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[DVD Review] A Charlie Brown Christmas
7 hours ago
Of all the Christmas specials produced in the 1960s that have gone on to become part of the national vernacular, A Charlie Brown Christmas probably holds up the best. It’s about as much fun to watch parodies of those Rankin-Bass Christmas specials (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming To Town) as it is to actually watch them, and the Grinch, however awesome it remains, will forever be somewhat tainted by the awful film version. In stark contrast, Brown seems in almost pristine condition, untouched by the technological and cultural shifts that have taken place in the forty years since it was first aired. Some of that can be attributed to how well crafted it is (it doesn’t waste a second of its exceedingly short running time), but more specifically, it remains one of the only pieces of modern media to impart a ‘very important message »
- Anders Nelson
[DVD Review] Train
7 hours ago
Of all the possible reactions that one could have to a film (or album, or television show), there’s probably nothing worse than having it make you wonder if something you like was even good in the first place. For a long time, I have defended the Hostel series, arguing that it has a great deal more subtext than most critics give it credit for, and that its tonal inconsistencies are actually quite deliberate pieces of black humor on the part of director Eli Roth. Now I am confronted with Train, a film that is so similar in plot and theme that I can’t really argue that anything said in Hostel isn’t said here. Except that I really like Hostel, and Train totally sucks.
Traveling through Eastern Europe with her college wrestling team, Alex (Thora Birch) goes out one night with her friends after a humiliating defeat at »
- Anders Nelson
[DVD Review] It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas
10 hours ago
I’ve seen several episodes, and now I’ve watched the Christmas special, and I might as well face facts: I have no idea what to make of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. I don’t especially care for any of the characters (indeed, except for the obvious eccentrics, they all seem to be nearly interchangeable with one another), the writing and direction strikes me as somewhat obvious and sloppy, and character progress from episode to episode is virtually nonexistent. On the other hand, it is consistently funny, and not just in a they-timed-that-well kind of way, but an honestly, remembering-it-days-later kind of way. I can’t say that it’s for everybody, but if you haven’t given it a shot yet, you might want to.
The show is set primarily in Paddy’s Pub, a working class bar in Philadelphia, which is co-owned by Mac (Rob McElhenney »
- Anders Nelson
[DVD Review] Four Christmases
14 hours ago
Taking a full year to make its DVD and Blu-ray debut, Four Christmases proves to be as confusing a holiday release in 2009 as it was in 2008. Even if the name “Four Christmases” leads you to believe the film will make for good Christmas Eve viewing, you’d be wrong. Its name begs for a mid-November release but its actual plot makes it suitable for release in any month of the year, because it’s not really about Christmas at all. It’s about a relationship and how spending time with your family and the family of your significant other offers insight into how they’ve become the person they are. The fact that the events of these films take place around Christmas is a fluke, any major holiday would suffice.
Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) live the ideal yuppie life: they maintain a joint apartment decorated in modern swag, »
- Lex Walker
[DVD Review] Santa Buddies
16 hours ago
Stretch too thin. Bend it until it breaks. Overstay your welcome. All are different ways of describing something which goes too far with too little. Some parents will say they like the entertainment the original Air Bud provided for their tots. They may even have been down with Bud’s football-based sequel. But can any of them say that they honestly don’t mind the annoying personas of the five golden retriever pups which comprise the “buddies”? If the Air Buddies premise, the talking puppies of Air Bud, wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back, then Space Buddies was. So what does that make Santa Buddies? Shameless. Unabashedly shameless marketing using Christmas and dog jokes that haven’t been funny since your kids read them aloud from that joke book you bought for them (rookie parent mistake).
Up in the North Pole, Santa’s workshop is aflutter »
- Lex Walker
[TV] Scrubs: The Complete Eighth Season (Blu-ray)
19 hours ago
Scrubs started off as one of the funniest and most promising shows of its time. The innermost fantasies of J.D. (Zach Braff) conflicting with the harsh sarcasm of Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) provided lots of laughs over the years, as did the bromance of J.D. and his long-time friend Turk (Donald Faison) in the midst of their struggles to make a name for themselves at Sacred Heart, the hospital where they interned, had their residencies and eventually worked as doctors. In the show’s eighth year, all the curveballs of past seasons begin to wind down as the cast takes what seems like their final bow.
In the past seasons, J.D. has dated all sorts of women (typically recognizable guest stars) and has found two things. The first is that sex eventually leads to pregnancy and he is now the father of a baby boy with »
- Lex Walker
[TV] Farscape: The Complete Series
23 hours ago
I’ve always been a huge fan of the Muppets, so the concept of Farscape intrigued me from the start. After all, this is Muppets in space way before Muppets From Space. What’s not to love about that? Luckily, I wasn’t disappointed.
The 26 disc set - released 10 years after the show began - follows John Crighton, an astronaut who accidentally enters a wormhole and finds himself in another galaxy far, far away. Of course, this isn’t just any galaxy. Nope, this galaxy happens to be one in which a huge war is being waged, and John (Ben Browder) finds himself right in the middle of it. While John is trying to figure out what the hell is going on, the ironically named Peacekeepers make things very hard for him and his newfound friends. Among these allies are the lovely Aeryn Sun, D’Argo, Rygel XVI (both a »
- Jessica Guerrasio
[DVD Review] Dane Cook: Isolated Incident
2 December 2009 4:40 PM, PST
Something very interesting seems to have happened to Dane Cook. Having risen from complete obscurity to one of the most successful stand-up comedians of the decade, Cook has subsequently emerged as one of the most hated pop culture figures working anywhere in the world. While there are certainly other celebrities who have a large base of detractors, the vitriol directed at Cook seems to have taken on a life of its own, gaining momentum and providing conversational talking points in the same way that a calculated promotional campaign would. With Isolated Incident, he seems to have refined his act to a comfortable place where he recognizes just how much antipathy he generates in others, and manages to play both to it and against it. As a result, he probably endears himself even more to his fans while daring those to hate him to call him out on it.
For those »
- Anders Nelson
[DVD Review] Taking Chances
2 December 2009 10:00 AM, PST
The feature debut from director Talmage Cooley - who by all accounts garnered great acclaim with an engaging documentary short about blind teenagers in a Buffalo ghetto - this terribly incoherent genre splicer is as badly thought out an idea as you will ever see on screen if you live to be a thousand. Purportedly a romantic comedy with a social message, it's painfully unfunny, incredibly patronizing, borderline misogynistic, and after boring you into a coma for the better part of two hours, gives up on its numerous flailing plot strands and freely admits via a final reel voiceover to not really being about anything at all.
Set in some random, economically depressed, Midwestern berg named Patriotville, geeky twenty-something Chase diligently curates the town's one-room historical museum, commemorating it as the site of some forgotten Civil War skirmish. Mostly this serves simply as an excuse to have him bike about »
- Neil Pedley
[TV] Better Off Ted: The Complete First Season
2 December 2009 4:00 AM, PST
When they adapted Dilbert from a simple comic strip into a television show they had a good idea; they just executed it poorly. The ridiculous nature of bureaucracy and its system of ethics with a Gumbi-like flexibility make a perfect target for lampooning. Dilbert does it perfectly on the page, but when translated to a moving cartoon the humor suddenly falls flat. But it can be done. Other ventures have taken up the mantle of pointing out the ludicrous nature of big business (The Office, Office Space, etc.) and each has been more successful than Dilbert. I would dare to say that when it comes to the funniest take on “business as usual”, Better Off Ted beats the rest. Easily. Heck, it only seems fitting that a sitcom which draws its name from a hilarious John Cusack film should have equally perfect comedic timing.
Ted (Jay Harrington) works in the »
- Lex Walker
[DVD Review] Vampire Party
1 December 2009 5:00 PM, PST
I hate to sound like an old fogy, but boy, they sure don’t make ‘em like they used to. And by ‘em, I mean spoof movies in the Zucker mold (specifically Airplane and The Naked Gun) that were amusing enough at the time, but in retrospect have come to seem like small miracles in comparison with the films that they have inspired. Vampire Party is just one of those films, and it does absolutely nothing to better the image of the parody film as lazy, uninspired, and more irritating than funny. But unlike Scary Movie, Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, and Superhero Movie, this is from France.
Sam (Patrick Mille), Alice (Frederique Bel), and Prune (Julie Fournier) are young people who (as is clearly established in the opening narration, perhaps the only very French touch in the whole movie) love to party. »
- Anders Nelson
[DVD Review] The Indian
1 December 2009 2:00 PM, PST
After watching The Indian, it’s easy to see why it was selected as Best Screenplay at Breckenridge Festival of Film, Best Feature at the Cinema City International Film Festival and Best Ensemble Cast at the Monaco Film Festival, along with several other awards. This independent film, written and directed by James R. Gorrie, features Matt Dallas (of Kyle Xy fame) as Danny, a troubled teen raised by his aunt when his father ditches him. But when Danny is arrested for breaking a window at a motorcycle shop after being tossed out of a party, his Hepatitis infected father Skip, played by Sal Landi, pays the bail money and reenters his life in hopes that Danny will agree to be a partial liver donor.
Danny doesn’t trust Skip, or really, anyone else, so when Skip suggests they bond by putting together an old Indian motorcycle that belonged to Danny’s grandfather, »
- Jessica Guerrasio
[DVD Review] Shorts
1 December 2009 1:00 PM, PST
When he isn’t skulking around the dark and blood-splattered alleyways of the Mexican underworld, director Robert Rodriguez runs a nice, profitable sideline in garish, high-energy kid flicks. A quick Read of his resume: Spy Kids, Once upon a time in Mexico, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl, Planet Terror, Shorts, and next up Machette, can give the impression the helmer is the ultimate proponent of the “one for them, one for me” school of filmmaking. Except, of course, they’re all for him. Once again he cheerfully does the whole shebang; writer, producer, handling the score, overseeing the effects, presumably on a diet of enough sugar to single-handedly raise the Gdp of Brazil. Perhaps he just likes the change of pace.
With that in mind this is yet another high-concept, pre-teen wish-fulfillment fantasy that finds the corporate controlled suburb of Black Falls thrown into colorful CGI chaos when »
- Neil Pedley
[DVD Review] Terminator Salvation
1 December 2009 10:00 AM, PST
It’s actually somewhat interesting the way this latest in the once glorious Terminator franchise very loudly and very brightly snuck up on everyone, and there are a few contributing factors. Firstly, a really good cast was cobbled together. Christian Bale is a star and Sam Worthington is a star on the rise. Secondly, to their credit they cut a really good trailer filled with the tease of possibility and some slick, pulsating action. Then as the release date began to loom large on the horizon the entire project was overshadowed by that now infamous rant that saw Bale relentlessly berate Dp Shane Hurlbut in a wide variety of different accents for walking through a shot. A rant laced with such mean-spirited overkill it will likely define Bale for some time.
Finally, in the weeks leading up to the opening weekend, anyone who truly gave a shit about the franchise »
- Neil Pedley
[DVD Review] Toi et Moi
1 December 2009 8:00 AM, PST
I’m a pretty die-hard rom-com fan. You’ve Got Mail, Never Been Kissed, 27 Dresses, pretty much any movie Hugh Grant did after 1998, are all favorites. Something about laughing and crying at the same time wildly appeals to me, along with thousands of other twenty-something women.
I cannot, however, quite get my head around movies that throw drama into the mix (dromantic-comedies?). Melodrama (melodromantic-comedies? I just can't stop myself...), sure — afterall, what's any decent picture without a little over(re)acting?
Toi et Moi revolves around two sisters: one, Lena (Marion Cotillard), a somewhat timid but beautiful cellist; the other, Ariane, (Julie Depardieu), a somewhat beautiful but loony photo-novelist. Sadly I found myself better able to relate to Ariane, who lives in her head, entertaining wild fantasies (that often translate into her work) about her lackluster relationship with Farid (Tomer Sisley), and that of Lena and her kind of lame »
- Jess Goodwin
[DVD Review] My One and Only
1 December 2009 5:00 AM, PST
When you hear “limited release Renee Zellweger movie about a proper lady in the 1950’s who picks herself up by her bootstraps,” you don’t hold out much hope. When you hear “cast of odd, bland C-stringers, including Steve Weber, Eric McCormack, Chris Noth, and Nick Stahl,” you don’t hold out much hope. And when you literally hear Zellweger’s upbraided Southern belle, Anne Deveraux, spit out endless, cutesy aphorisms within the first five minutes of the movie, like, “A man never thinks a woman is smarter than when she's listening to him,” well then, you don’t hold your lunch. Still, even though Zellweger seemingly insists on making a career out of playing characters who are just oh-so-fettered, this particular story, which has her go off on an ill-conceived road trip in search of a gentleman to take care of her and her family, after she’s found »
- Michael Narkunski
[TV] Crime Wave: 18 Months of Mayhem
1 December 2009
Suckers for profiler documentaries will find a decent production in Crime Wave: 18 Months of Mayhem. Not unlike the recent film Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp, Crime Wave suffers when it gets too bogged down in details of the various biographies; it loses sight of the overall story which has a compelling amount of information unto itself, making the moments where it dives too deep into the backstory of any one criminal a bit mundane. Perhaps the greatest aspect of the disc’s scope is that it covers both facets of the story: the criminals and the pursuit thereof; not only do Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde get a strong focus but the formation of the FBI plays an integral role in the telling of the story. From its humble beginnings as just another bureaucratic office with no real power to the upstart agency responsible for the felling of some of American history’s most notorious criminals, »
- Lex Walker
[DVD Review] My Sister's Keeper
30 November 2009 4:41 PM, PST
Nick Cassavetes likes plucking heartstrings and he’s not afraid to dig into your chest to do so. Unfortunately, the digging is sort of a laborious process and it can take Cassavetes an hour or two to even scratch the surface. Maybe you were swept away by his romantic tale of Alzheimers-afflicted love in The Notebook? It did have a surprisingly strong cast (Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling and James Garner) and whether you like the movie or not, chances are your body either produces a healthy share of estrogen and you loved the film or your body doesn’t but someone from the first category insisted you watch it. Yet, he also directed Alpha Dog, so his tendencies towards emotionally manipulative clearly aren’t his only option. My Sister’s Keeper, however, plays directly into his manipulative side; if you’re a crier then you’ll get that cathartic sobbing »
- Lex Walker
[TV] Superman: The Complete Animated Series
30 November 2009 2:00 PM, PST
When Superman: The Animated Series debuted that bright childhood day, the first thing I remember thinking was “It’s not as cool as Batman.” Dropping the black paper background of Batman: The Animated Series in favor of a brighter and more traditional white, Superman was a cheerier series right from the outset. Whereas Batman only gave passing glances to the dark origin of Bruce Wayne’s caped crusader, Superman’s is embroiled in many of the plots for each episode. When it comes to DC iconography, the difference between the significance of the emblems on each hero’s chest becomes even more apparent in the animated series. Batman’s yellow and black bat logo became an instrument, a tool; Superman’s logo, however, the sign of his lineage, works its way into many of the show’s storylines. Whether it’s a villain looking for the last Kryptonian, a princess »
- Lex Walker
[DVD Review] Evergreen
30 November 2009 12:00 PM, PST
It's pretty widely known that teenagers are selfish and ungrateful little snots. Evergreen, a film from 2004 that only recently was released, drills this into the viewer's brain.
Henrietta, Henri, for short, played by the relatively unknown Addie Land, and her mother Kate, played by Cara Seymour (the chick who was demolished by Christian Bale's chainsaw in American Psycho) have fallen on hard times and have to move in with Cara's mother (Lynn Cohen), who lives in grubby leaky shack on the edge of town. Henri's mother is the type who goes out of her way to do everything she can for her daughter, to give her the things she didn't have when she was a kid.
On paper this sounds great, but, if you recall your time in high school, the greatest thing your folks could do for you was to just leave you alone. Cara just wants to »
- Jess Goodwin
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