Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on May 24th, 2013
Usually when a kickboxing film comes along you pretty much know what to expect: a bunch of fighting with a paper-thin plot to string all the fights together. When I got Bunonhan I thought I knew what I was getting into, and really I was just ready to sit back and watch some cool fight sequences. Instead what I got was a complex story about families and betrayal where the fighting in the ring is just as deadly as the criminals that are willing to betray and kill anyone for money and land.
Bunonhan is nothing more than a little village where the lives of three brothers collide. Adil is a young Thai kickboxer who’s made a living at the sport. In a match where it seems he has no chance of winning, a fight-to-the-death match, friends quickly charge into the ring and carry Adil off to safety. Though their intentions were good, Adil knows that this will only put a price on his head considering the amount of money the fight promoter lost. The promoter hires a well known assassin to find Adil and kill him; the assassin hired just happens to be Ilham half-brother to Adil.
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on May 24th, 2013
“Any of this feeling familiar to you?”
Remember how everybody was really excited to see some of their favorite superheroes — plus Hawkeye (I kid, I kid) — in the same movie last summer? Well, I feel compelled to point out a different group of muscle-bound misfits actually beat The Avengers to the finish line by more than a year. Fast Five, released in April 2011, featured characters from each of the previous four Fast & Furious entries and, not coincidentally, easily became the biggest hit in the action franchise. So getting the gang back together for another round of motor-based mayhem was — much like these movies — a no-brainer.
Posted in: The Reel World by Jonathan Foster on May 23rd, 2013
“Someone should burn this place to the ground.”
How do you satisfactorily finish a story? You bring it full circle. They say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But for Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha), what happened in Las Vegas four years ago will come back to haunt them. In this conclusion to The Hangover saga, the Wolfpack returns to where it all began to face their toughest challenge yet.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 22nd, 2013
"I found this website... "How to Cure a Serial Killer in Ten Easy Steps" and this is the 1st step."
Dexter left us with quite a shock at the end of the 6th season. Shows have left us with cliffhangers before, but this was one of the most exciting season finales I've seen in a long time. Sister Deb walks in just as Dexter does his plastic playtime act, and there's no way to wiggle out of this one. As fans of the show, we knew that things just weren't going to be the same...and we were right.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on May 22nd, 2013
Ever flip through the pages of a magazine, or perhaps some electronic device where you read your daily world news, and wonder how they got that picture? Maybe on CNN or Fox News you caught a report from behind enemy lines or in some hellish city where Anderson Cooper or Bill O’Reilly would never be caught without an armored escort. Instead the stations rely on a group of brave (or insane) individuals to cover the stories and deliver the video and images needed to hit the audience with shock and awe. What Witness: A World In Conflict Through A Lens delivers is an inside look at the life and risks these men and women take every day so they can capture a moment for the world to see, but unfortunately the world seems to also ignore.
The four-part HBO documentary is cold and unflinching. What we get is by no means sugar-coated or filtered, and it’s because of this honest look at life in four separate hellish locations that it will be hard for some to handle. I’m going to come out and say from the start that this documentary not only sobered me to the reality of the world around us, but damn, did it make me feel lucky to be American.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 20th, 2013
Well, it is that time of the year when we must see what the blood suckers, shape shifters, wolves and the faeries are up to. No, I am not talking about the State of the Union address; I’m talking about the latest season of True Blood. Season Five to be exact. In these twelve episodes, we again travel to the land of Bon Temps, Louisiana and see exactly what delicious trouble and dastardly deeds our characters can get themselves tied up in.
We join Bill Compton (played by Stephen Moyer) and Eric Northman (played by Alexander Skarsgard) cleaning up their little mess (actually Eric is doing the majority of the cleaning while Bill talks on the phone) after they gave Nan Flanagan the true death at the end of Season Four. However, once they leave the mansion, they are immediately captured by Authority security.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 20th, 2013
The conclusion of the wildly popular Twilight saga last fall left a nation of haters high-fiving each other, but it also created a giant, heart-shaped vacuum in Hollywood. Where is the industry’s next big young adult-oriented, human-on-supernatural romance franchise going to come from? This past Valentine’s Day was as good a time as any to find out if Beautiful Creatures — based on Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s “Caster Chronicles” series — was up to the task.
Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) can’t wait to get out of Gatlin, South Carolina. Thanks to some nimble narration, Ethan explains why he feels trapped in his fictional dead-end town, where virtually every important piece of literature is on the banned list and people enthusiastically re-enact the Civil War as if they’re expecting a different result. Ethan’s spirits brighten when he meets moody outsider Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), who is literally the girl of his dreams. You see, Ethan has been having the same dream every night about a mysterious dark-haired beauty; unfortunately, he always dies at the end. After a rocky start (is there any other kind?), the two grow closer and Ethan discovers that Lena is a witch.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on May 20th, 2013
“Never let the truth spoil a good story.” – Charlie Watts, drummer
Ever since they came on the scene in the ‘60s, The Rolling Stones have done things in their own unique and unapologetic style. Widely regarded as the anti-Beatles, The Stones’ blues-infused rock music spoke to many people and inspired many a future musician. They personified the era of sex, drugs and rock & roll...especially the "drugs and rock & roll” part.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on May 20th, 2013
The problem with casting Ben Kingsley in this film’s title role is that the Oscar-winning actor is anything but common. He’s been a commanding screen presence for four solid decades, starting with his award-winning work in 1982’s Gandhi and continuing through his surprising performance in Iron Man 3. When Kingsley first appears in A Common Man, he immediately stands out in the crowded streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka thanks to a sharp goatee and his signature shorn dome. Turns out Kingsley’s inherent star power is the least of this movie’s problems.
A Common Man is a remake of the 2008 Bollywood hit A Wednesday. The film opens with news reports of recent terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka followed by an effective, nearly dialogue-free sequence of a man (Kingsley) leaving packages at different points — a bus, a shopping mall trash can, etc. — throughout the city of Colombo. The man, who calls himself Vincent, makes his way to his makeshift headquarters on a rooftop and calls overmatched Deputy Inspector General of Police Morris Da Silva (Ben Cross) to inform him he has planted five bombs across the city. He demands the release of four deadly international terrorists and threatens to detonate the bombs if his conditions aren’t met.
Posted in: The Reel World by Gino Sassani on May 16th, 2013
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Every Star Trek fan has had that phrase beaten into their brain about as many times as Uncle Ben's mantra about great power and great responsibility. Who knew that the tagline was appropriate to filmmaking? When J.J. Abrams signed on to direct the reboot/remake/reimagining/rehash (insert your own word here) of Star Trek he quickly made it known that he was not really that into the franchise. He considered himself a Star Wars man, and a chill went through the spine of every Trek fan on the planet. I approached the 2009 effort with dread.
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