Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 23rd, 2006
The Butterfly Effect 2 is a direct-to-video release, and for good reason. While the original film was a surprise hit back in 2004, this sequel is nothing more than a quick cash-in.
At least, that’s what I thought I’d be writing for this review. I definitely had low expectations for this film, especially since while I’ve heard good things about the original, I’ve yet to see it, and I still question its somewhat-acclaimed reputation. So surely this sequel must be a piece of junk, right? But it’s not.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 22nd, 2006
Boffo! Tinseltown’s Bombs & Blockbusters is all about the magic of movies. It’s about doing it right and doing it wrong, and how there’s no sure thing. This HBO documentary doesn’t get very technical about making films, but it certainly does get personal with some of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters.
Through a well-crafted collection of interviews and clips from some of the best and worst movies of American cinema, this documentary brings us the perspectives of folks like Steven Spielberg, George Clooney... Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Bogdanovich and Morgan Freeman. Every single one of the interview subjects is dynamic and entertaining, and while their experiences and methods are all different, they all seem to agree on one thing: making a successful film is really hard to do.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 22nd, 2006
Boffo! Tinseltown’s Bombs & Blockbusters is all about the magic of movies. It’s about doing it right and doing it wrong, and how there’s no sure thing. This HBO documentary doesn’t get very technical about making films, but it certainly does get personal with some of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters.
Through a well-crafted collection of interviews and clips from some of the best and worst movies of American cinema, this documentary brings us the perspectives of folks like Steven Spielberg, George Clooney... Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Bogdanovich and Morgan Freeman. Every single one of the interview subjects is dynamic and entertaining, and while their experiences and methods are all different, they all seem to agree on one thing: making a successful film is really hard to do.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 22nd, 2006
I must admit that I fully expected to hate this film. Turns out, I didn’t. The truth is, Little Man, the latest comedy from the Wayans brothers, is too harmless for such a vehement reaction.
Sure, Little Man is not very good, but if you can manage to check your brain at the door, you’ll probably get some laughs out of it. Then again, they’re probably the same laughs you had watching the trailer. My problem with comedy like this is that it’s really much better suited to short sketches than feature films.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 20th, 2006
From the rather twisted mind of Stephen King, Pet Sematary is actually one of my favorite of his horror novels. It’s scary to think the story was never meant to be published and only offered up to finish a contract with his earlier publisher. As has been the Stephen King plague at nearly every turn, something ends up lost in the translation. In the novel, the deeper subtexts that King is so adept at take several hundred pages to set up and ultimately pay off. Unfortunately a mere couple of hours of celluloid never ...eem to scratch the graveyard surface soil. Pet Sematary is, sadly, a definitive example. While the original work taunts us with its mystic undertones that always seem far more believable than they ought to be, the film lays down a path as overgrown as the one leading to the titular graveyard. At first the two works are not so convergent, and a great deal of hope is to be had. Soon, however, the movie descends into the typical shock horror film so common in recent years. Startles and zombies begin to dominate the experience, while the story’s deeper and far more frightening elements lie as dead as the bones of the neighborhood pets.
The plot points are pretty faithful to the King work. For ages the kids in this suburban Maine neighborhood have been burying the remains of their beloved pets, often victims of a dangerous road, in the barren soil of the local Pet Sematary, misspelled by the countless kids who christened the field untold years ago. But beyond the pet graveyard is a more mysterious and foreboding place. It was here that Indians brought the dead back to life. Our unfortunate family is about to discover that perhaps “dead is better”.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 19th, 2006
Jack Black says when he’s embarrassed, he knows it’s funny. He must have been pretty confident about the success of Nacho Libre, because as Ignacio (Nacho) – the friar by day, wannabe wrestler by night – he embraced one embarrassing moment after another.
Black stars as a friar at a Mexican orphanage run by the sort of God-fearing folk who think wrestling, or Lucha Libre, is a sin. All his life, Black has longed to be a luchador (wrestler), which is a bit of a conflict. His only jobs at the orphanage are cooking duty, and dead-guy duty. The latter only serves as an amusing side joke, while the former drives the story. You see, Ignacio’s bosses don’t provide him enough money for decent ingredients, so his food sucks. When the beautiful Sister Encarnacion (Ana de la Reguera) shows up at the orphanage, Black is smitten, and inspired to impress her with better food. But for better food, he needs money for ingredients.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 18th, 2006
In 1984 Brian De Palma dusted off his best Alfred Hitchcock imitation in the by now infamous Body Double. We all know the story by now. In fact, if you’ve seen the far superior Vertigo and Rear Window films, you knew the story already. Claustrophobic vampire actor Jake Scully is having a hard time. He’s just been fired because he can’t lie in a coffin, and getting home early, he walks in on his girlfriend in bed with another man. Out of work and homeless, things look up when a fellow actor gets him a sweet housesit...ing gig in a flying saucer shaped condo overlooking the Hollywood valley. There, he is obsessed with a neighbor he spies on with a conveniently provided telescope as she performs all sorts of sordid little things naked in the window. Looks like things are really going well now, until he believes he has witnessed a murder. His investigation into what he saw leads him to the underworld of the porn industry and into the arms of porn queen Holly Body (Griffith). Most of the film takes place at a painfully slow pace. De Palma offers up a lot of stylistic cinematography but not enough action or suspense to keep us all that interested. While the erotic nature of the film was quite shocking in 1985, it just doesn’t pack that kind of a punch today. When De Palma wants to, he can simply ooze atmosphere on film. In Body Double, he oozes something a bit less flattering.
Part of the blame for the film’s awkward pace must be taken up by Craig Wasson. He simply can’t emote beyond a typical movie of the week level. The same can be said for villain Sam (Henry). On one hand, De Palma is trying to dazzle us with the epic scope of the thing, but his two main actors limit that range significantly. Credit should be given to Melanie Griffith, who is miscast in her part, but carries it off with more credibility than one would expect. The stand out has to be Deborah Shelton, who is captivating with little to say. Dennis Franz stands out in his comedy relief portrayal of the director who fires Jake. He’s playing De Palma to a fault, including De Palma’s own clothes. Both men admit in the extras that Rubin was indeed based upon De Palma..
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2006
The Break-Up tells the story of the relationship of Gary (Mr. And Mrs. Smith’s Vince Vaughn) and Brooke (Friend’s Jennifer Aniston. As the film begins, we see Gary at a baseball game as he attempts to ask Brooke out on a date by endless asking her. The film skips forward roughly two years, to a point where Gary and Brooke are now a couple who are living together in a highly desirable condo. Gary is working as a Chicago tour guide with his brothers, while Brooke works at the Marilyn Dean Art Gall...ry. Everything seems to be going fine until a dinner with their respective families. Gary, feeling that Brooke is constantly asking too much of him, yells at Brooke, who feels that Gary never wants what she wants in life, leading to them breaking up (hence the title of the film).
Now that they’re ‘broken-up’, Gary and Brooke tend to play off each other doing little things to annoy each other. Gary is beaten up by Brooke’s brother while Brooke, on the other hand, votes Gary off of her bowling team. All these events occur, as Brooke tells us, in the hopes of getting Gary to change himself so he’ll get back with her. While this plot sounds kind of stupid, the real charm of this film is Vince Vaughn.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 17th, 2006
Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties is a lot better than I thought it would be. Kids would love it, and it’s not too obnoxious for adults.
It’s a decent story for kids. Just before he’s planning to propose to her, Jon Arbuckle’s girlfriend, Liz, announces that she’s been scheduled at the last minute to speak at a conference in London, and she must leave right away. Jon decides to follow her there to pop the question. Garfield wants to interfere, so he and Odie smuggle themselves in Jon’s luggage.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2006
This remake of the 1976 horror classic The Omen is a solid psychological thriller. I should admit that I have never seen the original, so I can’t make a comparison. For opinions from that perspective, I imagine an Internet search will find more than enough.
I can, however, weigh in on whether I think this move should have been made, a question always asked about Hollywood remakes. My answer? Yes, because it offers the film to a new audience, of which I’m a part. And now that I’ve seen and enjoyed this new version of The Omen, I’m also interested in checking out the original.
