Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 2nd, 2006
I will be honest and inform you that I have yet to like a video game based film since 1995’s Mortal Kombat. It seems that no matter how closely they try to follow the story based on the game, the director always fails. One of the more famous director’s in the video-game to movie based series is director Uwe Boll, who has brought us The House of the Dead and the recent Bloodrayne, These movies, as the popular consensus agrees, were extremely awful. They lacked anything redeeming, despite the orig...nal source material being pretty good. When I heard of a film being made on the game series Doom, I began to worry as I figured it would follow the typical trend of terrible video-game based movies. Can Doom reverse the horrible trend of terrible video-game based movies? Read on to find out
Doom begins with a fly in shot over the red planet Mars. We move in more and see the Olduvai Research Station, which is a remote scientific facility on Mars. And that is the last scene we see of the planet Mars. For a movie based on a game that takes place on the red planet Mars, we never fully see the planet except for the opening scene. Maybe this is me wanting what I saw in the game series. But every film director has to take a few creative liberties right? Well, I am very disappointed to report to that director Andrzej Bartkowiak and Universal seem to have taken a few too many creative liberties when making this film as the film is nothing like the game at all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 2nd, 2006
Synopsis
Over 400 years in the future, the remnants of humanity live in one last city. This is under the total control of the Goodchild regime. Innocents are constantly disappearing. The government is fought by the Monican resistance, and super-assassin Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) is sent to assassinate supreme leader Trevor Goodchild. At the moment of her victory, however, she hesitates, and it soon becomes apparent that nothing is as she though it was.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006
When The Passion of the Christ was released on DVD several years ago, I didn't buy it, opting instead to wait for the strongly-rumored special edition release to come. Here we are almost three years later, and no such release is being discussed. The funny thing is, The Big Question is essentially an extra for that non-existent DVD package. This documentary, which discusses questions of faith, was shot on the set of The Passion of the Christ, amongst the actors and artisans that were gathered from all parts of the planet for the production. This is a wonderful idea, and it makes for a great documentary featurette to support the film, but I just don't feel that there is enough here for a stand-alone release.
Various people from various cultural and religious backgrounds were asked the same set of questions about who God is and how He (or She, as the film asks) relates to us, and us to Him. The resulting comments serve as something of a glorified "man on the street" view of religion. While there were some religious scholars included, the end result is a muddled collection of opinions that really don't go very far toward answering many of the questions raised by the film's directors.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 29th, 2006
In the era we live in, the eventuality of a movie about war was going to come, whether or not we wanted to see the film. Since the war in Iraq is such a hot button topic with a majority of people, regardless if you were for the war or against the war, Universal thought this would be the perfect moment to capture our interest in war. Enter director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and stars Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) and Academy-Award winning Actor Jamie Foxx (Ray) and you know you have a m...vie that will pique the average person’s curiousity. But was Jarhead made too soon? Would people really want to see what our soliders are going through? Let’s find out shall we?
Jarhead is based on the 2003 memoirs of Anthony Swofford who is portrayed by Gyllenhaal. Swofford served in the first Gulf War. The film is obviously about a war, but what makes the film amazing is that it is a war film that rises way, way above the concept of a war to tell an intriguing story of exhaustion, boredom, lonliness, obession and drama.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 25th, 2006
Battle For The Planet Of The Apes was the last of the original Apes films. It has been far too frequently maligned. While I will admit that some of the high concepts are a little too undisguised, there was still some life left in the franchise. Of course, the novelty had worn off by now. It didn’t help that the films’ budgets kept falling as Fox was looking for cheaper ways to sell the same ideas. “Battle” was a violent film, but it was really a film about peace and the violent rite of passage often necessary to ac...ieve any long-term tranquility.
Roddy McDowell was, in fact, Planet Of The Apes. He appeared in four of the original films as well as the short-lived television series. The series was a victim not of its viewership, but rather a strong anti-violence movement aimed at the television industry at the time. While it was no more violent than most shows, it seemed to draw the most fire. Whether playing Cornelius in the first film, Caesar in the final two, or Galen in the series, McDowell had an uncanny ability to bring emotion and strength of character to the Apes make-up. He brought a realistic animation to a risky business. The Apes films might have easily become farces with laughable characters that no one took seriously enough to listen to the social commentary being offered. With the help of brilliant makeup artist Chambers, these characters were real. Paul Williams was a surprising cast choice. Better known for writing syrupy love songs, the singer did a fine job as the cynical brain trust, Virgil. Claude Akins brings the gruffness of gorilla Aldo exactly what it needs. The cast is pretty solid.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 25th, 2006
Clint Eastwood’s film Million Dollar Baby tells the story of an aging fighter trainer named Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) who eventually decides to train a hillbilly girl (Swank) who thinks she can be a boxer. Dunn runs a gym in the Los Angeles area. One day a girl named Maggie Fitzgerald, from Missouri, approaches Dunn informing him that she has been working at a waitress job since the age of 13. She tells Dunn that boxing for her is the only way she can escape this type of job her life has thrown at her.
< ...>Dunn, naturally, doesn’t want to give this girl a chance because there is no way he will train a girl. Dunn’s former boxer Scrap (Morgan Freeman) convinces Dunn to give this girl a chance because she knew growing up that she would be nothing but trash if not given any chances. Scrap serves as the film’s narrator, similar to his role in The Shawshank Redemption. His voice is very flat and subdued usually putting no effect on what he is ever saying. He talks about how the girl walked into the gym, how she refused to ever leave and how Frankie decided to finally train her. Scrap, to some, may just serve as a person who tells us what is going on, but he is more. Scrap serves as an individual breathing life into his own when he is not focusing on Maggie or Frankie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 24th, 2006
Steven Spielberg has always been a surefire type of director to go to if you want a high quality film. I was first introduced to Spielberg’s work via his groundbreaking film Jaws. Since then, Spielberg has continued to churn out hit after hit from 1993’s Schindler’s List which was awarded a Best Picture Oscar to his most recent film 2005’s Munich. Both of these particular films have gained numerous political and critical praise for the messages and raw power they both contained via the film’s int...nse imagery and story. I’ve always viewed Schindler’s List as my favorite film simply because of the impact the film had on me. After watching Spielberg’s latest masterpiece Munich, I can now say that the film is high up on my list nearly dethroning Schindler’s List.
Munich opens with the 1972 events that took place at the Munich Olympics where terrorists took hostages and killed them for the simple goal of wanting peace for their homeland. The event is re-enacted in near heart-stopping moments due the raw silent scenery that Spielberg creates. We then move to a room where we meet Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) sitting with her cabinet. She utters the line “Forget peace for now.” We learn that Meir has decided to establish a secret Israeli revenge squad. What’s the goal of this squad? Why simply to kill the men who were responsible for these heinous attacks. The question that was eventually raised, long after the events in the film, was why kill these men? Men who will simply be replaced by more and more powerful and intense men who will want to do even more harm.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 22nd, 2006
A critically acclaimed Adam Sandler film? I’d never would I have thought I’d see the day. I guess if The Truman Show is one of Jim Carrey’s dramatic stabs, then the star of Big Daddy can give a romantic comedy a try. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), using a story from the “Strange But True” category, combined with adding a touching tenderness to his characters, wrapped up with Sandler, playing a quiet, soft spoken man prone to fits of blind rage.
Sander is Barry ...gan, a novelty toilet plunger salesman with 7 sisters, who don’t hesitate in bullying him at every opportunity. Barry has times where he has periods of anger that cause him to destroy things, such as a sliding glass door at one of his sister’s houses. One morning, while at work, Barry discovers a harmonium that is left abandoned outside of the warehouse where he works. The harmonium becomes a metaphor for Barry’s pursuit to reclaim his life, as he periodically tries to play it through the film. Barry soon meets Lena (Emily Watson, Breaking the Waves) who drops her car off at the mechanic next to Barry’s office, but her intent is to meet him. Barry is attracted to Lena, and his awkwardness around her is cute to see, as if he’s a 13 year old trying to figure out what to do and say. Barry’s conflict in the movie is when he calls a phone sex company. He’s very awkward, and even confused, when talking with the girl on the other line. She decides to extort money from him, and enlists the help of Dean (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote), the owner of the company, and 3 crazed brothers.Through this, Barry is inspired by Lena, and when he finds out about a business trip she has to take to Hawaii, he takes advantage of a loophole in a Healthy Choice Promotional Campaign, which allows him to collect over 1 million frequent flyer miles from pudding purchases. He’s unable to redeem the miles in time, but he goes to meet her anyway.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 21st, 2006
With HD-DVD gaining a lot of press and discussion over the past few months, many wondered what would be the initial title for release that would help showcase the power that Toshiba wanted to showcase. Some figured a big blockbuster like The Star Wars Trilogy could be released. (wouldn’t that be nice?) But with Fox being exclusive to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD’s main competition, no one could figure that a moderately successful film like 2003’s The Last Samurai would ever be thought of as a player seller. Well, af...er jumping through the disc, one can easily understand why Warner Brother’s decided to chose this title for the main release.
The Last Samurai stars Tom Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren, who is a decorated Civil War hero. Algren, as of late, has fallen into a world of drunkenness and performing in side shows selling rifles. He wants a sort of redemption from the world he lives in now so he can eventually return to his famed world of before. It turns out that the Japanese government is looking for a military leader to train their new Imperial Army. Japan, who was trying to move into the world of modernization, needed an army to fight against the rising world of the samurai who wanted to preserve the countries sense of the old. Algren accepts the job for the main reason of the nice pay.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 19th, 2006
Mel Gibson stars as reluctant guerilla fighter Benjamin Martin in this story of courage, passion, and war, which dramatizes elements from the American Revolution into a gripping fictional narrative that will manipulate every emotion you have until its rousing finale. Martin endures great personal tragedies at the hands of the British - in particular, the despicable Colonel William Tavington (played with the vile gusto of a demon from Hell by Jason Isaacs). Tavington has already killed one of Martin's sons, and it is ...enjamin's concern for his other - as well as his insatiable lust for revenge - that drives him to take up arms for the Continentals and lead them into battle... and perhaps, freedom.
Whether it's tugging at heart strings, or planting viewers right in the middle of primitive warfare (no type of warfare is capable of being anything but), The Patriot maintains control of its audience, and only lets go at the final credits. Be forewarned, if you've never seen it. There will be times when you want to stop the film for fear of what might happen to Benjamin at Tavington's brutal hands. Then, other moments are "damn the torpedoes," kill that expletive-expletive, if it's the last thing you ever do. The point is, it will involve you the way few films can, and will actually have a physical effect on you - of some kind - by the time it reaches its conclusion.
![Doom [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/doom-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Jarhead [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/jarhead-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![Million Dollar Baby [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/million-dollar-baby-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
![The Last Samurai [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-last-samurai-hd-dvd-large.jpg)
