Chaplin Collection Volume 1, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 30th, 2003
Synopsis
Chaplin’s career was a long one, and the four films here cover a good span. Chaplin is bestknown for his silent work, and that is represented by Modern Times and The GoldRush. Though the former is also technically his first talkie, it is still primarily silent. Thelatter comes in two versions: the original 1925 release, and the 1942 re-issue, which featured afew new scenes, and the intertitles replaced by Chaplin’s narration (though the film remainsbasically a…
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Futurama, Vol. 2
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 29th, 2003
Synopsis
The complete set of episodes from the second season, with our 20th-Century hero nowrelatively well adapted to life in the far-flung future. The characters by this point are wellestablished and a fairly broad ensemble. The series has never struck me as being quite as funnyas the The Simpsons in their prime, but there is still lots of choice material.
Audio
The audio is a 2.0 mix. This is pretty common for TV discs, though it is certainly notnecessary…
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Cape Fear (1991)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 29th, 2003
Once in a blue moon, though, there’s a re-make that not only takes the original to a new level of appreciation, but actually improves upon it. In musical terms, it’s Ike and Tina’s “Proud Mary.” In the cinematic forum, Martin Scorsese’s 1991 re-work of the B-movie thriller Cape Fear is another.
Max Cady (Robert DeNiro, lost the Oscar to Anthony Hopkins) is a recent parolee, fresh out of the joint after serving a fourteen year stretch for aggravated assault. During his trial, his lawyer, public…
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Bowling for Columbine
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 29th, 2003
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine has done more then just win the Academy Award for best documentary film, it has also ruffled a lot of feathers. Moore’s extreme views, which are embraced by many, also seem to piss off a lot of people.
Moore’s extreme bias on the topic of gun control and U.S. war mongering has lead many to believe that Bowling for Columbine is more of a 2-hour speech then an award winning documentary. You may not like what he has to say, but y…
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Degree of Guilt
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 27th, 2003
Attorneys Chris Paget (David James Elliot) and Terri Peralta (Daphne Zuniga) are lawyers who come together to defend Chris’s ex-lover Mary Carelli (Sharon Lawrence). As they get deeper into the case they become closer; when Terri’s estranged husband is found dead and Chris is charged with the murder, things change. This film plays out like a three hour episode of Melrose places and it could have easily been two movies instead of one with two almost unrelated storylines.
Dragon Tales: We Can Work it Out
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 27th, 2003
Dragon Tales is a kids television show from the Sesame Workshop and Sony Pictures Television. Kids learn important lessons from the dragon’s and kids about getting along in the following five episodes; Cassie, The Green-eyed Dragon, So Long Solo, Breaking up is Hard To Do, The Grudge won’t Budge and Remember the Pillow Fort.
Audio
Included on this disc is a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track that is not really needed. The audio rarely leaves the center channel never mind the front soundstage. Ot…
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Horror
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 25th, 2003
Synopsis
The plot unfolds with the logic of a nightmare, thereby defying linear description. Roughly,what happens is that a group of teens stage a violent escape from a rehab centre, and wind upat the house of our heroine (Lizzy Mahon). Here reality breaks down completely, as Mahon andthe others are tormented by one supernatural event after another, all of which seem to havesomething to do with the actions of Mahon’s father and grandfather. There are many strikinglybeautiful and/or …
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Chasing Papi
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 24th, 2003
Synopsis
The “Papi” of the title is Thomas “Papi” Fuentes (Eduardo Verastegui), last word in ladies’men. He is romancing high-born Patricia (Jaci Velasquez) in New York, lawyer Lorena (RoselynSanchez) in Chicago, and Charo-clone Cici (Sofia Vergara) in Miami. This is already exhausting,but when all three women decide simultaneously to surprise him at home, all hell breaks loose.Roselyn Sanchez, here reduced to eye candy, has a much meatier role in the recent releaseNightstalker>, and the jokes are as old as the Precambrian Shield, but only half as funny.Tiresome.
Audio
You’d better like Salsa and similar rhythms, because it plays almost non-stop on thesoundtrack. The music is certainly given a good mix, and if this is you’re thing, you’ll bebopping along to the disc. The music is so omnipresent that there is little to notice by way of rearspeaker sound effects or environment, but there simply don’t appear to be that many to benoticed in the first place: this is a film of dialogue and music, both of which come throughclearly.
Video
Both full frame and 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen ratios are available on this double-sidedDVD. The colours are very warm and vivid, and the contrasts work well as the movie jumpsfrom live action to animated transition and back again. Blacks and flesh tones are very solid too,and the image is sharp. All in all a perfectly acceptable transfer, free of grain and otherdistractions.
Special Features
Generally speaking, the extras are fluffy, promotional, or both. The commentary is bydirector Linda Mendoza, DP Xavier Perez Grobet, and the four leads, and is in a mixture ofEnglish and Spanish (subtitled). As is frequently the case with such large round-tablediscussions, much of the conversation is silly and irrelevant. The widescreen side also has apromotional featurette (a glorified trailer, really), and the fullscreen side has a bloopers montage(nothing screamingly funny here), the theatrical trailer, an ad for the soundtrack and a musicvideo by Huey Dunbar featuring Fat Joe. The menu’s main page, intro and transitions areanimated and scored.
Closing Thoughts
An old-as-the-hills farce, with a pace that’s frantic enough, but that fails to be funny.
Special Features List
- Audio Commentary
- “Making Of” Featurette
- Outtakes and Bloopers
- Theatrical Trailer
- Music Promo
- Music Video
See No Evil
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 24th, 2003
Synopsis
Blinded in a horse-riding accident, Mia Farrow comes to live with her uncle and aunt in thecountry, and manages to get around the familiar spaces quite well. Unfortunately, her uncle’s carearlier splashed the cowboy boots of a psychotic killer. He descends on the house while Farrowis out, and kills everyone there. She returns, unaware that she is surrounded by corpses, and thatthe killer may return. Though the premise (blind woman versus a killer) bears some similarityto th…
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Good Thief, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 23rd, 2003
Synopsis
Nick Nolte plays Bob, a former high-end thief, now a drugged-out loser living in Nice,France. He still retains the loyalty of his friends, however, and this includes Tchiky Karyo, thecop who has busted him time and time again, and who worries about Bob. He is especiallyworried that Bob will return to crime, because that would mean prison for the rest of his life.Sure enough, Bob is seduced into One More Gig, a complicated heist of valuable paintings.
There are remakes, and …
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NYPD Blue – Season 2
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 23rd, 2003
The second season of the gritty cop show turned out to be an important test: could the seriessurvive the departure of important cast members? In particular, could it survive the departureof David Caruso? As it turned out, it survived without him much better than he without it. This season includes such turning points as the trial of Amy Brennerman and attendant consequences(i.e. bye-bye Caruso), the wedding of Dennis Franz, and the arrival (and his gradual acceptance of) his new partner (hello Jimmy Smits).
Double Life, A
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 19th, 2003
Synopsis
Ronald Colman, in an Oscar-winning performance (1948), plays an actor who takes methodacting to the extreme. He truly disappears into his roles, and this becomes a problem when hiscurrent project is Othello. Little by little he loses touch with reality, with consequences that provedeadly for waitress Shelley Winters. Filled with delicious portraits of the New York theatrescene, with top talent both behind and in front of the camera, this is a strong thriller. Highlyrecommen…
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Blood on the Sun
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 19th, 2003
Synopsis
James Cagney plays a hard-boiled newspaper editor in pre-WWII Tokyo. He gets wind ofa Japanese baron’s plans for world conquest, and risks his life (with the help of Chinese-American spy Sylvia Sidney) to expose the dastardly plot. We even get some early martial artsaction with Cagney jodo-chopping his way through men twice his (diminuitive) size. Be aware,though, that the film was made in 1945 and shows it, with all but one of the Japanese charactersportrayed as unidimensi…
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Nightstalker
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 17th, 2003
Synopsis
The time is the summer of 1985, and Richard Ramirez, who became known as theNightstalker, is roaming the streets, randomly entering homes and slaughtering the peopletherein. Rookie cop Roselyn Sanchez becomes involved in the search to find the killer, andstruggles both with inexperience and hostility from her male colleagues. That’s about all thereit to the plot, which is simplified almost to the point of short-hand, and in place of more elaboratedevelopment we get extended…
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Gangs of New York
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 17th, 2003
In 1927 Herbert Asbury published a book entitled The Gangs of New York: An informal history of the Underworld. This book would prove to be the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. This film was originally supposed to start filming in the late 1970’s, and after numerous delays and many financial issues, the film finally came to fruition in 2002.
It is an epic film of staggering proportions about a little known part of the history of the United States and New York City. We follow a story filled with both real and fictional characters through the slums of the lower Manhattan’s Five Points.
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My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 17th, 2003
If ever a movie could be negatively affected by monstrous box office numbers, it’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding. When a five million dollar film rides a tsunami of critical buzz and excellent word-of-mouth past the two hundred million dollar box office gross (finally ending somewhere over $230 million), it’s impossible to see it for the first time completely free of expectation. Perhaps this was my mistake, because I went into my first viewing of the king of sleeper hits excited to a super-duper romantic comedy. …
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Vampires
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 16th, 2003
As a film, John Carpenter’s Vampires leaves a lot to be desired. The story is average and has been done before, and the acting is questionable at best. I just cannot appreciate James Woods as a bad ass Vampire Killer. Vampires does contain a number of scenes that build tension and effectively instill some horror, but you will not be traumatized by the scariness of this film. Yes, there are a few sequences that look very good in terms of the cinematography, and there is some nice gore and violence, but you w…
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Implicated
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 16th, 2003
Synopsis
Amy Locane thinks she has found her soulmate in William McNamara, but in reality he issimply using her in a complicated kidnapping scheme. He fools her into believing that she isbabysitting a young girl, when in fact she is the unwitting accomplice of the kidnapping. Howwill she escape and save the child without running afoul of the police herself? Though blessedwith some stylish (if derivative) flourishes, the film is sunk by flat performances and the jaw-dropping banality…
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Mute Witness
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 16th, 2003
Synopsis
Marina Sudina is Billy Hughes, a make-up artist on an American film being shot in Moscow.She is also mute. Accidentally locked in the studio after hours, and unable to call for someoneto let her out, Sudina stumbles upon the making of a snuff movie. Pursued by the murderers, sheescapes, but her problems are only beginning. The snuff-makers are highly connected, andSudina soon doesn’t know whom to trust. The heroine’s muteness is deployed for maximumsuspense, and the first h…
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Devil Commands, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 15th, 2003
Synopsis
Boris Karloff adds Dr. Julian Blair to his collection of mad doctor roles. Here he starts offperfectly sane and well-respected, having just developed a device that records brain-waves.When his wife is killed in an accident, he is overcome with grief, and, one night in his lab, hismachine records a new transmission of his wife’s brain-waves. Karloff becomes obsessed withcommunicating with her, stopping at nothing in his quest, along the way frying the mind of hisservant and …
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Chasing Amy
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 15th, 2003
Film
The film starts out in a comic convention, where we are introduced to Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), the co-creators of the smash hit book “Bluntman and Chronic.” Holden is an artist who feels trapped into his commercial success, afraid he’ll always be known as “the guy who invented Bluntman and Chronic.” His partner and best friend of 20 years, Banky, is justifiably unapologetic for their success; he likes having his name on something that everyone recognizes. It’s …
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City Hunter
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 14th, 2003
Quite possibly the worst Jackie Chan film ever … strike that … quite possibly one of the worst films ever, City Hunter is a live-action film based off of the Japanese anime of the same name. Here, Chan plays private detective Ryu Saeba, who, along with his partner, Kaori (Joey Wong), are hired to track down the missing daughter of a wealthy Japanese publishing tycoon.
Ryu is quite the ladies man and his initial thoughts of turning the job down vanish once he sees a picture of the magnate’s beautiful ru…
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The In-Laws (1979)
Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 13th, 2003
The In-Laws was one of those films that just never fit neatly into any safe category. Recently I’ve been ask to describe it to others who had not seen it before. If your only point of reference is the recent remake with Michael Douglas, run to your nearest rental store and look up this gem of an original. Peter Falk is best known, of course, for the rumpled-raincoat detective, Columbo. While many of his Columbo mannerisms are in evidence in this film (that outstretched hand to the head and his gravelly low mumbles) the character is really quite removed from Columbo.
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I Love You to Death
Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 13th, 2003
Synopsis
Rosalie Boca is married to Joey, a pizza maker and womanizer. When she catches him with another woman she decides that he must go. With the help of her mother, the new age busboy and drug-addled cousins Harlan and Marlon, she attempts to send Joey on his way to the big pizza pie in the sky. Based on a true story truth really is stranger then fiction in this story of love and infidelity.
Video
Presented in both a 1.85:1 widescreen format and a 1.33:1 fullscreen v…
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Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 12th, 2003
Synopsis
Based on the life of Gladys Aylward, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness features IngridBergman as Aylward (granted, Bergman’s accent makes her an unlikely Englishwoman, but shealso played a cockney wench in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, so what the hell). Desperate to be amissionary, but turned down by the society she approaches, Bergman makes her own way toChina, where her extreme goodness soon wins over everyone in sight. At the climax, during theJapanese invasion of China, she must…
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