Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on April 12th, 2016
When we last saw Miss Fine (or should I say Mrs. Sheffield), she fell off her husband’s yacht on her honeymoon. I have previously written about The Nanny: Season 5 in January and Season 4 in September of last year, so go back and look up all the previous shenanigans. The first episode of the final season has the newly married couple stranded on a deserted island, and Fran Drescher is up to her usual ridiculous antics as Fran Fine. You can expect a lot of silly and moderately racy sexual innuendo. As usual, there are lots of celebrity cameos. In one Hollywood Squares episode alone, there are nine celebrities interacting with Max Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy) who is one of the squares. Fran is trying to get pregnant, and she has to climb up to get Maxwell because they have to follow a strict time schedule. Then since these episodes take place in 1999, there is an episode with Hillary and Bill (celebrity impersonators) which is an embarrassment for all involved. We get Aunt Frieda (Lainie Kazan), who is still obsessed and upset that she didn’t get to sing at Fran’s wedding. Frieda finally gets to sing, and Lainie has a fine voice. Another person who gets to sing is Fran’s father, Morty (Steve Lawrence). He also sounds great. We have never seen Morty before in the previous seasons, but in a very special episode, Sylvia (Renee Taylor) is seeing a hot doctor (Joseph Bologna, Renee’s real life husband) and everyone thinks she is cheating on Morty.
Then there is the constant rivalry between Mr. Sheffield and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, which culminates in a fight for the rights of Yetta’s Letters (don’t ask, but Yetta (Ann Morgan Guilbert) is Fran’s absentminded grandmother). Then there is time for another wedding when Maxwell’s little daughter, Maggie (Nicole Tom), grows up and gets married to an empty-headed male model. All of this leads up to the two-part series finale which juggles two disparate story lines. Niles (Daniel Davis), Maxwell’s fey butler, and C.C. Babcock (Lauren Lane), Maxwell’s business partner and jealous lover, reveal that their six seasons of hatred and insults was actually covering deep animal magnetism. Will they or won’t they stop treating each other like idiots and finally give into deep burning passion? Then we have Fran at Maggie’s wedding, very close to her due date when she gets stuck in an elevator with C.C. Babcock. I don’t have to tell you what happens next. Well, I could, but I won’t. We do finally get to find out what C.C. stands for.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on April 11th, 2016
Thanks to The Sound of Music, millions of people around the world are familiar with the von Trapp family saga. (They probably have the second most popular Austrian name among movie fans, behind some guy named Schwarzenegger.) Given that The Sound of Music is one of the most popular movies of all time, any filmmaker would be wise to offer a fresh perspective in telling a von Trapp story. Enter The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music, which puts eldest von Trapp daughter Liesl Agathe in the center of the action.
“Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start...”
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on April 10th, 2016
Comic book movies are the preeminent form of movie entertainment in this day and age. I use the term broadly to include all sorts of fantasy books and ancillary offshoots. There is the Marvel Universe and the DC Universe and other universes that include Star Wars, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and endless variations. As consumers we become fans of a particular fantasy world from which we gain great personal pleasure. Religion is also a source of orientation for most of the world. We believe in various versions of God in which to invest our emotions fervently and honestly. There is a clear difference between fantasy and religion, but then we have YouTube, which is becoming increasingly crammed with “information” that crosses the line between fantasy and reality. Many people who are obsessed with superheroes and fantasy characters may not believe in God. People who believe in God may find comic books silly. The fact is that myth and legend are intertwined with fantasy and religion to this very day. We all live in a real world, and all of this is beyond our understanding if it were indeed real.
Midnight Special is a movie that starts from a religious framework. A young boy, Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) has been kidnapped by his father from a religious cult. The cult is run by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard) and, though it’s not clear, he is probably the father of Alton’s father. Roy (Michael Shannon) has taken the boy to bring about prophesy that the boy has foretold. The cult is apparently centered on words the boy has said as a new scripture. The government is actively involved in recapturing the boy, but for reasons of national security. Numerous FBI and military personnel are involved in the hunt, but the de facto head is NSA agent Sevier (Adam Driver, better known now as Kylo Ren from Star Wars: Episode VII-The Force Awakens). Roy has enlisted a state trooper friend, Lucas (Joel Edgerton) in this highly illegal endeavor. Everyone is committed to the quest by the force of religious fervor.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 10th, 2016
It comes as no surprise that even in 2016 we continue to have issues with how we handle and discipline criminals while they are incarcerated. We have a system that pulls in troubled youths that seem to come and go through the judicial system and seem to spend a majority of their lives behind bars. Hollywood has seemed have an eye on this problem and has churned out many films about misunderstood inmates that are incarcerated and are unfairly treated by the system and those who are in control of the inmates. Cool Hand Luke, Sleepers, and The Shawshank Redemption are a couple films that jump out at me, and today it’s Stealing Cars that dares to explore this problem.
Billy (Emory Cohen) is basically your rebellious teenager who we meet in the opening scene as he is stealing a car and having a little joyride before the police finally catch up to him. As anyone can expect, when Billy arrives to the detention center he receives a less than warm welcome from one of the guards, Conrad (Paul Sparks) who seems to have it in for Billy from day one. To be fair though, Billy is far from being the model inmate and wastes no time making an obnoxious spectacle of himself during his first days in custody.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on April 10th, 2016
From the opening credits I knew this was movie intended to be a hard-hitting examination on how drugs could compromise a promising future. In most respects Curveball hits the mark; even the inclusion of the unorthodox methods which the lead character’s mother utilizes in order to help him is a welcome addition. However, there is a disconnect between the film’s introduction and conclusion that does some pretty considerable damage to the story overall.
Nolan is a pitcher with a promising future ahead of him. He and his best friend Sam are closer than brothers. Since childhood, when Sam protected Nolan from a beating from a group of boys, Nolan has felt extreme loyalty to his friend, covering for him anytime he makes a mistake. Sam, unlike Nolan, is a foster child in an at least verbally abusive home. To escape his situation, he turns to drugs and eventually pulls Nolan into that world as well. It starts off recreationally and rapidly becomes all-consuming
Posted in: Podcasts by Gino Sassani on April 8th, 2016
Are you happy? What makes someone happy? That's the subject of the documentary Pursuing Happiness. Director Adam Shell spent 2 years out on the road looking for the happiest people in the nation. Who they are and what makes them happy might surprise you. I had the opportunity to spend some time talking to Adam. What did he find out? How did it change his own life? Bang it here to listen in on my chat with Adam Shell.
You might also like to visit the film's website. Find out how you can see a copy of Pursuing Happiness.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 8th, 2016
“Look at where the world is because of solitary dudes going mental in the desert.”
Depressed, deplorable artist Tom heads to the Mojave Desert, where he unexpectedly meets his match in crazed, charismatic drifter Jack. The fact that their tense encounter results in a death is one of the least surprising things about Mojave. What initially appears to be a cat-and-mouse game set in the desert turns out to be an interesting, uneven meditation on perception vs. reality that spills over into the vapid world of Hollywood.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 7th, 2016
"There's always room for improvement."
Banshee is one of those improbable plots that finds a way to pull us into the action all the while ignoring how unlikely any of this might really be. Of course, we do that all the time. It's certainly unlikely we're going to face a zombie apocalypse or run into a super-powered hero. That's a different kind of unlikely. This kind of real-world fantastic is usually a bit harder to accept. Credit folks like Allan Ball for keeping us engaged with some of the most entertaining sleight of hand on television. Entering its third season, the series shows no signs of slowing down. You absolutely can't start with season three. There's too much "must-know" build up here. You can get caught up on the characters and first two seasons here.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Dan Holland on April 7th, 2016
After screening Payback, I did a decent amount of research to find information about the director in an effort to better understand the film from a production standpoint. After searching on the web for a bit, I discovered that there is really not much information about the film outside the fact that it is a Hong Kong production, written and directed by first timer Fu Xi. This is a bit strange, considering the fame of the lead actors Francis Ng and Fan Siu-Wong. Anyone who has a mild interest in the action cinema of Hong Kong would recognize Fan Siu-Wong from Ip Man, Ip Man 2, or my personal favorite, the gore-filled Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.
Francis Ng plays a lowly, disheveled cab driver (very well, I might add) who picks up a newly released prisoner, Zhang Jin (played by Fan). In typical action-thriller fashion, Zhang Jin becomes the target of an assassination plot to tie up loose ends, and he finds an unlikely ally in the cab driver. Although I’m much more familiar with Fan Siu-Wong’s performances, Francis Ng’s acting in this film is absolutely fantastic. Distraught with the recent murders of his wife and daughter, watching him spiral into insanity both emotionally and physically was quite an enjoyable ride. As a matter of fact, the picture on the DVD sleeve which depicts Ng holding a gun is rather misleading. Throughout the film, Ng’s acts recklessly out of grief, but is believably clumsy in his mannerisms: He is an outraged civilian who happens upon a gun, who takes matters into his own hands without knowing anything about firearms or the repercussions of revenge. I believe this, ultimately, is Payback’s saving grace.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 7th, 2016
Any time I would catch the show Storage Wars, I always would watch with this morbid curiosity with the hopes that one day they’d open a storage unit and discover something more than a few lost boxes. With the millions of storage units that are spread throughout the country, you’d have to imagine that hidden away in a couple of these units are some pretty awful things that would turn the stomachs of most. Is this simply a thought I have from watching too many horror films? Most likely, but I can’t be the only one out there; after all it would seem this line of thinking is what brought The Hoarder to the screen. In the new horror release we get to discover there is more to fear than a few old dust bunnies when venturing out to the local storage unit; in fact it can possibly turn into a trip you may never return from.
Ella (Mischa Barton) is having doubts about her current boyfriend; they are the kind of doubts that lead her to believe he has something to hide in his storage unit. After she’s swiped his card key to the unit, Ella drags her best friend Molly (Emily Atack) along to see what all they can find.








