Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2019
Steve McQueen has established himself as a rather talented director. 12 Years A Slave was one of the better films of 2013 and one of the few times I happened to agree with the Oscars’ choice for Best Picture. When he tackled the heist format, I expected something unique, and I wasn't at all disappointed. McQueen managed to put a clever spin on a tired genre and provide us with a superior and inspired cast. It wasn't all completely his idea, of course. The film is based on a Canadian miniseries that goes back to the 1980's. That doesn't mean he hasn't found a way to imprint the material with his own style and bold choices. There's a lot to love about Widows, but I have pretty low expectations for this film at the box office. More on that later. Let's get down to it, shall we?
Harry Rawlings (Neeson) is a career criminal. His wife Veronica (Davis) knows where the money comes from, but she's willing to feign a great deal of ignorance to the fact, because she has become used to the comfortable style in which they live. But it all comes crumbling down when Harry's latest heist appears to go horribly wrong and Harry perishes in an explosive encounter with the police along with his entire crew. Now Veronica is feeling the grief that comes with the death of a spouse, but there's more to deal with than that. The man Harry and his crew took down was a gangster by the name of Jamal Manning (Henry), who has taken a dip into politics. He's going up against the corrupt Jack Mulligan (Farrell), who is running to take his father's alderman seat. Manning's $2 million war chest was Harry's target, and the money appears to have been destroyed in the explosion that took down the crew. Now Manning has gone to Veronica and has given her one month to refund his money.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 12th, 2019
"Is this the real life or is this just fantasy?"
I think even Queen's biggest fans might have trouble distinguishing between the two in the Freddie Mercury/Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. And that's absolutely OK. If you look at the film's trailers, the movie looks less like a bio-film and more like a celebration, and that's exactly the kind of experience you're going to have from beginning to end. I'm sure that a lot of film and Queen fans shared more than a little skepticism over the project. I know that I certainly did. But all of that magically disappeared when the first trailer hit the internet and we all watched in amazement as actor Rami Malek appears to be channeling the manic spirit of Queen front man Freddie Mercury down to the smallest detail. Suddenly I believed that everything was going to be OK. But just as our hopes and expectations were about to hit the ceiling, the film started gathering controversy after controversy like a snowball rolling down a steep hill in the winter. Everyone already had an opinion before the film was even finished. For months the web has been filled with issue after issue, and it all seemed to threaten the buzz we all got from the trailers. We're going to talk about those issues, to be sure. If you let any of that filtercrap keep you from checking out Bohemian Rhapsody, you're going to be missing the next best thing to actually seeing Freddie and the boys live in concert. Since that's not going to happen, this is where you want to be.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 8th, 2019
When Robert Redford first announced that The Old Man and the Gun was going to be the last film he was going to be acting in, it became a film that shot to the top of my must-see list. Since that announcement he’s backed off on his comment, but if this were his last film, this would be one heck of a way to close out an amazing career. What writer and director David Lowery has delivered here is sort of a love letter to all of Redford’s greatest hits, and by the time the credits end, well, you simply know you’ve watched something special. It’s a film from another era, when special FX didn’t come out of a camera and cinema just was different. Most of all this film reminded me why Redford will always remain a cinematic icon, but what was missing here is the void Paul Newman left behind. This would have been a perfect film for them to both be in and ride off into the sunset together, and it’s a reminder of how many greats we have lost and those other greats who may not have passed, but it seems Hollywood just doesn’t seem to have a place for anymore.
The film is mostly a true story based on the criminal Forrest Tucker (Redford), who has spent his life in and out of prison. He’s been incarcerated 18 times, and each of those times he’s managed to find a way to escape. But the film isn’t about his entire life, but instead about when his criminal life may be coming to an end. When he meets Jewel (Sissy Spacek), he’s actually on the run after a bank heist, and he pulls over on the highway to help her when he sees her car is broken down. Of course it seems this is just a tactic to throw the cops off his tail, but the more he talks with Jewe,l you can’t be sure if that twinkle in his eye is part of the con or if he is sweet on the woman.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 7th, 2019
Bigger is not always better, and more is not always better. If the holiday season release of Dr. Seuss's The Grinch is a testament to anything, it is that those two ideas are absolutely true. The Grinch has everything that the 1966 How The Grinch Stole Christmas could never have hoped to have had. The film delivers on some of the best computer-generated animation that Hollywood studio money can buy. It had a $75-million budget. It will get a wide release with millions of more dollars put into a global marketing campaign. And it will make a ton of money. After all, the Grinch is the modern age Scrooge from Dickens' classic story. These are the kind of stories that are timeless and popular. Still, there's one thing this film doesn't have over the 1966 television short, and that is that its heart is two sizes too small.
We all know the story. The Grinch (Cumberbatch) lives high atop Mount Crumpet. He's a rather grouchy old soul, and he lives in isolation from the Whos, who live appropriately enough down in Whoville. He lives alone with his dog Max, who is the model of man's... Grinch's best friend. He manages to tolerate the bright and happy Whos from a distance except when Christmas rolls around every year. It is then that the singing and celebration get entirely out of control. So imagine his surprise when he discovers that the mayor has issued a decree to make Christmas three times bigger. For the Grinch, that can only mean three times louder. So he devises a plan to steal Christmas from the happy citizens and assure himself a nice and peaceful December 25th.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on February 6th, 2019
This was the big surprise during the 2018 Super Bowl halftime show; that this film that would be immediately available on Netflix after the game. As you can imagine, this was pretty significant for me, as I only had a vague knowledge of the film due to its limited promotion until this event. How apropos it is that this film be released around the same time of as the 2019 Super Bowl. Part of the Cloverfield Universe and armed with basically a who’s who of international talent, I can say that The Cloverfield Paradox is among my favorite of the movie franchise, based predominantly on the performances of the cast. The plot of the film tends to be a bit heavy on the science, which may make it difficult to follow for those who aren’t that well-versed with that subject.
Set in 2028, the Earth is suffering a global energy crisis, and countries are close to going to war over the remaining energy reserves. In an attempt to resolve the crisis, the space agencies of the world have band together to form a coalition force on a space station to test a particle accelerator to create an unlimited power source. After two years of failed attempts, tensions between the countries’ representatives begin to grow and accusations of sabotage are lobbied against one another, mainly at German physicist Ernst Schmidt (Daniel Bruhl, Captain America: Civil War).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 23rd, 2019
"That's one small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind."
July 20th, 1969. If you were alive and even somewhat old enough to be aware of your surroundings, you likely still remember that date. There are many such dates in history; unfortunately so many of them revolve around tragic events like 9-ll or the attack on Pearl Harbor. But on that night I was eight years old, and I know exactly where I was. I was watching Walter Cronkite on television as he brought us the first landing on the surface of the moon. Today that's a bittersweet memory. For an 8-year-old boy it was a promise that has remained unfulfilled. If you had told that 8-year-old who just saw humans walking on the moon that 50 years later we would have gone no further, he would have been dumbfounded. If you told him that not only would we go no further but that we would stop going to the moon in just a few short years, he would have been devastated. I can only imagine what that first man on the moon thought about it all so many years later. The truth is that Neil Armstrong never traded on his celebrity. He kept mostly to himself for the rest of his life, and perhaps the only tragedy larger than our abandonment of the pursuit he risked his life for is that we know so little about the man whose name lives with the likes of Columbus. He's almost a forgotten hero. That's why First Man is such an important film that almost lives up to that legacy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 17th, 2019
"I always knew he'd come back. In this town, Michael Myers is a myth. He's the Boogeyman. A ghost story to scare kids. But this Boogeyman is real. An evil like his never stops; it just grows older. Darker. More determined. Forty years ago, he came to my home to kill. He killed my friends, and now he's back to finish what he started, with me. The one person who's ready to stop him."
I was 17 years old when John Carpenter released The Shape, aka Michael Myers, on the world in 1978. It was a milestone film. Of course we didn't know we were watching something that would become so culturally huge. We were the target audience. Teens who were looking for some extra thrill in our films. These so-called slasher films became great escapes of fantasy to bring a date along. For a late-teen, there's no better way to spend an evening with a date than a film that might have her jump right into your lap. Great times. But the reason Halloween stands out from the crowded genre is because John Carpenter knew something about anticipation. He knew how to build towards a scare. And he understood how to use music, shadow, and pacing to truly immerse his audience into a film. I didn't watch Halloween in 1978. I experienced Halloween in 1978.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on January 16th, 2019
These days when the studios are cutting together trailers to promote their upcoming films, I feel one of the number one complaints people have is that the trailer gives too much away, so why bother shelling out the cash to see it on the big screen? When it comes to the trailer for Bad times at the El Royale, it gives you a glimpse at what is to come, but the result is something clever and ambitious. Unfortunately, it feels a bit too familiar. This is the second feature film from writer and director Drew Goddard, who first made a splash onto the screen with his hit film Cabin in the Woods. While I enjoyed his first romp that played with many of horror’s stereotypes, I still felt the film fell a bit flat. Unfortunately, though I enjoyed this fun little noir film he’s put together, I feel it too falls a bit flat, but mostly this is due to its 140-minute runtime.
The film opens up with a great sequence, where we get to watch as a man comes into a motel room and goes through the process of burying a bag beneath the floorboards. It’s a long static shot that nicely sets the tone for the film we’re about to watch, and with the nice little twist at the end of the scene, we’re ready to jump into this film. Sadly, as we are introduced to visitors at the El Royale motel, things get a bit long-winded, as it seems the sequence of just having the characters checking into their rooms will never end. It works as setting a tone and introducing us to characters, but the problem is we spent all this time with character development just to discover no one seems to be who they claim to be. I’m all for having twists, but this sequence just goes on for too long, and unfortunately that’s pretty much how each sequence plays out, each clever one stretching on for a bit too long. This is where I understand where people draw their comparisons to Quentin Tarantino, only Tarantino can make long talky sequences crackle with humor, dread, and cool all at once, and Goddard just can’t pull it off.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 22nd, 2018
"Predators don't just sit around making hats out of rib cages. They conquered space."
In 1987 Predator became somewhat of a milestone film for many reasons. The movie would anchor a franchise, thanks mostly to a wonderfully original Stan Winston creature design and the performance of Kevin Peter Hall under the suit. Both Winston and Hall have since passed, but the alien hunter that they created together is still going strong. The film also featured two stars who would later go on to become governors of their states. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jessie Ventura made their mark in politics. The film also featured Rocky's Carl Weathers. It also featured Shane Black in a small role that might not have contributed to the blossoming franchise then, but he has made his own impact by writing and directing the latest installment of that franchise The Predator.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by John Delia on December 20th, 2018
Children’s fairy tales have taken a new drift with the film The House with a Clock in Its Walls. Packed with exciting action adventure, the movie, based on the book by John Bellairs, envisions the story with an incredible amount of CGI. You could almost call the film animated, but that’s a good thing here as things go bump in the night, magic forms the basis, and solving the mystery becomes the prominent focus for older youngsters. Orphaned due to a car crash that took his parents, young Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) gets invited to live at his Uncle Jonathan’s (Jack Black) magical mansion. He’s a bit fearful of the old house with its grand stairway and many mysterious rooms, but Lewis sort of likes the flamboyance of the magician-turned-warlock. There he’s introduced to Jonathan’s neighbor and best friend, Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett), who assures Jonathan that he will enjoy living with his uncle.
Uncle Jonathan has only one rule for Lewis: he mustn’t open a special cupboard, ever. Things go well for Lewis until it’s time he attend the local middle school. There he’s the odd man out, as cliques have formed between the boys long before he came there. Surprises abound in his new life, and when he helps Tarby (Sunny Suljic), one of the school kids running for class president, he feels he’s finally made a friend. But things are not what they seem to be, and it leads to Lewis breaking the one rule he had promised he wouldn’t.
