Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 13th, 2006
Angel Rodriguez is a realist film that covers a 36-hour snapshot of the lives of two people: a troubled young man and his guidance counsellor.
I have to admit right off the top that this type of film is not my bag � realism to me pretty much means boring. While there may great artistic merit to writer-director Jim McKay�s little film, it�s not particularly entertaining. Interesting, maybe.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 11th, 2006
(Portions of this review have been pulled from the original one-disc version of Jackass, which can also be found in the reviews portion of the site)Synopsis
One could make an attempt at witty prose by comparing Jackass to the works of Kubrick, Cassavettes, Scorsese, or what have you. But look, it’s a bunch of guys, some of whom have reputations in other circles, such as skateboarder Bam Margera and acclaimed director Spike Jonze, doing stunts that you may not have thought, dared or ...emotely considered doing, and keeping parts of the general public off guard. The gang made a huge splash on MTV, and scores of crazed teens wanted to try what these guys were doing, and maybe appear on the show. I think the quote from Millhouse on the Simpsons says it best: "All those warnings on TV make me want to do it more". The kids would get burned, broken, what have you, and parents who couldn’t crack the whip hard enough at home decided to sue anyone under the sun, despite the profuse warnings on each show, as well as a timeslot shift early on in the series’ life. So Johnny Knoxville became this decade’s Beavis, which I guess makes Steve-O Butthead. So, after judging (perhaps correctly) there wasn’t anything really left to do on TV, they decided to step things up and do a movie, and a $5 million budget led to a gross of over $60 million and a sequel that may make the same amount.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 11th, 2006
(Portions of this review have been pulled from the original one-disc version of Platoon, which can also be found in the reviews portion of the site)Synopsis
There are a good number of people who have labeled Oliver Stone as a fan of conspiracy theories, out to destroy foundations of conservative ideology, while at the same time re-visiting 60’s nostalgic icons. Despite the jokes and the stereotyping, one has to admit that, as a filmmaker, he has helped bring to screen some of the most talk...d about cinematic experiences of our time, including Midnight Express, Scarface, not to mention Conan the Barbarian. As a director, his works, such as The Doors, Nixon, JFK and Natural Born Killers, have generated discussion both within and aside from the technical merits. Platoon was his most personal work, and is widely regarded as one of the defining films of the Vietnam War.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on November 10th, 2006
One of the smartest, most suspenseful SF franchises to emerge from the 1950's was Britain’s Quatermass series. Created by Nigel Kneale, the series first saw light as superlative television shows, which were subsequently adapted for the big screen by Hammer. While the shorter running time necessitated certain compromises, all three films were excellent, among the best offerings of British SF. These movies were The Quatermass Experiment (1955, released in the States as The Creeping Unknown), Quatermass...2 (1957) and Quatermass and the Pit (1967, AKA Five Million Years to Earth).
Val Guest, who was also responsible for the superb The Day the Earth Caught Fire directed the first two. The first film, which introduced Brian Donlevy as the irascible, bull-headed Professor Quatermass, remains unavailable on DVD, as far as I’ve been able to determine. This is positively criminal. The film, about an astronaut who survives the disastrous returning crash of his spaceship only to slowly transform into a carnivorous, Lovecraftian blob/tentacle monster, is bleak, suspenseful and terrifically atmospheric. Donlevy’s Quatermass is a rather troubling good guy, since he refuses to countenance any delay before launching yet another spaceship. If you can find the VHS, see this film, and in the meantime, let’s hope its DVD release isn’t too long in coming.As if in compensation, the other two films were released by Anchor Bay as a double feature DVD. Brian Donlevy returns to the role in Quatermass 2. He’s still pretty irritable, but he’s much more straightforwardly sympathetic. I mentioned this film before in my tribute to Michael Ripper, but to reiterate, it is very much in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Here, though, the takeover by aliens is already well advanced, with important members of the government not what they appear to be (a conceit revisited in last year’s Doctor Who revival). The climactic battle at the industrial plant that is the heart of the alien invasion is pretty explosive, and the monsters on display are impressive despite the limited FX budget.Quatermass and the Pit has Roy Ward Baker directing instead of Guest, and Andrew Keir taking over as Quatermass (meaning the hero is no longer inexplicably American). Both men do their predecessors proud. The only entry to be shot in colour, it makes good use of same, as there is plenty of (for the time) icky ooze and blood on display. Construction of a new subway line unearths a spaceship. The grasshopper-like corpses on board turn out to be Martians, and it seems they were responsible for the colonization of the earth. Our images of demons are the race memory of our previous overlords. The spaceship is far from being inert, however, and a terrible psychic horror descends on London. The climax is a horrific orgy of destruction, imitated (badly) by Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce. The premise, like that of the other films, is, of course, preposterous, but it is delivered with such conviction by all involved that it winds up making perfect sense, at least for the running time of the film.While the special effects of all three films have been, of course, outclassed by advancing technology, the intelligence of the scripts is something that most current SF films can only envy. Track these down. They’ll reward your effort.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 10th, 2006
Synopsis
George Segal is assigned by spymaster Alec Guinness to find the base of a group of neo-Nazis in Berlin. Head bad guy Max Von Sydow hopes to pry information out of Segal, specifically where the base of the good-guy spies (the precise organization is vague) is located. Segal’s only help is a schoolteacher (Senta Berger) with whom he begins an affair. George Sanders turns up in a couple of scenes for no particular reason.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 10th, 2006
In the wake of cable television’s recent success in the horror anthology genre, TNT brings us 8 tales from the mind and pen of Stephen King. Showtime’s hugely popular Masters of Horror series set a high standard while proving that this time-honored method of storytelling could survive. Cable’s unique ability to circumvent many of the censorship problems that plague network television puts them at a distinct advantage. Here it’s easier to tell compelling stories, with limitations, for the most part, only in the imag...nation of the story teller himself. And oh, what an imagination to cultivate, that of Stephen King. In his garden some of our most frightening nightmares are tended like the fragile leaves of a new basil plant. Here our fears are planted in fertile ground indeed, as fertile as graveyard dirt. These stories are what set apart this series from the many that have come and gone before. Most of the stories carry a feel very much like the 1990’s Outer Limits episodes we saw on Showtime a decade or so ago. You can almost hear the controller’s voice delivering a sober moral as each piece fades away. There are 8 episodes, each about 45-50 minutes spread out over 3 discs.
Disc 1
“Battleground” The teleplay is by Richard Christian Matheson, son of the great Richard Matheson who brought us many Twilight Zone adventures as well as “I Am Legend”, basis for a third version starring Will Smith, coming soon. The father also wrote the teleplay for the famous “Prey” segment of Trilogy Of Terror. This story is very much an almost remake of that episode. The story is unique in several ways. The most obvious is that there is no dialogue in the entire hour. I found it slowed the story down quite a bit, particularly in the overlong setup. Here William Hurt plays an assassin who slowly breaks into the headquarters of Morris Toys, where he apparently was hired to kill Morris, the owner. He commits his dirty deed and steals a music box dancer as a souvenir. Back at his plush penthouse apartment, we see he has collected many of these trophies over the years. In Battleground, we find that payback’s a bitch. A mysterious package arrives by carrier. Inside is a chest full of plastic army men and play equipment. These guys are pretty much like the versions we all had as kids. The toy regiment comes complete with choppers and jeeps as well as a “surprise item”. Our killer’s apartment becomes the titular Battleground when the toys come to life and terrorize the man. The f/x here are simply amazing as the toys wage a war with our gunman. There are even shades of another King classic, “The Ledge” from the Cat’s Eye collection here. After that slow start, things move at a brisk pace now that the battle is on. The Zuni Doll from the original Trilogy Of Terror episode also makes a cameo in this story. It acts as a nice moment of foreshadowing. Hurt has to carry the story, at least until the real action kicks in. You’ve just got to have some patience and it will finally be paid off.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 10th, 2006
Warren Beatty attempts directing for the second time in Reds, a film based on the life of John Reed during the Russian Revolution. I didn’t know what to expect from this film, as I had never heard of it prior to its release on HD DVD. I have never seen a movie based on this subject matter, so the movie covered all new grounds for me. Upon investigation I discovered the movie was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won three, including Best Director for Warren Beatty. Boasting an impressive cast including W...rren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Paul Sorvino, and Gene Hackman, this movie seemed to have a lot of potential.
John Reed was an American journalist and communist activist best known for writing Ten Days that Shook the World. He was married to writer Louise Bryant; they had a hot and cold relationship, which is one of the main themes portrayed in this movie. Of course the others being John Reed’s quest to document the Russian Revolution, and the years beyond it. We learn about things such as communism, the insecurities of the main characters, and observe their somewhat repetitive back and forth bickering. Interestingly, Beatty decided to tie in actual interviews with people who knew John Reed throughout the movie, which gave us real life perspectives about Reed as well as tying together different parts of the story. I enjoyed those parts, as they didn’t interrupt the flow of the movie and it added an insightful sense of realism to it.
![Reds (25th Anniversary Edition) [HD DVD] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/reds-25th-anniversary-edition-hd-large.jpg)
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 9th, 2006
William Keane (Lewis) has apparently lost his daughter, abducted from a New York Subway station. The film opens with a frantic Keane searching for anyone who might have seen her. But did any of it really happen? At first Damian Lewis’s performance completely sells the abduction. Every nuance of his acting tugs at our heartstrings for his horrible loss. His incessant searching and constant probing of his own memory draws us deeper and deeper emotionally into the set-up. It doesn’t take us very long at all to questio... the event and Keane’s sanity. In short time the story begins to unravel along with Keane’s mind. Again, it is a superb performance by Lewis that makes it all so real. It is this compelling performance that makes any of this interesting to us at all.
Keane, both the film and the man, is a detailed character study into the mind of a seriously troubled man. His troubles run far deeper than the possible missing child. Barely surviving in a hotel room with no job, we soon learn he is on some kind of disability. We are pretty sure what that’s all about. Keane spends a great deal of his time either drunk or high on coke. While it is almost impossible to have any kind of sympathy for this man, we are hooked into caring what happens to him, and more importantly what he might do next. Perhaps it’s the same concept as watching a train wreck, because we never believe this story’s going to end well for Keane or the young mother and daughter he befriends at the hotel. With this relationship our suspicious nature is aroused. Now we’re never really sure if Kean’e state of mind is a result of the substance abuse, or rather the reverse. A meltdown in a bar and a growing paranoia starts to scare the hell out of us, yet we simply can’t look away. Again, credit Lewis and his amazing performance.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 9th, 2006
Ultraman is a huge part of Japanese culture and pretty much has been since the original live action show in 1966. Perhaps Godzilla started the ball rolling, but Ultraman brought us these monsters on a regular basis. In Japan, Ultraman is like our Superman. He’s an iconic hero and a huge part of the pop culture. Since the 60’s he has appeared in many forms, most of them animated. But it is this 1966 series that made a ton of us kids fall in love with him and an entire genre. Yes, there were many from the era: Space ...iants featured a giant fighting robot who fought monsters sometimes converted into a spaceship (yes, before transformers were ever thought of); Johnny Socko had his giant robot; and the list goes on. But it was Ultraman that started it. Eiji Tsuburaya, who created the original Godzilla, formed a new company outside of Toho Pictures. Ultraman was pretty much the first thing out of the new shop.
Ultraman was a space being who was chasing an escaped monster. When his spacecraft collided with that of Science Patrol Officer Hayata, he inadvertently killed the young man. To make up for his mistake and also offer Earth a way to fight the endless row of monsters unleashed, he merged his life with Hayata. Now, whenever a monster threatens, Hayata uses his “beta capsule” and morphs into Ultraman. Complete with martial arts moves and an array of ray weapons, Ultraman fights these creatures in hand to hand combat. The downside is that Ultraman’s solar energy diminishes rapidly in Earth’s atmosphere. As he weakens, a light on his chest flashes. A narrator reminds us each time that if it stops, Ultraman will die.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 9th, 2006
By the time this film was announced, everyone and their dog had asked me if I’d read The Da Vinci Code. I hadn’t.
Yes, I’d heard it was the bestest book in the whole wide world. No, I didn’t want to borrow their copy. Months later, when I finally sat down to watch this DVD, I had still not read Dan Brown’s masterpiece. See, I decided to be one of the few who could judge the film as completely separate from the novel.
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