Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 20th, 2003
William Shatner refused to reprise his role of Kirk in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home without a promise to write and direct the next film in the franchise. Against their better judgment Paramount agreed, and to this day wish they had not. The story is absolutely silly and the direction very one-dimensional. The truth […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 3rd, 2003
Synopsis Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck are an estranged couple aboard the Titanic. In ahilariously caricatured Europe vs US conflict, he is elitist snob, and she is the paragon ofMidwestern values, fighting to save her children from corruption. Naturally, Webb will redeemhimself once the ship starts sinking. Though the focus on these two characters […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 9th, 2003
FX decided to jump on the cable bandwagon last year and come up with their very own original series, The Shield. The show stars Michael Chiklis, formerly of The Commish, as Vic Mackey, a hard-nosed Los Angeles detective that gives bad cops a good name – but in a bad way. Mackey is head of […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 30th, 2003
Black Mask 2 doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the first film. Instead what you get is a cheesy Japanese version of The X-Men. With the help of less than special effects, professional wrestlers change into hilarious creatures that are more loony tunes funny than actually dangerous. It doesn’t help that newcomer […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 17th, 2003
This is closer to a being a tone poem than a narrative, so there is hardly any plot as such. We move through Berlin in the company of angels. They can hear our thoughts, but they cannot interfere or feel the physical world. Two of the angels — Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 2nd, 2003
Synopsis Two couples looking for something to do on the weekend decide to drive down to BeavertailLake and look for a UFO that supposedly landed there. (There’s a $100,000 reward if they findevidence.) Along the way, they squabble, meet odd characters, and get lost in the woods. Thisis another film with improvised dialogue. Improv […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 25th, 2003
Synopsis Chow Yun-Fat is Godfrey (not “Jeff” as the case has him, though “Godfrey” is, to NorthAmerican ears, an odd name for an action hero), tough-as-nails leader of a group of friends inThailand. Godfrey’s weak cousin gets them involved in a heist masterminded by the Judge(Simon Yam), who leads a gang as flamboyant as they […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 17th, 2003
Synopsis The film unfolds in a series of interlocking scenes, all occurring at different times. The talebeing told concerns the arrival in a small Oklahoma town of an ex-con (Kevin Anderson), whodeveloped a prison-correspondence romance with shy Martha Plimpton. In the present, SheriffHal Holbrook is investigating a murder, and the flashbacks to Anderson and […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 14th, 2003
The X-files was one of the best written and directed shows on television, this unfortunately is the last year that the show held onto it‘s audience and originality. We start the season off with the two part season opener “The Sixth Extinction” and “The Sixth Extinction II” with Scully in Africa looking for a cure […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 12th, 2003
Synopsis The year is 1949, and mainland China is falling to the Communists. Eruasian doctor HanSuyin (Jennifer Jones, and the casting should be a bit of a clue as to what you’re in for) has asuccessful professional life in Hong Kong, but her personal life has been nonexistent since thedeath of her husband. Then […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 5th, 2003
Synopsis On a luxury ocean liner, playboy Cary Grant meets singer Deborah Kerr. Each is involvedwith someone else, but they fall deeply in love with each other. Upon arriving in New York, theydecide to part and, if all goes well, reunite in six months at the top of the Empire State Building,by which time […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 8th, 2003
Synopsis Alec Guinness is a ferryboat captain who runs back and forth every other day betweenGibraltar and Morocco. He has a wife in each port: the domestic Celia Johnson and the fieryYvonne DeCarlo. This state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely, of course. A fun battle-of-the-sexes story, very much of its time (1953). While not […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 17th, 2002
Synopsis A couple and their young son are driving to their vacation home in the Catskills. They hita deer on the highway, accidentally ticking off one of the hunters, whose elevator doesn’t go allthe way to the penthouse, if you know what I mean. The boy, already on edge from the death ofthe deer […]
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 6th, 2002
Synopsis Welcome to the stagnant end of the gene pool. In this world, mortally stupid people live in asuburban hellscape, and shop at Retail Rodeo, the bastard love child of WalMart and ValueVillage. Desperate to escape from this world and her slob of a husband (John C. Reilly) is Justine(Aniston). She falls in love […]
