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. While I was initially disappointed, I got over it quickly as new blood provides a new opportunity to expand the story rather than restricting yourself. Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, and Alex Wolff represent our new additions to the franchise, and they don’t disappoint.
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. Over three decades he starred in three iconic television shows that defined him for three successive generations. In the 1960's he was Heath Barkley on the TV western The Big Valley. Like the Cartwrights in the more popular series Bonanza, the Barkleys faced all of the elements of the Wild West, and Lee Majors was there for it all. From 1965 to 1969 he was in 112 episodes of the hit show. Then the 1970's arrived, which was the decade in which I became acquainted with Majors as Steve Austin, "a man barely alive" until a secret government organization made him "better than he was" as The Six Million Dollar Man. He was "reassembled with a bionic arm, eye, and two legs. It made him "stronger ... faster ..." I spent many a summer afternoon running in slow motion and making that "chichichi" sound as a young boy. The Six Million Dollar Man ran from 1974 to 1978 and went 99 episodes, a couple of spin-offs, and several television movies. The show has been kicked around in Hollywood for decades with several attempts to make it a film franchise, often updated to The Six Billion Dollar Man. I guess a million bucks just doesn't go as far as it used to. Now it takes $126 million to put Majors' third series on the big screen. That happens to be the role of Hollywood stuntman-turned-action-hero Colt Seavers, and it ran from 1981 to 1986 and another 112 episodes. If you're keeping score at home, that's an amazing 323 + episodes of television over three decades. And now it's Colt who beats Steve and Heath to the big screen in The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch and starring Ryan Gosling in Majors' Colt Seaver role and Emily Blunt as his co-star, playing Jody Moreno, originally played by Heather Thomas. But is this a movie that audiences are going to fall for?
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. But is that enough? In 2021 Denis Villeneuve gave us the first film in an expected trilogy. Would he be able to capture literature lightning in a bottle in the same way Peter Jackson brought to life the Middle Earth worlds of Tolkien? It was a bit of a strange time. The world was hit with a pandemic that brought our lives to a standstill, and people were finally looking to be coaxed back into the multiplexes ... and they came. Dune delivered an exciting new experience, but it wasn't quite up to par in my book. The film was far too involved in exposition. The characters talked a lot more than they did ... anything. So I was a bit unimpressed even in the face of the technological marvel that the film certainly was. Now it's Part Two, and the chances of the trilogy getting a conclusion depends heavily on what happens here. So what does happen here?
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. For me, I’d put the film up there with another one of my favorite Jason Statham movies, Homefront. And yes, it is not lost on me that both films feature a retired character who is forced to come out of retirement and take action. For me, in both films Statham’s characters have intrigue. Specifically in The Beekeeper, Statham’s character background is merely hinted at. We know that he was an elite operative. We know his organization operated independently and with a measure of impunity. Beyond that, not much is known about the group. It is left open for interpretation. It also doesn’t hurt that the cast also includes the likes of Jeremy Irons, Josh Hutcherson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, and Phylicia Rashad.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 25th, 2024
by Joshua Nuances
"I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying - we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn't get a f$#@&% job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it."
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on December 14th, 2023
“Let’s go get the s**t kicked out of us by love.”
It’s hard for me to accept that Love Actually is really 20 years old already. I remember being a projectionist when this came out and splicing the film together back when movies were actually shown on film. When I first saw the film, it was after hours in the movie theater, and we had to screen the movies the day before release to make sure it was put together properly, and I was with my girlfriend at the time, so it was just us in the auditorium, and from that moment on I was in love with this film. I’ve seen the film well over a dozen times through different phases of my life, and each experience it hits a little differently, but I still come away from this film feeling a bit schmaltzy and in the Christmas spirit. For those of you who have missed out on this classic and are wondering just what is so great about this sentimental British love fest, the movie is written and directed by Richard Curtis; this would be his first time directing, but he had previously made a name for himself after writing Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones Diary. These were a trio of films that American audiences were ravenous about and basically set up Love Actually to become an instant success, but I don’t think anyone was ready for just how charming and heartwarming this film would actually turn out to be.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 11th, 2023
As I have mentioned numerous times, I am not a fan of horror movies. In particular, my number one pet peeve is jump scares. Now, for certain scary movies, I'll allow one good jump scare; it almost goes with the territory. But if the director has to use one every fifteen minutes, my heart does not need that much of a workout, and I am going to avoid it very quickly. This is mostly reserved for American movies, quite often on their fifth sequel. However, Korean horror flicks know how not to use the jump scare and instead focus on making things as gruesome and disturbing as humanly possible. Or inhumanly, perhaps. Today, we take on a modern horror classic in the 2016 film, The Wailing as it makes its way on 4K UHD disc. Let's take a look and see if the ol' ticker can handle this one.
We get a Bible passage to start out this movie, it's from Luke 24:37-39 and basically describes the resurrection of Jesus. The important part of this passage is two fold, in that the people had doubts that he was resurrected and that he resurrected physically as opposed to as a spirit. Let's continue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 9th, 2023
"Space...the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before!"
Since the relaunch of Star Trek on television via the Paramount+ streaming service, I must admit to being a little underwhelmed. It's truly bad when Alex Kurtzman makes me pine for the days of Rick Berman. There have been some pretty good moments in the various new Trek shows. Picard has shown promise and has improved with a third season that looks very exciting. Lower Decks is just too campy for my taste, and Discovery has so many ups and downs I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster. So along comes Strange New Worlds, and this is the Star Trek I've been waiting for these last decades.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 5th, 2023
Most people, when asked to provide the best Korean film in modern times, would probably answer Oldboy or Parasite. Others might respond Memories of Murder or Train to Busan. Maybe A Tale of Two Sisters or The Wailing. I, on the other hand, always respond with the same title, The Man from Nowhere, which to this point in the US has only been released on Blu-ray from Well Go. That Blu-ray was also the victim of a bunch of discs from Well Go that came away with a quick dose of rot, infecting my copy as well as many others. For the last couple of years, I've been working with a bootleg, which I'm not exactly proud of, but felt necessary because I loved this film so much. However, that changed, as Well Go has released a 4Kcopy of this sensational film (and also of The Wailing, which I will get to later in the week). I thankfully received it a little bit earlier than expected and took it for a spin. Let's see how it does.
Kim Chi-Gon (played by Kim Tae-hoon) lights a cigarette and calls his squad into position. The crew of police detectives and squad members wake up and talk about their plan. They have been at this stakeout for two months and can't afford to mess this up.
