Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 2nd, 2011
Every generation has had its Christmas classics, films that have become as much a part of the holiday family traditions as Christmas trees and candy canes. For me it has been the more modern A Christmas Story with ol’ Carl Kolchak himself, Darren McGavin. Kids today have taken more of a shine to even more recent films, but for more than one generation, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Since 1947 the film became a seasonal fixture in neighborhood movie houses across the fruited plain. In the 1970’s the film temporarily fell into the public domain and was played relentlessly on local television stations as each holiday came and went. Unfortunately, these were usually prints in horrible condition, so that scratches and splice marks became a part of the experience, not to mention ads for department stores touting their early bird specials. It is with that experience that I as did most from my generation become acquainted with Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey. When the home video market began to bloom with VHS in the mid 1980’s a better print resurfaced, so that the experience improved dramatically, along with the loss of those commercials. Of course, this new resource of home entertainment created a fight for the rights to the film to once again be restored to a single owner. It ended up being the film’s score that would allow the rights to be enforced once again. The crappy television prints disappeared, and by the early 1990’s efforts to restore the film began.
These restoration efforts invariably turned to the controversial subject of colorization. If anyone remembers Ted Turner’s push to colorize RKO films, including King Kong, you will also remember how bad those films looked. The color was an added texture of hue covering the picture so that the subject’s textures and subtleties were obliterated. It was almost as if some child decided to finger paint all over the negative. There was nothing magical or at all realistic about the process. It’s A Wonderful Life has been colorized no less than three times. In both 1986 and 1989 the film got the colorized treatment, both failures. Now in 2007 It’s A Wonderful Life has been colorized by a new process developed by Legend Films. This new process allows films to be colorized naturally, retaining all of the detail and texture of the original print. These are the guys who are working with legendary Ray Harryhausen to colorize and restore many of his classics. The new process uses a 16-bit grayscale which offers over 64,000 shades of just gray. The process, called “Photo-Real”, can reproduce HD quality pictures with stunning life-like color. I was a very cynical skeptic of the process and was prepared to rip this color print to shreds in my review. I was blown away by how natural the color looks. You will be hard pressed to believe this wasn’t an original color print. Not only are the colors realistic, but the print retains the particular color palette of the 1940’s, so that the film still looks like one from the correct era. I know you’ve seen incredibly bad colorization before, and it likely has made you unwilling to even give this one a chance, but you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on November 2nd, 2011
“I might be wrong, but I'm guessing you know something that I don't.”
First off, this is not the 2011 Sucker Punch directed by Zack Snyder. This was shot in 2008, but released in 2011 under the name Sucker Punch just months after Snyder’s action fantasy. I can only imagine this was done to capitalize on confused DVD renters and buyers.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on November 2nd, 2011
Everybody needs a little help in their life but many are afraid to ask for it. Perhaps they need to know how to ask for a raise, or perhaps help with their geometry homework. One does not exactly gain knowledge of how to ask out a beautiful redhead supermodel unless they get a little help from somewhere. But I digress. Today, we explore the life of Laura who apparently needs a little help when her cheating husband dies right in front of her. Things are not as easy as they seem.
Laura (played by Jenna Fischer) is a dental assistant. Behind is a very noisy macaw outside the window who constantly repeats “Rinse Please”. He is supposed to be soothing. She talks to the patient and tells him about her husband and how he flosses with the extra waxy floss and how that is not good for him. Laura obsesses a bit about the fact that her husband ignores her and the patient soon wonders where the exit sign is at.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 1st, 2011
His troops defeated and massacred, General Pang (Jet Li) staggers away from the battlefield, more dead than alive. After a brief by intense overnight encounter with a mysterious Lian (Xu Jinglei), he falls in with bandits headed up by Er Hu (Andy Lau) and Wu Yang (Takeshi Kaneshiro). He finds a renewed purpose in life with this group, and forges the band into a formidable fighting force, one that will play an ever greater role in shaping the conflicts that are dividing China. But the fellowship he forms with his blood brothers has a fatal flaw: as fate would have it, Lian is promised to Er Hu. Betrayal and tragedy lurk in the wings.
First, the positives: this is a very handsome production, with a visual sweep that is appropriately epic. The battle scenes are expertly staged, whether these be small-scale skirmishes or grand campaigns. These are spectacular, exciting moments in the film. The characters and their story, however, are far less interesting. The love between Pang and Lian is difficult to empathize with – we don't really understand why these two are obsessed with each other, and must take it on faith that they are. All of which makes it difficult to care about the relationship, and thus its consequences are more irritating than tragic. And while Pang's internal conflicts are sometimes compelling, Lian's characterization is so perfunctory that she comes across as little more than venal, misogynist caricature. In the end, then, the film seems to drag on longer than its 113 minutes, as one finds one's eyes glazing over between the battle scenes. This is a beautiful movie, but an uninvolving one.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on October 31st, 2011
“In a blaze of blood, bones, and body parts, the vivacious young girl was instantly reduced to a tossed human salad... a salad that police are still trying to gather up... a salad that was once named Elizabeth.”
Ah, there is nothing that can bring an exploitation movie alive like the unhinged imagination of Frank Henenlotter. Frankenhooker is another love letter to the seedy side of a New York City from a long-gone era. It is a cult film extraordinaire.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 30th, 2011
The Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) has made a tidy living preaching the Gospel and working his specialty: exorcisms. But he has lost his faith and, along with it, his willingness to fleece the gullible. He does, however, acknowledge that an exorcism can prove psychologically beneficial if the recipient believes in the ceremony. All that said, Marcus wants out of the business, but he takes on One Last Case, and a film crew tags along with him to the backwoods (where else?), where the devout Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) is convinced that his daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) is possessed. Marcus slips into his routine, but soon discovers that there is is much more afoot here than he could have imagined.
The first half or so of The Last Exorcism is not without interest. It does, in some ways, handle the faith-vs-reason question more interestingly than The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and it does a credible job of gradually building suspense. But as we approach the climax, the cracks in the found-footage conceit begin to show, and the resolution blasts straight past “frightening” and into “ridiculous” and makes nonsense of the entire mockumentary premise. Maybe it’s time to retire what is rapidly becoming a tiresome cliché. In the end, then, the film is a misfire, but kudos to Ashley Bell for her disturbing physical performance – she does all the back-breaking double-jointed shenanigans without the benefit of special effects.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on October 29th, 2011
“Do you want to paaarrrty!”
If one loves zombies, one loves The Return of the Living Dead. This wonderful, unofficial sequel to Night of the Living Dead seamlessly combined horror and comedy in a way that has rarely been achieved. I would say the only other movie which did that as well was An American Werewolf in London. I had often heard stories in interviews about the insane experience making this movie was, but never knew the whole story. Or should I say stories?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 29th, 2011
Season 2 of the Tyler Perry-created series continues misadventures of Leroy Brown (David Mann), who, last season, opened up a seniors’ residence. This season has all the characters firmly in place, and the stage is set for no end of misguided schemes and misunderstandings, all of which conclude with lessons learned and heartstrings tugged.
If the above sounds a little generic, that’s because so is the series, and furthermore, I’m referring to an archaic quality to this series’ generic nature. Put another way, this is an unapologetic (though it should be deeply ashamed) throwback to situation comedy’s dismal era of the 1980s. The performances broad, unfunny caricatures, all squealing yelps and bugging eyes. The laugh track comes in on every other line, underscoring just how desperately unfunny the dialogue is. As for the plots, I cry mercy. Brown hopes to get rich marketing his family’s barbecue sauce, Brown becomes an over-demanding patient after being grazed by a bullet, Brown wins twenty bucks in a lottery and becomes a gambling fiend, and so on and so on and so forth. Storylines that would creak even if the main character were named Ralph Kramden, overlaid with thudding sanctimony and Real Social Issues.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 28th, 2011
Ken Burns has achieved a rare feat in the world of filmmaking: he makes clean, concise, uncontroversial documentaries and yet has somehow become a household name, or as close as any documentarian can get in this society. It also depends, I suppose, on the ratio your household's television is tuned in to PBS compared to, say, Spike TV. Burns has made his name making huge, sweeping films that take in gigantic aspects of American history and culture, like The Civil War, Jazz, and my personal favourite, Baseball. His latest documentary, which he co-directed with Lynn Novick, ranks right up there with his best work. Prohibition is vast, covering a huge time period in American history, contains tons of detail, and still manages to be focussed, concise, and tremendously entertaining.
The first part, A Nation of Drunkards, starts its story before the Civil War. It sets the scene by painting a picture of a nation obsessed with alcohol. Saloons are such an integral part of the landscape that huge numbers of the working class and immigrant labourers were giving up most of their pay buying liquor. Spousal and child abuse was rampant, and Temperance Unions grew out of the need to protect and shelter women and children from abuse and neglect as much (or more) than they did out of religious zealotry.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 28th, 2011
In the world of Marvel comics Captain America was indeed the first Avenger, and as the full title implies we're going quite a way into the past to create this hero. But the first shall be last, and it's certainly true on this long road to the May 2012 release of The Avengers on film. You see, this is the final piece to the puzzle for that great assembly of heroes. We've had two chances to witness both The Hulk and Iron Man and a recent film introduction to Thor. Other characters like Black Widow and Hawk Eye came as guests on the other films. But the introductions are now complete.
Steve Rogers (Evans) is a 98-pound weakling. He's the guy you see in the comics all right. The guy getting sand kicked in his face on those old Charles Atlas ads we used to read on the comic back pages. But he has a heart of solid gold, and he doesn't like bullies. So when Hitler and his boys begin to goosestep over Europe, he tries desperately to enlist. Each time he's shot down and denied his chance to contribute to the cause. That is, until he comes under the eye of Professor Abraham Erskin (Tucci). He has been tasked with reproducing a Nazi experiment to create a supersoldier. He admires Steve's heart and decides to make him the test subject. The experiment works, and Steve receives super strength and agility. But he can't seem to win the respect of Colonel Phillips (Jones). And when Erskin is killed in a Nazi invasion, not even a brave performance to get the bad guy convinces Phillips to give him a chance. He remarks: "I was promised an Army, and all I got is you". But the papers noticed his performance, and soon the country was shouting for Captain America.
![A Little Help [Blu-ray] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/a-little-help-blu-ray-large.jpg)
