Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 20th, 2010
"Let me know when the Governor gets here."
Well, he's in the house, and I'm going to get a lot of razzing for this review of Last Action Hero. The person who thought I should see a shrink for looking forward to the next Saw film is going to be calling for my outright commitment to an institution dedicated to covering walls with nice padding so we won't hurt ourselves. I know this film is generally considered "bad" by critics and moviegoers alike. It swept the Razzies in 1993 and has since been only the kind of film 10 year olds would really like to see. Me, I've always simply loved this film. From the first time I saw it at the box office, I was hooked. It was one of the first new laserdiscs I bought back in the day, and I watched the heck out of that disc. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I love this movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 19th, 2010
"Nature did not intend for you to survive out here. But here you are, and here I am to teach you how not to die..."
Whiteout has taken about as long and hard a road getting made as the characters in the film find themselves on stuck in the Antarctic. It began life as a crude graphic novel written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Steve Lieber. It developed a rather loyal cult following and was conceived as a film at around 2002. At one point it was intended as the launching point for a franchise featuring the federal marshal played by Kate Beckinsale. She might have been producer Joel Silver's first choice to play the character, as he has been heard to say. But the part was originally created for Reese Witherspoon. There were countless troubles developing a script, and studio support came and went throughout the period. Even when the film was ready to go with a street date, some troubles caused the release itself to delay its opening. Usually all of these development troubles spell disaster for a film in the end. Whiteout is no exception to that steadfast rule. The film scored a disastrous $10 million at the box and only $1 million foreign on a $35 million budget, and disappeared faster than your footprints in an Arctic blizzard.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on January 14th, 2010
"Fighting soldiers from the sky. Fearless men who jump and die. Men who mean just what they say, the brave men of the Green Beret. Silver wings upon their chest. These are men, America's best. One hundred men will test today. But only three win the Green Beret."
The Ballad Of The Green Beret has become one of America's most famous marching songs. It has been heavily parodied. The words were written by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler while he was in the hospital recuperating from a leg wound he received in Vietnam. The music was composed by Robin Moore, who went on to pen the book The Green Berets, on which this film was based.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 30th, 2009
Believe it or not, Robert Langdon did not make his debut in the Da Vinci Code novel. He was actually introduced in an earlier, but far less known novel, Angels & Demons. When Hollywood came a knockin’ they weren’t interested in that earlier work. The Da Vinci Code was tearing up the literary world, and Hollywood wanted a piece of that overstuffed pie. That meant a strange series of circumstances for Dan Brown and Robert Langdon. In print, The Da Vinci Code is the sequel to Angels & Demons, but in the cinema Angels & Demons is now the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. You might consider it a trivial point, but it’s not. If you’ve read The Da Vinci Code, you know that this isn’t Langdon’s first dance with a murder mystery. He’s much more comfortable around the cops and corpses than the film version appears, by necessity. This first film requires him to be quite the novice and led around the ins and outs by the other characters. That creates an almost new character for fans of the novel. Add that to the incredibly complicated world the novel explores, and you are bound to disappoint fans of the original work. And disappoint fans, the film did. But, the film was still a financial success, breaking the necessary $200 million mark. So, even amid some harsh criticism, Howard and the gang now tackle the actual first novel in Brown’s Langdon series.
Robert Langdon (Hanks) has been called in by the Vatican to help solve a crisis. The Pope has died, and the Cardinal College is about to enter Conclave to select the next Holy Father. A radical group using the name of the ancient Illuminati has kidnapped the top four cardinals in line for the job. They have also stolen a canister of antimatter from the CERN collider labs. They plan to use the antimatter to fulfill an ancient threat against the Vatican to destroy it in light. With little time before the kidnapped cardinals are scheduled to be killed one every hour, Langdon must locate the churches where they are to be executed using clues from the Vatican Archives and the taped threat by the radical group. All the while the Vatican is trying to select a leader. If Langdon can’t solve the clues in time, the entire Vatican City will be destroyed in the largest blast the world has yet seen.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 27th, 2009
James Gray’s Two Lovers revolves around the troubled Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix). Leonard has moved back into his childhood home to recover from his recent break up. In quick succession, two women enter Leonard’s life: Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), an entertaining and peculiar neighbor who transcends Leonard’s world and Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) a classy, traditional woman who is the daughter of a businessman attempting to purchase Leonard’s family business. Leonard becomes confused between desire and love and the story unfolds from there.
The performances in this film are what resonate with the audience the most. Joaquin Phoenix crafts his character from a dark place and displays great emotion in this role. His complicated past slowly unravels throughout the film and audiences become more and more aware of his emotional instability. Phoenix is truly a great performer; it is unfortunate that he has taken a recent ‘break’ from acting. Both of the female leads are strong as well. Vinessa Shaw’s performance is passionate and powerful. Her scenes with Phoenix are both romantic and realistic as well. Viewers can definitely identify with the dialogue between the two of them. Gwyneth Paltrow is not breaking new ground with her performance. However, her scenes are all remarkably interesting. Her character is deeply conflicted by her current relationship and the growing relationship with Leonard.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 18th, 2009
“Sometime in the 23rd Century the survivors of war, overpopulation, and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything. There’s just one catch. Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of Carousel.”
Logan’s Run started life as a pretty successful novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The source material was really quite dark and more like Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner than the 1976 film based on the work. For some reason it was decided that this dark reflection of the future wasn’t as marketable. So, the decision was made to make this a very bright film with only hints at the nefarious realities of this future world.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 11th, 2009
“The perpetrator is an expert marksman. He’s an expert in explosives and tactics. Gentlemen, play this one by the numbers. Maintain your fields of fire… We’re blind and he’s seeing in 20/20… We have not contained him. He’s contained himself.”
“He” is Samuel L Jackson in the 1998 action thriller The Negotiator. Jackson stars as Danny Roman. He’s a Chicago Metro hostage negotiator. As the film opens we get to see him in action saving a little girl from a tight hostage situation. He’s obviously good at his job and he has the respect and admiration of his fellow officers and commanders. Roman’s partner Nathan Roenick (Guilfoyle) has gotten a hot tip from an informant. Someone inside the department has been skimming money from the union’s retirement fund. He’s about to blow the case wide open when he’s killed. Roman discovers his friend and partner just as other cops arrive to see him leaning over the dead body. He becomes the prime suspect not only in his partner’s death but the missing money as well. Someone has gone to great lengths to frame him for the crimes. When evidence of his guilt is found at his house, not even Roman’s friends believe he’s innocent. With everyone turning their backs on him, Roman goes to Inspector Niebaum (Walsh), an internal affairs cop that Roenick mentioned as a part of the embezzlement scam. The confrontation quickly gets out of control, and before anyone knows what’s happened, Roman has taken the internal affairs department hostage. He demands that Lt. Chris Sabian (Spacey), another hostage negotiator that Roman trusts, be put in charge of the operation. Sabian takes over, but he’s dealing with a perp who knows all of the rules of engagement. To make matters worse, the book doesn’t cover this kind of negotiation. Roman isn’t asking for money and a plane full of fuel at the airport. He wants someone to get to the bottom of the frame job, or else.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on September 18th, 2009
This film is like the Ice Storm in warmer weather. Another portrait of burgeoning suburbia in the 1970s as an island from the rest of civilization instead of an off-shoot. Two families, who are long time friends, coworkers, neighbours and sometime secret lovers, are going through major changes as the children are just about grown, and the parents are falling apart to affairs, tensions and the appearance of Lyme disease in one household.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 12th, 2009
“Four turtles. Four brothers genetically reborn in the sewers of New York. Named after the great Renaissance masters and trained as ninjas. They battled many creatures and foes before defeating their arch enemy, The Shredder. But, now a greater evil is poised to destroy their brotherhood. An evil born 3000 years ago.”
What started as a low budget comic has grown into quite a sensation. The Turtles are everywhere. There are cartoons, books, comics, movies, and thousands of toys. They’ve been translated into just about every language in the world. The 1980’s and 1990’s were alive with Turtle power. With yet another film now in the works, the Turtles are about to make a comeback. While the characters might not have started with the 80’s cartoon series, that’s where it made its greatest leap in popularity. The show ran for over a decade, a rare record for cartoon shows of the era. Then came the inevitable movies. Three of them in all during the live action phase. The Turtles were part actor and part animatronics Jim Henson creation ala the Disney/ABC Dinosaurs television series. The fourth was a recent (2007) CGI film. All four are collected here for the first time in high definition Blu-ray in a rather righteous collection. The case is a pizza box, and each of the four discs resemble different kinds of pizza. There’s also a bit of swag to be found in the spacious box. You get character cards featuring shots from the live action films, a signed black and white sketch, a comic book detailing events from the first film, and a “radical” beanie for your head. It may be a bit corny and somewhat impractical, but it beats those crazy eco cases that are getting way too popular in the industry.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2009
Who doesn’t remember the original Witch Mountain films from Disney back in the 1970’s. They were clever family films. They were camp, to be sure. But, most of us remember them fondly, if not as particularly outstanding films. While Disney’s reimagining of the franchise doesn’t have a great deal in common with those earlier films, you can pretty much describe the reaction as being spot on. Race To Witch Mountain isn’t going to be breaking any box office records, but it is the kind of film you get a pretty warm feeling for, and like its predecessors, you’ll end up remembering it with fondness.
A flying saucer crashes in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas. The crash just so happens to coincide with the arrival of a huge UFO convention in Sin City. The Defense Department has secured the crash site. They quickly discover that the ship’s passengers have slipped through their perimeter. Now it’s a race to find the extraterrestrials before they can hatch whatever nefarious plan has brought them to our planet. The investigation is spearheaded by Henry Burke (Hinds). Meanwhile Vegas cabdriver Jack Bruno (Johnson) is busy ferrying the “nut jobs” to the UFO convention. Bruno was once a gifted race car driver as well as excelling in demotion derby driving. He had once worked a stint as a mob driver and has gotten out of the business. But, as we all know by now, you don’t just retire from the mob. So, there are some goons after him to “persuade” him to return to the job. All of a sudden a pair of teens appears in his car loaded with a huge wad of cash and a mysterious electronic device. The teens request to be taken to a remote location that appears to be being directed by the unknown gizmo. When his cab is assaulted by a convoy of black SUV’s, Bruno thinks it’s his old mob heavies, but it’s Burke and his ET hunters after the kids, who happen to be the escaped aliens. For the rest of the film Bruno and his unusual passengers, Sara (Robb) and Seth (Ludwig) try to locate a device that contains information that will stop an impending attack on the Earth. The kids must find the device, get their ship out of Burke’s hands, and return to their own planet before an all out invasion is launched at our planet. All the while the group is being pursued by the mob, Burke’s boys, and an alien bounty hunter with a ton of weapons at its disposal. They have two weapons of their own. First, the kids have some remarkable powers. Sara can move objects with her mind and talk to animals, and Seth can manipulate the density of his molecular structure, thus enabling him to pass through solid objects or withstand a head-on collision by an oil tanker. The second weapon is Dr. Alex Friedman (Gugino), an attractive scientist who speaks at these UFO conventions for a living, who happened to be one of Bruno’s earlier “nut jobs”. Together they race against time to save the planet, interacting with some peculiar characters along the way.
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![Whiteout [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/whiteout-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Green Berets [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-green-berets-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Angels & Demons [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/angels-demons-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![Logan's Run [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/logans-run-blu-ray-large.jpg)
![The Negotiator [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/the-negotiator-blu-ray-large.jpg)
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![Race to Witch Mountain (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/race-to-witch-mountain-blu-raydvd-large.jpg)
