Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 6th, 2007
Malcolm McDowell’s second collaboration with director Lindsay Anderson, after their triumph with If..., sees McDowell as an enthusiastic new coffee salesmen sent off to make his company’s fortune in an ever widening area of the Britain. In true picaresque style, he has one strange adventure and encounter after another, each more bizarre than the last, and the whole is intercut with studio performances of Alan Price’s songs that comment on the whole enterprise.
Picaresque narratives are, by their nature, sprawling, episodic tales, and that is certainly true of O Lucky Man, which clocks in at just under three hours. They can, however, also have plots that only appear to be random, but are in fact as tight as wound watch, as is the case with Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. This is less the case with Anderson’s film, which feels considerably more scattershot in approach. The episodes can be amusing, and McDowell is excellent throughout, but the satirical broadsides feel more obvious than pointed. Viewers will likely be divided over how they feel about the same actors (including Ralph Richardson and Helen Mirren) popping up in multiple roles, a convention rarely seen except in theatre. An interestingly messy work.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on December 5th, 2007
The movie of Hudson Hawk was often panned by critics who thought the movie was the worst thing since George Bush Sr moved into office. Look where that has got us! Remember kids, bad presidents only birth worse presidents. Anyhow, Hudson Hawk which was billed as an action comedy and was thought of by many as sloppy, over-inflated movie making that took the cream of bad movie making. Was it a turd that sank like the Titanic?(both the movie and the ship) Was it a lemon like XXX? (both the movie and the scent of Vin Diesel's Mr. Clean head) Actually no. *gasps and shufflings* I know, you expect me to blast it for the steaming pile it is. But when in fact, I enjoyed myself for a solid one hundred minutes. I didn't even need lotion either.
The story starts off with a song. Actually Eddie "Hudson Hawk" Hawkins (played by Bruce Willis) just did a song or term over in Sing-Sing for cat burglary. Now he wants to go straight. However, others in the business have different ideas. Seems there is a plot to steal various items that were in possession of the great Leonardo Da Vinci. The only one they feel that is suited for this job is Hudson Hawk. So, they make an effort to push him in that direction. He does the deed enlisting the help of Tommy Five-Tone (played by Danny Aiello), his old thieving buddy. The first item is a gold horse from Leonardo that is to be put on auction and certified authentic by the Vatican. They make the theft the night before and think they have finished the adventure. But in reality, it's only started. The plot takes off from there until we get to a rising climax where a nun, a CIA group that goes by the name of famous candybars and a recreation of a machine that turns lead into gold all take part.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 5th, 2007
The fat lady has sung, taken her bows and waddled off to the after-party. Gilmore Girls, a show loved by many — and abhorred by some — was canceled in May, leaving fans without a true series finale. Here, in this DVD set, lie the final episodes, created without input from series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who left the show after season six.
This is not a fitting end for our Gilmore Girls, but unless a rumored movie becomes reality, it's all we're going to get. So if you're looking for closure, this ain't the place.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 5th, 2007
Avast ye mates, Jack’s back, and did ye ever doubt the return of Cap’n Jack Sparrow? Johnny Depp once again transforms himself like no other actor in
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 3rd, 2007
A friend that I work with said that if Hollywood ever ran out of creative and original ideas, and that if a studio managed to make a sequel about pirate zombies that lasted three hours long, it would clean up at the box office. But the fact of the matter is that if we survived a nuclear winter, we would be well prepared about what to do when zombies took over the land, because of the prep we had from guys like George Romero. So even though Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later might have presumably sealed the deal when it came to this particular interpretation, someone decided to dredge it up for whatever reason.
The sequel, appropriately titled 28 Weeks Later was written by several Spaniards, including Enrique Lavigne (Sex and Lucia), who also produced the film, and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intact), who directed. After the viral epidemic and the subsequent pronouncement that “all was well” in England, the U.S. led NATO troops helped to clean and repopulate the London area. That is slightly down the line of the film’s opening, which has Don (Robert Carlyle, The Full Monty) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack, Braveheart) separated when some of the infected invade their countryside cottage, and he manages to get away. Flash forward to the period that shares the film’s title, and Don is a key part of the repopulation effort when his children come back to England. But you know how sequels go, through divine effort or circumstance, London becomes infected again and everything goes straight to hell.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 2nd, 2007
What we have here is an average film based on what I'm told is a great little bestseller, The Nanny Diaries. There's a lot of talent at work in this romantic dramedy, with stars like Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation), Laura Linney (Kinsey) and Paul Giamatti (Sideways), and the directing talents of husband-and-wife team Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor), so I expected more.
But are there any disappointments lurking on this widescreen DVD? Read on to find out.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 1st, 2007
Who says horror can’t be the cinema of personal expression? Director Tim Sullivan follows up his comic horror 2001 Maniacs with this heartfelt ghost story. Raviv Ullman plays David, a teenager whose depression and death-fixation following the demise of his older brother prompts his desperate parents to ship him off to an “Attitude Adjustment Camp.” Basically a brutal cross between boot camp and prison, this is a private institution (inspired by actual places) designed to transform any insipient Columbine-copycats. Once there, David must contend not only with the sadistic Captain Kennedy (Diamond Dallas Page) who runs the place, but also with visions of a ghost who clearly wants a buried truth revealed.
There’s more than a touch of The Devil’s Backbone here, what with the ghost-story-in-an-institution premise and the emphatic socio-political overtones. Sullivan isn’t quite Guillermo Del Toro yet – the spookiness is workmanlike but hardly heart-pounding, and many of the adult performances are pitched far too broadly – but there is a seriousness of purpose here that is admirable, a refreshing (and justified) anger, and the teen members of the cast are believably natural.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on November 30th, 2007
I love some Adult Swim. There are some real standouts shown that have fun plots, edgy animation, and a whole lot of outlandish humor. Venture Bros, Robot Chicken and Aqua Teen Hunger Force immediately come to mind. Heck, I've even gave smaller shows like The Boondocks and Metalocalypse a try and liked them on some level. So needless to say, I was interested when I received Squidbillies Volume 1. Twenty episodes staring a Georgia-based hick squid family. How bad could it be?
The story goes something like this. Early Cuyler (voiced by Stuart Daniel Baker) is a backwoods Georgia hick squid (yes, calamari) that has sex with a rather overweight white girl named Krystal. In the process, he robbed a liquor store for cassettes and booze and was caught by the Sheriff. Convicted for 15 years of hard labor, he had no idea that he had got Krystal pregnant. Krystal gave birth to Rusty, a little green squid. Krystal leaves him on Lil's (Early's sister) doorstep where the squid spends the next 15 years. At that point, Rusty finds his dad working on the chain gang and the Sheriff takes pity on the two. He decides to release Early which is where this story really begins. The mis-adventures of Early bringing up his illegitimate child Rusty serve as fodder for the rest of the twenty episodes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 28th, 2007
Have you ever watched a recent Robin Williams film and yearned for the days when the actor wasn’t so full of himself and stealing every scene he was in? Well, you’re out of luck, because there was never such a time for Williams; however, you can journey to a time when at least he was hungry and wasn’t so over the top. OK. Even in the days of Mork and Mindy Williams was never capable of reining himself in. Still, I thought I would look back on these episodes with that warm nostalgic feeling I tend to get and just remember the good times. And yes, there were good times. But the more I watched this third year of Mork and Mindy I was becoming all too aware that in 35 years nothing has changed except that the routine has gotten old. Watching Williams prance around with his silly voices and wide eyed faces might have been fresh in the 1970’s, but honestly, haven’t we all had just a little too much of it by now? A television film about the show didn’t present either of the stars in a very positive light, and perhaps it is that image that has tainted the show for me. Whatever the reason, I just didn’t find this stuff nearly as funny as I did 30 plus years ago. Somebody’s matured, and it wasn’t Robin Williams.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 26th, 2007
In 1988 the original Land Before Time animated feature enjoyed moderate success at the box office. This is the 12th direct to video sequel in what Universal describes as a billion dollar franchise. A lot has changed since the original film. None of the voice actors from the feature remain. The animation is really Saturday morning cartoon quality and has none of the detail work that Don Bluth gave to the first film. It seems these little gems have been coming out about once a year since around 1994.
