CARJACKED -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 11/10/11

 

Having just watched CARJACKED (2011), I must admit feeling a little confused.  I can't decide if the filmmakers were actually trying to make a serious thriller, or if they were aware that they were making one of the dumbest movies I've seen in quite a while.  Either way, it isn't much fun until it decides to go full-out goofy in the second half.

The story opens with divorced mom Lorraine (Maria Bello, THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, PAYBACK) attending a touchy-feely women's group therapy session.  Dumped by her husband Gary and facing a losing custody battle over their son Chad, Lorraine is too much of a simpy doormat to fight back or get angry about it as her brassy session mate Betty (Joanna Cassidy in an ultra-brief role) urges her to do.  When she relates how she earned the nickname "Klutzy" by accidentally shooting her dad's friend in the ass at the gun range, her counselor asks, "How did that make you feel?"  Yikes.

Already an emotional wreck, all she needs is for her and Chad to be carjacked by an escaped bank robber named Roy (Steven Dorff, BLADE, PUBLIC ENEMIES) on their way home, which of course is what happens.  Forced to drive Roy to a rendezvous 350 miles away, Lorraine somehow makes a connection with the chatty criminal and shares her feelings with him instead of being totally terrified like a normal person would.  Thus, we're not really all that scared for her and apart from a couple of halfhearted escape attempts, little suspense is generated by her ordeal.  At one point she even seems to consider running off to Mexico with Roy and his money.



Maria Bello, whom I've always considered a pretty good actress, is pretty awful as Lorraine.  Never convincing as a kidnap victim, she plays the role with a series of weird expressions and nervous tics, occasionally getting a comically peeved look when Roy says something threatening or offensive.  We expect Lorraine to eventually turn the tables on Roy, which will be just the thing to boost her confidence and assertiveness, but she's remarkably stupid--during an attempt to call 911 on her cellphone while in the bathroom, she gets 411 instead and can't understand why the operator keeps asking, "What city, please?" 

At first, Dorff plays Roy as the most patient and non-threatening carjacker in movie history, reducing his character's menace during the film's first half and even coming off as sympathetic while talking with Lorraine--for awhile there, it seemed this was going to turn into a road trip movie.  It's only later that we find he enjoys lulling his victims into a false sense of security before doing something horrible to them, as Lorraine discovers when they finally reach the rendezvous. 

At that point, it looked as though CARJACKED was finally going to turn into a tense thriller, but instead it seems to morph into a black comedy designed to have us thinking "WTF?"  In addition to some comical rednecks at a truckstop (the kind played by actors who have never actually seen a real one), we get a car chase that looks like something out of a Hal Needham movie followed by some highly improbable hijinks in a deserted warehouse.  With believability well and truly thrown out the window, all that remains is for the film to end with a wrap-up scene that seems to have been written under the influence of laughing gas.



John Bonito's direction is okay if somewhat self-indulgent at times, although that thing where the camera does those little zoopy zoom-ins on a character's face while they're driving doesn't even look good when Michael Bay and Paul W.S. Anderson do it.  Acting-wise, Dorff is okay while Cassidy isn't in the film long enough to make an impression.  Bello is hard to figure out--she seems aware that the film is going to turn into a semi-comedy in the second half, but since we don't know that, her performance seems curiously flaky throughout.  I kept thinking, "I hope she's in better form taking over Helen Mirren's role in PRIME SUSPECT."

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with English 5.1 and Spanish mono sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  The sole extra is a very brief behind-the-scenes short.

After a so-so start, the last twenty minutes or so of CARJACKED are so unexpectedly nutty that I actually began to enjoy it on that level.  But I still can't figure out if the filmmakers were trying to make a serious thriller and failed, or if they were just messing with my head the whole time.

CARJACKED -- DVD Review by Porfle

OPERATION: ENDGAME -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 7/21/10

 

A fast-moving cloak-and-dagger action flick that's smart and funny, OPERATION: ENDGAME is adrenaline-fueled fun from start to finish.

The whole thing takes place in the secret subterranean headquarters of a hush-hush black ops group known as The Factory, where two teams, Alpha and Omega, keep each other tenuously in check while performing dirty deeds for the government.  Each member is code-named for a tarot card, and it's The Fool's (Joe Anderson, THE CRAZIES) first day on the job.  The nervous new guy is given a tour of the facility by a drunken, foulmouthed burnout named Chariot (Rob Corddry, BLADES OF GLORY) and the hot but deadly High Priestess (Maggie Q, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD), finding it to be like a cross between "Get Smart" and "Office Space."

But The Fool soon discovers that his first day will be anything but typical when their mentally-unbalanced, suicidal leader, The Devil (Jeffrey Tambor), unexpectedly sets "Operation: Endgame" into motion.  This means that the complex is sealed off and will explode in about two hours, and that the two teams will now try to kill each other while searching for a hidden exit known only by their late boss and a spooky lone agent named The Hermit (Zach Galifianakis).  Things become even more complicated when The Fool encounters an opposing team member named Temperance (Odette Yustman) who happens to be an old girlfriend.

What follows is an exciting, often amusing series of surprisingly bloody death matches between various agents.  We never know who's going to be paired off against each other next since there are so many unknown agendas involved in "Operation: Endgame" and some of the more psychotic participants, such as sweet-looking Bible thumper Heirophant (Emilie de Ravin), have a survival instinct that is matched only by their bloodlust.  (When we first see Heirophant, she's sitting in her cubicle scribbling "I love killing" repeatedly on a notepad.) 

Some of the fight scenes are reminscent of the Bond vs. Grant train sequence in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE while others are just a bloody mess with the unarmed agents flailing away with whatever office supplies or other sundry items they can creatively use as weapons.  Meanwhile, Michael Hitchcock and Tim Bagley play Neal and Carl, two mild-mannered, befuddled office drones who man the surveillance center and watch what's happening as though it were a reality TV show. 

One-liners and droll character gags abound--Jeffrey Tambor ("Arrested Development", "The Larry Sanders Show") is especially good as he wearily trades snide insults with his uppity underlings.  As the sardonic "Empress", Ellen Barkin continues in the "Rosa Klebb" mode she displayed in BROOKLYN'S FINEST but with more sex appeal and a wicked sadistic streak.  Clearly having fun without straining himself too much, Ving Rhames plays "Judgement", a bomb expert who never passes up a pun on his codename ("It's judgement time, baby").  The rest of the cast is fine, with Bob Odenkirk ("Mr. Show") his usual wonderful self as "Emperor" and Joe Anderson's semi-heroic rookie agent convincingly clueless about the whole thing.
 

Exposition flies by early on so you might want to keep your finger on the rewind button until you get all the details straight, although they don't really matter that much.  It all has something to do with the transition of power from Bush to Obama, with the evil Bushies scrambling to cover up their covert misdeeds before the honest and open Obama administration sheds its heavenly light upon them and cleans up Washington.  (As Michael Corleone once said:  "Now who's being naive?")  Anyway, the "Bush bad, Obama good" campaign-commercial vibe gets old pretty quick, but unless this appeals to you, just ignore it and you should be okay.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Digital 5.1 with English and Spanish subtitles.  Extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette plus alternate opening and ending scenes.

OPERATION: ENDGAME is an imaginative blend of laughs and thrills that takes itself just seriously enough to maintain genuine suspense. Watching this colorful array of deadly eccentrics going at each other tooth and nail as the countdown to obliteration ticks away makes for a pretty entertaining action-comedy flick.  

OPERATION: ENDGAME -- DVD Review by Porfle

SUNSHINE CLEANING -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 8/9/09

 

From the looks of it, I thought this was going to be some sappy lightweight comedy or something, but it turned out to be right up my alley. Why? Because I'm a little twisted, and so is SUNSHINE CLEANING (2008), a cockeyed but wonderfully emotional comedy-drama about two sisters who find themselves in the business of cleaning up blood-splattered death scenes.

Amy Adams is dazzling as Rose Lorkowski, a former head cheerleader and prom queen who now runs a cleaning service while trying to cope with her intelligent but difficult son, Oliver (Jason Spevack), and flighty, irresponsible little sister Norah (Emily Blunt), whom she had to help raise after their mother's death. Rose is still "dating" former high school quarterback Mac (Steve Zahn), now a cop, even though he's married and has a second child on the way. When Oliver is expelled from school for "licking", Rose must think of a way to earn enough to afford to send him to a private school. Mac suggests, during one of their illicit motel room trysts, that she try the lucrative world of crime and trauma scene cleanup.

The funniest scenes occur as novices Rose and Norah bumble their way through their first jobs in this bloody and often downright disgusting profession. They scrape gore off the walls with toothbrushes and kitchen cleaner, toss bio-hazardous materials into dumpsters, and more often than not have to clean up their own barf along with everything else. Gradually, though, with the friendly guidance of Winston (Clifton Collins Jr., TRAFFIC), a one-armed model builder who runs the store where they buy their supplies, they start to get a tad more professional.

They also begin, inadvertently, to get more personally involved with the survivors. Rose sits with a suddenly-widowed elderly woman outside her home and comforts her until someone comes to pick her up. Norah, discovering a ribbon-bound stack of old photographs at the scene of a woman's suicide, tracks down her daughter Lynn (Mary Lynn Rajskub, "Mr. Show") who works at a blood bank. This leads to a tentative lesbian relationship as the two troubled women reach out to one another, discovering an emotional common ground that draws them together.

Of course, just when the sisters think they've found the magic key to post-mortem success, things start to go wrong. Rose finally makes the amazing deduction that her relationship with Mac is a dead-end and that she may very well officially be a failure in life. Norah finally gives Lynn those photographs and reveals the reason for their first meeting, and Lynn doesn't take it well. Worst of all, something disastrous happens on the job (it's Norah's fault, of course) which threatens to ruin them both on a financial and personal level. But while all of this stuff is going wrong, other things are starting to go right in ways that aren't as immediately evident.

Director Christine Jeffs makes the most of Megan Holley's well-written screenplay with a lean style and a crackling pace that doesn't let up. The film's tone remains consistent throughout, even when the comedy gives way to some pretty dramatic and emotional scenes. Jeffs has a light, naturalistic touch that keeps the heavier stuff from getting as maudlin as it might have been in other hands--both the small tragedies and the life-affirming triumphs are just parts of the story's texture as they would be in real life.

The cast is so good that their characters come alive. Jason Spevack as the inquisitive, introspective Oscar is one of those spooky-good child actors who can hold his own with an old veteran like the great Alan Arkin, who plays Rose and Norah's enterprising dad, or Clifton Collins Jr. as the likable and dependable Winston. Steve Zahn plays Mac with an air of detachment suitable to his character, who will never commit to Rose. Making brief appearances are the wonderful Paul Dooley as a used car salesman and Robert Redford's daughter Amy as Mac's pregnant wife. As Lynn, Mary Lynn Rajskub has that same quirky, hesitant quality that she always brought to her comedy roles and it works well here. Amy Adams does a brilliant job of fully inhabiting the character of Rose and it's fascinating just to watch her use that expressive face so well. Emily Blunt is equally good as Norah, gradually revealing the scared little lost girl beneath the gangly, clumsy exterior.

The DVD image and Dolby 5.1 surround sound are good. The movie can be watched in either 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen or full frame. Bonus features include a commentary track with writer Megan Holley and producer Glenn Williamson, a cool featurette called "A Fresh Look at a Dirty Business"--in which two women who actually do this for a living talk about their profession and how well the film portrays it--and a theatrical trailer.

I judged this DVD by its cover and thought it was going to be just another chick-and-wimp flick. But when it opened with a gory shotgun suicide in a sporting goods store, I was forced to readjust my expectations. And when it took the interesting turn of exploring who has to clean up after such an event and what the job must be like for them, I was hooked. I would recommend SUNSHINE CLEANING to anyone, because it isn't just a silly comedy, a sappy melodrama, or a life-affirming feelgood fix. Well, it is life-affirming, but, in a weird way, it's also death-affirming. Does that make sense?

SUNSHINE CLEANING -- DVD Review by Porfle

DIRTY GIRL -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 1/5/12

 

 

Partway into DIRTY GIRL (2010), the movie suddenly turns from what appears to be a teen sex comedy into a weird mishmash of campy cutesiness and mawkish melodrama.  Writer-director Abe Sylvia calls this a "bait-and-switch", but why would he want to bait the wrong audience into watching the movie while the right audience avoids it?

Anyway, it's smalltown Oklahoma in 1987, and behavioral problems get school slut Danielle (Juno Temple) stuck into the "slow" class where she's partnered with overweight gay outcast Clarke (Jeremy Dozier, who resembles a pudgy young James Hampton) in a parenting exercise that requires them to treat a sack of flour as their baby.  Since they're both outsiders with unhappy home lives, we know they'll bond sooner or later, although just how sappily they do so comes as a bit of a surprise.

Mary Steenburgen and Dwight Yoakam play Clarke's parents, and since all three actors are from the South we at least get some regional authenticity.  Dwight gets to be Doyle Hargraves from SLING BLADE again only this time with an official family, whom he intimidates with the standard macho bluster while Mom cowers and secretly supports her 65% gay son (in one of the film's funnier lines, Clarke tells Danielle: "My therapist showed me this chart that says I'm 35 percent hetero.  And if I can get that up to 60 percent, my parents won't send me to military school.")  We know Clarke's mom sympathizes with him because she bobs her head when he plays "I Want Candy" in his bedroom.

 

Meanwhile, Danielle's struggling single mom Sue-Ann (Milla Jovovitch), whom we know is a faded rose because "Delta Dawn" pops onto the film's jukebox when she's first shown, has hooked up with widower Ray (the great William H. Macy).  The prospect of a blended family with this straitlaced Mormon and his two creepy kids horrifies Danielle to the point of fleeing her home in search of her real father who disappeared before she was born.  Since the now openly-gay Clarke is avoiding his increasingly hostile dad, the two of them set off in Dwight's prized car for California, suddenly turning DIRTY GIRL into a road-trip movie. 

So far, the movie has abandoned its teen sex comedy premise (the closest we get to seeing Danielle being an actual "dirty girl" is when her car shakes in the parking lot and then she emerges post-coital from it, immaculate and sassy) along with any comedic developments we might've looked forward to regarding Danielle and Clarke's school situation and Danielle's prickly relationship with Macy and his family (Macy, in fact, disappears from the film at this point).  What we get is that coming-of-age bonding between the two runaways and their flour-sack baby, Joan, who ups the film's cuteness factor by acquiring the ability to change her drawn-on expressions in reaction to the moods of her adoptive "parents." 

We're also treated to an increasing number of by-the-numbers emotional moments that are inserted here and there with the appropriate soundtrack songs sparing the script the effort of letting us know how we're supposed to feel.  In fact, all of the film's emotional cues are delivered with songs, to the point where it seems there's a DJ somewhere spinning a different platter for each scene for our emotions to dance to.  Naturally, this includes the obligatory scenes of Danielle and Clarke bopping to uptempo tunes as they cruise down the highway, or crying while Melissa Manchester's lyrics tell us what they're feeling.

 

Drive-by romance enters the picture in the form of a handsome hitchhiker named Joel (Nicholas D'Agosto) who sets Clarke's heart aflutter, while the comedy takes a creepier turn when Clarke enters a striptease contest in a gay bar to earn some cash.  By the time he and Danielle reach California, however, the film has gone full-out maudlin, with enough precious and totally unrealistic emotional moments (each fueled by that relentless succession of treacly songs) to make the whole thing feel like an R-rated Afterschool Special. 

The DVD from Anchor Bay and the Weinsteins is in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  Bonuses consist of a director's commentary and some deleted and extended scenes.

The final "Partridge Family" ending left me almost literally agog, amazed that director Sylvia actually intended for it to be taken seriously rather than as some kind of deadpan homage to John Waters.  In a way, it's screamingly funny, or at least so cringeworthy that you can't help but laugh with discomfort.  Maybe, because of this, DIRTY GIRL will eventually become some kind of perverse cult film, but taken at face value it's just a really odd sort of artifact.

DIRTY GIRL -- DVD Review by Porfle

TENEBRE -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

 Originally posted on 5/8/08

 

I'm a Dario Argento fan but have yet to see all of his films. So it was a real treat to get the chance to watch TENEBRE (aka TENEBRAE), the Italian director's 1982 return to the giallo style after a detour into the supernatural (SUSPIRIA, his masterpiece, and its follow-up INFERNO). According to Wikipedia, "giallo" films are typically slasher-style whodunits characterized by "extended murder sequences featuring excessive bloodletting, stylish camerawork and unusual musical arrangements", which would make this a prime example of the genre.

Tony Franciosa plays Peter Neal, a murder mystery writer who's just arrived in Rome to promote his latest book, "Tenebrae", only to find that a serial-killing stalker is using his new novel as a template for ridding the world of sexual deviates and other undesirables. With the help of his secretary and budding love interest Anne (Argento collaborator and former spouse Daria Nicolodi) and eager young assistant Gianni (Christian Borromeo), Neal hopes to add a feather to his literary cap by solving the real-life murder mystery himself as bodies begin to pile up. The arrival in Rome of his spurned ex-lover Jane (Veronica Lario) and the presence of a television journalist named Berti (John Steiner) who appears to be a little too obsessed with Neal and his writings are just two of the many pieces in Argento's jumbled jigsaw puzzle.

One of the first things I noticed about TENEBRE is how bright it is. Much of it takes place in broad daylight, while the night scenes are often overly-lit. Argento has stated that he wanted the film to look hyper-realistic, with no shadows for either the victims or the killer to hide in. It's an interesting stylistic choice that Argento uses effectively. The often light-bleached visuals and pallid settings also allow him to emphasize certain elements such as a woman's fire-engine red pumps or the gouts of blood that liberally decorate several moments of terror.

Some of my favorite Argento touches are well-represented here, including: a haunting flashback, the details of which are only gradually revealed to us (not unlike Harmonica's recurring childhood memory in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, which Argento co-wrote); characters not picking up on an important visual or aural clue until it suddenly occurs to them after much reflection, as in the "three irises" scene from SUSPIRIA or the mysterious painting in DEEP RED; and several POV shots that disconcertingly put us in the killer's shoes as he (or she) is on the prowl.

As usual, Argento uses sound very effectively. In particular, he shares something in common with singer Nick Lowe--he loves the sound of breaking glass--so if you see a plate glass window in this movie, chances are it's going to shatter when you least expect it. Argento uses such devices to make his murder sequences even more nerve-wracking than they already are, usually after some very careful buildup and a few fake-outs to keep us off guard. And when the killer strikes, it's disturbingly violent. But unlike the standard slasher bore such as FRIDAY THE 13TH, Argento is more interested in the imaginative cinematic depiction of violence rather than simply racking up outlandish yet by-the-numbers body counts. When he does go for the gore, it shocks us, and it happens to characters that we care about and for reasons that keep the story moving.

Oh, and speaking of nerve-wracking, Argento managed to reunite three members of the disbanded rock group Goblin (Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Pignatelli, and Massimo Morante) to supply the original score. Unlike their music for SUSPIRIA, this has a synth-heavy, somewhat cheesy 80s sound that seems to be influenced at times by Giorgio Moroder's drum-machine disco rhythms. Other passages resemble their music for George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD. But it has that unmistakable Goblin sound, which somehow manages to compliment Argento's style even as it's turning your eardrums to mush.

Tony Franciosa is an old pro who did a lot of television while I was growing up, in addition to appearing in scores of fun films (a year after this, he got to do a steamy love scene with my favorite actress, Isabelle Mejias--the lucky dog--in the lively Canadian thriller JULIE DARLING). John Saxon, who plays Peter's literary agent, is, of course, always a welcome presence, and Veronica Lario is very effectively creepy as Jane. The rest of the cast is good, too--I especially liked Giuliano Gemma and Carola Stagnaro as a pair of homicide detectives--although in most cases the dubbing makes it hard to fully appreciate their performances. Daria Nicolodi does her usual fine job as well.

There are some really nice-looking women in lesser roles, adding considerably more sex appeal than you usually find in an Argento film. Ania Pieroni appears briefly as a lovely kleptomaniac who uses sex to beat a shoplifting rap but can't escape the fate awaiting her when she gets home. Lara Wendel plays a lesbian magazine writer whose promiscuous, half-naked housemate is the heart-stoppingly gorgeous Italian model Mirella Banti, in a sequence that allows Argento to indulge his stylistic impulses to their fullest.

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the casting of Eva Robins as a woman who appears in several strange flashbacks to a traumatic event in the killer's youth. Born a male, Robins reportedly began to develop breasts and other female characteristics during puberty, to an extent that convinced her that nature intended her to live as a woman. At any rate, she's convincing enough as the "girl on the beach" in some of the film's strangest scenes.

The new DVD from Anchor Bay features an uncut, remastered widescreen (1:85:1) transfer enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Aside from the trailer and an Argento biography, there's a commentary track featuring the director along with composer Claudio Simonetti and journalist Loris Curci, which is as informative as you might expect although much time is spent waiting for Argento to figure out how to say everything in English--I kinda wished it could have been in Italian with English subtitles. "Voices of the Unsane" is a nifty 17-minute featurette with Argento, Nicolodi, Simonetti, and other principals discussing the making of the film. (UNSANE was the retitled, badly-edited version first shown in the US.) Other brief featurettes explore the creation of TENEBRE's sound effects and the filming of an intricate extended shot featured in one of the murder sequences. All in all, not a bad array of extras.

It's interesting to see Argento eschew the sumptuous, fairytale look of SUSPIRIA for a more stark and austere style here. Without the dark shadows and saturated colors, TENEBRE is like a blank canvas splattered with bright red, with a realism that's as brittle and sharp as all that broken glass. Only when the killer's identity is revealed at last in an axe and straight razor-slashed finale do we get a really dark, lightning-streaked scene, and it's horrifying enough to warrant the seemingly never-ending screams of the last person standing as TENEBRE fades out into its closing credits. And if you're a Dario Argento fan, you'll definitely want to be there when it happens.

TENEBRE -- DVD Review by Porfle

PHENOMENA -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 5/9/08

 

Italian horror master Dario Argento draws us into the supernatural again with PHENOMENA (1985), a dark, richly-atmospheric return to SUSPIRIA territory as opposed to the stark and brightly-lit realism of his previous film, TENEBRE.

Once again, a young American girl (Jennifer Connelly) finds herself attending a remote, Gothic-looking European girls' school with a stern headmistress, an ill-fated best friend among a bunch of bratty schoolgirls, and a maniacal killer on the loose.

This time, though, there aren't any witches or diabolical forces at work--the supernatural aspect comes from Jennifer's telepathic connection to insects and her ability to control their behavior. She makes friends with Prof. McGregor (a wonderfully restrained Donald Pleasance), a wheelchair-bound forensic scientist who specializes in discerning time of death by the rate of maggot growth on a corpse, who suggests that Jennifer use her special abilities to try and track down the murderer. This, of course, puts her in grave danger, and before long she finds herself face-to-face with the killer in a nightmare of grotesque horror.

From the very beginning, the Swiss locations with their overcast skies and trees writhing in the constantly blowing wind create an eerie, forboding atmosphere. When a young schoolgirl (Argento's daughter, Fiore) misses her bus and is left behind on a deserted mountain road, she makes her way to an isolated cottage for help, then finds herself being pursued by an unseen maniac until she's cornered in a glass-enclosed observation point over a raging waterfall.

There's a super-slow motion shot of her head crashing through the glass (a familiar Argento motif that will occur yet again later on), and then we see the same head falling into the swirling water below. It's a terrifically strange and moody sequence that gets the movie off to a great start.

The scenes at the girls' academy are perhaps closer to what Argento had in mind originally for SUSPIRIA, since that film was meant to feature younger characters such as these. There's a Grimm's fairytale quality as Jennifer feels imprisoned in this dark, oppressive place and soon finds herself sleepwalking through its shadowy corridors, her mind wracked by nightmares, until another gruesome killing occurs right before her eyes.

Argento indulges himself stylistically during these dazzling sequences, and the beautiful Jennifer Connelly is a terrific young actress who perfectly embodies the type of heroine Argento has in mind. Throughout the film, her skillful performance is fascinating to watch and entirely convincing, helping Argento to sell some incredibly over-the-top situations.

The last twenty minutes or so are just plain nuts. (Look for Mario Donatone, who played Mosca, the Sicilian hitman in THE GODFATHER PART III, in a brief role.) I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just say that long-time Argento collaborator Daria Nicolodi shines as Frau Brückner, one of the teachers from the school, who hides a really dark secret that comes into play in a big way.

Jennifer finds herself in the middle of some of the most grotesque situations imaginable before the fiery, bug-infested finale which features some great underwater scenes. There are about three successive endings, but each one is more startling than the last. And I haven't even mentioned the chimp with the straight-razor.

Anchor Bay's new DVD release features a new remastered widescreen (1:66:1) transfer, enhanced for 16x9 televisions. There's a commentary track featuring Argento along with makeup effects artist Sergio Stivaletti, composer Claudio Simonetti, and journalist Loris Curci. "A Dark Fairy Tale" is an interesting 17-minute behind-the-scenes featurette. Goblin member Simonetti's music video "Jennifer", featuring himself along with Jennifer Connelly, is a fun example of 80s-style cheese, as is Bill Wyman's video for "Valley" (both excellent instrumentals feature prominently in the film, and to much better effect than the heavy metal songs that are also included). There's a trailer, an Argento biography, and, last but not least, Dario Argento's appearance on the legendary "Joe Franklin Show", which is a real treat.

My first experience with this film was a long-ago viewing of the drastically-cut version, retitled CREEPERS, which was released in the U.S. in the 80s, so it's a pleasure to finally be able to enjoy PHENOMENA in its original form and give it a long-overdue reappraisal. Argento himself rates it his most personal and perhaps best of all his films. I don't quite agree with the latter, but I do have a whole new opinion of this movie now. It's an exhilarating, bizarre, often mind-boggling excursion into Gothic horror, and a delightfully undiluted manifestation of Dario Argento's wildest imaginings.

PHENOMENA -- DVD Review by Porfle

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 1/30/2011

 

As with Meir Zarchi's 1978 original, the 2010 remake of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE tells the simple story of a woman named Jennifer Hills who gets savagely gang-raped at her summer home in the country and then goes on a brutal revenge spree against her attackers.  I found the new version somewhat less satisfying as a film, but as an eyeballs-deep wallow in utter, sadistic depravity, it takes the bloody brass ring.

Judging from the "Dukes of Hazzard" accents, the location seems to have been switched from Yankie Land to somewhere way down South, where most of the demented yokels of moviedom seem to live these days.  (Naturally, one of them wears a Confederate flag bandana on his head.)  Another big difference is that Zarchi's film took the time to establish a deceptively tranquil mood before shattering it, with Jennifer's sense of security and well-being robbed along with everything else. 

Here, the music sets an ominous tone right off the bat, and Jennifer (Sarah Butler) is edgy and uncomfortable with her surroundings as soon as she arrives in the remote community.  Johnny the gas pump jockey (Jeff Branson) reveals his crudeness immediately rather than deceiving her with a folksy fascade (which this version of the character would be incapable of doing anyway) and the two start off on bad terms.


In addition to the interchangeable Stanley and Andy characters, the slow-witted Matthew (Chad Lindberg) returns as a plumber who fixes Jennifer's toilet and goes ga-ga when she gives him a friendly peck.  Johnny and company find such provocative behavior intolerable and, as they drool over Stanley's peeping-Tom videos of her, resolve to teach the uppity city gal a lesson while helping their mentally-challenged mascot lose his virginity.

What follows is the nocturnal home invasion which becomes the basis for Jennifer's inevitable revenge, with writer Stuart Morse pulling out all the stops to make these guys as unforgivably reprehensible as possible.  As with Zarchi's film, the sequence is designed to justify the filmmakers' indulgence in extreme violence against the rapists later on.  Still, it lacks the lingering impact and immediacy of the original (not to mention Camille Keaton's searingly realistic performance) and seems almost by-the-numbers, as though the film can't wait to get it over with and fast-forward to the juicy revenge stuff. 

At this point, the remake starts to throw in some new wrinkles, such as the introduction of a not-so-helpful sheriff (Andrew Howard), which makes it easier to judge on its own terms.  In fact, once Jennifer disappears from the film for what turns out to be quite a spell (which, unfortunately, means that we're not nearly as engaged with her character this time around), it's almost a completely different story.  When she finally returns, she has become a hardcore killing machine who stalks and dispatches her prey like a cross between Jason Voorhees and Rube Goldberg.

 
The second half of the original movie is positively sedate compared to this one, which is pretty much a torture porn free-for-all.  The filmmakers go all out to surpass the 1978 version by taking it to a new level that's beyond gratuitous.  "What are the most ghastly things you could do to a guy?" they seem to be thinking.  "Whatever they are, we get to show them, hee-hee, because by gum, these scumbags raped Jennifer!"  As such, the execution scenes are diabolically elaborate and profoundly depraved--so much so, in fact, that you might even start feeling sorry for these guys after awhile.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Extras include a director-producer commentary, a "making of" featurette, deleted scenes, trailers, and a radio spot.

Whether you're rooting for Jennifer or just turned on by this kind of stuff, the cumulative payoff is pretty intense.  If you fit into neither category, then you're probably watching the way wrong movie.  Hard to believe that anything could make the 1978 I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE look like a model of restraint in comparison, but the no-holds-barred (and, let's face it, repulsive) remake manages to do so.  While it fails to surpass the original in some ways, fans of brutal cinematic sadism and extreme gore definitely won't be disappointed.  

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) -- DVD Review by Porfle

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted 1/28/11

 

No doubt about it--rape has always been a prime motivator for the revenge movie.  Whether by the victim herself or a husband, lover, or relative, audiences tend to excuse whatever horrendous acts they commit in the name of vigilante justice, and even cheer them on.  Open with a rape scene, and the filmmakers are free to make with the bloody violence.

Such is the case with the infamous I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, aka "Day of the Woman" (1978), one of the most extreme examples of this unsettling subgenre.  (One of its alternate titles is the built-in spoiler "The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill.")  To me, the debates about the "deeper meaning" that this film has stirred up since its release are all a bunch of hogwash--depending on who you ask, it's either virulently misogynistic or "the ultimate feminist movie."  I think it's really just a case of cooking up a scenario in which the bad guys are so irredeemably vile that the filmmakers are free to depict the most violent and gruesome revenge sequences their hearts desire, and if people read more into it then so much the better.



Although writer-director Meir Zarchi's inspiration for the script was a real incident in which he gave aid to a woman who'd been raped in the park, the film is hardly a "Lifetime" special.  What it does, though, and quite effectively, is to present one of the screen's most convincing depictions of the physical and emotional devastation endured by a victim of violent rape.  The film is no less exploitative for this, yet the fact that Zarchi treats this aspect of it so seriously prevents it from being anywhere near the irredeemable trash it might have been.

Big city girl Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) sets things into motion when she drives to a rented summer home in the country to commune with nature and work on her novel.  The attractive stranger draws the attention of four unsavory locals, led by pump jockey Johnny (Eron Tabor).  Turned on by her looks but resentful of what they imagine to be a teasing and superior attitude, they begin to harrass Jennifer and then brutally rape her in a marathon ordeal, setting the stage for her bloody revenge.

These guys are the most cartoonishly sexist pigs that Zarchi could cook up--they're even vile and offensive when they're fishing.  Jennifer, on the other hand, is as sweet and innocent as the heroine in a dark fairytale, which this somewhat resembles.  We see enough of her friendly and open demeanor in the early scenes to sense it being destroyed during her dehumanizing assault.

The early part of the film is very slow, almost tranquil, as Jennifer is lulled into a false sense of security in her hammock under the trees or floating on sun-dappled water in a canoe.  Twenty minutes in, the assault begins and doesn't end until over half an hour later.  The utter simplicity of the story gives Zarchi time to dwell on the key events and explore them fully enough to make us feel as though we're experiencing them too--not as one of the rapists, as some contend, but through Jennifer's eyes.  The fact that almost the entire story is told from her point of view, and never encourages us to identify with her tormentors, is what makes it tolerable.



The almost cinema verite feeling of the film is largely due to the complete lack of music (ambient sounds and silence establish the mood) and the director's matter-of-fact, near documentary style.  This gives the harsher events an inexorable quality and a sense of immediacy.  There's so little film artifice to hide behind that viewers can't distance themselves from the terrible things that are happening, and there are no timely cutaways to relieve the tension.  When the final and worst attack occurs in Jennifer's own house, it's as though we're in the same room.  This is probably one of the things that bothers some people so much about this movie.

After the halfway mark, Jennifer's long, contemplative healing process gives way to her resolve to get revenge herself rather than go to the police.  At this point the film shifts noticeably from realism to improbable fantasy, with Jennifer becoming a fearless, seductive femme fatale with almost supernatural cunning and luck.  Those looking for the charnel-house massacre promised by the film's famous tagline may be disappointed--while Jennifer's killings display showmanship, only the cringe-inducing bathtub scene is truly shocking.  These scenes do, however, provide the necessary cathartic resolution to all that has gone before.  

Keaton (who later married director Zarchi) is a good enough actress for the most part, but during the rape scenes she becomes harrowingly convincing.  At times it's as though she isn't even an actress performing for the camera but someone who's being caught on film during an actual event.  The actors playing Johnny's friends give broad performances, especially Richard Pace as the semi-retarded Matthew, which serve the story while distancing us from them as human beings.  Eron Tabor as Johnny is a better actor and his character is fleshed out more--he has a family and talks fondly about his kids--giving an added dimension to the film's notorious latter-half setpiece.



The Director's Cut DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, and is definitely a step up from the Wizard Video VHS edition I bought back in the 80s.  Extras include a half-hour interview with Meir Zarchi, a poster and stills gallery, trailers, TV and radio spots, a clip of the alternate main title "Day of the Woman", and two commentary tracks.  Zarchi's is informative while the one with drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs is delightfully entertaining.

Despite the horrified misgivings of a number of critics, including an aghast Roger Ebert, I can't imagine very many people besides the truly twisted few who would identify with the rapists in this story and vicariously enjoy their actions.  As for myself, I find I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE to be a meticulously well-made film that's too sympathetic to its female protagonist to be as reprehensible as it's often made out to be.  An interesting thing to consider is that, after the more realistic events of the first half, what happens in the rest of the movie is so wildly improbable that it might simply be Jennifer's own revenge fantasy. 


Read our review of the 2010 remake here

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) -- DVD Review by Porfle

13 -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 10/28/11

 

In THE DEER HUNTER, a game of Russian Roulette proved so overwhelmingly intense that, as I sat watching it in the theater, I wasn't even sure if I'd be able to get through it.  Géla Babluani's 13 (2010) gives us an entire movie based on the game but manages only to be moderately entertaining without coming anywhere near that level of tension.

Sam Riley is Vince, an average young guy whose family--mom, dad, and two sisters--has hit rock bottom financially after the father is badly injured.  Stumbling across an illicit Russian Roulette tournament involving some very high-stakes betting, Vince manages to take the place of one of the entrants in hopes of surviving to solve his family' money problems.  Needless to say, this descent down the rabbit hole will be a nightmare with the spectre of sudden, violent death hovering over him every minute.

Riley gives a restrained but effective performance and makes his character easy to root for.  Vince is believably freaked out during the first round while quickly getting more hardened to the game out of necessity.  When he makes it to the final round, which we know he will since the opening flash-forward gives it away, he's still reluctant but his initial hesitance has been overcome by sheer desperation.



Technically, 13 is as good as it needs to be but no more, relying on the inherent fascination we derive from seeing a group of men standing in a circle, each with his gun pointed at the head of the man in front of him and then firing on command, with some surviving and others thudding clumsily to the floor.  With each round the stakes rise along with the number of bullets in each gun.

Even so, we never really get that caught up in the game itself, and it's the sketchily-drawn characters who provide the most interest.  As Jasper, Jason Statham is likable as usual even playing a rat who plucks his brother Ronald Lynn (Ray Winstone) out of a mental hospital to compete in the game.  Winstone is an imposing figure, even more so when Ronnie's meds start wearing off and he becomes increasingly hostile both to Vince and to Jasper for using him. 

Mickey Rourke is interesting to watch even when he's coasting through a role as he does here, playing a convict named Jefferson who's been whisked out of a Mexican prison and into the competition against his will.  Rapper 50 Cent plays Jefferson's handler, Jimmy.  Belgian actor Ronald Guttman, whom I recognized as one of the Russian defectors in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, is Vince's sponsor in the game, and David Zayas of "Dexter" is a police detective trying to put an end to it. 

Film and TV veteran Ben Gazzara is a welcome presence as Schlondorff, sponsor to his own nerve-frazzled entrant.  In the small role of Vince's handler, Jack, Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård manages to convey an unspoken sympathy for Vince that makes his character more tolerable.  Michael Shannon (airplane mechanic "Gooz" in PEARL HARBOR) plays the role of coldblooded game ringmaster Henry with particular relish, harshly barking out commands such as "Spin the cylinder!" and "Cock the hammer!"  Gaby Hoffman, who was little "Maisy" in UNCLE BUCK, is all grown up now and plays Vince's sister Clara in a brief role.



Ray Winstone's menacing character becomes the focal point in the game's final stages and gives 13 its most gripping scenes.  After the game, however, the film wanders down a pretty predictable path and finally comes to a stop after failing to find anything interesting to do with itself save for a mild attempt at some kind of irony.  Director Babluani and his co-scripter Gregory Pruss really needed to throw a few more ideas around before settling for this acutely unremarkable ending.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  There are no extras.

In other hands, 13 might've been a really riveting nailbiter.  As it is, it's a nifty little suspense yarn that doesn't quite make you feel like you've gotten your money's worth when it's over.

13 -- DVD Review by Porfle

CATCH .44 -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 12/9/11

 

Ever since PULP FICTION came out, various talky, quirky crime flicks have been described as Tarantino rip-offs.  Or, more generously put, "Tarantino-esque."  Despite all the bad things I've heard about it, I feel generous toward the talky, quirky--and fairly entertaining--crime flick CATCH .44 (2011) so I'll use the latter term.  Besides, people were making movies sorta like this before QT came along, but there just wasn't as convenient a way of describing them.

Not surprisingly, the movie takes the timeline of its not-all-that-complicated story and reshuffles it all over the place just for fun.  Most of the action occurs in an out-of-the-way Louisiana diner at 3:00 a.m., where three girls--Tes (Malik Akerman, WATCHMEN), Dawn (Deborah Ann Woll), and Kara (Nikki Reed, CHAIN LETTER, TWILIGHT)--are on an assignment for local drug kingpin Mel (Bruce Willis) and waiting for something to happen.  When it does, people start getting blown away, including one of the girls. 



We'll keep returning to the diner, with intermittent flashbacks bringing us up to speed a little at a time (a la RESERVOIR DOGS), until everything and everyone comes together at the end.  Meanwhile, we rewind to the dead girl and her two cohorts getting stopped by this really weird highway cop.  Only he isn't really a cop, because we just saw him shoot the real cop in the head during a routine pull-over.  Ronny (Forest Whitaker in another interesting performance) is a scary and enigmatic guy whose intentions are as yet unknown, but we're pretty sure he's going to end up at that diner, too.

Writer-director Aaron Harvey manages to keep things zipping along even when he's imitating Tarantino's chatty dialogue style with long, talky scenes that have their own modest rewards while never quite bagging the elusive Royale With Cheese.  A three-way Mexican standoff inside the diner (also a la RESERVOIR DOGS) after the initial shootout is nicely handled, prolonging the tension with various revelations and teasing us as to what certain characters' motivations are.  Whitaker is especially good here, with Shea Whigham doing a nice turn as a twitchy fry cook with a pump shotgun.  (Lovable oddball Brad Dourif also shows up for a couple of scenes as, of all things, a cop.)

Harvey's directorial style is a pleasing amalgam of lesser you-know-who mixed with a little Robert Rodriguez, making CATCH .44 easy to look at.  It amazed me to discover that Harvey's only other directing credit is the absolutely wretched 2007 slasher flick THE EVIL WOODS, which is without question one of the worst pieces of dreck ever made.  The difference between the two films is stunning--if nothing else, Harvey deserves some kind of an award for "most improved filmmaker."



Lurking in the background, getting talked about a lot, and popping into view for a few key scenes is Bruce Willis' "Mel" character.  The PULP FICTION co-star lends his formidable presence to the film without really breaking a sweat, but by now just being Bruce Willis is enough to elevate a small film such as this to another level.  We see him being a rich, cool drug lord manipulating his unsuspecting employees (such as Tes, Dawn, and Kara) like pawns, and finally emerging for a long, talky final scene with Whitaker that manages a faint hint of the Bill and Beatrix exchange at the end of KILL BILL VOL. 2.  Barely a whiff of that Royale With Cheese, though. 

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  A long, talky commentary track with Harvey and editor Richard Byard is the sole extra.

CATCH .44 doles out tantalizing scraps of story to us until the pieces fall into place, and once that's done, the final scene plays out in a way that resolves all the pent-up suspense in rather predictable ways.  There's no ironic twist or "gotcha" to fully justify so much story fiddling, and we realize that it was all done just to tell a very simple tale in a more interesting way.  Which is okay, since it does.  

CATCH .44 -- DVD Review by Porfle

BLUE VALENTINE -- DVD Review by Porfle

Love is a battlefield, the poet once said.  And as in most wars, the opponents often don't even know what they're fighting for.  Such is the case in director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance's BLUE VALENTINE (2010), the story of a relationship that goes from love to indifference and finally to outright hostility.  The film, unfortunately, bypasses entertainment altogether and goes straight to outright boredom.

We join the sad dissolution of the marriage between Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) already in progress.  Dean's an unambitious housepainter who's content to be a husband and a father to their cute little daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka), but Cindy, a nurse who once had dreams of becoming a doctor, grows more distant and disillusioned every day.  Mostly she seems to have simply grown tired of Dean, moping as he romps playfully with Frankie and rejecting his romantic advances as though he were the poster boy for bad breath.

Even when Dean books the "Future Room" in a sleazy sex motel so they can have a passionate night together, Cindy's about as sexually yielding as an anchor chain on an aircraft carrier.  Her increasingly hostile attitude drives Dean to drink, which makes her even more hostile toward him.  This vicious cycle is reflected in their maddeningly circuitous dialogue ("You should try thinking about what you say, instead of just saying what you think," she chides for no particular reason), much of which was improvised by the actors.  While this sometimes makes characters' speech sound more natural, here it simply leads to a lot of shaggy-dog dialogue that's as frustratingly pointless for us as it is for Dean and Cindy.

 

As a counterpoint to their crumbling marriage, we're shown flashbacks of how they met and fell in love ten years earlier.  While helping an old man move into a nursing home, Dean spots Cindy in her elderly Gramma's room and is instantly smitten.  After they meet-cute, he cute-stalks her until she finally gives in, mainly because the jock-jerk she's been having sweaty sex with has knocked her up and dumped her.  But their love is made sweetly manifest during a saccharine sidewalk scene in which he sings and plays the ukelele like Tiny Tim while she tapdances (also improvised for our pleasure).

Along the way we get to hear Dean and his moving company coworker Marshall (Marshall Johnson) having the kind of contemplative, sensitive guy-talk that guys in real life have, like, never, while Cindy's old and wise Gramma offers her the usual quotable soundbites about life and love.  What finally drives Cindy to marry Dean is an unpleasant abortion scene, which itself is aborted by a reluctant Cindy who then reluctantly consents to tie the knot.  Since we already know how ill-fated this marriage is, the whole thing's a downer anyway.

Shot in an informal semi-doc style, BLUE VALENTINE just sort of mopes along from one depressing situation to the next, alternating between Dean and Cindy's sappy love story and the advanced stages of their bitter breakup.  Cindy's iceberg attitude toward Dean is never adequately explained beyond the fact of her free-floating discontent (and vague "grass-is-greener" memories of the dickweed she was banging before she met Dean), with her extreme coldness during their unsuccessful attempt at lovemaking in the "Future Room" coming off as particularly unpleasant.

Dean, on the other hand, is a doormat whose love for Cindy is like a debilitating infection spreading from his heart to his brain.  The scene in which he drunkenly bursts into the clinic where Cindy works and wrecks the place has some dramatic oomph, but after that comes a weepy denouement which doesn't really go anywhere and leaves us with little understanding of these characters or why we've just suffered through all of this unresolved conflict with them. 

 

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  Extras include a commentary with the director and his co-editor Jim Helton, the featurette "The Making of Blue Valentine", a "home movie" by Gosling, Williams, and their onscreen daughter Faith Wladyka, and some deleted scenes consisting of several minutes of further improv by Gosling and Williams.

BLUE VALENTINE is the kind of relationship flick that separates people into two distinct camps.   Either you're one of those hardy viewers whose temperament allows them to settle in and enjoy this sort of meandering mopefest, or the morose antics of Cindy and Dean will have you grabbing for the remote as your eyes glaze over and clicking away for dear life.


Originally posted on 5/4/11

 

BLUE VALENTINE -- DVD Review by Porfle

HALT AND CATCH FIRE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 4/23/15

  

You don't have to be a computer whiz to appreciate "Halt and Catch Fire", the AMC series about an upstart electronics company in Dallas, Texas taking on monolithic IBM in a race to come up with the first portable personal computer. In fact, even the most borderline "tech savvy" viewer such as myself can find plenty here to be entertained by even as the geek-speak flies right over our heads.

Set in the early 80s (with RETURN OF THE JEDI still in its first theatrical run) Anchor Bay's HALT AND CATCH FIRE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON captures the furiously competitive world of the burgeoning PC industry with ample amounts of drama and suspense. In this fictionalized account of real-life events, Cardiff Electronics boss John Bosworth (Toby Huss, JERRY MAGUIRE, COWBOYS & ALIENS) makes a fateful decision when he hires the brash and manically driven Joe McMillan (Lee Pace, THE RESIDENT, THE HOBBIT), an ex-IBM exec, as his head of product development.

Joe causes chaos by weeding out the less imaginative employees and channeling ever-increasing resources into building a faster, cheaper PC, one which weighs less than fifteen pounds and can be carried in a briefcase. Much of the show's watchability comes from seeing him plunge recklessly forward through any personal, professional, or financial crisis as though his life depended on it, with an almost sociopathic singlemindedness. Hints of his past, including an unfortunate childhood trauma and his ousting from IBM (John Getz of THE FLY will guest-star as his IBM exec father), make him even more of an ongoing mystery.

For his core team, Joe drafts hardware genius Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE), an office drone still haunted by the inexplicable failure of his own brilliant innovations in the field (Joe recognizes his potential and reignites it by tasking him to reverse-engineer the IBM computer chip), and software savant Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis, BAD TURN WORSE), a punky, videogame-addicted college student who seems to have cut her teeth on writing computer code.

The big drama isn't just in whether or not they can come up with the technological breakthroughs they're striving for--they're also trying to do all of that without causing Cardiff electronics to go out of business, mainly due to legal actions brought against it by their monolithic competitor IBM. After reverse-engineering that IBM chip, the team must then come up with their own non-copyrighted version that will pass legal muster and do so before the company goes under.

Between Gordon's marital problems with wife Donna (Kerry Bishé), another tech head working for Texas Instruments, and the unhealthy sexual relationship between Joe and Cameron, the show features plenty of non-computer-related mischief that also manages somehow to be relevant in various ways to the ongoing professional intrigue. The characters are far from perfect and often display less-than-admirable traits, which makes them more believable and identifiable.

The 80s-era period atmosphere is good, although the Georgia locations don't convey much of a "Texas" vibe and neither do some of the less-than-authentic accents. (Guest stars Jean Smart and Texas-born Annette O'Toole are exceptions.) When the resident eggheads start spouting volumes of computer lingo at each other, it reminds me of the techno-gibberish used on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"--I don't really have to know exactly what it all means to appreciate its dramatic impact.

The entire season builds up to the big electronics sales convention in Las Vegas where the team goes to unveil their big gamble to their peers along with the rest of the world. Here, just when we think all is finally well and that a major victory is at hand, a shockingly unexpected and near catastrophic setback gets them scrambling into damage control mode again.

The 3-disc Blu-ray set from Anchor Bay (10 episodes, approx. 435 minutes) is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish. Extras consist of three featurettes--"Remaking the 80s", "Rise of the Digital Cowboys", and "Setting the Fire: Research and Technology"--along with a brief behind-the-scenes look at all ten episodes. Also contained are instructions on how to instantly stream and download a digital HD ultraviolet copy of the series.

HALT AND CATCH FIRE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON succeeds in taking something totally foreign to me and making it interesting. It's fun seeing all the dramatic stuff that went into the creation of this amazing invention that most of us take for granted every day.

HALT AND CATCH FIRE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 8/28/12

 

The world's first serialized zombie saga for television (that I know of, anyway) continues with Anchor Bay's 4-disc DVD set THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON.  And if you enjoyed yourself the first time around you won't want to miss what happens next. 

This time, our ragtag group of still-warm survivors led by former Alabama state trooper Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his partner Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) are on the road again after last season's visit to a military laboratory for help ended on a decidedly hopeless note.  Now, with the zombie apocalypse raging fiercer than ever and flesh-eating reanimated corpses popping up at every turn, their tiny caravan hits a traffic jam on the interstate and comes to a screeching halt. 

While ransacking the stalled vehicles for supplies and fuel, the group must hide from an entire herd of zombies as they go shambling by.  This zombie herd is one of season two's most noteworthy features--we'll not only see them again during a key climactic sequence, but we'll even get a flashback which answers the question, "Why the heck would hundreds of 'walkers' get together and become a herd in the first place?" 

Anyway, their passing leads to two of the key events of the season.  One is that little Sophia, daughter of Carol (Melissa McBride), goes missing and forces the others to undertake an exhaustive search of the surrounding woods which will keep them there for days.  The other is that when Rick's son Carl (Chandler Riggs) is accidentally shot by a hunter, he is taken to the secluded farm of aging veterinarian Hershel Greene (IN COLD BLOOD's Scott Wilson) for treatment.  Rick and the others see Hershel's farm as an almost walker-free haven where they could live in relative peace and safety--but Hershel wants no part of them and insists they leave after Carl has recovered.

With this idyllic farm setting as a backdrop, season two is less episodic than before and allows our characters time to engage in plenty of interpersonal dramatics punctuated here and there by sudden walker attacks to keep viewers jumpy.  The love triange between Rick, his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), and an increasingly resentful Shane becomes more bitter and curdled than ever, especially with Lori's discovery that she may be pregnant.  Andrea (Laurie Holden) eschews "women's work" and wants to go zombie-hunting with the guys; she also clashes with the group's sage old RV driver Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) over whether she should be allowed to carry a gun or even, if she chooses to, commit suicide. 

Hershel's insistence that the group leave his farm turns explosive when they make a shocking discovery about what he's keeping out in the barn, leading to what is probably the most emotionally devastating scene of the series thus far.  Heated disputes between Rick and Shane over how things should be handled escalate until the former friends are at each other's throats, with the entire group split down the middle as well.  As Rick struggles to retain his humanity and Shane becomes increasingly ruthless, it becomes harder to decide whose way is more beneficial to the group and who will lead them to ruin.

But even with all this dramatic stuff going on, the main emphasis of "The Walking Dead" is still on zombies, zombies, and more zombies.  Despite the safety of Hershel's farm, there are frequent opportunities for our main characters to put themselves in danger during supply runs and other necessary excusions, which usually result in their being set upon by scores of ravenous walkers. 
Makeup effects are better than ever, with several of the "hero" zombies looking exquisitely horrible and some of the attack scenes generating nail-biting suspense.  As usual, a hapless human will occasionally find himself (or herself) feasted upon by a group of ghouls like a living, screaming buffet (I call this the "Full Meal Deal"), surely the most awful fate that can befall anyone in any zombie flick since George Romero's seminal work, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. 

A hefty percentage of the gory violence in "The Walking Dead", however, comes from humans dealing that fatal brain-extinguishing death blow to their undead foes in all manner of extremely messy ways including machetes, screwdrivers, hatchets, shovels, and, of course, guns. An impromptu autopsy by Rick and group outsider Daryl (Norman Reedus, BLADE II) on an expired walker is especially gruesome (and perversely amusing), as is the aftermath that occurs when a bloated ghoul is found splashing around at the bottom of a well and is hauled up by rope only to be pulled in half at the waist.  

The 4-disc DVD set from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with English Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Surround 2.0.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Bonuses include several behind-the-scenes featurettes, five cast and crew commentaries, deleted scenes, and a stunning 6-webisode tale that gives us the backstory for one of the most memorable minor characters in season one.

Filled with all the gruesome zombie action and intense personal drama we've come to expect from this unique series, THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON ends with the inevitable as Hershel's farm turns out to be not so walker-free after all.  As carnivorous chaos reigns over the once-peaceful countryside in a free-for-all of flesh-eating and brain-bashing, the season not only goes out with a bang but leaves us with a teasing glimpse of what's in store for our heroes next time.



1st season review

3rd season review

4th season review

5th season review

THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 2/21/11

 

Doing a continuing series about a group of characters struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse is such a cool idea it's a wonder nobody's ever done it before.  Frank Darabont (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE GREEN MILE) must've thought so too, so he and producer Gale Anne Hurd (THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS) have adapted the graphic novel "The Walking Dead" into an AMC television series that should have horror fans lurching through the streets in undead ecstasy.

Anchor Bay's two-disc set THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON contains the initial six episodes, which use George Romero's 1968 classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (along with a large dash of Stephen King's "The Stand") as a launching point for a whole new saga.  Darabont's intent was to stick close to the Romero vibe, with shambling, non-athletic zombies and an emphasis on the (living) human conflicts occurring amidst the carnage.  No punches are pulled on either front, as the visuals are exceedingly graphic and the stories are filled with dramatic tension and surprises.

Andrew Lincoln stars as Rick Grimes, a lanky Atlanta, Georgia sheriff's deputy who awakens from a coma to find the world ravaged by an undead armageddon.  The first episode, "Days Gone Bye", is probably the all-out creepiest of the bunch--it's like the ultimate "Twilight Zone" episode, with a dazed Rick wandering through the ruins of his hometown which is littered with rotting, partially-devoured corpses.  The fact that a good number of them are walking around and trying to eat him adds to the nervous tension this episode bristles with.
 

Luckily, Rick hooks up with a guy named Morgan (London-born Lennie James, OUTLAW) and his young son, living in a barricaded house.  Morgan's dead wife is one of the zombies (known here as either "walkers" or "geeks") that surround the house, but he doesn't have the heart to put her down.  The scene in which she staggers up to the front door and stands there, seemingly aware that he's inside, reminded me of a similar eerie moment in the Richard Matheson adaptation THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. It finally dawned on me later that Vincent Price's character in that movie was also named Morgan.

"Guts" finds Rick in Atlanta, where his hopes that the "authorities" will have things under control are dashed when he's overrun by hundreds of walkers and barely escapes with his life in a thrillingly suspenseful sequence.  Here, he meets a group of survivors who take him to their encampment outside of town.  To his joyous surprise, his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl are there, along with his former partner Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal), who is the group's leader.  Thinking Rick dead, the headstrong Shane has staked a claim on Lori and Carl which he's reluctant to relinquish, a situation that will lead to growing complications as the season progresses. 

"Tell It to the Frogs" and "Vatos" find Rick leading a group back to Atlanta to rescue Merle (genre fave Michael Rooker), a violent racist whom they'd been forced to leave handcuffed on a rooftop during their escape.  Merle's little brother Daryl (Norman Reedus, who played "Scud" in BLADE II) is another hothead with an anger management problem, which makes him an asset in their frequent bouts with the walkers but a big liability as a team player.  At one point, Rick and young pizza-delivery guy Glenn (Steven Yeun) must hack a corpse to pieces and cover themselves with gore in order to pass unmolested among the undead.  This is the one scene in the series that's so over-the-top it almost invites laughs as the two sneak around in their blood-encrusted overcoats with severed limbs hanging from around their necks.
 

"Wildfire" deals with the aftermath of a terrifying zombie attack on the encampment and brings up an issue from the Romero films--what to do with friends and loved ones who have been bitten and, once dead, are doomed to return.  Rick comes up with a plan to pack up and travel to a military base for protection, hoping that their scientists are close to a cure.  In "TS-19", the final episode of the season, the survivors' hopes are raised when they reach the installation but are soon dashed by new revelations.  Shane's obsession with Lori takes a dark turn, while suicidal despair infects various members of the group.  An explosive finale leaves their final fate as doubtful as ever.

Once I started watching THE WALKING DEAD it was like eating potato chips--I couldn't stop until I'd scarfed the whole thing.  True-blue George Romero stuff all the way, it explores all the fascinating avenues of the premise set forth in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and its sequels with up-to-date effects, sharp writing, and the combined talent of some great filmmakers.  The estimable Darabont's enthusiasm for the project is one of its main assets, as is the incredible make-up artistry of Greg Nicotero and his team. 

While always in service to the story, the gore effects match or surpass just about anything we've seen on the big screen and are often jaw-dropping.  Delightfully hideous zombies chow down on their victims amidst gouts of blood and guts while the good guys blast, dismember, and behead them.  In one scene, an abused wife (Melissa McBride) makes sure her "walker" husband is good and dead by braining him repeatedly with a pickaxe until his head looks like a taco salad.  One of Rick's first "geek" encounters is with a female torso so desiccated that he, and we, are shocked to find it still horribly ambulatory.  Time after time, this cable-TV series serves up gore effects that might easily get a feature film stamped "X."


Production values are first rate, and scenes of zombies by the hundreds swarming through ravaged city streets have an epic quality that's impressive.  As for the cast, they're all on their best game.  In addition to those already mentioned, multitalented IronE Singleton is T-Dog, who clashes with brothers Daryl and Merle.  Laurie Holden (THE MIST, "The X-Files") and Emma Bell (FROZEN) play close-knit sisters Andrea and Amy, trying to protect each other as circumstances conspire to separate them.  Old-school character actor Jeffrey DeMunn has one of his best roles ever as the group's wise old sage, Dale.  As Rick, British actor Andrew Lincoln is a believable, non-glamorous lead who, with the right beard, might even make a convincing Abraham Lincoln.  After getting used to him in character, it's somewhat of a shock hearing him speak in his native accent in the bonus features.

The 2-disc DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Extras include the half-hour documentary "The Making of 'The Walking Dead'", six behind-the-scenes webisodes, a visit with graphic novel author Robert Kirkman, a look at the makeup effects, a Comic Con panel with cast and producers, a trailer, and other assorted featurettes. 

With more time to develop its characters and situations and some first-rate filmmakers at the helm, THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON makes a lot of the recent living-dead films seem anemic in comparison.  For fans of both hardcore zombie horror and riveting serial drama, this is the good stuff.


2nd season review
3rd season review
4th season review
5th season review

THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- DVD Review by Porfle