2.35:1 Widescreen

Die Hard Collection

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2007

Synopsis

I’ve gotta say that when the first Die Hard was released, I was in a position where I hated, absolutely despised Bruce Willis. In my opinion, the world honestly didn’t need another loudmouthed movie star who was from New Jersey and didn’t hesitate to say so, and that whole schtick about him and the Bruno persona would allow him to release music albums reeking of self-promotion and another money grab. And when he hooked up with Demi Moore, my initial reaction was “good, they’ll have mongoloid…
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Hills Have Eyes 2, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 6th, 2007

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It’s no secret that horror films these days severely lack originality and overuse violence and gore instead of actually scaring the audience. Sometimes this works and when coinciding with an actual story can make for a good movie. The Hills Have Eyes remake from 2006 wasn’t half bad because there was a tiny amount of depth in the story, combined with the violence that audiences have come to love. But ultimately for me, it didn’t hit the mark, it was just another typical horror movie. I really don’t think the s…
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Dante’s Peak (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 5th, 2007

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Disaster films are nothing new in Hollywood. While most disaster films tend to focus too much on destroying random objects, there’re are a film good disaster films that come around every so often that actual try to explain the film instead of giving us two hours of random explosions. One such film is 1997’s Dante’s Peak.

Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) works for the US Geology Survey Team. Four years after experiencing a volcano eruption, Harry and a few other scientists are called to a town named Da…
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Licence to Kill (Region 2)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 1st, 2007

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Synopsis

Timothy Dalton might have endured a bit of grief for his short tenure as James Bond, enduring comments equating him to Connery and Moore plagued his two film run, with this one being the last. However, this one was quite the doozy, and almost in the area of “forgotten gem” status.

Written by Richard Maibaum (The Man With the Golden Gun) and producer Michael Wilson, and directed by John Glen (A View to a Kill), Dalton as Bond finds himself as the Best Man to the wedding of lo…
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Neverwas

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 29th, 2007

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As you might imagine, I am often asked for my opinion on the films I see. Inevitably I’m called upon to compare the film with some other work, which is at best quite unfair and at worst simply impossible to do. But I’ve gotten good at the game. So let us play it now. We’ll call Neverwas One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest meets Alice In Wonderland. Unfair, some might say, for they are actually the very same story. When you look at it carefully enough, they really are, although important differences do exist. My point i…
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Thunderball (Region 2)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 27th, 2007

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Synopsis

In slowly but surely wrapping up my reviews of each and every Ultimate Edition James Bond title on DVD, coming to Thunderball, a sect of people say that this is the quintessential film for the man who quintessentially personified James Bond. So in his fourth outing as the man who likes martinis, cars and women, he encounters a large swath of them all over two hours.

Based on Ian Fleming’s story and directed by Terence Young (From Russia With Love), this installment in the se…
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Cult Camp Classics 1 — Sci-Fi Thrillers

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 27th, 2007

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Synopsis

There isn’t a lot that connects these films, other than the fact that they are all budget-conscious SF and were released in 1958. All are joys for fans of the genre, however.

The Giant Behemoth was director Eugene Lourié’s second giant-dinosaur-on-the-loose film, after The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and before Gorgo (1960). It is also the weakest of the three, but not without its charms. Signs of an intensely radioactive being are proliferating on the Eng…
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Neptune Factor, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 25th, 2007

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Synopsis

An undersea earthquake leads to the loss of an undersea lab. There is, however, no sign of the wreckage, and so it is presumed that the lab slid deep into a trench. In the faint hope that there might be survivors, the submersible Neptune descends into the depths, where it encounters all sorts of gigantic sealife.

In my review of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, I said it was the most idiotic sub movie out there. I stand by that, but The Neptune Factor keeps the…
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Black Snake Moan (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 25th, 2007

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Yet another Samuel L. Jackson movie containing the word snake in it, but unlike Snakes on a Plane, Black Snake Moan is a dramatic picture delving into dark issues like abuse. I’ll come out by saying that I though this movie was going to be a good laugh, seeing the trailer I though it would be a bearded Sam Jackson shouting out profanities at an unwilling captive in his home. Although this does happen it is a small portion of the movie, and not as comedic as I had supposed.

Black Snake Moan…
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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea — Global Warming Edition

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 21st, 2007

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Synopsis

When Admiral Walter Pidgeon’s glass-nosed submarine (?) Seaview surfaces at the North Pole after an extended stay underwater, Pidgeon and crew discover the sky is on fire. It turns out the Van Allen radiation belt has caught fire (?!) and life on Earth will be incinerated once the temperature reaches 175 Farenheit (and not, apparently, a single degree less). Pidgeon and co-hort Peter Lorre come up with a plan to launch a nuclear missile into the belt and use the explosion to blow out …
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Fantastic Voyage

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 20th, 2007

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Synopsis

An overheated Cold War plot sees a scientist, crucial to American interests, felled by a blood clot. The only way of saving his life consists in shrinking a submarine and specialist crew to microscopic size and injecting them into the his body. They must make their way up the circulatory system to the brain and there destroy the clot. But on top of all the hazards they encounter in the body, there is also a saboteur aboard.

Who could this saboteur be? No way it’s heroic Stephen Boy…
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Shooter

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 20th, 2007

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Shooter is closely based on Point of Impact, an excellent novel by thriller writer Stephen Hunter. I read the book in the late 90’s, and enjoyed it. A lot. When I began seeing trailers for this film last year, you can bet I was excited at the prospect of seeing Bob Lee Swagger come to life on the big screen, even if it had to be “Marky” Mark Wahlberg in the role.

The film updates Hunter’s story to present day, shifting Vietnam to Iraq and villains to mercenary pawns of thinly veiled Dubya coho…
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Black Snake Moan

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 16th, 2007

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Watching the trailers for Black Snake Moan, I recall thinking it was going to drum up some outrageous controversy. I mean, the only thing we really knew about the film was that a big, scary black man chains up a half-dressed white girl in his home. Not exactly a wholesome image.

It’s a southern gothic parable, starring Samuel L. Jackson (Shaft) as Lazarus, a God-fearing man whose wife just left him for his own brother, and Christina Ricci (Sleepy Hollow) as Rae, a broken young woman wh…
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Hustler, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 16th, 2007

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I’m kicking myself. Martin Scorcese’s The Color of Money has long been a favourite of mine, but for some reason I never knew it was a sequel to The Hustler, a film 25 years older and three times better.

Starring a young Paul Newman (Road to Perdition) in a role that earned him his second Oscar nomination, The Hustler is about a cocky pool player hustling his way to the top. When “Fast Eddie” Felson (Newman) challenges undefeated straight-pool champ Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason,…
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Frighteners, The (HD DVD)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 13th, 2007

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Peter Jackson’s the Frighteners is a 1996 comedy/horror film starring Michael J. Fox. It follows the story of a physic investigator/ deactivate who is in league with the very sprits he is supposed to be exorcising. For the first half hour, the film is mostly comedy, with good work by Chi McBride as Cyrus, the ghost of a black man from the 70’s, complete with a huge afro. The other ghosts are less noteworthy and merely amusing, such as R. Lee Ermey as a ghostly version of his character from Full Metal Jacket. T…
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Hard Easy, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 11th, 2007

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Not all heist films are created equal. The Hard Easy is a poor man’s Ocean’s Whatever. Number. While that might appear more often than not a knock on the film, that would not be so in this case. Actually I rather liked the film, more for its nuances. The first thing that impressed me was the cast. This isn’t the gaggle of A listers found in the Ocean films. These are still some hard working craftsmen. Just because this isn’t as hyped or financed to the hilt doesn’t take anything away from the performances. It might…
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Tex Avery’s Droopy (The Complete Theatrical Collection)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 10th, 2007

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Synopsis

Hello, all you happy people. Growing up, many people of my generation when turning to classic cartoons turned to Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse or even Popeye. I wasn’t normal (who would have guessed?). I found my cartoon home when I wasn’t watching Transformers or He-Man in the old Tex Avery cartoons of yesteryear. My favorite character was Droopy, the little dog with the deadpan wit and a penchant for outsmarting the big bad Wolf or Spike/Butch the bulldog. Tex was fa…
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Miss Potter

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 10th, 2007

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Where was I when Miss Potter was in theatres last year? I don’t recall hearing much about it, and that’s a shame. This is one of the most charming, infectiously light-hearted films I’ve seen in long while.

It’s the story of Beatrix Potter (Renée Zellweger, Chicago), the 19th century British creator of the famous Peter Rabbit children’s stories. When we first meet Beatrix, she’s an unmarried woman in her early thirties, lugging her portfolio of paintings and a story to potential publishers.
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Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Adventures Of (Extra Frills Edition)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 10th, 2007

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Synopsis

One of my favorite movies of all time is Rocky Horror Picture Show. My favorite character of that movie is Dr. Frank-N-Furter who is just a sweet transvestite transexual from Transylvania. So when I got Priscilla Queen of the Desert to review which had two cross dressers and a trannie and a grand helping of humor to boot, I was hoping it would become one of my favorite movies as well. The story behind Priscilla is that Tick Belrose (drag name: Mitzi) …
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Revenge (Unrated Director’s Cut)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 8th, 2007

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Tony Scott’s controversial thriller, Revenge, is based rather loosely on a 1979 novella written by Jim Harrison for Esquire Magazine. I say loosely because the source material is quite short and was necessarily expanded for a feature length film. I never saw the 1990 theatrical release of the film, but research shows it did rather poorly. What I know of the difference between this cut and the original comes from Tony Scott’s commentary, which I’ll discuss in the audio portion of this review. I do know the changes m…
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Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 8th, 2007

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There’s a heat-wave in January, and dozens of meteorites are falling from the sky. The plane carrying a princess explodes, but the princess has somehow survived, though she has no memory of her former self and believes herself to be Venusian, come to warn humanity of impending calamity. In due course, this calamity arrives as one of the meteorites transforms into King Ghidorah. Earth will be destroyed unless Mothra manages to convince Godzilla and Rodan to stop fighting each other and instead take on King Ghidorah.
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Invasion of Astro-Monster

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 8th, 2007

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A mysterious new planet is discovered, and an expedition there discovers a civilization under threat from King Ghidorah. The inhabitants of Planet X ask to transport Godzilla and Rodan to their home for help. Earth agrees, and at first it seems that all has gone well, as Godzilla sends Ghidorah packing. But then it turns out that the Xians are actually invaders, and plan to use all three monsters to subjugate Earth.

If you thought Godzilla grabbing at his butt after being zapped by Ghidorah in Ghidorah, …
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Cowboys, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 7th, 2007

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Synopsis

When all his cowhands desert him to take part in a gold rush, John Wayne is left with no alternative but hire a group of schoolboys, between the ages of 9 and 15, to work for him on a long and dangerous cattle drive. Along with all the usual hazards of such a journey, they are also being stalked by Bruce Dern and his band of rustlers.

What a peculiar concoction. All the expected western conventions are present, but most of the cast is a half or a third of the age one would generall…
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Donnie Brasco

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 7th, 2007

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Pacino and Depp in a mob drama about an undercover fed and his unknowing Mafioso mentor? Fuggedaboudit.

Donnie Brasco is based on the true story of F.B.I. agent Joe Pistone (Johnny Depp, Blow), who spent six successful years undercover in the New York Mafia, as one Donnie Brasco. The film opens with Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino, Heat), an aging made man, connecting with Donnie about a diamond ring. Donnie’s cover is he’s in the jewelry “business”, and Lefty wants to unload a ring some guy …
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Primeval

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 6th, 2007

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The opening credits are a frantic run of images that is pretty hard to actually watch. The segment is made worse by the constantly changing images and strobe light f/x. At first you get the idea you’re in for just another horror film made in the modern deluge of images style. Fortunately this is not a portent of things to come. With a little patience, you’re safely beyond these trappings and find yourself in a rather good film. If you’re able to follow this montage, you’ll be introduced to the bloody history of Gus…
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