DVD

Caged Animal

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 30th, 2010

Written by Dave Younger

This is a prison drama, where the most feared criminal in Combs State Prison is born-to- be-bad Miles “Cain” Skinner (Ving Rhames). His nemesis Redfoot (Robert LaSardo) has just been caught doing his last drug deal and is transferred there. Which tough guy will prevail? Cain is so dangerous he’s in solitary confinement, so that makes it harder to take him out. But he is allowed out one hour a day. He’s handcuffed – sometimes – and security is increased, so it seems like Redfoot has an advantage. But those handcuffs could be nasty weapons…
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Slave

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 27th, 2010

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Written by Dave Younger

David (Sam Page) and Georgie (Natassia Malthe) are engaged. They go overseas, to Spain, to get the blessing of David’s father, Robert (Michael Maxwell). Georgie is abducted from a nightclub and becomes a sex slave for a twisted psycho known as the White Arab (David Gant, but because this is an ultra-cheap straight-to-DVD Hostel knockoff, his name is misspelled as Grant on the cover). Georgie’s fiancée discovers a guy whose sister was also kidnapped, and they make plans for a rescue. But there are lots of crazies, drug dealers, and corrupt officials they have to deal with first.
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Billy the Exterminator: Seasons 1 & 2

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 27th, 2010

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“As an exterminator I’m called upon to curb the destruction by beasts both great and small, be it eliminating a deadly menace or safeguarding a lake from ruin. But sometimes one wrong turn on the job can become a question of life or death.”

Billy Bretherton is the owner of Vex Con Pest Control in Shreveport, Louisiana. It’s a family run business. Mom is the office manager and takes all of the service calls and then dispatches the technicians to their various jobs. Dad is the office mascot. He’s had a heart attack along with a few other medical scares, so he’s not really very hands-on. You might say his main job is to worry and complain.
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Vegas: Season Two, Volume One

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 27th, 2010

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By 1978 the television detective model had been nearly complete and possibly already a cliché. Dan Tanna might have well been the complete model as far as the formula goes. It was almost as if you could go down a checklist and, like Dr. Frankenstein creating a monster, check off the necessary elements. The scripts could then almost write themselves, and you let the show fly on autopilot for three seasons or so until someone decides to look behind the curtain.
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Bonanza: The Official Second Season, Volume One

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 27th, 2010

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Three-time widower Ben Cartwright (Greene) runs his famous Ponderosa Ranch with the aid of his three grown sons from three different mothers. There’s Little Joe (Landon), Adam (Roberts) and Hoss (Blocker). Set some time in the mid 1800’s, this long-running series followed the family’s many exploits. In the late 1950’s westerns accounted for six of the top ten programs on TV. Only Gunsmoke had a longer run than Bonanza. From 1959 to 1973, Ben Cartwright and his boys rode across the small screen.
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The City of Your Final Destination

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 24th, 2010

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Omar (Omar Metwally)desperately needs to write the biography of author Jules Gund if he wants to hang on to his academic post. In order to do this, he will have to secure the cooperation of the reclusive author’s surviving family: his wife (Laura Linney), his mistress (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and his brother (Anthony Hopkins). Pressured by his girlfriend to make something of himself, Omar heads off to Uruguay and essentially invites himself into the Gund residence, an isolated mansion in a state of genteel decay
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Inception

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 23rd, 2010

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Written by Diane Tillis

It is hard to talk about Inception without spoiling something. It is also hard to read any review and get a full feel for the film. Inception truly needs to be seen to understand why it is so amazing. On one level, it is an incredible action film that revolves around the heist scenario set in exotic locations such as France and Japan. On another level, the core purpose of the film is a complex discovery into dreams and the subconscious,
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Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 23rd, 2010

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Written by Dave Younger

This is an entertaining and informative biopic of the American icon. Starting with a $600 loan from the bank, he parlays his good fortune of coming across Marilyn Monroe pay-the-rent nudes into an I-gotta-see-this magazine. Along the way he publishes some great fiction – Ray Bradbury says nobody wanted his Fahrenheit 451, so he sells it to Hef for $400 – and non-fiction: groundbreaking interviews with Jimmy Carter, Miles Davis and John Lennon. His road was filled with battles, because America in the 50s was staunchly conservative.
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Vengeance

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 23rd, 2010

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In Macao, a trio of gunmen butcher a family. Only the mother survives (barely), and her father (aging French rocker Johnny Hallyday, looking as hardboiled and grotesque as Mickey Rourke), a restaurateur who knows altogether too much about how to get by in the violent underworld, comes to town and sets out on a mission of vengeance. He hires a trio of hit men, and works with them in tracking down his enemies. They have to do so quickly, though, because Hallyday has been shot before, and the bullet lodged in his brain is gradually stealing his memory away. He wants his revenge while he can still remember why it is necessary.
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Hunter Prey

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 22nd, 2010

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One man. One alien. One choice.

That’s the tag line for Hunter Prey, the latest project from Sandy Collora, idol to fanboys everywhere thanks to his 2003 short film, Batman: Dead End, believed by many to be the best fan film ever made. Well, after a long wait, he has finally made his first full-length feature film, and though it’s clearly hovering around the bottom rung of the budget ladder, there is much to admire here.
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Monte Walsh

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 21st, 2010

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Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins (Lee Marvin and Jack Palance) are two cowboys in an era where their kind is becoming extinct. After a hard winter in the mountains, they discover that most of the ranches they knew have vanished, the land being bought up by Eastern corporations. They find work on the ranch once owned by Jim Davis, though he now answers to accountants back East. And though life, at first, seems all right, bit by bit they witness the end of their era, as a way of life dies, and the men who lived it are pushed to suicide, desperation, robbery and worse.
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Tonight – 4 Decades of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2010

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He’s been called the King Of Late-Night. Today when there are so many talk shows on at pretty much every hour of the day, that might not appear to be such a huge distinction. There were talk shows on before Johnny Carson, but there can be no doubt that he invented the modern late-night show. For 30 years Johnny Carson was like a member of the family for millions of Americans. He was a friendly face at the end of a long, stressful day.
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Gunsmoke: Season Four, Volume Two

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2010

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The setting for Gunsmoke was the by-now-famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20-year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy
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Lucy Show: Official Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 20th, 2010

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This was Lucille Ball’s follow-up to I Love Lucy. Here Ball is a widowed mother of two, sharing her home with best friend Vivian Vance, who is a divorced mother of one. All the other members of household are, of course, faced with the disasters triggered by Lucy. I screened this set immediately after viewing its close contemporary, Petticoat Junction, and the difference between the two was instructive.
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The Andy Griffith Show 50th Anniversary: Best of Mayberry

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2010

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Who doesn’t have a soft spot in their heart, if not their DVD collection, for The Andy Griffith Show? The denizens of Mayberry have been with many of us our entire lives. For most of America, The Andy Griffith Show has become the template for any small rural town. The characters stand as prerequisite citizens in any said town. The town drunk, the local barber, the motherly little old lady, and the corner mechanic all look like Otis, Floyd, Aunt Bee, and Goober to most of us now.
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Possession of David O’reilly

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 19th, 2010

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Written by Dave Younger

A couple, Alex and Kate (Nicholas Shaw, Zoe Richards), has fallen asleep on the couch watching a movie. Kate wakes up muttering, “Don’t open it.” Someone rings the doorbell. You know they shouldn’t open it. It’s only David (Giles Alderson), a good friend, a little freaked out because he’s just discovered his girlfriend is cheating on him. They agree to let him spend the night. Bad idea. He’s more than a little freaked: he can’t sleep, and he sees monsters. We can’t see the monsters too well, but what we do see is reminiscent of the phantasmagoric creatures on The Outer Limits. We’re mostly aware of them through sound
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Space Precinct: The Complete Series

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 16th, 2010

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“The name’s Brogan, Lieutenant Brogan. For 20 years I was with the NYPD. Now? Well … let’s just say I’m transferring to another precinct.”

That Precinct is the 88^th, which serves Demeter City from an orbiting station around the planet Altor. Demeter City is one of the toughest cities in the universe. There’s tons of slums and every kind of scumbag criminal you could ever expect to find in the worst of Earth’s hoods. The planet is primarily populated by three species, although there are literally hundreds of known species that might be found in one of the darkest corners of the city.
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Gene Simmons Family Jewels: Complete Season 4 & 5

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 16th, 2010

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KISS fans will likely feel like they’re in heaven with this quasi-intimate look at the long-tongued demon of rock. All others might be tempted to stay away, and yet, that might be a mistake. Let me first admit that I’m no fan of reality television or KISS. With that said, you might be expecting me to trash this particular program. Wrong! Honestly, as an outsider I have the unique ability to judge the show without all of the trappings of the band’s fame and history.
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Exit Through the Gift Shop

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 16th, 2010

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Thierry Guetta has the habit of filming everything he does in his entire life. This habit did not shake while filming the, technically illegal, work of his cousin ‘Invader’ who is a street artist that pastes up images from and inspired by the video game Space Invaders. Guetta quickly fell head over heals for this underground movement of creating street art and started documenting some of the most famous street artists in the entire world, including the ever (in)famous ‘Banksy.’
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Resonnances

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 15th, 2010

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Six young men and women head off in two cars for a weekend trip in rural France. Along the way, the car with the three guys runs out of gas, fortunately within pushing distance of a filling station. There, our boys inadvisedly pick up a hitchhiker, who turns out to be an escaped psychopath. But no sooner have they started to worry about their new passenger when a mysterious fog and a ghostly vision send them careening off a cliff. Wounded and lost, they find that not only do they have a killer to contend with, but there is something monstrous and huge under the ground that is hunting all of them.
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7th Heaven: The Final Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 14th, 2010

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7^th heaven reaches its 11^th and final season of rampant political correctness and lessons of family togetherness through Christian love. Yes, that was a mildly passive aggressive summary of this show, but I feel sometimes one strong bias deserves another to challenge it. This show, the story of a very large family lead by a Minister (and don’t deny it, he leads them) as they convey their socially and politically conservative Protestant Christian point of view of “real-life” situations.
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Young Adam

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 13th, 2010

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Written by Dave Younger

Young Adam (2003, 98 min.), set in drab postwar Glasgow, Scotland, combines the kitchen-sink dramas of late 50s/early 60s northern England with a Hitchcockian tale – what if you discovered your girlfriend floating dead in a river? Throw in explicit full-frontal NC-17 sex (most movies, like Blue Valentine, will do anything to avoid this kiss of death, but Young Adam embraces it; they wanted to cut Ewan McGregor’s junk for the American release, but he fought to keep it in)
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Vampires Suck

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 13th, 2010

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The comedy team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer should be commended for their unwavering attempt to destroy the spoof comedy entirely. Sure, they aided the Wayans brothers in creating the first Scary Movie film (which is decent spoof film) but in 2006 they started their campaign with Date Movie and continued right through Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, and now Vampires Suck. Did they succeed? And did it take the recent loss of Leslie Nielsen to have us be reminded that spoofs where once a glorious and enjoyable thing.
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The Haunting of Sorority Row

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 13th, 2010

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The Haunting of Sorority Row has one of those titles that, when you first hear it, you immediately make assumptions about. My initial assumption was that the movie might very well feature a house full of hot young girls in various stages of undress, acting all catty between pillow fights and being menaced by a supernatural entity of some kind. And then I looked down to the bottom of the dvd case and noted that this was produced by Lifetime. Wait, I thought, isn’t a horror movie by the Lifetime Network akin to Spike TV producing a Jane Austen film festival?
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Death of a Snowman

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 12th, 2010

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A mysterious figure or organization going by the name of War on Crime is apparently engaged in just that in the streets of Soweto. Known drug dealers are being gunned down. On the case is Lt. Deel (Nigel Davenport). Caught up in the case is newspaperman Chaka (Ken Gampu), who is contacted by War on Crime and given tips as to when the next attack will take place. Deel and Chaka are friends of long standing, but their friendship is challenged by the fact that the police captain now views Chaka as a possible accomplice in the vigilante killings. The question, too, is whether there is more to these killings than meets the eye.
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