DVD Reviews
January 23, 2007 by Joe Boyle · Leave a Comment
Get The Latest Movies To Rent From Blockbuster Video Unlimited DVD Rentals delivered to your door first month is only $9.99. The nerve of TNT to produce a cheese-heavy action-adventure movie franchise and actually have it work. “The Librarian” is the header for two made-for-basic-cable films now, and both of them have been wonderful surprises despite an inherent corniness that would make any sane viewer assume the worst. These movies are unabashedly fun, a breezy cocktail of dopey action and broad laughs, topped off with special effects that would have looked lame on an episode of “Xena: Warrior Princess,” but, you know, in a good way. Both the original film, “The Librarian: Quest for the Spear,” and now its sequel, “The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines,” stars Noah Wyle as Flynn Carsen, a bumbling bookworm chosen to defend the world with his combination of bravado and smarts - a sort of Indiana Geek. He works for “The Library,” where hidden behind the stacks of reference volumes and Dan Brown novels i…Read the entire review
The Librarian - Return to King Solomon’s Mines
17 Jan 2007 at 9:38pm
Recommended
Nancy Hower’s “Memron” wants to be both a biting satire gnawing at corporate scandals and a showcase for its cast of improv comics. It fails to be either. As you can guess from the title, “Memron” stabs at the Enron mess - here, the fictional megacorp of the title has laid off some 60,000 employees while the CEOs play golf at a minimum security prison. (The main CEO is named “Ken Clay,” which, along with the title, should clue you in on the filmmakers’ lack of parody prowess.) The ensuing mockumentary follows a support group for ex-employees as they bicker, whine, and then decide to start up their own business, selling clean air, ha ha. Meanwhile, after spending his couple of months in prison, Clay laments his house arrest-imposed ankle bracelet and argues with his trophy wife. The complete lack of social satire is disappointing, making the title and set-up completely useless. This isn’t …Read the entire review
Memron
17 Jan 2007 at 9:38pm
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In his video introduction to his 2004 film Lunacy, Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer declares that he has made a horror film, not an art film, because art is all but dead. He also states that it is nothing more than an “infantile tribute” to the works of Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis de Sade. He is, of course, in the best surrealist fashion, playing with half truths and being a bit tongue cheek, and if you haven’t seen Svankmajer’s work before, it is a perfect set-up for his black sense of wit. I entered Lunacy with a little trepidation. I, like most people, discovered Svankmajer via his stop-motion shorts. It was actually a long time before I discovered he’d made the leap to feature films in 1987 with Alice. While I enjoyed Conspirators of Pleasure, Alice, Faust, and Little Otik were long form films that left me a little cold. Particularly Otik, his…Read the entire review
Lunacy
17 Jan 2007 at 8:11pm
Recommended
Cast: Rupert Graves, Judy Davis, Helena Bonham Carter, Helen Mirren, Barbara Jefford, Giovanni Guidelli. Like Henry James, E.M. Forster took the clash of cultures as an abiding theme, be it Brits wreaking havoc on the Continent or the Subcontinent, or upper-class English lording it over their less privileged countrymen. If James’ chief concern was psychological, Forster’s was social; he came on the scene a few decades after the Master at a time of thunderous industrial and economic change, and trained his gently searing eye on the essential insidiousness of the class system and the British sense of entitlement.
Forster’s elegant novels, written in the first quarter of the 20th century, went largely unfilmed until the 1980s, when he suddenly became a source as hot as Stephen King (albeit for a different audience). David Lean’s “A Pas…Read the entire review
Where Angels Fear to Tread
17 Jan 2007 at 5:07pm
Recommended
Director: Charles Sturridge
1992, 112 minutes, PG
Street Fight It’s no secret that politics is a dirty game, but Marshall Curry’s Street Fight (2005) offers us front row seats as a reminder. Our two combatants, Cory Booker and Sharpe James, were both running for mayor of Newark, New Jersey in 2002; unfortunately for the 32 year-old Booker, his opponent held the position for the past 16 years. Needless to say, James (”The Real Deal”, seen above) earned Newark’s trust over the years; at least enough to grant himself numerous pay raises while the city’s crime rates remained high…and if that weren’t enough, his “second job” as a senator pushed James’ salary closer to $300K. Booker saw this as one problem of many, so the young community activist and City Council member pushed for change from the ground up. Shaking hands, kissing babies and going door-to-door thro…Read the entire review
17 Jan 2007 at 11:54am
Recommended
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January 23, 2007 by Joe Boyle · Leave a Comment
Get The Latest Movies To Rent From Blockbuster Video Unlimited DVD Rentals delivered to your door first month is only $9.99. THE MOVIE:
It’s been about a year now since the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon. A year since the success, the hype, the awards and the backlash, and, of course, the endless string of punch lines. (The definitive reason I decided once and for all not to see Night at the Museum: the new commercial with Owen Wilson making a “Why can’t I quit you?” joke. Suddenly the backdated pop-culture humor in the Shrek movies feels timely.) To cap it all off, Focus Features is releasing a new two-disc special edition DVD, which forces one to ponder, has the movie survived it all?
Having watched Brokeback Mountain again last night, I’d have to say yes. The movie’s quality was more than enough to withstand the whirlwind of publicity that swirled around it,…Read the entire review
Brokeback Mountain - 2-Disc Collector’s Edition
16 Jan 2007 at 6:40am
Highly Recommended
Yojimbo & Sanjuro: Two Samurai films by Akira Kurosawa Reviewed by Glenn Erickson Criterion doubles back into its library to bring a pair of earlier releases ‘up to code’: Back in the first years of DVD they were re-purposing older transfers just like everyone else, and along with Fox and Paramount were late to commit to enhanced (squeezed) transfers. I wouldn’t call this double dipping, as seven years have elapsed since the first no-extras edition of Yojimbo, and the movie is certainly worth the special attention. Criterion has retooled a number of its initial disc offerings, such as Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, H. G. Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, Fritz Lang’s “M” and Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Hopefu…Read the entire review
16 Jan 2007 at 12:01am
Recommended
The Movie
Back in 1987, self-proclaimed filmmaker Jon McBride gathered a bunch of enthusiastic — yet talent-free — pals into the woods to make a few movies. A few weeks back I saw one of these flicks (called Woodchipper Massacre) and I was amazed that something so outrageously amateurish could earn itself a nationwide video distribution — but then I remembered that back in the late ’80s you could have put out your own movie if you had a handycam, some willing friends, a few buckets of homemade gore, and a salacious title like Cannibal Campout.
Plot: A bunch of idiots go into the woods, butt heads with a ridiculous trio of sleazy cannibals, wander around a whole lot, get killed and get eaten. If there’s more to Cannibal Campout than that, I’ll have to take your word for it. Because there’s no way I could sit through even five seconds of it over again. Cheap and chintzy…Read the entire review
Cannibal Campout
16 Jan 2007 at 12:00am
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Unknown The Movie If you are like me (and God bless you if you are), when you popped in the Clerks II DVD, you were confronted with the trailer for Unknown, and you thought to yourself, “Wow, that title sure is right! How have I not heard about this movie?” The film has a cast of instantly recognizable faces and the premise sounds very interesting — it seems as if it should have received more publicity. But, then again, this movie is from the Weinsteins, who, when they were with Miramax, were notorious for making movies only to have them released years later with little fanfare. Typically, once these films see the light of day, it’s clear why they were hidden. In the case of Unknown, which is making its way to DVD, the answers aren’t so obvious. As Unknown opens, five men awaken in an industrial building. Unfortunately, due to a chemical leak, they have n…Read the entire review
16 Jan 2007 at 12:00am
Recommended
I love vintage TV, but to be honest, after the second episode of Good Morning, World, I was ready to bail. There was something wrong with it that I just couldn’t put my finger on, but frankly, I was too bored to care about figuring it out. But, pressing on, after the fourth or fifth episode, I found myself perking up a little, with the characters starting to grow on me. The sitcom plots, while a tad silly, were aided by some clever lines, as well. While by no means a forgotten classic, Good Morning, World is a good, solid little show that deserved a few more years on TV — it was canceled after just one season.
Good Morning, World
15 Jan 2007 at 11:59pm
Recommended
Dave Lewis (Joby Baker) and Larry Clarke (Ronnie Schell) are smart, funny morning DJ’s for a small AM radio station in the Los Angeles area. Their act con…Read the entire review
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January 23, 2007 by Joe Boyle · Leave a Comment
Get The Latest Movies To Rent From Blockbuster Video Unlimited DVD Rentals delivered to your door first month is only $9.99. The Movie
It’s important for a movie to make at least as much sense as its title, and Mike Feifer’s A Dead Calling certainly accomplishes that task.
Noteworthy to horror fans in that it features some (rather unimpressive) work from Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Leslie Easterbrook (reunited from The Devil’s Rejects, don’t forget) and for very little else, A Dead Calling is a schizophrenic little cheapie that has a possesses a few surprisingly good components — but not nearly enough to keep the thing afloat.
Alexandra Holden plays Elizabeth, a TV news-woman who’s only six months removed from the horrific murder of her boyfriend and just now ready to get her life back on track. Her mom and dad (Easterbrook and Haig) are sweet and supportive, but it turns out they also have a few skeletons hidden in the closet.
Anyway, the “dead boyfriend” stuff doesn’t really have a whole…Read the entire review
A Dead Calling
13 Jan 2007 at 7:12pm
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Spirit Trap The Movie
According to Dictionary.com, the word “conventional” means “based on or in accordance with general agreement, use, or practice; customary; conforming to established practice or accepted standards; devoted to or bound by conventions to the point of artificiality; unimaginative; conformist. (I italicized the most important ones.)
If I told you that the British horror flick Spirit Trap was about five college kids who move into a disgusting old house, your first reaction would be “OK, so what’s the hook? Co-eds and a creepy house? That’s it? You gotta be kidding me.” And yet I’m not kidding. Basically, Spirit Trap is the cinematic equivalent of a glass half-filled with lukewarm water: You can swallow it with very little effort, but it sure isn’t very tasty — nor is it very memorable.
Frankly movies this basic make it pretty hard for a reviewer to expound upon th…Read the entire review
13 Jan 2007 at 6:24pm
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WWE - the Spectacular Legacy Of the AWA Believe it or not, there are some people who think Vince McMahon is responsible for professional wrestling - sorry, sports entertainment. However, the Spectacular Legacy Of the AWA will give viewers a brief lesson on a promotion that was responsible for some of the greatest wrestlers the sport, or the WWE, has ever seen. When I started watching wrestling in the 70’s, I knew nothing about “territories”, “shoots/works”, “heels” or “kayfabes”. I was just a kid that enjoyed watching the nearly seven foot tall Andre the Giant demolish opponents. Since this was before the internet, the world was still a big place and I was blissfully unaware of the backstage politics, shenanigans and backstabbing …Read the entire review
13 Jan 2007 at 4:05pm
Highly Recommended
The Movie: The “heroes in a half shell” fight to save the universe from the evil Shredder and his bumbling band of henchmen while at the same time celebrating with their favorite pizza dinner and managing to sound like cast members of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They have human friends, like Zack, April…Read the entire review
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Volume 6
13 Jan 2007 at 10:53am
Recommended
I was too old and, at the age of thirteen (where I thought I knew absolutely everything), far too cool for the first incarnation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so I never understood the big deal about them at the time, but like the Power Rangers, the Care Bears, and Strawberry Shortcake, the Turtles continue to delight each subsequent generation. Having stood the test of time, it is only fitting that the original cartoon series, which premiered two decades (!!) ago and ran for an impressive ten years and close to 200 episodes, is given a DVD release.
Yes, yes, yes. Finally, the 1996 NBC cult-classic sitcom, Men Behaving Badly: The Complete Season has been released on DVD. Never, ever in the Nielsen Top Thirty (while pallid, “safe” crap like Suddenly Susan, The Naked Truth, Fired Up, The Single Guy, and Ellen sat comfortably up there for 1996), Men Behaving Badly was one of those series that the few people who watched it, loved. It was like our little secret. And while we were dismayed that fewer people didn’t tune in (all the while knowing its low ratings doomed the show), we felt kind of proud of that fact. After all, isn’t that the innate appeal of cult TV? Its exclusiveness? That feeling that you’ve discovered something that other people (draw a box in the air and mouth the word, “squares”) just don’t get? And when the series started to generate bad publicity from the sta…Read the entire review
Men Behaving Badly: The Complete Series
13 Jan 2007 at 10:25am
Highly Recommended
Get FREE SHIPPING and 5 DVDs for only $0.49 from Columbia House! Buy your favorite DVD’s and watch your top movies again and again.
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