The Talkie:

The Beastmaster is a moderately low budget B-movie that gained
a cult following through repeated showings on HBO in the early and mid
80’s.  It was so popular, that it spawned a pair of sequels and a
syndicated TV series that lasted for a couple of seasons.  Though
the acting isn’t first rate, and the script is a little bit hokey in parts,
this film manages to transcend its limitations and is actually an enjoyable
way to spend a couple of hours.

For those of you who somehow managed to miss this on its many cable
showing, The Beastmaster concerns an evil priest, Maax, wonderfully
overacted by Rip Torn.  In order to foil a prophesy, (will these evil
priests never learn?) Maax decrees that the King’s unborn son must be removed
from his mother’s worm, branded, and then sacrificed.  The king won’t
have anything to do with that of course, so he banishes Maax to the wastelands. 
That night, a witch enters the King’s rooms and magically transfers the
royal embryo into a cow.  (I hate when that happens!)  She then
take the cow into the forest, removes the child, and brands him. 
A passing farmer sees this and kills the old hag before she can kill the
child.  He takes the boy to his village and raises him as his own.

The child, Dar (played by the muscular Marc Singer,) is taught to fight
by his step father.  As a young man, Dar realizes that he can communicate
with animals, but keeps this ability secret.

While working in he fields one day, Dar’s village is attacked by a hoard
of barbarians, lead by Maax.  The entire village is raised, and Dar
is the only survivor.  Armed only with his step-father’s sword the
young man goes out into the world.  He soon befriends a black eagle,
a black tiger, and a pair of (regular looking though they do have some
black on them)  ferrets, and together they search for revenge against
Maax and his evil cult.

You can tell from watching this movie, and the creators admit it in
the commentary, that its trying to be an epic film.  With barbarian
hordes, sacrificial pyramids, wild animals and eerie setting, the film
is attempting to be bigger than its $4½ million budget.  It
manages to succeed to a certain extent.

The large battle scenes are chaotic have an authentic feel to them,
and the film is rich with atmosphere.  The sets are wonderfully decorated,
with the villages, dungeons, and primitive cities all looking sufficiently
dingy and old rather than looking like sets.  There is a good amount
of action, and the momentum doesn’t let up once the plot starts rolling.

It does have its failings though, with the most significant being that
the acting is rather standard throughout the film.   John Amos
does a good job as Seth, a royal trainer and apparently the only black
person in this mythical world, but his performance is the best.  Dar’s
love interest Kiri is played by the attractive Tanya Roberts.  This
was her first role after staring in the final season of the Charlie’s Angles
TV show, and she wasn’t really convincing.  Her slave/warrior woman
act just didn’t have a lot of emotion in it, and seemed fairly run of the
mill.  The same can be said of star Marc Singer.  I found his
lack of emotion after seeing his entire village slaughtered, not to mention
his dog, a little odd, and he never seemed really filled with a need for
vengeance.  One final critique is that the individual fights in the
movie look staged and over rehearsed too.

Even with these limitations, the movie is a lot of fun.  There
are a lot of battle to keep things interesting, and the film has a good
amount of humor to keep things light.  While no Raiders of the
Lost Ark, The Beastmaster is an eminently enjoyable action flick that’s
well worth checking out.

The DVD:

Audio:

Anchor Bay has done a fantastic job with the audio on this disc. 
The big Hollywood studios should take note.  They offer viewers the
choice of 6.1 DTS-ES, Dolby Digital Surround EX, and Dolby Surround, and
they all sound great.  I spot checked all the tracks, but viewed the
movie in DTS, and it was excellent.  They made great use of the rear
channels which immerse the viewer in sound.  Much of the incidental
music is piped to the rear and it works well there.  When the witch
dies at the beginning of the film her eerie cackling can be heard behind
you which is a little spooky.  There weren’t any obvious audio defects
which made this a first rate soundtrack.

Video:

The video 1.85:1 anamorphic image on this disc also looked very good. 
I didn’t have the original version with me for a direct comparison, but
this version is head and shoulders above the previous release.  Anchor
Bay had a good print to work from apparently, and touched it up well. 
There were no spots or dirt on the print.  The colors look great,
with a lot of definition and good contrast. The only defect I noticed was
that there was minor digital noise noticeable in the sky if you look for
it.  Otherwise a very good looking transfer.

Extras:

This Special Edition of The Beastmaster has a good number of
extras included with it.  The most inpressive is The Saga of the
Beastmaster.  Running nearly an hour in length, this featurette
gives an in depth look at the filming of the movie.  They interview
the major players involved with the movie includeing Don Coscarelli. Paul
Pepperman, Tahya Roberts, and Marc Singer, all of who give interesting
anecdotes about the movie.  It is a fun extra, and incorporates much (if not all) of the footage that appeared on the origianl edition’s featurette.

Like the first release, there is an easter egg. If you click on the symbol on the Talent Bio’s page, you’ll be treated to two minutes worth of outtakes including more shots of Tanya Roberts nude.

There is also a commentary with writer/director Don Coscarelli and writer/producer
Paul Pepperman, which is a lot of fun.  They go into detail about
the filming, pointing out goofs and giving other behind the scenes information. 
They also talked about the genesis of the project, trying to make an epic
movie on a budget and working with the animals.  An entertaining commentary.

In addition to those two bonus features, there is also a trailer, a
still gallery, talent biographies and even the entire screenplay in .pdf
format that can be accessed through a computer with a DVD-Rom drive. 
A very full DVD.

Final Thoughts:

This may not be the grand epic that the creators envisioned, but The
Beastmaster is still a lot of fun.  The story is a bit hokey,
and the acting is generally wooden, but this movie is still an enjoyable
way to spend an evening.  The presentation on this DVD is excellent
too, this is a disc that puts a lot of large studio releases to shame. 
The video and audio are very good, and the extras are unexpectedly generous. 
A movie worth checking out.  Recommended.

 

A sharply and literately witty Western comedy of manners, scripted by Benton and Newman (of Bonnie and Clyde) and rigid largely in an Arizona approved school, 1883 year, peopled by a wonderful collection of rogues including a mortal Chinaman, a dimwitted gunslinger (Oates), a unite of old-maidish conmen (Cronyn, Randolph), and – most memorably – the Missouri Kid (Meredith), once a great train robber but now a rheumy-eyed long-standing man dreaming of the whilom and of the peaceful little farm he will conditions own. King of this community is remodelled arrival Douglas, a abruptly-blooded outlaw smiling amiably behind stiletto-rimmed glasses, biding his opportunity (he has sack stashed outside) but seen as a potential bandmaster of men by the new warden (Fonda), a staunch believer in the milk of kind-hearted kindness who enlists his aid in turning the place into a model prison. The distinguishability, cynically demonstrating the relativity of good and evil, comes a little too pat; but the performances, the set pieces, and the overall modulation are irresistible.

Reviews for the week of March 27, 2000.

Erin Brockovich
is a fantastic movie with Julia Roberts portraying the title symbol – a struggling, twice-divorced single mother of three that is perilous for a job. After a motor car mishap leaves her a fair game with medical bills, she sues the other driver who is in the wrong – and loses. Still unable to find work, Erin convinces her lawyer (Albert Finney) to reject her a job.

Erin soon stumbles onto some medical records in a real estate file and becomes intrigued with the case. She discovers that contaminated water may have caused serious illness to more than six hundred residents and former residents of the small town of Hinkley, California. Erin starts snooping around and soon convinces her lawyer to sue the Pacific Gas & Electric Company for contaminating Hinkley's water supply.

Meanwhile, Erin gets involved with her neighbor, a Harley Davidson biker. Their relationship lacks chemistry (he's no Richard Gere) but does add interest to the story.

Erin's sassy attitude and rather unprofessional style of attire (short, tight and revealing clothes that remind you of Roberts' prostitute character in


Pretty Woman


) don't always win her any points with the boss, however, they do lend the movie great comic relief.

The cast is excellent, Roberts and Finney are believable, likable characters and I highly recommend

Erin Brockovich

.

When I first apothegm the previews for

Mission to Mars

mould year, it looked like a superb big. Then, I found unfashionable it was rated PG – and no offense, but PG rated movies are infrequently thrilling.

I have highly enjoyed some PG movies, but they weren't sci-fi/action thrillers; they were dramas or comedies, such as


Music of the Heart


or


Galaxy Quest


. (Those types of movies don't require a lot of explosions, blood, and gore to be interesting, as they have something called a plot.)

For a movie with no virtually no swearing, violence, explosions or other loud, noisy special effects,

Mission to Mars

is fairly engaging.

Certainly the cast is talented; Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins are especially skilled actors. Sinise, Robbins, and several others are NASA crew members stationed in space. From there, four astronauts jet off to Mars, where three of them are suddenly killed. (They send sonar waves into a mountain, and a huge dust storm surges up, killing the three astronauts. The reason why is a mystery.) Sinise, Robbins and his wife, and Jerry O'Connell, are the astronauts sent to rescue the last guy left on Mars (if he hasn't died too).

Complications hinder their flight, and one member of the rescue party is killed during descent to Mars. Once the remaining three arrive, they find the sole survivor (Don Cheadle) of Mars' mysterious wind storm. He theorizes that "something" (meaning some form of alien life) is inside the mountain. (This mountain, in fact, turns out to be a giant metal face. Go figure.)

The end of the movie essentially explains nothing; the last scene leaves you wondering what happens next. Maybe the scriptwriters were so confident

Mission to Mars

would be a hit that they left it open for a sequel. Or maybe they just ran out of creative ideas for the plot. Either way, I found the inconclusive end very annoying.

Here's something attractive, which can be interpreted several ways. The modern Sinise's character shows up at the pre-blastoff-to-Mars party, I figured off half the plot – and his background. I immediately guessed that Sinise's strife (also an astronaut) had died, he had retiring from the trade, and he was going to end up on Mars anyway, working unlit some slighting issues. (That's in the presence of this all gets explained in the meeting.) Either the plot is amazingly in the cards, Sinise is Possibly man heinous actor, or I have seen so sundry movies I can configuration them out instantly.

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Unconstrained (Wise) decides to settle a direct cut en route to the dreaded annual Christmas stay with his in-laws. His passengers shortly realise something’s inopportunely, and requite the unyielding Frank long run has to assent to when they keep seeing a unreal young bird cradling an infant on the roadside. Open stops to investigate, and events rapidly turn abominable. Making the most of profoundly circumscribed resources, the French directors retain all the nasty press off-camera and visible only to the characters. But ignoring the exceptional efforts of the cast and some deliciously nefarious temperament along the path, the film is something of a cul-de-sac in terms of plot. Essentially a Twilight Zone event padded out to reduced feature length, it’s a sting in the tailpiece picture. That said, Andrea and Canepa do more than plenty in the first 80 minutes to compensate as regards running out of gas in the final five.

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Chalk-white Noise

(2005) / Mystery-Horror

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for violence,
disturbing images, and argot

Blind since she was newborn, Emma Brody (Madeleine Stowe) experiences a miracle–a dead woman’s eyes force been donated to her, allowing Emma to see again. But before she’s had the opportunity to evolve accustomed to her blurry vision, she witnesses a brutal killing. Working with a handsome detective (Aidan Quinn), she tries to help the police locate the murderer in the future the murderer locates her. Director Michael Apted (COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER and GORILLAS IN THE MIST) has unendingly been caring everywhere creating stronger, more knotty female characters in mainstream films, and with BLINK he has succeeded. In more than 200 films with blind characters, ruse men be suffering with danced, taken photographs, and performed rescues, while eclipse women entertain in the main been terrified, hapless victims; Emma, as played by Stowe, breaks with that tradition. In her first major role after LAST OF THE MOHICANS, Stowe bristles as an independent woman who has long infatuated care of herself and doesn’t want to be protected by the police.

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Writer/director Gilling collaborated on some of Hammer’s most contrived pictures (The Plague of the Zombies and The Gorgon among them), but this old affair of tricks does neither him nor the studio justice. In 1920 Stanley Preston, the usual swaggering imperialist (Phillips), orders the desecration of an Egyptian tomb and unleashes ancient dire. Vengeance comes in the improve of Prem (Owen), a horse to a mummified pharaoh, inhabitant of the tomb. First to pass away is Sir Basil Walden (Morell), the honourable archaelogist committed to a lunatic asylum by Preston. Catherine Lacey performs entertainingly as a soothsayer.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

I Capture the Castle is an enchanting Jane Austen-style adult (in
the good meaning of that term) romance tale narrated and featuring Cassandra
Mortmain (Romola Garai), a charming 17-year-old beginning writer (she keeps
a diary) living in a rundown English castle her family rents with her younger
brother Thomas (Sowerbutts), her 20-year-old curly redheaded sister Rose
(Rose Byrne), and her bohemian parents — the despairing writer father
James (Nighy) and the much younger arty stepmother Topaz (Fitzgerald). 

British television director Tim Fywell tries his hand at films for
the first time and has British television writer Heidi Thomas craft the
script from the 1948 first novel by Britisher Dodie Smith, who was living
in America at the time and was later to become known as a children’s writer.
She’s especially remembered for her “101 Dalmatians.” What works rather
well is the way it contrasted the lifestyles of rich and poor–there are
two great dinner scenes, one at the castle and the other in the mansion
of a brusque British widow. Though the complications in the romance tale
had its endearing moments, it nevertheless packs too many twists for the
excellent ensemble cast to save it completely from too much plot development. 

The film opens when the father is at his happiest, having just written
a masterpiece a few years before. For further inspiration to write more
masterpieces, when on an outing, he talks the family into renting a picturesque
stone castle that has no electricity and is dank. Following an argument
with his wife where he attacked her in a moment of rage with a butterknife
and she had to be rescued by a neighbor, he was never able to write again
for the next 12 years after spending four months in prison. Upon his return
to castle life his wife soon dies and he later on marries a flighty artist’s
model named Topaz, who saw herself as his muse and cure for his long writer’s
block. She also tries to mother his ungracious daughters. Topaz is in the
habit of dyeing everyone’s hand-me-down clothes green, which affects Rose
the most because it adds to her displeasure of living in such poverty.
The eccentric family had no money coming in and were only able to survive
because for 2 years the landlord hasn’t pressed for the rent. 

In the mid-1930s they receive an unexpected visit from two handsome
American brothers, the contemplative, sensitive, scholarly goateed Simon
Cotton (Henry Thomas), who has just inherited the Suffolk castle upon his
father’s death and, his opposite, the homesick outspoken and brash Neil
(Marc Blucas), who is an orange grower from California. The boys are at
first not impressed with the castle as it reminds Simon of something in
literature, while Neil disdainfully calls it “the House of Usher.” They
are also not taken with the girls, as they find Rose to be too theatrical
and forward, while Cassandra is too plain. 

The heart of the story revolves around the sisters scheming to get
Simon to marry gold digger Rose and save the family from poverty, as “Castle”
plays games with the nature of love and brings up how strong the powers
of love are and how deadly are its emotional repercussions. The beautiful
Rose wins the heart of the sincere Simon and is willing to marry him even
though she doesn’t love him. Cassandra secretly pines for Simon, but is
convinced Simon loves Rose. Neil publicly detests Rose but secretly loves
her. While handsome nice but poor boy Stephen, who is a neighbor of the
castle and helps out with odd jobs, openly loves Cassandra even though
she only thinks of him as a brother. If the young ones seem confused, the
adults are more than confused. The father upon meeting the brother’s imperious
mother, Mrs. Cotton (Sinéad Cusack), begins an affair, as he’s not
put off when she dismisses him as a has-been artist whose well has run
dry. 

It was certainly a competent high-brow production, much like an intelligent
British stage play, one that effectively allows the romantic fantasy to
turn back for a reality check. But it didn’t excite me or hold my interest,
though everything about it was modestly successful. Romola Garai in her
first starring role gives a sympathetic performance as the one most thrown
into a tizzy about coming-of-age after being so naive and not understanding
the world or men. Bill Nighy deliciously caught the madness in his tormented
genius role. But the film was not as good as its actors, as the script
just had too many extras to properly digest. 

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The X-Files had been growing in popularity throughout its first four seasons when the producers decided it was time to try not on the franchise on the big screen. It remembering, it was a bit of a risk. With episodes running on Fox, would people be willing to shell out money for what was at one’s fingertips at digs with a view free? Inescapable, Headliner Trek: The Next Institution had some sensation with First Get in touch with and Generations, but the peek through was eccentric the air by then, and the movies provided the but distance for fans to fathom the characters they loved. Thus, the pressure was on to create something that felt bigger than a two forsake TV stage shot in 35 mm. Luckily, tons of the people who made the show so successful worked on the film, and the result was a captivating, satisfyingly expanded big-screen outing, which not only walking on air long time fans, but drew unfledged viewers as well.

The unpleasantness b lyrics “plot” gains a whole recent meaning when you are talking about The X-Files. The mythology has behove so convoluted and complex in excess of the last eight years that one the most die-hard fan can seek reading. Allay, the feature haze does a precarious job of summarizing and clarifying what took place over the first five seasons of the tell, and at the identical time raising a not many more of those pesky questions. It all starts with Mulder and Scully investigating an boom at a Federal erection in Dallas. Bodies in the wreckage seem to tie into a government excavation in a little village in the middle of Texas. All of the old standbys pop up for a cameo (including the Long Gunmen, Cigarette Smoking Humankind, Skinner, and the Unspeakable Oil), and there are some creative faces, including Martin Landau as the paranoid Kurtzwiel and Strughold, the apparent leader of the management conspiracy. Added, some bees.

Production values are suitably upgraded from those of the TV show (which is remarkably film-like in and of itself). Locations overpass the globe, from the arctic to the desert, and it is discernible that we are not on the usual Toronto soundstages. Rob Bowman, veteran of over 25 episodes of the show, proves himself a more than sufficient big screen director. The claustrophobic feel of the TV show is gone, but the widescreen palate allows for a few sweeping enterprise set pieces. Bowman also does a fine job balancing characters scenes with the fight, and he pulls some great work loose of Duchovny and Anderson. Mark Snow’s score is also a dangerous change from the TV norm. The bigger budget allowed him a full orchestra in place of of a synthesizer, and he has provided some hair-splitting, atmospheric background music.

I am a big fan of The X-Files, especially the earlier seasons, so I have some perturb being consummately fair here, but I think this blur is about as friendly as you can get when it comes to adapting a TV show seeking the big partition off. I was afraid that it would be too confusing and mythology-heavy for non-fans, but my parents (who watch maybe one episode in ten) seemed to use to advantage it just as much as I did. It’s better than the 1966 Batman movie, anyway.

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Pineapple Express

"Pineapple Express" could easily be titled the "Apatow Express" for the way it expands on Judd Apatowâ??s influence as a modern-day Mel Brooks. The title refers to a hybrid kind of marijuana so rare that to smoke it is akin to killing a unicorn. James Franco busts out some impressive comic chops as Saul, a good-natured pot dealer who befriends his process server client Dale (played by the ever reliable Seth Rogen) to whom he sells the precious herb. The two young men bond after Dale witnesses a murder committed by pot kingpin Ted Jones with the help of a woman cop (played by Rosie Perez). Desperate to escape the wrath of Tedâ??s bloodthirsty henchmen, Dale and Saul employ the unreliable help of a pot middleman named Red (played by Danny McBride). Over the top in its take-no-prisoners comic approach, "Pineapple Express" draws on stylistic and plot elements from â??70s martial arts movies, shock horror films, and Tarantino set pieces to generate a new type of irreverent comic cinema in touch with the candid loyalty of a new generation. Itâ??s also an open plea for the legalization of marijuana.

(Sony Pictures) Rated R, 112 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

August 2, 2008 in

Comedy

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