Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 7th, 2007
The Force family is not your typical American Brady family. Then again, if they were, they wouldn’t be interesting enough to get their own reality television show. Still, just because you’re interesting doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will want to watch you. John Force is apparently the winningest drag racer in the sport’s history. His wife and three daughters live on his property but in a separate home. His daughters have decided to follow in Daddy Dearest’s track marks and are also circuit race car drivers.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 7th, 2007
The prologue to The Covenant tells us of people with supernatural powers. We're told of how these powerful warlocks and witches were hunted throughout Europe and escaped to the New England colonies in the New World. The information is provided with the contradictions of pseudogrunge music and pages of ancient texts. It doesn't take us long to meet young men, descendants from these immigrant families. We discover them flaunting their powers by jumping off a cliff on the way to a teen party.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 5th, 2007
Three young couples on a road trip leave their turtled vehicle and march through the dark woods, hoping to find the highway again. (Clearly Mensa candidates, each and every one.) They stumble upon an apparently abandoned secret facility, and naturally blunder in. A psychically powered lunatic uses astral projection to do bad things to them. People start to die. No great loss.
Think through this equation for me, will you? Direct-to-video + walking-around-tunnels-plot + Tara Reid = ?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 3rd, 2007
All, the early '90s! I spent my time counting the days until my military service ended by drinking as much beer as possible until I got to the bright red circle on my calendar. But when Martin Lawrence (House Party) pitched an idea for a sitcom with an African American cast, Fox picked up the show and added it to a then-fledging group of shows that balanced themselves between evening soap operas and raunchy family comedies.
Martin tells the story of Martin Payne (Lawrence), successful host of an urban radio station program in Detroit.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 2nd, 2007
The World Cup is unquestionably the greatest sporting event in the world. No other event, sporting or otherwise, pulls nations together like the World Cup does. Once every four years, the whole of the world (save for the majority of the United States) takes a month off to focus their eyes on the efforts of a group of young men to put a white ball into a white net. This film is the story of the 1996 edition of the famed tournament.
This film does a great job of capturing the story of the tournament, while not ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 2nd, 2007
It’s a shame that there aren’t many stand-up comedians around anymore. And the ones that are still around (Chris Rock, Dane Cook) usually only use the medium as a launching pad into a flawed movie or television career that never equals the laugh factor and energy that exists in their stand-up comedy shows.
So along comes Damon Wayans’ Last Stand.
Wayans, in my opinion, was always a talented comedian. His characters on In Living Color made the show a pop-culture hit that rivaled S...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 1st, 2007
Five men wake up in a middle-of-the-desert chemical warehouse. Some of them are tied, some are wounded, and all have no memory of who they are or how they came to be here. They soon discover that they are part of a kidnapping plot, but who is victim and who is kidnapper remains a mystery. What they do know is that the rest of the criminals are on their way back, and if they don’t escape the warehouse, someone is going to die.
Though the opening had me worried this was going to be Saw II with a prestige cast (Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano, etc.), it quickly developed into a tight thriller whose premise made up in niftiness what it lacked in plausibility.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 31st, 2007
Bridget Moynahan is the new stepmother to Peter Weller’s children. 14-year-old Carly Schroeder is not at all pleased with the state of affairs, and just as displeased to be hauled off to Africa for a safari while Weller works on a dam. When their guide goes off-road, they run afoul of a pride of lions. The guide is eaten, the car is disabled, and the lions are circling. Weller mounts a hunt for his missing family, hiring a misanthropic big-game hunter to help.
There are more than a few echoes of Jaws here.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 31st, 2007
Arriving at a small English town, backpacker Christina Ricci is promptly run over by a car. Despite the impressive impact, she seems unharmed, apart from a complete loss of memory. The woman who hit her takes her in, and Ricci promptly bonds with the children, especially the little boy, who, like her, sees scary things at night. Meanwhile, the kids’ father (Stephen Dillane) is investigating a long-buried 1st Century church nearby, whose crucifixion scene is disturbingly out of whack. Ominous hints gather.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 31st, 2007
Romeo and Juliet is a classic tale that has been told and re-told over and over again. It is generally accepted that the definitive film version of Shakespeare's story of lovers' twisted fate is the 1968 version by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli. Rather than attempt to best this effort, more recent film adaptations have decided to modernize the story. Baz Luhrmann tackled it with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio using all the original dialog, but ultra modern wardrobe, sets and music. While some critics myself included) fell in love with this fast paced adaptation, others were appalled.
