Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on March 1st, 2004
Liability Crisis tells the tale of Paul, a man obsessed with Hitler and the Holocaust. This obsession threatens relationships with the women in his life. Sounds like an interesting premise. But art is all in the execution.
The leads in the film are played by Jim Helsinger and Mirjana Jokovic. Helsinger has the potential to look good on screen, but the bad lighting gives off an unnatural brown pallor to his skin. His performance fluctuates between veracious and just plain awkward. Jokovic, an ac...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 27th, 2004
Synopsis
A young married couple (Nathan Fillion and Chandra West) move to a cabin in thewilderness. This is not a happy getaway. They have lost their daughter, they are broke, theirmarriage is hanging by a thread, and the wife is suicidal. As if they didn’t have enough on theirhands, Fillion comes across a bad scene in the woods: the sheriff about to murder a youngwoman with a rock. Fillion kills the sheriff, rescues the woman, and then the problems reallybegin as nothing is what it...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 27th, 2004
Synopsis
Jane (Renee Stahl) drifts through contemporary LA. She wants to be a writer, but is reluctantto share her uncompleted work in her writing class. She makes a living typing up term papers.She has a model boyfriend, who is off doing a shoot in Italy and misses her terribly, but she isn’tsure what she feels about him (if anything at all). Then there’s the memory of a car crash thattorments her. Enter an young artist, with whom she begins an affair...
This is very much a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 27th, 2004
Synopsis
Two young women, each with their own problems. Marilu is a con artist, currently involvedwith selling fake Mayan art. She has to deal with the Mexican police, and one officer inparticular, who has carnal designs on her. Aurelia is coming to the end of her maternity leave,and is facing going back to work at a sweatshop. Said sweathshop is in an area where some 250women have already been killed by a serial killer. Aurelia steals her drug-dealer boyfriend’s stashand money, and...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 27th, 2004
If you’re passing through the video store and see a movie on a shelf that looks like the cover of Motley Crue’s album “Too Fast for Love”…you’ll be disappointed…or relieved (depending on how you feel about the Crue). The movie is James Cox’s Wonderland. Wonderland is a film about the porn star John C. Holmes (Val Kilmer) at the end of his tether. Towards the end of his life, Holmes, famously, got involved in a series of crimes known as the Wonderland Murders, which are dramatized in this movie. I wo...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 27th, 2004
Synopsis
Lee Remick travels to Columbus, Texas, so her young daughter can meet the father she hasnever known. Steve McQueen is but recently out of jail, and rather than settling down, dreams ofbeing a songwriter and singer. He is surprised to see Remick and daughter, but welcomes them.He is too volatile for life to be happy, however, and in spite of the best efforts of gentle deputyDon Murray to keep things in line, the situation grows every more dire.
Lee Remick is one of c...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 27th, 2004
Synopsis
In the wake of a late-90s attack on Japan by Godzilla, the government orders the construction of a weapon that will be able to stand up to the monster. To this end, the bones of the first Godzilla (killed in 1954) are brought up from the sea-bed, DNA is extracted, and this DNA is used to operate computers in the robotic Mechagodzilla (also named Kiryu). The project takes years, and the completion of the weapon ironically seems to trigger the monster’s first attack in all that ti...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 27th, 2004
Star Trek Voyager was the third spin-off from the original Star Trek following the Superior Next Generation and the inferior Deep Space Nine. While the idea was quite an original premise, the cast never seemed to gel. The obvious attempt at political correctness gives us the most diverse cast yet on Star Trek, including the first female captain. Kate Mulgrew is the weakest captain to date on Star Trek. (I know I’ll catch heat for this.) The reason is not her gender but such a lack of strength. She never walks but see...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) is on the job again with anotherpolitically charged case. In this instance, a skeleton is dug up that might be that of a young blackwoman. Her disappearance six years ago was badly handled by the police, to the point thatcharges might be laid. The investigation is not only explosive racially, but the way it plays outcould help or destroy careers, Tennison's among others.
As ever, the Prime Suspect series delves r...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
We are in a magnificent art deco hotel in Berlin. Here we come to know a disparate groupof characters: the world-weary ballerina (Garbo), the gentleman thief (John Barrymore), thedying man on a last spending binge (Lionel Barrymore), the scheming stenographer (JoanCrawford), and the unsavoury tycoon (Wallace Beery). These characters’ lives intersect andcollide over the course of a momentous night.
This is not the best-written Hollywood production. The plot is implau...
