DVD Talk DVD Reviews https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/list/DVD Video DVD Talk DVD Review RSS Feed en-us Angels of Darkness DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/68114 Sat, 28 Mar 2015 18:12:21 UTC Rent It

The Movie:
J. Sheridan le Fanu's eerie vampire novella Carmilla has had quite a number of film adaptations, from the serious to the silly to the erotic. Some of these have been pretty good, such as Roy Ward Baker's The Vampire Lovers, while others have been… less so. Mauricio Chernovetzky and Mark Dvendorf's Angels of Darkness a/k/a Styria is somewhere in the middle of this pack: well produced but uninspiring.

Stephen Rea is Dr. Hill. It's 1989, and he's gained entry into Hungary in order to study frescoes in an isolated castle before it's torn down. He brings his troubled daughter Lara (Eleanor Tomlinson) with him, since she's been kicked out of her boarding school. Hill hires Miss Pasztor (Erika Marozsan), a local woman from the nearby village Styria, to tutor his daughter. Lara persist...Read the entire review

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About a Zombie DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/64750 Fri, 16 May 2014 01:39:13 UTC Recommended

The Movie:
I have to admit, I went into About a Zombie fully expecting to hate it. It's a mockumentary about an Irish family that decides to care for their adult son after he becomes a zombie, instead of killing him as most people do. While I am a big fan of zombie films generally, the genre has been overplayed of late, and this premise sounded exceptionally annoying. But it actually turns out to be a pretty decent film.

The boy's father, Danny (Rory Mullen) appears first on screen, being asked, apparently by a reporter, to talk about the "events of last year", something that Danny is reluctant to do. He eventually acquiesces, and starts to tell about how a documentary film crew, led by an American director (Todd Fletcher) comes to tell the story of Billy (Patrick Murphy), the first zombie in Ireland.

Billy's mother Lizzie (Geraldine McAlinden) and pregnant girlfriend Aoife (Dian...Read the entire review

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Angry Nazi Zombies DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/64292 Mon, 31 Mar 2014 02:09:29 UTC Recommended

The Movie:
Two hot trends in the horror cinema world right now are zombie movies and anthology movies, so why not put these two great things together? Well, that's exactly what the producers of Angry Nazi Zombies did, with mixed results.

There are three short films, each around thirty minutes long, all set during the Second World War. Strictly speaking, only two of these segments are zombie related, and one of those only slightly, but they are all horror themed, and they all do feature some kind of nasty creature that kills.

Medal of Horror
In this segment, a cowardly young British captain named George (David Wayman) seduced an American dancer, then sent her an official letter telling her he was dead so that he wouldn't have to deal with the awkward breakup. Her life takes a turn for the worse after. Turns out, though, that her father is a Major (Paul Kelleher), and whe...Read the entire review

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1976: Hunt vs. Lauda (aka Hunt vs. Lauda: F1's Greatest Racing Rivals) DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62947 Thu, 16 Jan 2014 00:51:13 UTC Rent It

For fans, the 1976 Formula One racing season was one of the most exciting and suspenseful on record. Fueled by the neck-and-neck competition between British McLaren driver James Hunt and Austrian Ferrari driver Niki Lauda, the season was not only an incredible nail-biter, but the drama helped push the sport into the global spotlight. In 2013, Universal Pictures released Rush, director Ron Howard's dramatized version of Hunt and Lauda's championship battle. The film has renewed interest in seeing the real men behind the story, and "Hunt vs. Lauda" is one of the many documentaries now hitting home video.

"1976: Hunt vs. Lauda" (or, "Hunt vs. Lauda: F1's Greatest Racing Rivals", according to the on-screen title) was first broadcast on the BBC in the UK, and is being released direct-to-DVD in the United States a few weeks ahead of Rush's debut. To tell the pair's thrilling story, the fi...Read the entire review

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Dragon Knight DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61512 Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:19:39 UTC Skip It



Director: Helene Angel
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Nicolas Nollet, Sergi Lopez
Year: 2003

This is a movie of many titles. The DVD has it entitled Dragon Knight. The original French title is Recontre avec le dragon. And IMDB has it labeled as The Red Knight. Whatever you choose to call it, the multiple names are a sign of the confusion to come. There is not a single dragon in the movie, nor can we ever be sure that a dragon played any part in the story. That's fine, there doesn't have to be an actual dragon; you could argue that the legend of the dragon is what's important to the plot. But then there's the French vs. the English title. Sure, it's a foreign film, why not. But again, it's a clue as to what's...Read the entire review

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The Magic Flute (2006) DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58901 Sat, 13 Jul 2013 21:53:59 UTC Recommended

THE MOVIE:

Kenneth Branagh made his name adapting Shakespeare to the screen in the early 1990s. His productions were noteworthy for being faithful to the content while still being vibrant reinterpretations made relatable to modern audiences. For one of his more recent stage-to-screen efforts (and the latest to hit home video), the director has turned to another kind of stage production, bringing Mozart's popular opera, The Magic Flute, to the screen.

In this version, which sports a witty English rewrite by beloved humorist Strephen Fry (Wilde), Branagh brings the 18th-Century German musical forward in time. Now Tamino and P...Read the entire review

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Starsuckers DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57627 Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:41:14 UTC Highly Recommended

In 10 Words or Less
Fame addiction and how the media capitalizes on it

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Documentaries, Penn & Teller's B.S.
Likes: Chris Atkins
Dislikes: Celebrity culture
Hates: Reality TV, fame whores

The Show
It doesn't make me a saint or anything, but I don't watch reality television. At least, I don't since the genre lost its sense of realness, which is probably following the first season of The Real World. I'll still watch creative competition shows like Face-Off but even those struggle to keep my attention. I just can't get into watch people whose only talent is being famous (and normally combative and/or aggravating as well.) I shake my head when I catch my wife watchi...Read the entire review

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Shooting Robert King DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/53929 Sat, 03 Mar 2012 04:56:38 UTC Recommended

I'm not a big war fan. I don't generally care for it in real life and I don't like most war-themed movies or documentaries on the subject. I had a good feeling about Shooting Robert King before requesting it as a screener, though, and ended up enjoying almost every minute of it. Of course, it's probably because our subject isn't a soldier: he's a photojournalist whose work has graced a number of front pages and magazine covers. He's also a charismatic guy who grew up in a dysfunctional family led by a distant father. Shooting Robert King follows the man ...Read the entire review

]]> King George VI: The Man Behind The King's Speech DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/50602 Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:29:39 UTC Recommended

The Documentary:




The story behind King George VI's reluctant ascension to the throne is one of fortitude, camaraderie, and the pressure of royal leadership on a man who doesn't naturally take to a dynamic public voice, either by radio or in-person. His struggle with stammering proves to have an enduring ability to captivate by the success of The King's Speech, in which his relationship with speech therapist Lionel Logue develops amid the emotionally trying path he travels before leading his people into war. Julie Sawyer's documentary The Man Behind the King's Speech understands and respects that Tom Hooper's Oscar-winning film stanchly chronicles the events surroundi...Read the entire review

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Bonded By Blood DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/46439 Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:37:40 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Based on the book of the same name by Bernard O'Mahoney (author of Essex Boys), Sacha Bennett's 2010 big screen adaptation of Bonded by Blood is set in the England of the mid-nineties and it begins with a powerful opening sequence in which two men make their way into a man's apartment and shoot him dead. This dead man, Darren (Adam Deacon), narrates the picture and fills us in on how and why he ended up this way and through a series of flashbacks that occur throughout the film and not always in chronological order, we learn his story and how it ties in with the other characters in the film.

As Darren narrates rather distantly, we meet two of the crooks he's been hanging around with, Mickey Steele (Vincent Regan) and Jack Whomes (Dave Legeno) who get involved with some business dealings made up of another group of guys - Pat Tate (Tamer Hassan), Tony Tucker (Te...Read the entire review

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Destricted DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/45760 Wed, 01 Dec 2010 06:34:44 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

Okay, where do we start with this one. Destricted is a tough film to categorize. It's absolutely an arthouse picture, presumably made with the intention of letting some of today's more interesting avant garde filmmakers poke at our collective id. And yet, it's more than that - it's also basically a collection of short hardcore porno movies. This is a mix that has been done before, but rarely on such a socially mainstream level. There are plenty of filmmakers toiling away in the confines of the adult film industry who mix art with smut quite effectively, but unlike the six directors collected here, their intent is to excite and to titillate. Destricted doesn't do that. It's certainly as explicit as you'd care for it to be, possibly more so, but despite this it isn't particularly arousing - it's just weird, and seemingly only for the sake of being weird. And explicit...Read the entire review

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Sparkle DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/45681 Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:39:50 UTC Rent It

Sparkle, written and directed by the team of Tom Hunsinger and Neil Hunter, is hard to pin down. The script is uneven but features good characters and realistically-drawn situations. The performances are mostly solid, but the direction is clunky. The film often feels unsure of its footing, and the PAL video visuals don't do it any aesthetic favors. Yet there is charm here, helped along by good performances and some smart scene-building.

Sam (Shaun Evans) is new to London, and takes a job as a personal assistant to PR maven Sheila (Stockard Channing). He's in his twenties and she's much older. They begin sleeping together immediately, but the relationship isn't going anywhere, even though it satisfies Sam's bloated ego. In addition, Sam's strained relationship with his mother, Jill (Lesley Manville), a single budding singer, has a somewhat Freudian resonance upon his dallia...Read the entire review

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