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The Trotsky

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 11th, 2011

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Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel, in a knockout performance) is convinced that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, and is determined to live out his life in the same way, right down to getting himself assassinated (“hopefully somewhere warm” his note appends). He also has only three years left to find Lenin, but in the meantime, his attempts to kick-start the revolution are meeting with little success. His struggle to unionize his father’s factory manages only to embarrass and anger his father, who retaliates by removing him from private school and packing him off to a public one run by the tyrannical Colm Feore.
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Greenberg

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 11th, 2011

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Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) once was a musician, but now he is a carpenter and an inveterate writer of letters of complaint (to pet taxis, for instance, for not having a soft carpet for the paws of their passengers). After a stay at a mental institution, he arrives in LA to look after his brother’s house and dog while the family is away in Vietnam. He reconnects with an old friend from his band days (Rhys Ifans, a long way from his manic energy in Notting Hill), and circles around a stop-start romance with personal aid and professional doormat Florence (Greta Gerwig).
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The Girl

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 8th, 2011

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Written by Diane Tillis

It is rare for a film to create a complex portrait of a child with the same thoughtfulness as a serious portrait of an adult. The Girl is unusual compared to the countless other coming-of-age films is in its depiction of the title character and the events she experiences in one summer.
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Red (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 2nd, 2011

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“This used to be a gentleman’s game.”

I must confess that I had not even heard of the comic book titles created by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. I think that might have been one of the best things that could have happened to me as I sat down to watch the film Red. With a cast this strong, there was little doubt that they would provide a powerful stamp on these characters. No insult intended toward the graphic novels, but I can’t imagine these characters any other way now.
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Secretariat (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 31st, 2011

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“He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength and charges into the fray. He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing. He does not shy away from the sword. The quiver rattles against his side, along with the flashing spear and lance. In frenzied excitement, he eats up the ground. He cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.”

Disney has a grand tradition of putting out a certain kind of sports film. You know the type well.
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This Movie Is Broken

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on January 25th, 2011

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Not quite a concert film, not quite a drama. This film follows a young man named Bruno, who sleeps with his life long crush, the night before she moves from Toronto to Paris. On this final night, Broken Social Scene are playing a free show and Bruno uses a connection to get backstage passes as a last ditch effort to win over his crush. All the while, we are treated to a multi camera view of that very same concert, running the duration of the entire film.
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Buried (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 20th, 2011

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“Dear Screenwriter,

“Here’s your writing prompt: You are to write a feature-length screenplay with only one on-screen character. This character is to remain in only one location for the entire duration of the film, and that one location must be a 2′ x 7′ wooden box. You cannot use flashbacks, cut-aways, or any other narrative device that would take the action outside that box. Sound impossible? It’s not. In fact, all this exactly describes the film BURIED.”

Or how about this one.
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The Collector (2009)

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on January 20th, 2011

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An ex-con trying to pull one last heist is sucked into a booby trapped house and must face against a madman who is torturing the family within. The makers of 3 SAW films (and not the first three) have ventured into familiar territory of nonsense gore, whisper thin plot, and then even more nonsense gore.
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Dances with Wolves (20th Anniversary Extended Cut) (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 19th, 2011

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There’s no doubt that Kevin Costner’s name has been attached to some pretty crappy projects during his career – Waterworld, The Postman, and 3000 Miles to Graceland to name a few – and it’s unfortunate, because the aforementioned dirt loafs have tarnished the fine film that we’re here to discuss, Dances With Wolves. Heck, even I had horrid recollections of the film from viewing it years ago in theaters. However, this review forced me to check the film out again and I actually found myself…enjoying it – and enjoying it immensely.
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Case 39 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 6th, 2011

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“If you’re going to face the fires of Hell, you need to be prepared.”

And that’s exactly what someone should have told the folks behind the horror thriller Case 39. This has been one of those cursed films from the very beginning. The film appears to have begun production way back in 2006. It appears the film was done, at least in one form, by 2007, but there were reshoots and pick-ups for so long that it’s going to be hard to imagine what the film might have originally been intended to look like.
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The A-Team (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 3rd, 2011

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“I love it when a plan comes together.”

I love it when a movie comes together that offers you some value for your entertainment dollar and manages to touch a bit on the old nostalgia strings along the way. I’m not going to try to convince you that the new A-Team film is a great movie. It’s not even close. But neither was the series a great series. What I am going to try to convince you to do is go out and at least rent a copy
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Exam

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on January 2nd, 2011

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8 corporate hopefuls gather at a mysterious location and are instructed to take one final exam as a final test to see which one will walk away with a prestigious job at a major company. The trouble is their exam papers are blank, and it would seem that there is not even a question to answer. For 80 minutes each must solve the puzzle without being disqualified by breaking one of the few rules, all of which double as a riddle/clue to solving the exam question and answer.
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Vengeance

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 23rd, 2010

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In Macao, a trio of gunmen butcher a family. Only the mother survives (barely), and her father (aging French rocker Johnny Hallyday, looking as hardboiled and grotesque as Mickey Rourke), a restaurateur who knows altogether too much about how to get by in the violent underworld, comes to town and sets out on a mission of vengeance. He hires a trio of hit men, and works with them in tracking down his enemies. They have to do so quickly, though, because Hallyday has been shot before, and the bullet lodged in his brain is gradually stealing his memory away. He wants his revenge while he can still remember why it is necessary.
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Monte Walsh

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 21st, 2010

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Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins (Lee Marvin and Jack Palance) are two cowboys in an era where their kind is becoming extinct. After a hard winter in the mountains, they discover that most of the ranches they knew have vanished, the land being bought up by Eastern corporations. They find work on the ranch once owned by Jim Davis, though he now answers to accountants back East. And though life, at first, seems all right, bit by bit they witness the end of their era, as a way of life dies, and the men who lived it are pushed to suicide, desperation, robbery and worse.
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Young Adam

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 13th, 2010

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Written by Dave Younger

Young Adam (2003, 98 min.), set in drab postwar Glasgow, Scotland, combines the kitchen-sink dramas of late 50s/early 60s northern England with a Hitchcockian tale – what if you discovered your girlfriend floating dead in a river? Throw in explicit full-frontal NC-17 sex (most movies, like Blue Valentine, will do anything to avoid this kiss of death, but Young Adam embraces it; they wanted to cut Ewan McGregor’s junk for the American release, but he fought to keep it in)
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Harpoon: Whale Watching Massacre (Unrated Edition) (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 9th, 2010

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“Nobody thinks of it from the whale’s point of you.”

I think this is the very first film I’ve ever seen that was made in Iceland. Of course, Iceland isn’t one of those movie-making meccas known throughout the world for their movie magic. The truth is, there haven’t been too many films set in Iceland and even fewer shot on location there. Now that Harpoon has come along, I don’t expect that is going to change any time soon.
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Cairo Time

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 2nd, 2010

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Written by Diane Tillis

Vogue magazine editor Juliette (Patricia Clarkson) travels to Cairo to attend a UN function where she will meet up with her UN-official husband Mark (Tom McCamus). Mark is unavoidably delayed in Gaza, but sends a trusted friend and former UN official Tareq (Alexander Siddig) to keep Juliette company. Tareq and Juliette have known of each other for years, but this is the first time they have met face to face.
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The Disappearance of Alice Creed (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 1st, 2010

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The axiom in Hollywood these days is that more is better. Every year we get inundated with blockbuster films sporting $200 million budgets, groundbreaking f/x, epic journeys and casts of thousands. Enter first-time director J. Blakeson and his intimate and quite claustrophobic thriller, The Disappearance Of Alice Creed. Right from the start we know that we’re in for something completely different. There are no opening credits of any kind. There isn’t even a title screen.
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The Expendables (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 24th, 2010

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“Man, we’ll die with you. Just don’t ask us to do it twice.”

Remember the old days of the action movie? Those films where someone like Stallone or Schwarzenegger would run around and take out armies of bad guys while barely breaking a sweat. You know the kind of movie I’m talking about. The ones where the hero goes up against a hail of bullets and explosions and manages to pick off the bad guys without catching a single slug himself.
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Back From Hell: A Tribute to Sam Kinison

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 22nd, 2010

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Dear Faithful Readers, Due to the nature of Sam Kinison’s work on stage and off stage, this review may contain foul but funny humor, bad but heeeeelarious language, and not so politically correct (but correctly off the wall) jokes. Please be aware before you continue to read. Yours Always, Noms
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Arn: The Knight Templar

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 17th, 2010

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Based on the books by Jan Guillou this film is in fact the merging of two epics produced in Sweden. It also happens to be Sweden’s most expensive production thus far. It tells the tale of a boy raised in a convent and trained to become a warrior by a former knight Templar. He falls in love and has a child with a young woman named Cecilia and the two are forced away from each other. Cecilia must pay penance living as a nun while Arn is sentenced to 20 years fighting in the name of God as a Knight Templar in Jerusalem.
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Dry Land, The (Blu-Ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on November 16th, 2010

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My dad was a Vietnam veteran. He did his time and came home to his wife (and eventually me). Because of when I was born, I never knew my father before the war. Therefore, I can’t really speak on his personality changes after he went off to fight the good fight. But in the same breath, I can tell you that we really don’t talk about that time except in very broad brush strokes. War is heck and hopefully my experience with The Dry Land is one that isn’t such a painful undertaking.
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Lock ‘n’ Load

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 12th, 2010

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Lock ‘n’ Load is a hidden camera reality TV series that is based out of a gun shop in Colorado. The show is centered on the gun shop proprietor Josh T. Ryan. He interjects himself into every story and casually interviews each customer. The show attempts to personify each gun owner and provides a background for each purchase. The show is marketed as a comedy but I found myself rarely laughing.
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Ghost Whisperer: The Final Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 12th, 2010

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Melinda Gordon (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is basically the kid from The Sixth Sense, only with boobs, killer cheekbones, and a formerly lucrative pop career. I may not be entirely accurate about that last item, but until this 6-disc set arrived, I had not really watched the show. It always seemed a little too Touched by an Angel meets The Sixth Sense meets Jennifer Love Hewitt’s aforementioned cheekbones for my taste. Upon viewing the episodes in this set, I pretty much stand behind that assessment, and though it is still not my particular cup of tea, I can understand its appeal to its fans.
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All American Orgy

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 9th, 2010

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Three couples are meeting for a trip out to the country to have an old fashioned, American orgy. What instigated said orgy is mostly a mystery, as is what truly keeps them motivated to go through with it. Needless to say, most of them are in it for reasons beyond being carefree and their ulterior motives and inner demons will only spoil the party.
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