Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 15th, 2006
When the film V For Vendetta was announced, my interest immediate peaked as I found out the Wachowski Brothers would be writing the film. Unlike a majority of fans, I didn’t completely dislike The Matrix Trilogy; in fact, I thought they were a ton of fun. With this new film, the brothers attack the theme of a society where the government has the only voice, similar to the novel 1984. Add in actors Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving, and you have me at the word go.
The year is 2020. A vir...s has run through the world leaving a majority of Americans dead in their shoes, and Britain is ruled by a fascist dictator who promises nothing but security for his people. This dictator never mentions anything about giving his people freedom though. This causes a man simply known as V to rebel. V secretly moves throughout London evading authority figure after authority figure. V wears a mask of the face of Guy Fawkes, a man who tried, in 1605, to blow up the houses of Parliament. On November 5th, the eve of Guy Fawkes Day, many citizens burn fires in a type of effigy toward Fawkes. On this eve in the year 2020, V saves a young reporter named Evey (Natalie Portman) from rape. He forces her to join him and concludes the night by sitting the Old Bailey courtrooms ablaze.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 14th, 2006
I like to call movies like this “exception films”. They are the exception to the rule. Those odd little films that show up every once in a great while that really have no right to be good. You hear the plot, you see the trailer, and you know that this film is mere days away from losing vast sums of money for someone on the left coast. Then the movie comes out and it is... inexplicably entertaining and fantastic.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has carved out a surprisingly strong cult following for itself since it... theatrical release. So here's the plot of this unlikely hit: Robert Downey Jr. plays Harry Lockhart, a clumsy small time criminal who stumbles into a Hollywood acting audition while fleeing the police. Naturally, he gets the part, and is quickly ushered off to La La Land to act in the film. When he gets there, he is assigned an acting coach (Val Kilmer) named Gay Perry (get it?) to help him learn the craft. Throw in an old High School girlfriend and a murder mystery, and there you have it. A movie that is much better than it has any right to be.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 13th, 2006
Utter the words ‘Dave Chappelle’ or ‘The Chappelle Show’ to any person and odds are they will think of the ‘Lil’ Jon’ skit or the ultra famous “I’m Rick James, bitch”. While this one joke doesn’t even come close to the charm and humor that Dave Chappelle had on his once popular ‘Chappelle Show’ on Comedy Central, it still has become the most popular joke. But enough about that and more about the actual film at hand.
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party takes place around September of 2004, which was before ...happelle walked off of the third season of his show, but after the famous $50 Million Dollar deal that Comedy Central offered him. Chappelle has decided to have a block party on the 18th of September. He has invited many big artists to perform at the block party including Kanye West, Mos Def, Common and the Fugees to name a few.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 12th, 2006
In Failure to Launch, Trip (Matthew McConaughey) is a 35-year-old man who still lives with his parents. His parents simply want him out of the house, which doesn’t seem so harsh considering his age. So what do they do? Why, they simply decide to hire a woman named Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) to assist them. Paula, you see, is a specialist in helping grown men move out of their parents’ homes. I didn’t even think such a job existed. Well, Paula, we soon learn, has a very simple method that usually guarantees h...r success. First, she looks nice, then she finds out what they like and she pretends to like it too. What a complex job. Paula calls this system “Failure to Launch”.
Trip’s parents, Sue and Al (played by Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw) live in a naturally beautiful home that Trip loves to pass off as his own. You see, Trip dates a girl, begins to like her, continues to date her, and then when he gets “the look”, he takes her home passing the home off as his own. It usually isn’t until Al comes into his room that he reveals to the girl that the home is actually his parent’s home. Sue tells Paula this is Trip’s method of breaking up with people. I find it hilarious that Sue takes the amount of care that she does of Trip for a man at his age. She cooks him a big breakfast, packs his launch, does his laundry, etc. I know the whole motherly-love thing is always around, but what kind of mother does this for her 35-year-old son?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 11th, 2006
Synopsis
A group of occultists horsing around with more than they know accidentally open up an evil portal and unleash a terrible force upon the world. Fortunately, there’s an organization of Demon Hunters on the job, determined to send this evil and all if its minions back where they came from.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 11th, 2006
Synopsis
Long before she paired up with Phil Donahue and the two went on to do..who knows what, Marlo Thomas appeared in some smaller TV shows from in the early '60s, until she got a break when she was given a TV show to utilize her talents. That Girl is the story of Ann Marie, who decided to move to New York City to try to find steady work as an actress, and over the course of the show's five year run, Ann Marie's exploits are documented in situation comedy fashion.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 11th, 2006
OK, I hope I'm not diving into a review that may fall into the "film scholar" category, and thus rule me out of being taken seriously. When there's a lull in buying new releases, sometimes my wallet gets cabin fever, and so I went out and picked up the Hitchcock set from Criterion, entitled Wrong Men and Notorious Women: Five Hitchcock Thrillers 1935-1946, and includes the previous Criterion releases from Hitchcock, namely Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound and The Lady Vanishes. I'm tackling the earliest release of the bunch, entitled The 39 Steps. The story very much resembles another of Hitchcock's later works, North by Northwest, in the aspect that the wrong man is thrown into a spy chase. While Cary Grant is taken through New York, a cornfield, and Mount Rushmore in the later film, in The 39 Steps, Richard Hannay, played by Robert Donat, attends a Music Hall production, meets and takes home a women (Annabella Smith, played by Lucie Mannheim), who he later finds out is a spy who is being chased by two men attempting to kill her. In the middle of the night, Annabella comes into Richard's room, and falls over him, dead of a knife in the back. As the police chase him, looking to detain him for the murder, the two men, assuming that Richard has found out about the secret she held, start to pursue him in order to kill him. And whatever he does, some of Anabella's last words to him are not to trust a man missing the tip of his right pinkie (It sounds strange to write the word "pinkie" in a review of Hitchcock, so I hope it looks out of place as you're reading it).
This was one of Hitchcock's last works before coming over to America to wow us with the movies that have become legend. For all of my DVD collecting, I'm still a bit green when it comes to the older stuff. And after seeing The 39 Steps, I now realize what I've been missing. For its time, it's a pretty suspenseful film, with a lot of shots that are still used in movies today, and even the story has been used in some fashion or another over the years, though clearly not to the same effectiveness that Hitchcock has done. Despite the "Born On" date for this film, it's a very good one, and to see many of the same devices used today, both within the story and within Hitchcock's technical realm, make it an easy recommendation to those who are even casual film fans.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2006
Limitations of budget and social conventions of the time prevent Murder, Inc. from being all it can be - still, the performances, and the captivating dynamic between hero (Stuart Whitman) and villain (Peter Falk) result in entertaining fare, so long as this film is allowed to be a movie and not a documentary. Whitman leads a fine cast as the mob lackey, who is constantly manipulated by a tough-talking contract killer. Part of the real life syndicate of hit-men "Murder, Inc.," Falk's baddie steals every ...cene he's in throughout this early career-making performance. He smacks of a young Brando, and comes across as just the type of ice-blooded villain, which gave the 1930's Brownsville mob its infamy. He'll lie, cheat, and steal, to get what he wants - whether it be conning Whitman's assistance to off a stale nightclub comedian (Morey Amsterdam), or brutally raping Whitman's wife (May Britt). And by "brutally," I mean "brutally for the times." The word "rape" is never used, and the explicit nature never goes beyond an aftermath scene, where a disheveled Britt anguishes, "Those filthy hands. Those dirty fingers."
A film like this could be revisited to great effect by a capable director like Scorcese. In fact, stylistically, Murder, Inc. shares many attributes with Scorcese's superior mob epics. It's the kind of film that influences better filmmakers to make better pictures - but I would only use the word "classic" to describe its age, and not its quality. For one, the narration is totally out of place, and - quite obviously - the result of a receding budget. The first bit of narration doesn't come into play until we're past the first act. And when it does finally appear, all we hear is a droll voice with zero personality. We only learn later the narrator is a character in the film - the heroic cop (Henry Morgan), who takes on the entire mob organization. Rather than give the film a documentary effect, the narration serves only to clumsily fill in cracks, where story should be. "Show, don't tell," this isn't. Another weak point is how the best element is often neglected - the Whitman-versus-Falk conflict with Britt caught in between. It seems like every time this story element gets rolling, we cut away to a less interesting sidebar. And when the angle is finally resolved, it happens with such anti-climax that we wonder why we even cared at all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2006
Synopsis
Not having seen the first season, I confess as to floundering somewhat in my encounter with the second. In the interest of keeping things simple and comprehensible, I thus present the synopsis provided by the box itself. The second season “finds Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) away from his former crew . . . and working in a Staten Island firehouse. He must come to terms with the havoc his drinking has caused and realizes it’s time to get his problems under control. His comrades back at 62 Truck a...en’t faring much better. Chief Reilly struggles with the recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis of his wife and her deteriorating condition. Franco juggles the responsibilities of raising his daughter while trying to return to work. Lt. Shea discovers just how lonely the single life can be and Laura complicates house relations by getting involved with a colleague.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2006
Synopsis
Jeremiah is taken at the age of five from his loving foster parents and turned over to the tender mercies of his white-trash mother, Sarah (Asia Argento, in an absolutely monstrous role). He is dragged down into the abusive nightmare of her life, being raped by her male partners when he is being beaten by them. There is an interlude where he is taken under the care of his fundamentalist grandparents (whicih is a nightmare in itself), but mother reclaims him, ultimately making him up as a gir... and having him turn tricks with her at truck stops.
