DVD

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2003

Synopsis

Irascible Scottish scientist James Mason discovers evidence that an explorer made thejourney of the title. Determined to do likewise, Mason sets off for Iceland (there to descend avolcanic crater that will lead to the centre of the Earth) in the company of Pat Boone (whoseaccent must be heard to be believed). Along the way, they are joined by feisty widow ArleneDahl and towering Icelander Peter Ronson. They are not alone in their journey, however, andthey must confront huma…
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Quest for Fire

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2003

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Synopsis

The time is 80,000 years ago. Our focus is tribespeople who value fire deeply, but do notknow how to make it. When they are attacked by a rival, far more simian, group, they lose theirfire. A trio of friends (Everett McGill, Nameer El-Kadi, and Ron Perlman, a man who doesn’tneed much make-up to look prehistoric) head off on a search for new fire. During theirquest, they encounter a cannibal tribe, and hook up with Rae Dawn Chong, a prisoner of thecannibals and member of a m…
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Stargate

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2003

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Why is there yet another DVD of Stargate? This time it really is an improvement. The Ultimate Edition contains a director’s cut which is about 16 minutes longer than the original. If you like the original better, a second disc is included which contains the original cut. This was Devlin and Emmerich’s first real blockbuster. I found Independence Day and The Patriot to be better films, but Stargate has its moments. It’s a little hard for me to accept Kurt Russell as Jack O’Neal after 7 years of Richard Dean Anderson.
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Of Mice and Men

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003

Synopsis

Gary Sinise (who also produced and directed) is George, the smart one. John Malkovich (in arole light years from his usual creepy venom) is Lennie, child-like but enormously strong. Thetwo best friends wander Depression-era California, looking for work. They find what seems likea long-term gig at the Tyler Ranch, but trouble rears its head in the form of the unhappy SherilynFenn, trapped in an abusive marriage. It isn’t long before everything goes to hell.

Audio< ...
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Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003

Like most folks, I grew up on the Charlie Brown TV specials. What kid hasn’t looked forward to seeing “The Great Pumpkin”? Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown was made more recently then the more notable Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween episodes. The whole Peanuts gang is there and so is most of the charm. The idea just isn’t as compelling; it comes off rather forced. Still, it’s always fun to visit the world of Charles Schultz.

Synopsis

Poor Charlie Brown is dreading another Valentine’s Day.
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Taboo

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 23rd, 2003

Film

Let’s at least give the filmmakers credit for getting right to the point. Unfortunately you’ll spend the next 80 minutes or so wishing they hadn’t. The film is full of enough plot holes to pilot a starship through (one of the big ones). You get the sense right away that the characters really can’t stand each other, but then you’re expected to believe that one year after pissing each other off they’re going to get together for an intimate New Year’s Eve gathering. There’s an obvious attempt at th…
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Road House

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003

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Road House is one long bar brawl interrupted occasionally by a thread of a plot line. Patrick Swayze is the offered marquee name, but better performances can be found from Ben Gazzara, best known for his portrayal of Al Capone, Sam Elliott, and even Kevin Tigue. The music is the only thing that keeps this one interesting. Jeff Healey stars as the bar’s regular musician and treats us to some of his best music.

Synopsis

Daulton (Swayze) is hired to clean up a rowdy redneck bar.
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Day The Earth Stood Still, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 23rd, 2003

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Synopsis

A flying saucer lands in Washington, causing widespread paranoia. Emerging from thesaucer are the ominous robot Gort, and the human-looking Klaatu (Michael Rennie). Klaatucomes with a warning for Earth (get your act together or be wiped out), but he will speak only torepresentatives from all nations. This turns out to be a difficult proposition. Klaatu escapes fromthe authorities and blends in with the population as he learns about humans. The questionbecomes whether he wil…
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Scarlet Diva

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 19th, 2003

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Synopsis

Asia Argento plays Anna Battista, who, when you get down to it, is really Asia Argento inthis intensely autobiographical film. Anna, a popular film star in Italy, stumbles from one bizarreencounter to another, pining for one-night-stand Kirk, in this picaresque tale. There isn’t much ofa plot, as such. Instead, we witness her descent into hell and ultimate redemption. The sex ispretty graphic, which is what caused all the fuss upon the film’s release, but what hasn’t beencommented …
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Wannabes

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 18th, 2003

Synopsis

Angelo’s the good brother, Paulie’s the bad boy. Fed up with waiting tables, Paulieconvinces Angelo and two friends to get into the bookie business. After a few missteps, businessbecomes good. Then it gets very good. Then they hook up with local don, Santo, who issaddled with an extremely volatile son, Vinnie. You can probably guess where all this isheading, and there are certainly no real surprises here. The clearest sign that we’re on familiarterritory is Vinnie, a clone …
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O

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 17th, 2003

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Synopsis

Instead of Othello, great warrior, we have Odin (Mekhi Phifer), basketball star. His loveDesdemona becomes Desi (Julia Stiles), and duplicitous friend Iago is not Hugo (Josh Hartnett).Consumed by jealousy because of Odin’s success, and feeling unloved by his father (MartinSheen), Hugo sets about destroying Odin and everyone else by planting the seeds of jealousy inhis mind. The more familiar you are with Othello, the better this plays, as it follows Shakespearevery closely,…
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Asunder

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2003

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Synopsis

After a freak Ferris wheel accident kills his pregnant wife, Chance (Blair Underwood) istaken in by best friends Michael (Michael Beach) and Lauren (Debbi Morgan), friends whosemarriage is already shaky. The thing is, Chance and Lauren previously had an affair, somethingthat wracks Lauren with guilty, but that Chance is increasingly obsessed with reviving.Gradually, things go from bad to worse. Too gradually, in fact: we’re almost 45 minutes in beforethe thriller angle begi…
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Trouble Bound

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 16th, 2003

Synopsis

Michael Madsen, recently sprung from jail, is determined to stay out of trouble. Things startoff well, when he wins five grand and a Lincoln Continental in a poker game. He heads off forLas Vegas, planning to multiply that money. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a corpse in thetrunk of the car. Then he picks up Patricia Arquette, a sociology major and mob family daughteron a vendetta against another mobster. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose, and does so quiteamusi…
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Bliss

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2003

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Synopsis

Craig Sheffer and Sheryl Lee are less than a year into their marriage, and already they’re intherapy. It transpires that Lee has never had an orgasm. Sheffer finds out that she is visitingextremely unconventional sex therapist Terence Stamp. Outraged, he confronts Stamp, but windsup listening to him, and then becomes his pupil, hoping that what he learns will lead to sexualhealing for Lee. If this sounds like things are about to get very flaky, well, that depends on yourtak…
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I’ll Do Anything

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2003

Synopsis

Nick Nolte is a down-on-his-luck actor, who suddenly has to look after his six-year-olddaughter (who naturally winds up with a better TV career than he has). This film was a big flopfor writer/director James L. Brooks. It was originally a musical, but all the songs were cut priorto release.

Audio

The audio specifications aren’t really indicated, which smells like 2.0 to me. Theenvironment effect is all right, though not spectacular, and the left-rig…
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Sordid Lives

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 14th, 2003

Synopsis

An ensemble piece, along the lines of something John Sayles or Robert Altman might do,only on a minuscule budget and played strictly for laughs. A massively dysfunctional Southernfamily meet for the funeral of Grandma Peggy, and all sorts of animosities and such are workedout. The film is based on a play, and boy can you tell — static as hell, boring to watch. There aresome moments of genuine emotion with the gay characters, but for the most part this is just apainful slog…
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Tuck Everlasting

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 14th, 2003

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Synopsis

In the early years of the 20th Century, Winnie Foster (Alexis Bledel) is in the full throes ofadolescence and feeling extremely repressed by her domineering mother. Wandering off into thewoods next to her home, she stumbles upon the Tucks, a family of immortals. She falls in lovewith Jesse (Jonathan Jackson), who is 17, going on 104. Meanwhile, a supremely sinister BenKingsley is tracking the Tucks, hoping to make a mint with their fountain of youth. Kingsley isso dark, his…
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Bloody Murder 2

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 12th, 2003

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Synopsis

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A group of camp counsellors is shutting down a campwhere gruesome murders happened years before. They goof around, have sex, and areslaughtered by a masked maniac. Bloody Murder 2 is 90% shameless Friday the 13th plagiarism:the location is “Placid Pines” instead of “Crystal Lake” and the killer is “Trevor Moorehouse”instead of “Jason Voorhees,” but my God, even the number of syllables is the same. The other10% is stolen from Scream: a li…
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Thirst

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 11th, 2003

Synopsis

Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri) is, unbeknownst to her, a descendant of Countess Bathory. Aninternational cabal of vampires kidnap Kate, take her to their industrial blood farm (wherepeople, called “blood cows,” are milked and the product is place in milk cartons). There Kate issubjected to extensive psychological conditioning, the purpose of which is to make her reclaimher heritage. The concept is interesting, taking the idea of the vampire as the upper class bleedingthe low…
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Summer of Fear

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 11th, 2003

Synopsis

Linda Blair plays Rachel, a teenager whose parents take in her cousin Julia when Julia’sparents are killed in a car crash. Julia bewitches everyone but Rachel, who realizes that Julia is,in fact, Evil. This is the European theatrical cut of the TV movie, which aired Stateside asStranger in Our House. Though an important release for those following Craven’s early career,especially his early movies, this remains nonetheless very much a 1978 network TV film, withall the limita…
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Puphedz: The Tattle-Tale Heart

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 10th, 2003

Synopsis

The story is essentially “The Tell-Tale Heart”: our protagonist, obsessed by an old man’sugly eye, kills him, buries him under the floorboards, but then loses it when he thinks he stillhears the beating heart. The short feature has a lot of affection for Poe (despite misspelling hismiddle name) and actually uses much of the actual prose from the original story, before divertinginto slapstick silliness. Not all of the jokes work, but the care and imagination that went into the…
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Ultimate X

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 10th, 2003

When I was 12 I rode my 10-speed down a huge hill and crashed down a concrete stairwell into a brick wall. I survived. The bike didn’t. If only I had known there was a career in this stuff it might have hurt a little less. Of course, in those days there was no such thing as X games. With this DVD, perhaps the X Games have arrived…with highlights from X Games VII in Philadelphia.

Audio

Ultimate X contains solid Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks. Except for a bit of a bottom boost on the…
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Duellists, The

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 9th, 2003

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Synopsis

Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel are soldiers in Napoleon’s army. The film opens the yearNapoleon has become ruler of France. Keitel is a man of irrational and explosive temper. For noreal reason, he develops a hatred for Carradine, and challenges him to a duel. Over and overagain, during the course of the tumultuous years that follow, the two duel, but never manage tocomplete their battle and both always live to fight another day. Though not without darkness,this film, ba…
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The Bourne Identity

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 8th, 2003

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In 1988 Richard Chamberlin played the signature role of Jason Bourne in a made for TV adaptation of the classic novel The Bourne Identity. The show was a two-part pilot for a projected series that was never picked up. While the TV version might have been more faithful to the novel, the 2002 film with Matt Damon as Bourne effectively brings the spy yarn into the 21st century. Microfilm is replaced with a laser decoder and the awkward doctor is replaced with a more fitting female companion. Damon’s youth is both an asset and a liability.
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City by the Sea

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 8th, 2003

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Synopsis

De Niro is Vincent LaMarca. His father was a kidnapper and accidental murderer. Now hisson, a junkie, has also killed a man. Will LaMarca be able to stop the generational cycle ofviolence? The Long Beach settings are very effective, combining rotting former grandeur withStalinist architecture. So far, so 70s, and the hard-luck characters fit right in. FrancesMcDormand, however, is stuck with a woefully underwritten part as De Niro’s girlfriend. Theplot, as well, is strictly…
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