16 Blocks
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 7th, 2006
In 16 Blocks, Bruce Willis plays Jack Mosley, a NYPD detective who seems to be annoyed and tired of he job. He looks lethargic 90% of the time never wanting to really do his job. Jack is told that his boss wants him for another job; which is the last possible thing Jack wants right now. Jack has been told to transport a key witness 16 Blocks to a grand jury hearing. The witness must arrive in two hours before the grand jury’s term expires. The witness is Eddie Bunker (Mos Def), who seems to have more lines tha…
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Culpepper Cattle Company, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 7th, 2006
The Culpepper Cattle Company was a surprise for me, and one that I looked forward to immensely. I love a good western, and I’m particularly fond of anything post-Leone. A western doesn’t have to be spaghetti, however, for me to like it. I just feel that, for all Sergio’s overblown proportions, he did instill an accurate degree of nastiness in his films, which I’m sure was prevalent in that time of American history. Once Sergio came, westerns grew up, even if they were playing closer to the American style of fi…
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New Police Story
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 7th, 2006
You might not know this, but there are two Jackie Chans. The original Chan was an intense martial artist. His films were quite serious and action packed. While humor was always an element to his style, these early films did not really capitalize on that element. The Asian productions were nearly a genre unto themselves. Still, international stardom was elusive to this talented actor.
The second Jackie Chan is the man most Americans are familiar with. Still a talented martial artist, these films show a lighter side to the actor.
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BloodRayne
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 7th, 2006
Synopsis
Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a dhamphyr – a human/vampire hybrid. Escaping from the carnival where she is imprisoned as a freak, she sets out on a crusade against vampires, her ultimate target being the lord vampire Kagin (Ben Kingsley, an actor showing Michael Caine’s former penchant to whore himself out without shame), who also happens to be her father. Along the way, she forms an initially uneasy alliance with Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, and Will Sanderson – members of Brimstone, a …
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Noi
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 6th, 2006
Synopsis
Tómas Lemarquis plays Nói, a 17-year-old living in a tiny, frigid, massively isolated town in Iceland. He is brilliant, but refuses to be so, and many people in the town think he isn’t all there. He sleeps through school (when he bothers to show up), deals with his useless alcoholic father, and dreams of being somewhere else. When he meets a young woman who turns out to be a kindred spirit, his desire to escape is further enflamed. The odds, however, are stacked against him.
Quirky…
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Puff, Puff, Pass
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 6th, 2006
It’s hard to tell what Ronnie Warner and Kent George were trying to accomplish when they perpetrated Puff, Puff, Pass on the video rental public, but hopefully, they will discover it takes a little more work to write a funny script than cobbling together every stupid pot joke and lame religious blasphemy they can think of into a coherent script. Think “lame sitcom trying to be edgy for 95 minutes,” and you’ll have exactly what this film turns out to be. Featuring six stars from various TV shows – with Mekhi Ph…
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Dirty Dozen, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 5th, 2006
It is exceedingly strange to me that in this unprecedented age of media availability, movies on demand and theaters in our very own homes, more and more men have not seen those movies that were a staple of manhood for so many years. Movies like Bullitt, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and even The Godfather are less and less familiar to male audiences than ever. There is a reason that these films were so popular amongst men. They are movies about tough guys who weren’t afraid to rearrange some fac…
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Running Scared
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 4th, 2006
In Wayne Kramer’s latest film, Paul Walker stars as Joey Gazelle, a man who seems to be a part of the mob and has a ten year old son named Nick. The film then zooms back to 18 hrs earlier where Joey and his Perello boys are ambushed and are nearly killed. Turns out these men who they just killed are big time cops. Joey is told to get rid of the murder weapons, which seems to be his main goal in this mob group. Instead, as we soon learn, Joey never does this instead he hides the weapons. Unfortunately for Joey, Nick a…
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Immortal Sergeant
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 4th, 2006
Synopsis
Henry Fonda plays Colin Spence, a diffident, self-effacing Canadian (but of course!) corporal in the British infantry based in Tunisia. Led by the crusty but supremely competent Sergeant Kelly (Irish of course), Spence’s squad is sent out on a recon mission that goes badly awry, and the men are forced to engage in a terrible trek across the burning desert. Spence is forced to assume a leadership role, and along the way has flashbacks to his relationship with Maureen O’Hara, and how his unwil…
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Return to Me/At First Sight (Double Feature)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 4th, 2006
A long time ago, Sony owned the MGM video library (before Fox picked it up for impending HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Wars) and re-released some films as Special Editions, and combined others as part of convenient two-packs. This is an example of the latter, perhaps as some sort of romantic two-pack that’s easy on the wallet but heavy on the heart.
At First Sight is directed by Irwin Winkler (Night and the City) and tells the tale of Virgil Adamson (Val Kilmer, Real Genius) who has been blind all of his life.
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Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 4th, 2006
Before it became a somewhat famous regional barbecue house (I kid, I kid!) red, hot and blue was another name for the Red Hot Organization, a group designed to help fight the AIDS epidemic. Back in the early and mid ’90s kids, AIDS was raging on through the land, and Ronald Reagan did nothing to stop it. In fact, he was injecting homosexuals with AIDS while delivering crack into the ghetto.
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Jim Brickman at the Magic Kingdom – The Disney Songbook
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 4th, 2006
Synopsis
Everything I know about Jim Brickman could fit into a couple hundred word review about a concert performance he put on at the Walt Disney World resort. But upon further review, Brickman has been reaching out to the older generation for a few years now, producing collaborations and appearing at high profile events to bring recognition to his work.
He’s collaborated with quite a few people, and on his live performance at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, the mighty Michael Bolton makes an extended ap…
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Back Door to Hell
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 2nd, 2006
Monte Hellman filmed Back Door To Hell back to back with his better known Flight To Fury. This early Jack Nicholson film plays out very much like the throwaway it seems to have been. It’s certainly a brief affair, clocking in at just 69 minutes. Low budget films can often be impressive masterpieces. I have never seen a war film where that’s been true. After watching Back Door To Hell, nothing’s changed. The location and supporting cast make this at times feel more like Mexico than the Philippines. The settings are strictly back lot looking affairs, even when they are not.
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Alf: Season Three
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 2nd, 2006
ALF is back, and just as funny as ever in this third season of mayhem. Unfortunately, we are again treated to syndicated cut versions of the show. Still, this appears to be all we’re going to get. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but having the episode titles has pointed out that each ALF episode uses a song title as the production name. This season songs like Stop In The Name Of Love, Funeral For A Friend, and Stairway To Heaven are represented. There are quite a few more “fantasy” episodes here. ALF is shown what life in the Tanner household would be without him.
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Erosion
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 2nd, 2006
Synopsis
Emmanuel Xuereb plays Gabe, a man whose dying wife has left him for his best friend. (The psychiatric term for this situation is “bummer.”) His mourning takes the form of attempting to seduce women he doesn’t know, and he beings a relationship with Irene (Charis Michelsen), married but bored with her unimaginative husband. Irene is initially thrown when it turns out that Gabe is breaking into the homes where their encounters occur, but soon she is a willing participant in this game.
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OZ – The Complete Sixth Season
Posted in News and Opinions by Archive Authors on June 2nd, 2006
HBO Home Video will release the Complete Sixth Season of OZ on September 5th. This 3-disc set will inclued all 8 season three episodes presented in 1.33:1 Fullscreen along with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Extras will include three episode specific audio commentaries (with series creator Tom Fontana and members of the cast), original cast audition tapes, 30-minutes of deleted scenes and an extended cut of the series finale: Exeunt Omnes.
Chronicles of Riddick, The (HD DVD)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 1st, 2006
The Chronicles of Riddick takes place about five years after the events of Pitch Black. Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) continues to fight for his life on Crematoria (what a name), a planet whose sun, apparently, is so blazingly hot that every 15 minutes it blankets everything beneath it basically vaporizing it. But that doesn’t really matter all that much now does it. For Riddick, who is one of the few surviving members of the Furions, has been captured by the Necromongers and now must find a way to po…
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Compulsion
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 1st, 2006
This film’s slogan was “Sometimes murder is just a way to pass the time.” A better way to fill up those empty minutes would be to watch this film. The film is based on a highly publicized real life case out of Chicago. A play was produced in the 1920’s. A book would also be written by Meyer Levin, which is the source material for this film. The story would not end there. It would be made at least twice more, including Hitchcock’s first color film, Rope. The case was perhaps made famous as much for the presence of Clarence Darrow as the defense attorney than for the senseless act of violence it represented.
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Doogal
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 1st, 2006
Follow Doogal and friends as they try to save their lush green world from the clutches of the evil jack-in-the-box Zeebad (Jon Stewart) in this CGI family film that completely misses the mark. Though G-Rated – and obviously of inferior intellect – the film tries to be witty and smart with a ton of stale pop culture references its target audience will not come close to grasping. Sure, the adults will get them, but once they do, the question becomes, what do we do with them? Another “Can’t Touch This” MC Hammer referen…
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Underworld Evolution
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 31st, 2006
You won’t ever know the excitement I felt when I heard a sequel was being made to the film Underworld. While I didn’t see the big to due about the first film, I was actually hoping that the film would take the route some sequels have taken by making the film far superior to its predecessor. I guess Director Len Wiseman was trying to go out and make the sequel to Underworld even worse than its predecessor as he has completely succeeded in doing so.
As Underworld Evolution opens up, we g…
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Yellow Sky
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 31st, 2006
Yellow Sky is one of those near classic Westerns from 1949. For decades the film has flown under the mainstream radar, only to finally be rediscovered on DVD. Gregory Peck is an unlikely choice to play the lead role. Stretch heads a band of thieves that strike from town to town hitting usually banks. The film wastes very little time getting started. We see the gang set up, and soon pull off, one of these heists in the first five minutes. The gang is quickly chased out into the unforgiving desert sun of the Western badlands.
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Bazaar Bizarre
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 31st, 2006
Synopsis
This is an odd fish. It’s a documentary about Bob Berdella, who raped, tortured, killed and dismembered six men in the late 80’s. Director Benjamin Meade combines interviews with the investigators, the prosecutor, a survivor and Berdella himself with gruesome recreations of the crimes, an expectedly hard-boiled narration from James Ellroy, and incongruous performances of songs by the rock band “Demon Dogs.” The result is certainly interesting, but it jumps around so much that it can become h…
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Van Helsing (HD DVD)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 30th, 2006
In Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing, we meet Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) who is a professional monster-killer with a sidekick named Carl. Van Helsing must first track down Mr. Hyde who lives in the Notre Dame Cathedral and, sometimes, likes to venture outside for the occasional murder here and there. After completing this basic mission, Van Helsing is sent to the famous Transylvania to deal with Frankenstein’s Monster where he meets Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale). Anna and her brother Velkan represent the…
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Andre the Butcher
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 30th, 2006
Synopsis
On their way to a regional competition, a group of cheerleaders have a car accident, and wander into the rural landscape to look for help. They come across an apparently abandoned house. Two escaped convicts also find that house, and take two of the girls hostage, but soon everybody has a bigger problem in the shape of a hulking killer, Andre the Butcher, who has all sorts of supernatural powers as well as plenty of sharp blades.
Any movie that casts Ron Jeremy as a mad slasher has…
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MASH – The Complete Tenth Season
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 30th, 2006
It’s true that MASH was winding down by year 10. Everyone involved already knew that the next year would be the last. This is what separates the true professionals from those in it for the money. Instead of dragging out the concept until there was virtually nothing of quality remaining, the entire cast and crew decided it was time to finish on top. A lot of folks would have simply gone through the motions once the end was in sight. Instead, these guys kept pouring it on. The stories and acting in this season are just as good as in any other.
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