Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on May 20th, 2025
“Good evening, everybody! My name is Robbie Williams. This is my band, and for the next two hours, YOUR ASS IS MINE!”
I was really intrigued with the film’s concept. After all, every year musical biopics are released, and they can sometimes seem like they are all following the same blueprint, which, needless to say, makes it rather difficult for them to stand out. Better Man bucks that trend by instead of opting for an actor with a passing resemblance to the subject, rather depicting the subject as a chimpanzee, which was inspired by Robbie Williams’ own perception of himself as a "performing monkey". If that doesn’t make this film stand out, I don’t know what will. This also has the added benefit of allowing Williams to voice the character himself, which in my opinion adds a layer of authenticity to this biopic. After all, who better to tell their life story than the person themself?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 30th, 2025
"I'm not feeling motivated to be valuable to anyone but myself."
When Alex Kurtzman took over the television side of Star Trek, he started with Star Trek: Discovery. Michelle Yeoh played one of the better characters on the series. She started as a ship's captain and was soon killed off. But then the ship heads into the Mirror Universe, where Yeoh's character of Philippa Georgiou wasn't a Starfleet officer. She was the emperor of the Terran Empire. She ended up on our side of the looking glass and had some rather interesting stories. It turns out that almost from the beginning Yeoh had some ideas of a spin-off she hoped to do. That series was Section 31, which involved a black-ops agency within the Federation, and she thought our kind of evil emperor might be a perfect fit.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 4th, 2025
"We work 364 days a year because on that one day we deliver presents to several billion individual domiciles across 37 time zones without ever being detected by a single human being. We prep, we rehearse every moment, every stop down to the last chimney. So yeah, it's a lot of work."
At first glance, it would appear that the crew for Red One is made up of folks who have had long associations with Dwayne Johnson, from Director Jack Kasdan, who also directed two of the Jumanji films, to writer Chris Morgan, who wrote many of The Fast And Furious films including the Johnson-led spinoff Hobbs And Shaw. He also wrote the last Shazam film, which led to Johnson's spinoff black hole Black Adam. It's a working environment friendly to the actor.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on December 17th, 2024
I saw this film as an opportunity to gauge whether a movie could hold my two-year-old son’s attention. This is something I am particularly interested in, because it would demonstrate that my baby boy is finally ready for a theatrical experience. Unfortunately, he is not quite there yet. He watched for a bit, but then he eventually wandered off. Ironically, I didn’t notice his absence at first, as I was too focused on the movie. Based on the New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, The Wild Robot stars Lupita Nyong’o as Roz, a ROZZUM unit 7134 robot that becomes shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling. Joining Nyong’o is Pedro Pascal in his animated movie debut
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 22nd, 2024
"Not everybody can become United States Marines. We want the best and we settled for nothing but the best, because there is nothing prouder, nothing finer, nothing standing as straight as a United States Marine. Now they got the Air Force, they got the Navy, they got the Army, they got the Coast Guard - and if you want to join them, go ahead. They got plenty of room. But if you want a challenge, if you want to try something difficult, try to achieve the impossible - try 13 weeks of hell at Parris Island, South Carolina, and find out if you got what it takes, find out if you really are a man, then the Marines might be what you are looking for. Tarawa ... Iwo Jima ... Belleau Wood ... the frozen Chosin Reservoir. First to fight, we have never lost a war. We have always come when our country has called."
Born On The Fourth Of July has been both a controversial film as well as one of Tom Cruise's first breakout roles.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on October 16th, 2024
"It's good to be back."
It’s the little things I supposed. When forced to confront the prospect of your own death, what will you do with the time you have left. Some fight against their own extinction. Some seek help from a higher power. While some cling to the past and seek comfort in their treasured memories. In a Quiet Place: Day One we see a bit of all three. While Day One marks the third installment in the Quiet Place franchise, it serves as the prequel for the series showcasing how the world went silent after sightless aliens with sharp hearing and impenetrable armor plating take over the planet and attack the human population. For me, this is a welcome addition to the franchise because while watching the first two films, one of my recurring thoughts was I would like to see how the world went quiet. Imagine my excitement when I this movie was announced. In my mind, I figured the prequel would continue to follow the Abbott family. However, Day One is comprised of a predominantly new cast, with the exception of Djimon Hounsou, who was introduced in the second film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 26th, 2024
"This is the story of one of America's great unsung heroes. I mean, you've seen him, but you never knew who he was. You've cheered for him and cried for him, and women have wanted to die for him. But did he ever get any credit, or the girl? No! He's what we call the "stuntman", and the reason I'm talking so fondly about him is, well, because it's me, Colt Seavers. Anyway, picture work isn't wall-to-wall employment, so maybe you wonder how a guy keeps his head together. Well, one way is to wait by the phone ... and wait, and wait. The other is to take an occasional job with the court system of the United States of America, where a man is considered innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, sometimes a lot of these people get out of jail on what we call bail, and they'd run like hell ... and that's where I come in. I sometimes pick up rent money trying to find them and bring them back to justice." - Television series open.
Lee Majors performed a pretty solid television hat trick in his television career.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 12th, 2024
"For most of human civilization, we believed that we were Earth's most dominant species. We believed that life could only exist on the surface of the planet. Well, after a certain point of view, you have to wonder what else we were wrong about. In the beginning, Hollow Earth lived in harmony with the surface world. The Titans were the guardians of nature, and the Great Apes became the protectors of humanity. But a great evil threatened the peace. A powerful and ruthless ape desperate to conquer the surface world led his tribe into war against the one they call the Monster Who Ate a Star. The war with the Apes nearly destroyed Godzilla. But after a great battle, he imprisoned the apes in a fiery realm of Hollow Earth. Their false king remains obsessed with reaching the surface. The Iwi call him the Skar King."
That in a nutshell is the plot of the latest Monsterverse film from Legacy and Warner Brothers. It's called Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, and we're told the X is silent. And here I thought it was some kind of a multiplier.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 18th, 2024
"Consider what you are about to do."
I first read Frank Herbert's initial Dune book back in the mid 1970's. I was introduced to one of the most complicated and extraordinary universes of literature I have still ever encountered. It's a masterpiece followed by several more books over the years that have more completely brought this world to life. The material's cinematic journey has been somewhat less captivating and quite a disappointment. The 1984 David Lynch film was a train wreck and quite possibly one of the greatest film failures in history. Since then a lot has changed. Today computer-generated images have progressed to the point that with enough money and artistic expertise a filmmaker can depict anything the mind can conceive. Images have become photorealistic, and the worlds of Herbert's Dune universe can finally be brought to the silver screen with almost no limitations.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on May 3rd, 2024
"The honeybee has always had a special relationship with humanity. A sacred relationship. Why? No bees, no agriculture. No agriculture, no civilization. Our nation is not unlike a beehive, with its complex systems of workers, caretakers, even royalty. If any of the beehive's complex mechanisms are compromised, the hive collapses. Someone, a long time ago, decided that a mechanism was needed to keep our nation safe -- a mechanism outside the chain of command, outside the system. It's one mission -- to keep the system safe. Beekeepers are given all resources, empowered to act on their own judgment. For decades, they have quietly worked to keep the hive safe. That is, until now. It appears that a retired Beekeeper has gone off program, and is acting in what he mistakenly believes is the hive's best interest."
On its surface, The Beekeeper seems to be another mindless action film featuring a retired assassin or skilled operator forced out of retirement to right an injustice. Granted, those themes are central to the overall story; however, in my opinion, the film embraces those themes and provides a measure of excitement and substance to a premise that could have easily become basic.
