Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 9th, 2005
The term Reivers, it is explained, is a turn of the century word for thieves. From that explanation one might expect an action adventure heist film. What you get instead is a Faulkner coming of age story. While the film has quite a few memorable moments of pure Americana, there seems little point in anything that happens on screen. Even the wonderful acting of Steve McQueen leaves most of the film muddied in a period piece about nothing at all. Burgess Meredith does a fine job of narrating the film from the point of view of an old man recalling a moment in his 11th year. I think I would have rather had Meredith providing a books on tape version of the original Faulkner work. The cinematography appears older than its 1969 production year implies. I don’t feel like I got to know these characters enough to simply want to be with them. The adventure is anything but. There’s a questionable moral character to the entire premise.
Synopsis
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 9th, 2005
Synopsis
Kelly Lunch plays a young woman who begins the movie by attempting suicide. She is saved, and annoyed by the friends and family who visit her in the hospital, she takes off in her hospital clothes and a coat, hopping on a bus and getting off in the middle of a desert nowhere. One drunken night later, she wakes up in a house married to a stranger. Cue a whole bunch of sex scenes and psychological drama.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 8th, 2005
Synopsis
The surviving characters from the cliffhanger ending of Dracula II: Ascension pick up the chase. Pursuing Dracula (or rather, the much-older being who uses that name, and who was said to be Judas in earlier installments, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, either) are Jason Scott Lee as Uffizi, the vampire-killing priest now slowly turning into a vampire himself, and Jason London, whose girlfriend was snatched at the end of the last film. They travel through a Romania beset ...y civil war, where vampires run rampant not only through the countryside, but apparently in the government as well.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2005
Synopsis
Peter Bogdanovich may be the victim of having too much too soon, as he was well known for his work in the early 1970s, starting with The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, but experienced a string of poorly received work as well. Following the 1980 murder of his girlfriend Dorothy Stratten (at the hands of her estranged husband), he stayed out of the business (and was bankrupt) for awhile, but returned in 1985 with the excellent film Mask. In Illegally Yours, he manages t... cast Rob Lowe (The West Wing) as a lovestruck kid named Richard Dice who returns home to Florida.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2005
Synopsis
Lately various studios have been releasing films with Gene Hackman onto DVD, films like Scarecrow and Twice in a Lifetime. And after a run in 1983’s Uncommon Valor, he teamed with Matt Dillon (The Flamingo Kid) in 1985’s Target, the proverbial Cold War spy thriller.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 3rd, 2005
Synopsis
There are two Lawrence Tierney vehicles here, and the first is the one that made his name, the 1945 Dillinger. Told in flashback for no visible reason, this chronicles Dillinger’s rise from naive and incompetent thief to ruthless, brutal gang leader, and his ultimate fall. There are some startlingly brutal scenes here, for the time, and if Tierney isn’t quite as scary as James Cagney in White Heat, he’s still plenty menacing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 3rd, 2005
Synopsis
Jeremy Northam plays the rather insecure Morgan Sullivan, who applies for a job as a corporate spy for Digicorp. His first few missions under the identity of James Thursby go well, but he is tormented by headaches and strange nightmares. Then he encounters Lucy Liu, who reveals that his missions are a sham and that Digicorp is brainwashing him to believe that he really IS Thursby, and so will be the perfect double agent to spy on another company.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 2nd, 2005
By the last half of season three Lost In Space was certainly showing its wear. The stories would sink to simply camp with little or no redeeming value remaining. It’s no surprise that this once smart bit of space humor was on the way out after season 3. By now it appears the writers were fresh out of anything new and opted to recycle already tired formulas. Just how many times can Smith sell the family out for a long-shot return to Earth? Will and the Robot remain the best reason for watching the show.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 1st, 2005
Synopsis
Think of this as the John Waters version of Grease, with everything that that entails. The setting is the fifties, and kids are divided between the Squares (so clean-cut and conformist they make Ward Cleaver look like Marlon Brando) and the black-leather-clad Drapes. The leader of the Drapes is Cry-Baby Walker (Johnny Depp), and his posse includes the likes of Ricki Lake (BEFORE she became a talk-show host) and Traci Lords (AFTER... well, after). Square Amy Locane is drawn to Depp an... his world, much to the horror of her cohorts.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 1st, 2005
Synopsis
In the 1950s, Blue (Nina Siemaszko) travels from town to town with her itinerant jazz musician father (Tom Skerritt). When Dad is killed, Blue winds up under the thumb of brothel madam Wendy Hughes, and after some initial difficulty, assumes her new identity. But she pines for the boy (Brent Fraser) she met before her life went to hell, and she eventually fights to leave the addictive world of decadence she has entered. Escape will not be easy.
