Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on April 23rd, 2013
“Nobody grows up wanting to be a knuckleball pitcher. It’s born of desperation; it’s born of necessity.”
By the start of the 2011 season, there were only two active knuckleballers in Major League Baseball. One was a failed power-hitting 1B/3B, while the other had been cut by his team at the start of the previous year’s spring training. Knuckleball! — an engaging documentary dedicated to the kookiest pitch in baseball history — illustrates how that desperation extends beyond the few brave souls who have attempted to make a living in the big leagues by throwing very softly.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 22nd, 2013
Donnie Yen continues to deliver one great martial arts film after the other, easily making him the most entertaining martial arts star for quite some time. Sure, there are those who cling to the idea of Bruce Lee being “the best” or perhaps mentioning Jackie Chan or Jet Li for more modern viewers. But for me it’s Yen, and I have no problem saying he may be the best martial arts star of all time. His work with Ip Man, Seven Swords, and Flash Point are staples in a career that has been going since 1984. With Dragon you can check off another hit for Yen; though it may not be as action-packed as some of his previous releases, what we get instead is a fun detective story that asks the question, can a man that has committed atrocious crimes be capable of change?
Dragon opens up in a small village in 1917 China. The village is quaint; everyone has their place in keeping the village alive and running. For money the village makes paper; it’s not enough to exactly have everyone living the high life, but that isn’t what you’d expect in this village that probably hasn’t changed much in the past hundred years. But everything changes when two thieves come into the village and attempt to rob it. Liu Jin-xi (Yen) reluctantly stops the robbery, and in the process a “fight” breaks out which results in the death of the two thieves. Was it simply luck on Jin-xi’s part, or is his simpleminded act of heroism a ruse, and beneath it all could he possibly be a trained killer? This is left to Xu Bai-jiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro Red Cliff and House of Flying Daggers), an investigator sent to the village to decide if it was all an act of self defense.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 22nd, 2013
“I want to talk to you about the war for the soul of Los Angeles.”
This could easily describe the current rivalry between the surging L.A. Clippers and the geriatric Los Angeles Lakers, but Gangster Squad has slightly weightier matters on its mind. The stylish 1940s and 50s cops-and-crooks saga wants to tell a story about corruption and violent men unable — or unwilling — to turn off their capacity for hurting others. Instead, the film winds up being a somewhat shallow 21st century gloss on The Untouchables. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on April 22nd, 2013
You need to imagine you are back in 1969. Many of you will have no idea what a different world it was back then. So many things did not exist, like computers and the internet and cable television. So much is available now that people could only fantasize about then. Now any unsupervised 10-year-old can see just about anything they want. It's hard to imagine how big a difference that is. Hiding Playboy magazines under the mattress was about as bad as it got back then. There was a huge unfulfilled demand for adult entertainment when adults couldn't find much that excited or titillated them. But there was a change coming slowly without calling too much attention to itself. Radley Metzger saw an opportunity to create a kind of art film that would let him break new ground.
The film The Lickerish Quartet was one of a number of films Metzger created as a film distributor and director. The films look quaint now. They were filmed beautifully with excellent production values. For instance, The Lickerish Quartet makes superb use of an actual castle (Balsorano in Italy's Abruzzi Mountains) by the gorgeous seaside and countryside. It attempts to use Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author as an inspiration for its existential musings. Metzger's forays are pretentious, but they did break ground in upscale eroticism. Both Andy Warhol and NY Times film critic Vincent Canby gave it high praise.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 22nd, 2013
“Whose move is it?”
To be honest, I’m not much of a chess player. I know how all the pieces move and I enjoy the mental challenge, but I never really committed to becoming proficient at the game. (Now, if we’re talking Connect Four, you don’t want to run into me in a dark alley.) Pawn establishes its intriguing chess motif early on, before almost completely abandoning it in favor of becoming more of a generically twisty thriller.
Posted in: The Reel World by Brent Lorentson on April 19th, 2013
Ever wonder what would happen if you took all the best or most memorable parts in a sci-fi film and cut them all together? What you get is the hodgepodge mess that is Oblivion, which unless I’m mistaken or blinked a bit too long and missed it, doesn’t have an original bone in its already weak story. Though they say if you’re going to steal, then steal from the best; the problem is that when you play it off as your own, please be able to give us a refreshing twist on a classic scene, not just make it cool. Sure people will say the same about Tarantino, but he owns up to it and puts a spin on it that is undeniably his own. In the case for Joseph Kosinski (the writer and director) I look at Oblivion and feel he gave the entire sci-fi genre the finger and took all the cool great moments to play with at will.
(If you’ve never seen The Matrix, Moon, Blade Runner, Independence Day, 2001 Space Odyssey or numerous others, well, then perhaps you may be in the dark as to what I’m talking about.)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on April 18th, 2013
“I want to visit a country of dreams, imagination and magic.”
Instead of “dreams, imagination and magic”, the Africa presented in this confounding, family-friendly offering from Spanish filmmaker Jordi Llompart is a place of trippy visuals, head-scratching dialogue and horrid CGI. Magic Journey to Africa — billed as a “giant screen spectacle” — is now available for home consumption, where the film’s dazzling 3D presentation is its only saving grace.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on April 17th, 2013
The computer-animated feature film has reached the point where you don't have to be one of the big boys to play. While Pixar and to a lesser extent Dreamworks have dominated this feature form pretty much since its inception, there have already been a handful of independent films that have managed to leave their mark on the landscape. Now the foreign market is getting into the act as well. A Monster In Paris, or Un Monstre a' Paris, is the result of that evolution.
The story is a rather weak one, to be sure. It's 1910, and there is a creature running around the streets of Paris. It is the result of a flea's exposure to a scientist's formula to make things grow. Like all of the good monster films of the Universal era, this monster is terribly misunderstood and doesn't want to hurt anyone. He is attracted to a theatre where Lucille (Paradis) is the featured singer and performer. The flea makes himself known to her, and instead of acting in fear, Lucille embraces the flea's musical talents. Together they take the stage by storm.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on April 16th, 2013
Sometimes a movie comes along that rises above simple entertainment and actually has something to say. The Big Picture is the kind of movie that has profound ideas about love, family, and the pursuit of your dreams. Is it possible to really have it all? The perfect spouse, the perfect family and live out your lifelong passion and dream? Many who have families, especially when starting young, can understand the idea of sacrifice for their families; it doesn’t mean they just cast their hopes and dreams aside, but once marriage and children are involved the direction your life may take was never the direction you had planned at all. And it’s this life and compromise director Eric Lartigau thrusts us into.
When we first meet Paul (Romain Duris) he is a happy family man with a beautiful wife, Sarah (Marina Fois), and two children. Though he is a successful lawyer, his passion is photography. He continues to snap photos and develop them in his personal lab, but he understands the risk of setting out to be a freelance photographer and simply can’t give up the security of his job with the law firm. Unfortunately, though, Sarah is not so content with her idyllic life and has dreams of her own as well as other desires she wishes to fulfill outside of the marriage. As Paul discovers his wife’s infidelity and that it was with a close friend, he begins to crack, and with good reason. Things only get worse when Paul confronts Greg (the man Sarah is having the affair with); their minor altercation leads to Paul accidently killing him.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on April 16th, 2013
“Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt."
Never question the importance that a title plays in the success of a film. The title is the first thing that you encounter when discovering a new movie. Let me set the scene: you are at home, bored and looking for a movie to watch so you go to a Redbox kiosk or log onto your Netflix (given that video stores are close to extinct at this point); you narrow your selection down to two titles. The first is a film has a generic title that starts with “The”; the second is a little film entitled John Dies at the End. Now honestly, which title is most likely going to interest you?
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