Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 10th, 2015
I’m starting to wonder if it is time we officially made a sub-genre for kidnapping films. It’s a storyline that has been played out for decades but continues to offer up some engaging and oftentimes heart-wrenching tales that for the most part have happy endings but that seems to be a far stretch from reality, though I doubt audiences are looking for these bleak realistic endings and mostly prefer the Hollywood ending where everyone is rescued in just the nick of time. When Prisoners came out, I had hopes that it would be a film that wouldn’t shy away from the harsh realities, and for the most part it succeeded, but I still felt it held back. Now we have Atom Egoyan throwing his hat into the murky subject matter. Let’s face it; kidnapping is a horror no parent wants to experience and would much rather not think about.
Matthew (Ryan Reynolds) is the unfortunate parent who in the moment of doing something as trivial as running into the shop to grab dinner for the family, his daughter is taken without so much as a trace of evidence. Not only does he have to face the guilt of losing his daughter while being only yards away from her, but we see how he is on the receiving end of blame from his wife Tina (Mireille Enos) and a suspect by the police. Sometimes films like to dangle the shadow of doubt that the parent could be involved with the disappearance. Though in this case where we know Matthew’s innocence, we are able to feel his frustration as all this time wasted while looking at him as a suspect and the real criminals are only slipping farther away.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on March 10th, 2015
It's hard to understand our relation to the past today, especially in America. Africa, Europe and Asia had ancient history, but the USA only really has the Old West. This country has no real history, and most of its people came from other parts of the world. The immigrants would funnel into New York City to get away from the Old World, looking to build a better life. The West was unpopulated and barely governed. Most small towns were ruled by the man who could hire the most guns. If we think things are bad today, we really don't understand how it was when people could be gunned down with little consequence. Sheriffs were often scared, alone, and afraid that each day could be their last. Most people tried to stay to themselves and avoid getting shot. It was a dirty and bleak life.
The Salvation is one of the most brutal and unrelenting westerns I've seen in a long time. It calls up all the ghosts of the genre, especially the strong, silent Clint Eastwood of the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone. It's funny, because this isn't an Italian western but a Danish western, but it was filmed in South Africa. It takes place in the classic Old West town ruled by a ruthless and unpredictably mean gunslinger called Larue (Jeffery Dean Morgan). The landscape is typical of a thousand westerns with locals that could be in Wyoming, Arizona, Texas or any locale where the law was meek and in short supply.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 9th, 2015
Even though one of the main characters in The Red Road is a police officer, the show's six-episode first season plays less like your typical cop drama and more like an extended profile of two strained communities. There's the fictional town of Walpole, N.J. and the Lenape tribe that lives in the neighboring Ramapo Mountains. While the show certainly touches on the tension between the two communities, too much time here is devoted to multi-generational family drama that we've seen before. In other words, the show too often neglects the things that make it unique.
“Bad things happen in those mountains.”
Posted in: Podcasts by Gino Sassani on March 8th, 2015
Can you mine comedy out of a financial crises and the student loan issues in this country. You can if you're Arc Entertainment. They're releasing Bank$tas on DVD Tuesday. I got the chance to talk with one of the film's stars. Michael Seater might be best known to fans from Bomb Girls and Life With Derek. He gets to play in the world of high finance with the likes of Alan Thicke and Supergirl herself Laura Vandervoort. Bang it here to check out my chat with Michael Seater.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 8th, 2015
I’m going to come right out and say that before I got season 3 to review, all I had previously seen of Longmire was through advertisements I would catch every now and again. It was a show that seemed to have a lot of promise, but with the amount of DVD watching that comes with writing for the site, you have to be a bit picky about what you want to watch in your “spare time”. Thanks to the help of the internet I was able to watch some season 1 and 2 recaps and surprisingly when I started up season 3 there wasn’t much difficulty in catching up and getting into the groove of the show.
Sheriff Longmire (Robert Taylor) is a brooding character who by the time season 3 has rolled around not only has he lost his wife, but his best friend Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips) is about to go to prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Season 3 wastes no time jumping into the drama as Longmire is thrust into action to save Deputy Branch Connally (Bailey Chase) who has been shot. When the deputy is finally able to speak, the man he is able to identify as a shooter is a White Warrior Indian who is believed to be dead. To help with these claims, while removing a bullet the doctors remove a crow’s feather that had been stuffed into the wounded deputy.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on March 7th, 2015
Unfinished Business starring Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, Dave Franco, Sienna Miller, James Marsden and Nick Frost is a raunchy comedy. I say that because it is the most important thing I can say that would make people want to see this movie. It is raunchy, but it is mixed with so many other issues and tones that the raunchiness and comedy sometimes get lost in the mix. The film is really more about anxiety and failure. There are so many elements mixed in that this emotional rollercoaster of a movie is so full of strange turns that it is difficult to enjoy the ride. All the performers are capable of great work and may even be doing great work here, but it gets lost. The cumulative effect is a sense of confusion, but I believe that there is a good movie here that could come out if everyone went back and did the whole thing again. The director Ken Scott is best known for having made the successful French Canadian comedy Starbuck, which was later remade as The Delivery Man starring Vince Vaughn. I assume that is how this whole project ultimately came together.
The original title for Unfinished Business was Business Trip, which would have been better since it gives focus to what's going on. Dan Trunkman (Vaughn) quits his job to start a new company in the opening scene of the movie. The opening scene of an argument in the break room with his boss and future competitor, Chuck (Sienna Miller) gets things off to a good start. Many people have expressed confusion about what the actual business is, and I think it would have helped early on to have included a funny scene explaining the mechanics of selling aftermarket metal waste for recycling. He immediately takes on two new employees in the parking lot in a typical heart-of-gold fashion. One is an employee let go because of age. Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkinson) is only 67 and still feels he has a lot of living yet to do. The other major character is a problem from the outside. Mike Pancake (Dave Franco) is such a confusing mix of negative and positive qualities that any normal person would have instinctively said, “Sorry, I can't help you”. That Dan doesn't do that immediately makes you wonder if there isn't something terribly wrong with him as a businessman embarking on a new venture.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on March 6th, 2015
Despite the twinge of disappointment I felt as I exited the theater after seeing Elysium, I still believed writer/director Neill Blomkamp was more than a one-trick pony with District 9. Now two years after the release of Elysium, Blomkamp is set to release Chappie, a sentient-robot film that from the trailers evokes comparisons to Robocop and Short Circuit, which could mean either that could be a hit or another disappointment. A disappointment could be trouble for Blomkamp. After all, his concept images and storyline for an Alien sequel has relit excitement for a franchise that many had felt died after the third entry. I look at Blomkamp’s film and feel he is what the sci-fi genre has needed, a creative party who isn’t making films just because he can. Blomkamp is a fresh voice that the genre has desperately needed. A voice that is willing to tackle social issues but entertain the masses at the same time. When it comes to Chappie, despite my concern, despite all the naysayers, Blomkamp has made a film that takes many risks, and he comes so close to knocking it out of the park.
Chappie takes us into a world where the days of human police officers working the street has become a thing of the past. It’s an experiment we’ve seen explored before, and most will think about Robocop in many of the early scenes. As I watched, I couldn’t help thinking, was this nothing more than an attempt on Blomkamp’s part to show he should have been the one to helm the Robocop remake? We even get a glimpse of another robot that is being designed by a mullet-brandishing Hugh Jackman that looks just like the ED-209, only this version is called the Moose. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 6th, 2015
When Stephen King wrote The Running Man back in 1982, he might very well have been looking through a crystal ball at the television landscape of the 21st century. While we haven't started executing criminals in game-show fashion ...yet … reality television has had a huge impact on our pop culture. From Big Brother to Survivor, Americans continue to get their kicks watching attention-needy "contestants" engage in silly little dramas and the occasional shoving match. Maybe we should blame it all on Jerry Springer. One of the latest reality shows to come along has been Breaking Amish. That show was soon followed by Breaking Amish: Los Angeles. Both are no longer on the air, and after spending a season with Breaking Amish Los Angeles, I can't say I'm at all surprised.
The idea appears to be a simple one. Young Amish folks are offered a chance to try the "English" (it's what they call the rest of us) lifestyle. They are taken to LA where they live together and experience all of those things that are taboo in their own cultures. They risk being shunned when they return, but they go along with the idea. Now here's where the show differs from any other reality series I've seen to date. Usually there is some competition or elimination process with some kind of a prize or goal at the end of the show. That's not the case here. When it starts we don't even know how long they are to do this, and "contestants" appear to come and go in the house. There is no cash or apprentices awaiting a winner. A couple of the participants do get to meet people in a field they wish to pursue, but it's a dropped thread that doesn't really lead anywhere for either. No one gets voted out, although a couple are asked to leave at different times, only one being permanent.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 5th, 2015
“There’s no place on Earth with more magic and superstition mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands.”
To build its slate of original programming, Starz has largely decided to look to the past. In recent years, the premium cable network has produced shows like Da Vinci’s Demons, The White Queen, and Black Sails, each of them (loosely) historical dramas with varying amounts of nudity sprinkled in. But it took a trip to the Scottish Highlands — and to the 18th century — for the channel to find its biggest hit to date.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 3rd, 2015
"Remember when our biggest problem was which Mayan to kill?"
All good things come to an end, and all rides eventually reach their destination. It's all come home for the gang at Sons of Anarchy, and you can believe that if anyone is left standing when it's over, there will be scars. Kurt Sutter has taken the culture of the motorcycle club, don't call them a gang, and made it accessible to a regular audience. He did that not by attempting to overwhelm us with the iconography of the genre. He did it by giving us incredible characters with incredibly complex story arcs and inter-relationships. Honestly, it couldn't have been an easy task. I could not have cared any less for this particular genre or culture, but I'm really going to miss the characters of Sons of Anarchy.
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