Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2006
The 1970’s was the decade of the muscle car. Films like Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run raced into theatres, riding on the thrills of speed. If you were a young man, then you were right there ridin’ shotgun. Kicking butt and takin’ names. The Last American Hero makes the unfortunate attempt to combine this “need for speed” with a typical “against all odds” story. The result is a dead end street.
Junior Jackson (Bridges) is the son of a bootlegger with a real talent for running roadblocks. Wh...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 21st, 2006
David Lynch's Dune has an extremely odd past, which some might say is just how David Lynch likes it. This cult classic came out in 1984 to the joy of sci-fi fans everywhere. Some time after the film's release, the studio tried to get Lynch to take all of the extra footage that he had shot for the film, and re-cut the product into an extended TV-appropriate film. Lynch refused, but since the studio already owned the footage, they went ahead and cut it together themselves. The result is an "Alan Smithee" directe...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 20th, 2006
Synopsis
Dennis Quaid is a widower Coast Guard Admiral with eight kids. He runs his household with (of course) military precision. His career has taken him back to his home town, where he runs into high school sweetheart Rene Russo. She is a widow (no divorces in THIS movie, thank you very much) with ten kids (four biological, the rest adopted), and her household is a joyful chaos of artistic self-actualization. Quaid and Russo fall in love and marry immediately, and then announce to their kids that ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 18th, 2006
In the era we live in, the eventuality of a movie about a soldier’s experience in 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) ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 7th, 2006
Pity the younger generations that will forever associate the character of Inspector Clouseau with Steve Martin. Peter Sellers might not have been a “wild and crazy guy,” but he was nothing short of brilliant as a comedic actor. Sellers never relied on over the top grandstanding to make a point. You never needed to be hit over the head with the jokes. He displayed an altogether different, more subdued, flamboyance than the modern comic. You didn’t need to be told when to laugh. The problem was more often being able to stop.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 3rd, 2006
Harry Belafonte stars as an ambitious young politician, who refuses to fear the white majority that holds a foothold over his island home, in Island in the Sun. Along the way, he strikes up a romance with Joan Fontaine. Incidentally, we are supposed to believe Ms. Fontaine’s character is younger than Belafonte’s, despite the fact that she looks ten years older. Dorothy Dandridge also stars as a pharmacy clerk, who falls in love with the white aide to the island’s governor. If this seems like it’s all over the ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 1st, 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...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 1st, 2006
If you aren’t familiar with what Roll Bounce is, you will be pleasantly surprised by some of the tricks this small coming-of-age film pulls out of its hat. I expected horrendous acting, a poorly written script, and a story that cared more about racially motivated laughs than honesty. What I got was just the opposite. First of all, the film’s success begins and ends with a top-drawer screenplay that perfectly captures teen angst as well as the fears and traumas of growing up. Not something one would expect abou...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 31st, 2006
Synopsis
Sarah Miles is the spoiled young daughter of Leo McKern. In the troubled Ireland of 1916, she falls in love with, and marries, middle-aged schoolteacher Robert Mitchum. Their marriage hits troubled waters when she begins a passionate affair with a young English officer, which is a politically delicate move, to say the least.
Ach and begorra, but ‘tis a wee long, the story is, to be sure. This simple love triangle is stretched out over a mind-boggling 206 minutes. Everything is Oiri...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 28th, 2006
Oliver Stone has developed a well-deserved reputation for injecting conspiracy tales into his films. A veteran of Vietnam, he has developed quite a case of drug-induced paranoia over the years. While this probably makes him a real drag at parties, it makes for some really interesting films... especially when said films are based on actual events. Audiences can drive themselves crazy trying to separate fact-from-speculation-from-rumor-from-flat-out-fiction, and that kind of thing is great fun for somebody like me.
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