we're seeing a film about how Carlito, pardon the word choice, has "rose to power"? What's the point? Needless to say, I'm still popping the hood and looking what's underneath.
So Rise to Power was written by Edwin Torres, who also wrote the novel about Carlito's later years. Michael Bregman, son of Martin, who's produced several Pacino movies through the years, adapted the novel and directed this straight to video project. Carlito is now played by Jay Hernandez (Hostel), and his true beginnings are in jail with the Italian Rocco (Michael Kelly, Unbreakable) and the African American Earl (Mario Van Peebles, Baadasss!!!!). When they get out, their friendship forms into a business partnership of heroin trafficking. They do pretty well, in fact Earl manages to leave the business and move to the Caribbean, however he asks Carlito to look after his younger brother, who is long on bluster and short on any real business or personal sense, causing friction among the bigger crime bosses like Hollywood Nicky (Puff Daddy himself, Sean Combs), and Artie (Burt Young, Rocky).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 14th, 2008
Two of my favorite comedies are Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and the first Mortal Kombat(well perhaps it wasn't meant to be a comedy). Films that have slapstick humor with a good sporting event of where the underdog wins in the end over their lavishly dressed opponents. Balls of Fury was to take that one step further by going into the dangerous underworld of Ping Pong and parody old kungfu tournament stories in the process. With an array of famous character actors including Christopher Walken; how could one not enjoy the game the Chinese call "Peing Poong"?
Randy Daytona (played by Dan Fogler) used to be a famous ping pong player. He lost in 1988 Olympics after losing his composure to Karl Wolfschtagg (played by Thomas Lennon ) and got a nasty bump on the head in the process. Nearly twenty years pass when Daytona, now a Reno side show act is recruited by Agent Ernie Rodriquez (played by George Lopez) to compete in arch-criminal Feng's (played by Christopher Walken)ping pong tournament. However, it's invitation only. So in order to get recognized, he is taught by Master Wong (played by James Hong ) and his niece Maggie (played by Maggie Q).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 8th, 2008
As the Harry Potter franchise heads into the home stretch of films, some of the film’s young cast members are attempting to break out into other roles, or at least employ a little bit more emotional depth in the roles that they’ve made into small cottage businesses. And of course, the biggest one in the bunch is Harry himself, Daniel Radcliffe. He’s appeared in a London played named “Equus”, in which he appeared nude in and got a lot of notoriety for, but received some praise based on his performance. He also appeared in the Ricky Gervais show Extras where he played himself in a role where he really really wants to break out from his childhood perception. But in December Boys, he plays a bit of a loner of sorts, though people seem to label the film for the sensationalist things Radcliffe does in the film. Look, Harry Potter smokes and gets it on with a girl, wow! But looking beyond perception, it’s a decent film.
December Boys was a film that was adapted from a Michael Noonan novel and directed by Rod Hardy, who has directed mainly television shows, most recently, Battlestar Galactica. But in the film, Radcliffe plays a guy known as Maps, along with his friends Misty (Lee Cormie, Darkness Falls), Sparks (Christian Byers) and Spit (James Fraser). The boys are slightly older orphans who have not been adopted by any prospective Australian families and are getting to the age where adoption is unlikely. They share the same relative birthday in December, and at the orphanage they live at, the nuns give them a chance to go to the beach and enjoy a holiday during Christmas, where two sets of families decide to welcome them. The younger family apparently has aspirations for adopting one of the children and Misty finds this out, and the boys are thrown in a competition of sorts. Maps finds Lucy (Theresa Palmer, The Grudge 2), who is staying there for a time, and shows Maps his first real look at the birds and the bees.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 27th, 2007
Sometimes I absolutely adore anime. Great action from the far east that breaks boundaries one could only dream of. Or perhaps to tell an engaging story about a love lost long ago. Once in a while, I hate anime unfortunately. This usually occurs when they break no boundaries, tread over the same story or it plays out like hentai (tentacles in places where they don't belong). So I receive Paprika to review. Hoping I would like it, I quickly stuffed it in my dvd player and found the following:
Paprika is the story of what would happen if somebody built a machine (called the "DC Mini" here, presumably the Mini DreamCatcher) that would allow psychotherapists to enter their patient's dreams and help them understand their hidden meaning. The DC Mini was designed and built by Dr. Kosaku Tokita, an extremely large fellow who is basically a child at heart. The main therapist Dr. Atsuko Chiba uses the device to enter her patient's dreams as "Paprika". Paprika is a fun and whimsical being and in contrast to the doctor who is very serious and laid back. Her primary patient for the film is Detective Konakawa Toshimi. He is having a recurring dream where he is trying to find this killer on the case he is working on. However, he can never make that breakthrough as the killer keeps escaping thru the various scenes in his dream.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 21st, 2007
Something strange happened to me this week. I had two particular films arrive that I was to review. Stardust and Underdog. I expected to love one of them and basically tolerate the other. If you’ve read my recent Stardust review, you already know which was which. I expected to love Stardust and ended up hating it. I expected just a lot of silly nonsense from Underdog, and that’s what I got, except I had a great time watching it. The film is far more entertaining even to adults than I ever could have imagined.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 19th, 2007
In 1959 Rod Serling changed the face of television. This unimposing thin man stepped in front of a camera and told us we were entering a world of shadow… the Twilight Zone. The anthology series ran for 5 years and included some of the best genre tales ever told. We all have our favorites, and my list is too long to go into here. Even years after when Serling himself had passed it never truly died. Syndication found a huge new following for the series, and it inspired not only revivals of itself but a long list of other anthology shows over the years like Tales From The Crypt and Tales From The Darkside, but none of these imitators ever came close. Serling was a genius in not only picking out great material, but he was a master presenter as well. So in 1983 when 4 of the world’s leading genre filmmakers banded to do a Twilight Zone Movie, the expectations went through the proverbial ceiling.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 17th, 2007
U.S. soldiers return home from war and find it difficult to re-assimilate into everyday American life. We've seen this idea played out dozens of times, mostly with Vietnam as the conflict of choice. In Home of the Brave, writer-director Irwin Winkler (De-Lovely) transplants the story into more modern times with the war in Iraq, without much success. Panned by critics and moviegoers alike, Home of the Brave feels a lot more like a made-for-TV movie than a major theatrical release, despite the presence of perennial Hollywood badass Sam Jackson (Snakes on a Plane).
It's not that there isn't power in the message that war profoundly affects those involved long after they've left the battlefield, it's just that this film does a poor job living up to that message's raw potential. The disc itself isn't bad at all, but solid DVD production values can't save a movie.
![Carlito's Way: Rise To Power [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/carlitos-way-rise-to-power-hd-dv-large.jpg)
