Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 20th, 2005
Synopsis
The superbly obnoxious Ben Stiller plans to have his Globo Gym take over and destroy the building that houses the apathetic Vince Vaughn’s Average Joe’s. Unless Vaughn and his friends raise $50,000.00 before the end of the month, all will be lost. Their only hope is to win a dodgeball championship. They’re no damn good, but help comes in the form of psychotic ex-dodgeball champ Rip Torn and Christine Taylor as an accountant with a killer throw.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 16th, 2005
I will be honest and admit that Insurrection is one of my least favorite Trek films. I rank it down there with the first film due to its many flaws. While it has always been Star Trek’s style to engage in open social commentary, I don’t believe it usually needs to hit you over the head so blatantly. The social message here is too cut and dry. There is not the necessary moral middle-ground to create honest conflict. This is also Brent Spiner’s worst performance. The inside jokes are too cute and forced to appeal to any but the most dedicated fans, and I believe even they might feel insulted. The Picard/Data duet while two shuttles engage in a dogfight is just too much for my gag reflex to handle. Jonathan Frakes, after turning in such an impressive directorial display on First Contact, plays it safe for the entire film. I’ve heard fellow Trek fans say this would have been a better series episode. I disagree. This would have been a poor episode as well. Rich Berman puts one more bullet in the gun that killed Star Trek.
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 13th, 2005
Synopsis
The degree to which any of these films is or was “controversial” varies quite a bit, but the claim can certainly be made that all seven of these films dealt with pertinent social issues of their times. Some are still quite relevant today, and all are well worth watching.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 9th, 2005
Synopsis
Christian Bale plays Patrick Bateman, Wall Street dealer and psychotic. He, like his peers, is completely obsessed with surfaces, narcissistic beyond all measure, and about as deep as a sheet of mylar (and his extended exegesis on the music of Huey Lewis and the News doesn’t help make him seem smarter, despite what he thinks). He rapes and murders with impunity, but after all, isn’t that the 80s ethic in a nutshell?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 2nd, 2005
Synopsis
Steve McQueen is Doc McCoy, master thief. Having just been denied parole, he asks wife Ali McGraw to make a bargain with political fixer Ben Johnson to get him out. This she does, but what McQueen doesn’t realize is that the deal not only involved McQueen’s participation in a bank job, but also McGraw sleeping with Johnson. In short order, the robbery goes wrong, and husband and wife are on the run.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 31st, 2005
We now have the full I, Robot experience with this new “All Access Collector’s Edition”. We have more a lot more supplements but, unfortunately, the movie is not improved. It’s still a fun couple of hours though. I, Robot follows the story of Will Smith (and his character name, if that matters, is Detective Spooner) as he tries to solve the murder of a robotics scientist (James Cromwell). Smith must overcome his prejudice against robots, as he tries to solve the case.
There are a lot of “c...ol” scenes, and I really enjoyed the universe created by Alex Proyas. One of Proyas’ previous films, Dark City, is a startling work of imagination. The special effects are very modern, but the story is as creaky as an old rocking chair. We’ve seen all this before: the chases, the one note characterizations, the one-liners, the Will Smith-ism. This is ain’t Bad Boys. The movie is caught between an intelligent futuristic tale and a Will Smith vehicle. The two cancel each other out. What’s left is a watered down film that’s only “suggested” by Isaac Asimov’s original work. Fans didn’t seem to mind though. The excellent box office summer receipts proved that Will Smith is still a force to be reckoned with. I enjoyed I, Robot, but I took it for what it was…and not as it should be.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 29th, 2005
Guilt’s a bitch. It can drive you down the road to insanity, and turn your life upside-down. The Machinist is an interesting story that leaves you guessing right until the end. The story moves a little slow, but the performances are impressive and the cumulative tale is well done. Watching Christian Bale portray lead character Trevor Reznik is both impressive and disturbing. Bale looks like a shell of himself; shedding an astounding 63 pounds to play this role. Bale is so thin that you can see every rib ...nd every vertebra of his spine. Comparing his appearance in this film to his role in American Psycho will blow you away.
The story of The Machinist centers around the progressively dwindling life of Trevor Reznik (Bale). Resnik is an insomniac who claims to have not slept in a full year. He works in a machine shop, has a hooker that he regulars, and nightly visits the same waitress at an airport-based coffee shop. Everyday brings with it a new paranoia. When he mysteriously finds a “hangman” sticky-note on his refrigerator, Resnik starts a journey to discover who is playing this sick game with him, or if it is just his sleep-starved mind playing tricks on him. A hallucination of a mysterious co-worker causing a workplace accident drives Resnik to evaluate everyone around him. The more he digs, the more crazy everything seems… it is real, or is it all in his head?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 27th, 2005
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 27th, 2005
Fascination is a potboiler without a pot. It loosely follows the plot of Hamlet. Adam Garcia plays Scott Doherty, a spoiled young artiste who sulks more than Anakin Skywalker. Scott's father dies (played by James Naughton) under mysterious circumstances, and his wife (played by the "still a hotty" Jacqueline Bisset") returns from a cruise with a new beau (Stuart Wilson). Scott smells something fishy, and with the help of a new stepsister/lover (Alice Evans), he tries to get to the bottom of this crime. So...nds fascinating? Not really.
Everything about Fascination is not fascinating. It's only interesting in the sense of how much worse can it get! For a thriller, it moves like molasses. For eroticism, it's more awkward than sexy. As far as underwater sex scenes go, I'll take the one in Showgirls any day. The performances aren't the saving grace either. Garcia is one note, Bisset tries her bisset, and Alice Evans deserves an award for one of the strangest performances I've ever seen. You can watch the film in a director's cut or a theatrical cut. The director's cut is a bit shorter, so I might go for that one.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 25th, 2005
East Meets West
I don’t know a great deal about Korean cinema, but I imagine that H must have been a milestone in the Korean film industry – a distinctly Korean interpretation of a Western tradition. H is a dark psychological murder mystery, thriller, and suspense film, best compared to The Silence of the Lambs, or Kiss the Girls - not what one expects from the other side of the Pacific. There’s no martial arts to be found, and no running through trees, and pseudo-mystical mum...o-jumbo is just as Western as Se7en. Never once does a sword fight break out, and no wise, old monastic sages are ever consulted.
