Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 8th, 2018
"You can tell a lot about a person's character by how they treat people they don't have to treat well."
It had been a decade since Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible hit theatres to box office success, established a new blockbuster franchise, and added ‘action hero’ to Tom Cruise’s resume, and six years since John Woo’s highly stylized follow-up raised the franchise to new box office heights. In 2006 the long-awaited third installment arrived amidst controversy about Tom Cruise’s crazy off-screen antics. It was feared that the happenings of Cruise’s personal life would somehow bring down this movie
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on July 6th, 2018
Earlier this summer, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was turned upside down in a snap. Avengers: Infinity War was the culmination of 10 years worth of origin stories and world-building. That blockbuster featured (almost) every MCU hero in the galaxy, universe-spanning stakes, and an unforgettable cliffhanger. So you can excuse Marvel for scaling things back (waaaaay back) with its next entry. Of course, any superhero flick that came immediately after Infinity War was going to feel small by comparison, so who better to take on that task than the tiniest hero of them all?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 5th, 2018
"This is not Mission: Difficult, Mr. Hunt. It's Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you."
After four years and nearly $200 million at the box office, it was only a matter of time before Paramount and Tom Cruise would partner again for a new Mission Impossible film. This time the move would be completely toward the action and stunts and farther away from the television series. The hiring of John Woo to direct the second film put quite a punctuation mark on that move.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on July 5th, 2018
“Welcome to North Dakota, the least visited state in America.”
Yeah, that’s what you want to hear when you go to visit a place. I mean, according to Frat Pack, entertainment is so scarce that you have to kidnap a person as a first impression. Well, then again, as first impression goes, I can’t imagine a better one to set up the kind of movie you are watching. Frat Pack is a story in the vein of Animal House. Let me be clear, I am not putting it in the same league as Animal House, just merely pointing out their similar genres.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on July 5th, 2018
“Every time a black woman gets mad, she's a stereotype.”
Taraji P. Henson has been a very good and versatile actress for a long time, but she didn’t become a star until she started getting very angry on screen. Her breakout role came in 2015 courtesy of Fox’s Empire, in which Henson’s Cookie Lyon has been known to get into some scraps. So it made sense for Henson to bring her talent for tantrums to the big screen with the help of a filmmaker who once directed a movie called Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Writer/director/producer Tyler Perry seems to be going for “trashy fun”…unfortunately, he only gets halfway there.
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on July 4th, 2018
“This is the greatest s--- show on Earth!”
The First Purge arrives in theaters a little more than five years after the (lowercase) first Purge rampaged into moviegoers’ consciousness as a nasty bit of R-rated, summer blockbuster counterprogramming. The movies are obviously quite popular, but I’ve never felt that any of them fully lived up to the killer concept at the center of this franchise. Unfortunately, that still holds true for The First Purge, which had a chance to deviate from the established formula in a variety of interesting ways, but ends up playing a lot like The First Three Purges.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 3rd, 2018
"Well, you think about it, Ethan, it was inevitable. No more cold war. No more secrets you keep from yourself. Answer to no one but yourself. Then, you wake up one morning and find out the President is running the country without your permission. The son of a bitch, how dare he. Then you realize, it's over. You are an obsolete piece of hardware, not worth upgrading, you got a lousy marriage, and 62 grand a year."
The more things change, the more they tend to remain the same. In 1996 Paramount was nearing the end of a run of feature films that started with a 1960's Desilu Studios television series called Star Trek. That same year the studio was beginning a run of feature films based on a 1960's Desilu Studios television series that at one time shared an actor with Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on July 3rd, 2018
Sometimes a movie comes along that has everything going for it: a great cast, a great cinematographer, and a decent plot, but when you watch it, you just scratch your head wondering why it ended up so bad. That in a nutshell is Terminal. It stars Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, and Mike Myers, and for each of them I believe this is a film they quickly want to move past. The tagline for the film is Revenge Never Looked So Good, which is a big part of the problem with the film. I absolutely love the look of the film. It’s beautiful and to a point creates its own style I’d call neon-noir, but unfortunately no matter how good something may look, it doesn’t always mean it will be good.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 29th, 2018
“Please don't do the whole absent-minded professor thing.”
Even though he’s not anywhere close to the biggest name in Hollywood, Guy Pearce is low-key my favorite actor. The Aussie is probably best known for his starring role in Christopher Nolan’s Memento, the memory loss masterpiece in which Pearce played a man who tattooed helpful(?) clues and reminders all over his body. So when I realized he’d be playing another forgetful lead character in Spinning Man, I was hopeful. But despite some solid performances and interesting philosophical ideas, the film is too downbeat and dull to be an effective thriller.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 28th, 2018
When we first meet the Pierce family it is at the Freeland jail, where Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) is there to bail out his oldest daughter, Anissa (Nafessa Williams). The show doesn’t waste time in tackling social issues as we see them have an encounter with the Freeland police force as they are pulled over for a traffic stop. The reason for the stop turns out to be they are looking for a suspect who just robbed a liquor store, and because Jefferson is black, he of course is a potential suspect. Having this scene early on, not just in the season but in the pilot episode, is a bold and important move by the writers. This shows us that despite being a superhero show, Black Lightning is going to show us a superhero tale unlike anything we’ve seen before on the CW.
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