Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 19th, 2006
Clearly, I am in the minority when it comes to Veronica Mars. Reviewers go on and on about the sharp writing on this show, but I just don't see it. With character names like “Beaver”, “Butters”, “Weevil” and my favorite, “Dick Casablancas”, this is a show where the writing is actually one of the things that is wrong with this show. (And yes, Beaver and Dick are friends. How's that for creativity?) The character of Wallace is an African American stereotype that is embarrassing, and stinks of what old while people think young black men are like.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 19th, 2006
Written By Jeff Mardo
This disc certainly had me fooled. I though I was in for another one of those lame teenage “comedies” where the emphasis is on lame and cliché jokes and the occasional glimpse of gratuitous nudity. What I wound, however, was a wonderful movie that is the very definition of an indie film. If you liked Kevin Smith's first foray into filmmaking, then you will probably like this piece as well. I would contend that Clerks was a better film, but this Mexican film certainly has it's on charm as well. While Smith's fi...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 17th, 2006
Road House is macaroni and cheese for a lot of movie goers that are over 27 years of age. Released in 1989, the movie chronicles the life of James Dalton (Patrick Swayze, Ghost), a “cooler” at a local bar, who is offered a huge sum of money to help a bar owner named Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe, Mumford) get his place called the “Double Deuce” back on its feet. A cooler for lack of a better explanation is a bouncer who helps diffuse situations before they blow up into brawls.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 17th, 2006
Synopsis
Marnderlay is part two of the trilogy that began with Dogville. Picking up where that film left off, we see Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard replacing Nicole Kidman) and her gangster father (Willem Dafoe taking over from James Caan) arriving at Manderlay, a plantation where slavery never ended. Grace, horrified by this state of affairs, orders slavery abolished, but her attempts to bring freedom to the slaves lead inexorably to disaster.
While one does, at first, miss the l...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 16th, 2006
If you ask me, what sitcoms need are fewer contrivances and more realistic humor. That's what made Seinfeld so brilliant. As horrible as those people were, the sad truth is that all of us have a little bit of that twisted humor lurking within us. That's just the kind of thing that happens with The Worst Week of My Life. This amazingly funny BBC series lasts just seven episodes, but I guess that should be expected judging from the show's title. The names of the episodes themselves are “Sunday”, “Monday”, “Tuesday” and so on. By the end of the season, viewers have been treated to what is often-times the worst week of many people's lives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 16th, 2006
Synopsis
Mu-ju is trying to adjust to life again after surviving a terrible accident. Life is still hard, as her eldest daughter suffers from something like autism, and she is having trouble landing a permanent position as a teacher at a music school (plus, a former student has it in for her). The aforementioned eldest daughter becomes obsessed with a cello, and a mute housekeeper moves in, and terrible things begin to happen.
But those terrible things wait far too long to happen. A third o...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 15th, 2006
There is a little more Tracey to go around with Tracey Takes On: The Complete Second Season, so fans of the show shouldn't be disappointed. However, I find her humor quaint and dry in an inescapably British way. No one can deny her talent. But it's hard to like a show when none of the laughs are connecting. Of course, humor - like beauty - is certainly in the eye of the beholder. With that said, I am not one of the lucky ones that can look at this raw oyster of a show and see the pearl. This season, Ullman inc...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 15th, 2006
Tristram Shandy is the oddest and most entertaining sort of film. It is a film about the making of the film that you are watching, hosted by the fictional main character. It is sort-of like American Splendor, and sort-of like Spinal Tap. The film is the story of the life of Tristram Shandy, an 18th century Englishman of particularly stately means. The man's life is of note and worthy of such a film because... well, now that I think of it... I don't really know. You see, there are so many interruptions and different takes during the film that the actors are trying to make, that the viewer never really learns anything.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 15th, 2006
Synopsis
Robert Mitchum shows up twice here, as does Robert Ryan. The two clash in The Racket (1951), where Mitchum is the incorruptible cop, and Ryan is the old-school gangster whose brutally direct methods put him in conflict not only with Mitchum, but with the more sophisticated crime syndicate spreading over the land. The focus of the film is rather split between the two, but is pretty tense, and is further enlivened by a memorably sleazy turn by William Conrad as a VERY corrupt cop.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 14th, 2006
Today, anyone with a credit card and some free time can make a movie. But that doesn't mean it's always a good thing. Case in point is Kisses and Caroms, which sports a massive hard-on for Kevin Smith’s Clerks (it’s Clerks in a billiards store. Brilliant!), but its characters, dialogue and location fail to be funny or engaging. For one, how many oddball customers can a billiards store receive in one day? In Clerks, it was believable, since people from all walks of life need what is readily...
