"I will find every piece of your heart that has been blown to smithereens, and I will put it back together again. It will probably take a long time...but then, I'm a patient man. And above all, I'll be your friend."

That

...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/37021 Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:55:22 UTC Skip It The Movie: Incendiary is one of those movies that begins with a portrait of parenthood that's so idealized, so bathed in gauzy filters and piano music, that you know the kid's a goner. We see the close and loving relationship of a young mother (Michelle Williams) and her son (Sidney Johnston), as they do their goodnight ritual and take a trip to a glowingly warm beach and engage in some business about his favorite stuffed animal, and if you don't think that item will be back as an improbable and clunky symbol, you haven't seen enough movies. But we're willing to go along with it, because we're savvy moviegoers and we recognize that it's part of the construct--it's like the scene where the renegade cop gets pulled from the case. We also play along because the performances are so strong; the kid is terrific, and Williams, who is finally (thankfully) getting her due as an actress, crea...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/34815 Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:14:09 UTC Highly Recommended The Movie The 20th century had muckrakers -- journalists and authors who relentlessly probed people and institutions until the ugly truth surfaced, often with considerable consequences which could lead to political and social reforms. I'd like to submit that the 21st century breed should be dubbed "blood-boilers," those who doggedly pursue stories that the mainstream media can't or won't, chipping away at massive topics like the aftermath of 9/11, the war in Iraq or the far-reaching effects of the Bush administration without bias or ill will. First in line for this title? How about director Alex Gibney? Gibney already tore open the world of financial corruption -- his exemplary 2005 doc Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room looks positively prescient these days -- and has peered into the life of one of America's most compelling writers (2008's Gonzo: The Life and Work...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/34419 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:34:21 UTC Highly Recommended THE FILM Helen Hunt took herself out of the Hollywood game eight years ago after sleepwalking through the Mel Gibson embarrassment, "What Women Want." She's acted in a few projects here and there, but "Then She Found Me" feels like a breaking dam: the overflowing artistic release of an actress fed up with what's been handed to her. Now Hunt takes matters into her own hands with this raw feature film, her directorial debut. Now 39 years old, April (Helen Hunt) is desperate to have a baby of her own. However, to get to a place of motherhood, April has to deal with her divorce from husband Ben (Matthew Broderick), the death of her adoptive mother, and the persistence of her birth mother (Bette Midler), who, after all these years, is ready to be a part of her life. Also on her plate is an itchy romance with single father Frank (Colin Firth), an equally unhappy individual with passion...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/33891 Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:12:33 UTC Recommended To better appreciate "Encounters at the End of the World," it's best to view it not as a scientific documentary, but as a home movie from screendom's crankiest old bastard. That's right, Werner Herzog is back with his latest non-fiction endeavor, proving again that it's not actually naturalistic poetry until it's been touched by his camera. Asked by the National Science Foundation to travel to Antarctica and document his adventures, Herzog halfheartedly agreed, on the condition that penguins wouldn't be the focus of his efforts. Heading to the developed community of McMurdo Station armed only with some cameras, a distaste for the sun, and his boundless curiosity, Herzog wandered around the landscape looking for oddities that piqued his interest and offered his lens a glimpse of beauty in the most unfamiliar of locations. An accomplished and prolific documentarian, Herzog's films are specialized pro...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/33347 Sun, 25 May 2008 02:15:57 UTC Highly Recommended The Movie To the cynical outsider or compulsive cable news viewer, it would seem as though our nation's capital is fueled by a sinister blend of sex, greed and scandal. Writer/director Paul Schrader (of Taxi Driver and Affliction fame; his searing Mishima gets the Criterion treatment later this summer) seems to think so, particularly in light of his elegant drama The Walker, which spins a chilly tale involving all three elements. He's aided in the telling by Woody Harrelson, arguably one of the most underrated character actors of his generation, who turns in an exceptional performance as Carter Page III, a man whose world is shaken and shattered by story's end. A "walker," as the film explains, is a ne'er-do-well who functions as a companion to idly rich women and wives of Beltway insiders. Carter Page III (Harrelson) is a well-connected Washington ...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/33044 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:23:40 UTC Recommended Helen Hunt took herself out of the Hollywood game eight years ago after sleepwalking through the Mel Gibson embarrassment, "What Women Want." She's acted in a few projects here and there, but "Then She Found Me" feels like a breaking dam: the overflowing artistic release of an actress fed up with what's been handed to her. Now Hunt takes matters into her own hands with this raw feature film, her directorial debut. Now 39 years old, April (Helen Hunt) is desperate to have a baby of her own. However, to get to a place of motherhood, April has to deal with her divorce from husband Ben (Matthew Broderick), the death of her adoptive mother, and the persistence of her birth mother (Bette Midler), who, after all these years, is ready to be a part of her life. Also on her plate is an itchy romance with single father Frank (Colin Firth), an equally unhappy individual with passions that excite and...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/32881 Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:23:43 UTC Highly Recommended THE FILM "War Dance" follows a long line of documentaries eager to expose the joy of life trapped deep within the world's most dangerous locations. Personally, I don't think I'll ever fatigue of such tales and "War Dance" is a worthy addition to the genre, eloquently assembling a powerful story of artistic communication in the middle of a land known primarily for bottomless horror. In northern Uganda sits the Patongo Primary School, a place of education located in the heart of a war zone, where the Lord's Resistance Army (L.R.A.) has wreaked havoc for over 20 years. The students are made up of orphans who've watched their parents slaughtered, former prisoners and boy soldiers of the L.R.A., and the rest of the pre-teen collateral damage of the countryside. However, it's time to put aside the gloom because the National Music Competition has arrived, with over 20,000 schools vying f...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/32858 Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:39:23 UTC Highly Recommended THE MOVIE: I'm a big fan of nonlinear writing. Seeing a skilled storyteller juggle his plot elements in such a way as to make a story that confounds as it delights, taking the audience through the material in fits and starts, examining different bits and pieces as they go, can be a thing of magic. Not every story lends itself to this kind of structuring, however, there has to be a reason why the author would choose to chop up a straight line and rearrange it. Writer Kelly Masterson and director Sidney Lumet understand this perfectly, so it's not for nothing that their film Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a vertiginous marvel. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is the story of two brothers, the successful but cold Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/32793 Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:02:04 UTC Recommended British-born filmmaker Tony Kaye (American History X) has received rave reviews for his 152-minute documentary about the divisive issue of abortion in America, Lake of Fire. The film has been promoted by distributor THINKFilm as "unquestionably the definitive work on the subject of abortion" and film critic Roger Ebert found it impossible to determine which side Kaye was on. This is a bit much. While Lake of Fire is a moving documentary that powerfully presents aspects of both sides of the abortion divide, it is neither viewpoint neutral nor definitive. Kaye's views on abortion are no secret. In an online piece for London's Guardian Unlimited last October, Kaye wrote about still grieving the loss of a child aborted by his girlfriend thirty years ago, but nonetheless being pro-choice because he considers a woman's right to bodily autonomy to be preeminent. Even ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/32406 Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:27:46 UTC Highly Recommended The Movie: It's been nearly 40 years since Neil Armstrong took that giant leap for mankind, but the sheer wonder and majesty of his first step on the moon has hardly diminished with the passage of time. In the Shadow of the Moon, one of the few documentaries to sufficiently capture the awe of that historic moment, pays tribute to the Apollo astronauts who literally reached beyond the heavens. British documentarian David Sington and his crew constructed this cinematic journey by poring over copious reels of rare, and sometimes never-before-seen, footage from NASA and other sources. Many of the images are simply breathtaking, particularly those taken from fixed cameras in the command and lunar modules. For all its considerable beauty, however, 2007's In the Shadow of the Moon primarily concerns itself with the personal recollections of the courageous Apollo astr...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/32142 Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:02:25 UTC Highly Recommended Taxi to the Dark Side is a film everyone should see. Even if you think you're well-informed about the torture scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, even if you think you're appropriately outraged, you still should see this new documentary by director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room), because you may just discover that you are neither. Likewise, if you have friends or family who are not concerned with our government's blasé attitude about torture, you should drag them to Taxi to the Dark Side. Trick them if you have to. Tell them it's an ultra-violent action picture or something. This is essential viewing. We've all seen the photos coming out of Iraq and Gitmo, but I've never seen them in such a concentrated fashion, uncensored, complete with grainy video and fleshed out by the more disturbing details of what went on in the various prisons aroun...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/32123 Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:31:55 UTC Recommended A meek, stuttering accountant (Forest Whitaker) dreams of having a better life. The promise of youth, he's discovered, is a lie, and all most people achieve is a life lacking in any great impact. A butterfly aficionado, he wishes for a transformative experience that will give him the wings to fly away from the mundane. One day, he overhears three of his coworkers discussing a fixed horse race. A runner named Butterfly has been set up to win and will pay out 8-to-1. It's too much of a coincidence, right? This is the chance he has been waiting for. It's the butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, sending a wind of change straight at our accountant. Films about "the butterfly effect" could probably constitute their own genre at this point, so in that sense, Jieho Lee's The Air I Breathe is nothing new. All lives are linked, what one person does effects another, setting of...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31881 Sun, 30 Dec 2007 17:37:51 UTC Recommended Even underneath a place dictated the "most dangerous place on earth" lies a throbbing heart aching to break free. Ghosts of Cite Soleil, a gritty documentary from Asger Leth, gives merit to such a statement. Winding through the dusty streets of this chaotic Haitian town is much like swimming through a sea rife with bloodthirsty sharks; this unnerving yet entrancing documentary makes certain to shed light on the openings that lead towards the few radiant elements of Cite Soleil. The Film: In the ramshackle remnants of Cite Soleil, one of the most dangerous slums in the world positioned in Haiti's Port-au-Prince, the poverty level can be unquestionably heartbreaking. Scavenging for food and money in the dusty dervish becomes a treacherous ...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31846 Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:20:08 UTC Rent It A walker is a man whose sole occupation is escorting rich women from one place to another, the kind of unthreatening companion whose presence in the lives of these women causes their husbands no end of consternation and fuels torrents of gossip amongst their friends. Which is both a blessing and a curse for the title character of Paul Schrader's new film, The Walker. He loves gossip, but he generally prefers that it not be about him. Set in Washington D.C., this molasses-flavored thriller stars Woody Harrelson as Carter Page III, a sort of low-rent Truman Capote without the bibliography to back him up. Truman is actually one of the only gay authors whom Carter does not quote (unless I missed the reference), but we do see that Carter owns a book about him. That's probably a telling character trait, that Carter may be less inclined to read the books than he is to read about the scandals around ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31795 Sat, 22 Dec 2007 20:34:07 UTC Rent It "Pigs" is a T&A comedy that doesn't really want to be a T&A comedy, so much so that around halfway through, it completely stops trying to join the "Porky's"/"American Pie" frat, instead opting for gentler charms of romantic comedy. What we're left with is a movie that's too nice to be gross and too gross to be nice. Consider the premise: a big man on campus gets talked into a wager that leaves him trying to sleep with the entire alphabet (that is, 26 women whose last names begin with each letter) before the end of the school year - and he has to provide photographic evidence of each deed. Add in the film's title, and you have the opportunity for campus vulgarity at its sleaziest, with our hero smooth-talking his way into 26 beds in record time. Now consider the leading man: Jefferson Brown, a young up-and-comer with a beaming personality, the kind of guy everyone wants to hang out...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31709 Sun, 16 Dec 2007 05:01:07 UTC Rent It The Movie The problem with young love, the kind that afflicts teenagers and those in their early twenties, is that it's too complicated and overwhelming an experience to be properly articulated by those going through it. Understanding and, more importantly, appreciating the vagaries of the human heart is much too complex for most youthful lovers (nor would they want to waste precious time dissecting and pondering relationships forged out of curiosity and white-hot attraction). The problem with adults reflecting back upon young love is that they do so through a romanticized fog, blissfully editing out the difficulties and boredom so that they're left with a singular, purifying experience. Unless, of course, that adult is Ethan Hawke. Suffocated by its own pretensions and almost insufferably plodding, The Hottest State, adapted from Hawke's novel by the actor himself, is ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31445 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:58:18 UTC Skip It The Movie Ah, the realm of straight-to-video dramas. It's a sub-genre to be cherished, because where else can you find tawdry, overheated pieces of work like Deceit? A semi-erotic misfire if ever there was one, this 2006 slice of televised cheese, which premiered a little over a year ago, has lofty ambitions. Produced by actor Joe Pantoliano (who has a small part as Anthony), Deceit is ostensibly a psycho-sexual thriller in the vein of "CSI" or "Law & Order," but can't even hold a candle to those programs. Maybe it's director/co-writer Matthew Cole Weiss' proclivity for underlining every scene with Dan Silver's score or third-hand rock songs; maybe it's the cast penchant for performing intensely dramatic scenes as though they're taking place in wind tunnels or just maybe this half-baked thriller is just another tired TV movie. Dave Ford (Matt Long...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31427 Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:14:30 UTC Skip It The Product: Eli Roth needs to man up and take responsibility. He can bare his burly - and frighteningly hairy - chest and aim his animal magnetism at whoever will respond. But such heroic cinematic defiance cannot change the fact that his stellar masterpiece of a scary splatter social commentary Hostel has fueled an entire sub-genre of horror films. Some have labeled it violence porn, even adding Leigh Whannell and James Wan of Saw fame to the list of likely suspects. In the case of Gag, it's better to call the emerging trend what it really is - a steaming pile of horse apples. Or better yet, let's just look at this gangrenous gorno rip-off and describe it proper as the dullest, most derivative example of motion-picture plagiarism committed to celluloid since the Band family stopped making '80s monster movies. The final product is so bereft of intelligence and fear fact...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31162 Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:01:49 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series Director Sidney Lumet has enjoyed a fruitful career, bejeweled with blinding classics such as "Dog Day Afternoon," "Network," and "12 Angry Men." However, nothing in Lumet's filmography has contained the back alley, concrete-block pummeling of "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a masterful, rampaging descent into the quicksand hell of desperation. Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) are brothers with a swarm of troubles to their name. To break out of their cycle of debt, Andy proposes robbing the jewelry store run by their parents. At first, Hank is uneasy about this endeavor, but the immediate benefit of a quick heist is too much to ignore, and they set off with a local bar stooge to complete the job. When the simple plan goes awry in a very tragic way, Hank and Andy are caged by their misdeed like animals, with their father (Albert Finney) hungry for revenge on the ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31164 Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:42:05 UTC Recommended In 10 Words or Less ...And justice for all...except Darryl Hunt Reviewer's Bias* Loves: Good documentaries Likes: New ways to tell a story Dislikes: Hates: Corrupted justice The Movie At this point in history, who hasn't heard of a man being wrongly convicted and imprisoned, only to be vindicated years (or even decades) later? After seeing it happen so often, the concept has nearly become hokey as a plot. So when a documentary uses Darryl Hunt, just such a victim of judicial failure, as its subject, it runs the risk of coming off as just another story we've heard before. Thankfully, though the story is familiar, the way it's told is not, resulting is a quality documentary. When Deborah Sykes, a young whit...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30811 Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:27:49 UTC Skip It Has Edgar Allen Poe ever been so boring? Marking the feature debut of director Hayley Cloake and writer Collin Chang, "The House of Usher" is the latest screen adaptation of the gloomy writer's most famous story; this one's a modern-day updating powered by liberal reshuffling of most of the details. But there are long stretches where nothing's happening at all, and a much-needed sense of dread that normally excuses such plotless meandering is conspicuously absent. And that's just the start of the problems. Polish ballerina-turned-actress Izabella Miko ("Save the Last Dance 2," "The Forsaken") stars as Jill, an utterly bland club-hopper who acts as a female reworking of Poe's nameless male narrator. Here, Jill is the ex-girlfriend of Rick Usher (Austin Nichols), a wealthy socialite and successful author. Years ago, Rick and his twin sister/Jill's best friend Maddy suddenly broke off all ti...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30715 Fri, 28 Sep 2007 07:34:30 UTC Rent It The Movie: How does one shoot a documentary on a conflict which has been raging for ages and for which there is no end in sight? Consider filmmaker Isidore Rosmarin's Blood And Tears: The Arab-Israeli Conflict a work in progress. That said, it's certainly an insightful and interesting piece that does a fine job of enlightening us to what the real issues are without pointing fingers too many fingers or coming right out and bluntly laying blame on any one side. That's not to say there isn't a bias here, but it's not a particularly obvious one. Isidore's film runs a quick seventy-four minutes in length but every one of those minutes counts as he's packed the documentary with interviews and archival clips that demonstrate and elaborate on points made by both sides in the ongoing war. The film begins by explaining the religious significance of the land over which the two faction...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30603 Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:55:59 UTC Rent It A half-way decent vampire flick, The Insatiable, comes to DVD from ThinkFilm. Starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Charlotte Ayanna, and Michael Biehn, The Insatiable frequently achieves a quirky, funny sensibility that proves more consistent when dealing with its Office Space-like sequences, rather than with the more conventional (and prominent) vampire elements of the plot. Combining aspects of The Hunger, Fright Night (and even William Wyler's The Collector for good measure), The Insatiable looks and sounds great, but overstays its welcome with a draggy, increasingly soggy second half. Harry Balbo (Sean Patrick Flanery) is a dorky, repressed office worker for American Flange, a metalworks company. Berated and belittled at his job b...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30587 Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:28:53 UTC Rent It The Movie: Let's get the niceties out of the way: Zoo is a documentary about people who have sex with horses. I tell you this upfront because that fact gets a bit obscured beneath all the pretentiousness ladled on by the filmmakers. Director Robinson Devor, who co-wrote Zoo with Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger writer Charles Mudede, employs reenactments with actors, a haunting music score and ethereal cinematography to tell the bizarre story of "Mr. Hands," the Internet handle of an aerospace engineer who bled to death in July, 2005, from injuries sustained while making sweet love to a stallion in Enumclaw, Washington. In focusing on the sad case of the 45-year-old Seattle man, the film explores the world of zoophiles -- otherwise known as zoos -- who enjoy getting their freak on with, ahem, animals. From such pursuits comes scrupulously high-minded cine...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30412 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:45:04 UTC Skip It Tip for aspiring filmmakers: never open your film with a character that's more interesting than your lead. Example: In Jason Carvey's "A New Wave," we spend several minutes with a very funny John Krasinski before we're ever introduced to Andrew Keegan as our hero. Problem is, once we've seen how amusing Krasinski can be, all those scenes with Keegan become a massive bore. Why, we ask again and again, couldn't the movie be about Krasinski, instead of pushing him over to the sidelines? The opening scene sets the stage all wrong. It's a good scene, in which Krasinski, as motor-mouthed trickster Gideon, works his way to stealing an expensive suit. But why open the film with him in a bit of amusing nonsense, then shove him aside? Why not open with the movie's second scene, the introduction of Desmond (Keegan), a struggling artist slogging his way through a bland day job as a bank teller? Doing...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30313 Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:28:35 UTC Highly Recommended It was one of America's greatest triumphs, and it occurred during a time when the country needed a singular force of hope to clear away the tensions and misery that plagued the face of the nation. "In the Shadow of the Moon" is a documentary exploring the space race of the 1960s and 70s, using the astronauts as the storytellers, recalling their adventures and doubts while they went about their work, unknowingly changing the course of history. "Moon" is a deeply respectful motion picture, clearly endeavoring to shift the moon landings back to cultural regality, away from all the naysayers and cruel conspiracy theorists. It's a pedestrian journey from one end of NASA to the other, but it has the astronauts' involvement, and their various personalities and memories lend the film a unique rhythm than more glacial, upstanding archival endeavors would have. Outside of a brief mention that beating Russi...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29989 Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:17:58 UTC Skip It The Movie: The tagline for "The Dog Problem" on the DVD cover is "Eat. Sleep. Therapy. Repeat." Right away, I should have known a slogan about repetition would be a bad sign. Sure enough, the movie is indeed a repetitive journey that continually goes around and round in circles before an unsatisfying and abrupt end. The story centers on Solo (Giovanni Ribisi) who is not related to Han or Mario Van Peeble's title character. Solo is a broke author who goes to therapy to try and get his life back on track. When the therapist mentions Solo should get a pet to keep him company, he decides to purchase a dog. At first, the dog brings nothing but trouble, but Solo slowly realizes the dog is helping his life as he meets a woman at a dog park, among other fateful occurrences. "The Dog Problem" is in fact loaded with problems. First and foremost, the script is padded with filler that does nothing ...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29944 Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:13:05 UTC Skip It If you haven't had the misfortune of witnessing Ethan Hawke's other directorial effort, 2001's "Chelsea Walls," then I envy you. Hawke is an actor's director, if that term still applies these days, but it's not an identity based in vocational respect, it's one of unreal permission. "The Hottest State" is Hawke's second shot at isolating the wounds of the selfish heart, and it's every bit as tedious and agonizingly self-absorbed as you might have expected. William Harding (Mark Webber) is a frustrated aspiring actor fresh from the wide open spaces of Texas, now living in the artist bohemia of New York City. One night at a bar, he meets Sarah (Catalina Sandino Moreno), a singer with severe relationship scars. The two hit it off and embark on a sexually-charged connection, which offers both personalities some comfort and an excuse to bathe with their demons. When Sarah breaks up with William, it sends h...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29915 Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:35:29 UTC Recommended The Movie I have to assume that it wouldn't be a stretch to say that many film-fans have dreams of making movies themselves. And I would wager that most of those people have made statements like, "If I ever got to make a movie, I would make the best movie that I could." This may seem like a obvious statement, but I think that we've all seen movies where those involved didn't really seem to be trying. The makers of Bloodlines may not have made a great movie, but it's clear that they had a vision of pushing a certain genre and they've made a memorable film. Bloodlines tells the story of Amber Strickland (Grace Johnston), a young woman from Alabama who is driving through Kentucky on her way to college. She experiences car trouble (which wasn't an accident) and is abducted by the Hackford clan and taken to their ramshackle house. There, Amber awakens to find herself ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29610 Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:33:52 UTC Recommended The Film: It is difficult to dislike what Daniele Thompson has achieved with Fauteuils d'orchestre a.k.a Orchestra Seats (2006), last year's official French Oscar entry. Whether you like intelligent storytelling with rich and unpredictable characters or, as the French describe them, comedie-dramatiques with enough romanticism to awake even the coldest of hearts, this film has it all. Provincial charmer Jessica (Cécile de France) heads to Paris ready to experience what the city has to offer. She quickly gets a job as a waitress at a chic bistro on Avenue Montaigne where the rich, famous, and those who wish to join them mingle. There Jessica recognizes Catherine Versen (Valérie Lemercier), an enormously popular but exhausted TV start, who is only a few days away from performing a much-anticipated play. Amongst the guests of the bistro is als...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29552 Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:08:08 UTC Skip It Sometimes I hate reviewing comedies. It's a totally subjective experience. What makes you laugh might not make me laugh, and what makes me laugh today may not hit my funny bone tomorrow. Thus, when I tell you that The Ten is one of the most unfunny, pretentious bores I've ever seen in a cinema, what does that really mean to you? I worked in an independent video store for two and a half years, the kind of place that had a section of movies organized by directors and where you could actually get some customer service. It made me pretty good at handicapping the tastes of others in order to find a movie a particular customer might like. When someone would come in and ask for something funny, I'd find out what movies made them laugh so I could try to recommend something accordingly. I think it would be helpful here to turn this around and tell you that I don't really care for the more surreal mode...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29290 Sun, 22 Jul 2007 04:02:00 UTC Recommended THE FILM "Live Free or Die" (not to be confused with the new "Die Hard" sequel) drifts around as aimlessly as its characters, calmly dragging its knuckles on the ground in search of laughs. It's the perfect comedy for those who find the physical act of laughing too much of a hassle. John "Rugged" Rudgate (Aaron Stanford, "Tadpole") is a small town petty criminal clinging to his reputation as the town enforcer. When he runs into Lagrand (Paul Schneider, "All the Real Girls"), a simple-minded acquaintance from high school, Rudgate gets the idea to pull off a bigger swindle than he's ever attempted before. When Rudgate mistakes an intended poisoning for a death his did not actually commit, it sets off a chain of accidents and paranoia that involves the local cops (Kevin Dunn, Michael Rappaport), Lagrand's sister (Zooey Deschanel), and the tireless efforts of New England's dumbest cit...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29048 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:37:49 UTC Rent It The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams (originally titled Strike the Tent), a Civil War romance indie from 2005, has the novel attraction of its co-director/writer/producer/lead star Julian Adams being a direct descendent of the film's real-life lead character, Robert Adams, Julian's great-great grandfather. And while that hook rates a momentary, "Hmph," it doesn't erase the fact that The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams, while certainly good-intentioned, can't escape a fairly routine, mundane treatment that fails to elevate the film beyond other straight-to-DVD fare. Telling the true story (with an end credit that says some of it has been fudged) of Robert Adams (Julian Adams), a Captain in the Confederate Army, The Last Confederate...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/29001 Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:40:29 UTC Skip It The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico, the 2005 Canadian mockumentary from writer/director Michael Mabbott, frequently feels likes it's just ready to take off, to actually become funny or musically entertaining or maybe even just a tiny bit meaningful. But constant undercutting of the material - material that isn't particularly new or humorous or interesting to begin with - keeps the film firmly grounded. Wasted opportunities abound, with scenes stopped well before their intended payoff, while viewers are left scratching their heads, wondering what the hell's the point of The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico. Loading up the film with legendary country music figures like Kris Kristofferson, Ronnie Hawkins, Levon Helm, and Merle Haggard, and then abandoning them with only the faintest of comedic set-ups, only exaggerates the film's sense of aimlessness and waste. <...Read the entire review ]]>