Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 8th, 2004
Angels Don’t Sleep Here is the stuff of crime melodrama: long forgotten murders, revenge, twin brothers, and corrupt public officials. It’s a mild foray into the genre. The film knows the notes but not the music; but the actors, or the instruments, (if we continue the music metaphor) really save the day.
Dana Ashbrook (from Twin Peaks) plays a forensic specialist who returns to an unnamed city to start poking around about his long lost twin brother. The trail leads to a DA (Kelly Rutherford)...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
Sludgers is an aardvark who dreams of being attractive, and of wearing some truly finetrousers. Sludgers also has a terrific sense of rhythm and percussion. Discovered by a caterpillartalent agent, Sludgers is taken to the big city, renamed “Hamilton Mattress,” and is hired to playthe drums behind the scenes while a handsome but untalented bird mimes the gestures. WhenSludgers gets carried away with his drums and almost literally brings the house down, will hislooks stand i...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
After the death of his mother, Elijah Wood is left with his uncle’s family while dad DavidMorse takes off for two weeks to settle their future. Uncle has two children: a little girl and anolder boy Wood’s age: Macaulay Culkin. Behind Culkin’s angelic visage, naturally, lurks thesoul of a devil. Wood suspects the evil, but no one will believe him, and so he is left alone totry to stop the increasingly deadly games his cousin is playing.
Director Joseph P. Ruben made ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
Robert Hays is a rising corporate star at a major brewery. The company, headed by EddieAlbert, has just taken over some smaller competitors. Hays is sent to streamline one of them,which happens to be in his home town. The city mouse hooks up once again with all his oldcountry mouse friends, and sho’ nuff begins to transform, losing the will to be the corporate hitman he was sent to be.
Did anybody ever find this type of comedy funny? Somebody must have. Now it looks...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
M-3D purports to be a parody of MTV, which is hardly likely, given that the film, inits original form, was made in 1976. Actually Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy, this is apainful slog combining aphrodisiac lollipops with extra footage involving ancient Greek soldiersdoing sad Three Stooges routines. No, it makes no sense. No, it isn’t funny. And with obviouscuts to the sex scenes, the waste of your life is complete.
The Playmates is even more resi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
Michael Beach plays Ty Adams, a psychiatrist whose ego and belief in his methods is hardlyshaken by the deaths, after unsuccessful treatment, of his wife and daughter. He arrives at anmental hospital (whose name you should watch for as it blinks past) headed up by a skepticalRonny Cox. Beach will be filmed 24/7 for the purposes of a documentary as he treats a groupof patients over a few weeks. A particular challenge arrives in the person of Eriq La Salle,who claims to be Satan hims...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 6th, 2004
Synopsis
Michael Ironside, in his patented bastard role, is pulling the strings on a secret militaryexperiment in weather control. The test goes wrong, killing the wife of Dale Midkiff and ruiningthe career of pilot Gregor Toerzs. Four years later, an asteroid grazes Earth’s atmosphere, andtriggers a superstorm. If this hurricane isn’t shut down in a matter of hours, it will go critical andrage for centuries. Hauled back in to save the day are Midkiff and Toerzs, now flying a souped-up 747 ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 5th, 2004
Stargate SG-1 suffered a little in its switch to the Sci-Fi Channel. The loss of Michael Shanks was very deeply felt. Jonas wasn’t really a bad character, but it took me a while to get used to him. The guest appearances of Daniel Jackson helped a bit with a couple of pretty good episodes. I felt there might have been too many Earthbound episodes in an obvious effort to curtail the budget. Through most of this season, Anderson had been talking about spending more time back in L.A. with his family. (The show is shot in...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 5th, 2004
Warning: Do not be taken in by the cover of this DVD. With iron gates, murky lighting, and a creepy stone angel, Lush has the appearance of a gothic horror film. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Lush is one of those quirky crime dramas. You know the ones I mean…eccentric characters, a unique soundtrack, off kilter comedy scenes, and a murder plot. The Coen Brothers have made an art out of this kind of film. Lush tries really hard to make inroads into the genre.
The story ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 5th, 2004
So many people believe the “buddy cop” routine started with Lethal Weapon, or maybe Running Scared. Truth be told, Starsky and Hutch was quite a breakout from the cop shows of the time. The studio was picketed for the amount of violence portrayed, which by today’s standards wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.
This is typical 70’s from the film stock to the wardrobe. The unique Ford Grand Torino was so popular that Ford ended up manufacturing a limited number of the replicas. David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser had s...
