Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on December 29th, 2017
“Have you ever heard the legend behind the legend of Ninjago?”
Even though I loved the first two Lego movies, I was completely unfamiliar with the toy company's Ninjago line before I sat down to watch this latest entry in the madcap cartoon franchise. (I wasn't even sure how to pronounce “Ninjago”...and the answer isn't as simple as it seems.) But my unfamiliarity with the source material isn't the reason why I feel The Lego Ninjago movie is the weakest entry in the series so far.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on December 28th, 2017
“Based on real events...mostly.”
Queen Victoria sure knew how to create a frenzy in court. The monarch's close relationship with Scottish servant John Brown following her husband's death caused an uproar in the royal household and inspired the 1997 film Mrs. Brown, starring Judi Dench. Turns out, Victoria and Dench were just getting warmed up! Twenty years later, the actress reprises her regal role in Victoria & Abdul, which chronicles another unique, unconventional, and even more scandalous relationship between royal and commoner.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 11th, 2017
When I was a young boy I loved playing with my toys. We didn't have Transformers in those days, but we did have Major Matt Mason, plastic dinosaurs, Hot Wheels and Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker sets. Yeah, in those days a toy could cause third-degree burns and no one really worried about getting sued. Kind of takes the fun out of being a kid today. You know who else, I bet, loved to play with his toys? Michael Bay. I bet he had the coolest toys in his neighborhood. He probably wasn't the best guy to be friends with, however. He didn't invite the kids over to play with his toys. He likely charged you a nickel to watch him play with them. It's many decades later, and Michael still has the coolest toys on the block. Only now you have to cough up twenty bucks if you want to watch him playing with them. Sadly, that is what the Transformers film franchise has been reduced to. We're all watching the rich kid playing with really cool toys.
That's not to say that Transformers isn't at all entertaining and maybe, just maybe worth the twenty bucks to check out. It's an amusement park ride from beginning to end, and when you see how much Disney or Universal are charging for those these days, it might just be a bargain at that. Just as long as you enter the gates with the understanding that Transformers: Age Of Extinction is going to take you on a thrill ride. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on December 7th, 2017
“Sounds like you don't have a lot of faith in faith.”
You know how sports teams retire the jerseys of their most beloved, outstanding players so that no one can ever wear their number again? Well, we are well past the point where movies about exorcisms need to be hanging from Hollywood's rafters. Simply put, no one has ever come close to doing it as well as William Friedkin did almost 45(!) years ago with his adaptation of The Exorcist. If anything, The Crucifixion is an even more egregious misfire than other head-spinning stabs at the genre because this movie is actually based on an intriguing, horific real-life case.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by John Delia on December 6th, 2017
The Despicable Me series that includes Minions never seems to get tiring as they extend their comedy one more time with Despicable Me 3, opening this weekend. The key to the filmmaker’s success is the handling of the characters and inserting them into the animated movie with a plan in mind. That plan consists of starting with a little comedy involving the Minions, then working into some intense action that leads to a champion who either succeeds or fails. In the meantime there are multiple stories going on with each one targeting certain audience members. Sounds complicated? Well, the best comedy adventure is intricate, and Illumination Studios does that very well.
The lovable characters are back again with a new twist on Gru’s (Steve Carell) employment. It seems that the government has hired him as a partner for Lucy (Kristen Wiig) in the Secret Service following their marriage. Gru, now an agent looking for the bad guys instead of being one himself, seems to have found his goal in life.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on November 29th, 2017
“Cauliflower.”
When Steven Soderbergh announced his retirement from directing films in 2013, it was an announcement that was followed by shock and disappointment for fans and others in the industry. He was a workhorse who managed to deliver a variety of art house titles (The Girlfriend Experience) and then numerous successful blockbusters (Ocean’s 11, 12 & 13) that seemed to always allow him to make films by his own rules. Soderbergh makes his return to film with a heist film that uses West Virginia as its backdrop and NASCAR as its target. It’s familiar subject matter, but it’s the characters that separate this film from the rest of the pack.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 25th, 2017
"All of human history has led to this moment. The irony is we created you. And nature has been punishing us ever since. This is our last stand. And if we lose... it will be a Planet of Apes."
I was always a fan of the original Planet Of The Apes series of films. While they often flirted with a camp style, I was impressed with John Chambers' makeup effects and the performances of Roddy McDowall as both Cornelius and Caesar. Then came the television show, and I was just as enchanted, and that was helped along by McDowall's appearance as a third ape, Galen. The show didn't last a season, and before long the Apes franchise was left in some kind of limbo. Then along came Tim Burton, and I was excited to see what he could do with the material. Could this be the beginning of a new series of films? No, it was horrible, and the franchise suffered another lingering death. I had now given up hope that the Apes would ever return. Then came Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, and I was suddenly enchanted once again. Little did I know that combined with Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes and now War For The Planet Of The Apes, science fiction's greatest trilogy would emerge. Where will they go from here?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 18th, 2017
- “You know what they say...the house always wins.”
- “What if we were the house?”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 13th, 2017
When a film like The Survivalist comes along, you somewhat have an idea what to expect when it’s being marketed as a “dystopian thriller”. I like these kinds of films, but for the most part many of them are just not very good and are just a carbon copy of previous dystopian films that came out prior to it. For years I’ d say the Mad Max series was the gold standard on what you should want to be. Waterworld at least attempted to be Mad Max, but rather than a desert wasteland it went the direction of the high seas. The Survivalist goes another direction; rather than a barren wasteland, or the ocean, it instead plunges deep into the wilderness after society has apparently collapsed and food has become scarce.
The film follows a man who is simply credited as the survivor (Martin McCann), and we see him dragging a body away and dumping it into a shallow grave. It’s an ominous opening that has the viewer questioning if this is a guy we should root for or not, but following this scene we go on to see his daily routine in his boring isolated life. Apparently one of his routines is having a little private time with himself, and the camera has no problem shying away from this. This goes up there as one of the most pointless gratuitous nude scenes I’ve seen at least since the opening sequence of Nocturnal Animals. I’m far from a prude, but I’m a believer that everything we see on the screen should have some meaning to drive the story forward. This instead just became a distraction.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 11th, 2017
“You know, there comes a time when even the greatest leader has gone as far as he can go.”
Winston Churchill was once voted the Greatest Briton Ever, beating out the likes of Princess Diana and William Shakespeare. Although Churchill had a staggering number of accomplishments throughout his long life, he is most closely associated with being Great Britain’s prime minister during World War II. That’s why the notion that Churchill vehemently opposed the D-Day invasion at Normandy in the days leading up to the pivotal battle is a provocative premise for this well-crafted, well-acted movie. The only problem is that it remains unclear whether that was actually true.
