Movie DVD Reviews
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Staff Pick
Shoot 'Em Up
Roger Ebert will surely hate this movie. It’s needlessly violent, cynical, poorly made and, well, pointless. What Ebert doesn’t understand – and it hurts me to say this, because the man is my idol – is that sometimes, under the right circumstances, those can all be assets rather than liabilities. You just need to put them in the hands of someone, in this case B-movie lifer Michael Davis, who gives the material the respect it deserves…which, for the record, is none. (Staff Picks Archive)
DVD QuickTakes
QuickTakes Archive / QuickTakes Archive (pre-May 2008)Pathology
Though it spends much of its time dealing with the dead, you’d expect a movie like “Pathology” to have a little more life to it. After all, it was created by the writing team behind “Crank” – quite possibly the most over-the-top movie ever made. Of course, with Milo Ventimiglia headlining the cast, it’s no wonder the film feels a lot duller than it should have been. The “Heroes” star does his best Hayden Christensen impression as Ted Grey, a brilliant medical student who’s just joined the nation’s most prestigious pathology program. When he arrives, however, he’s seduced into playing a twisted game with some of the other interns that involves them taking turns murdering strangers, while the others figure out how it was done. Think of it as Medical Clue, but much more boring than it sounds, because there isn’t a single horrific or suspenseful moment in the film, despite the fact that that is how it’s being marketed. Even worse is that the audience has no one to root for. Sure, Ted is supposed to be the good guy in the movie, but are we really supposed to forgive all of his faults (cheating, killing, using, etc.) as someone who’s simply taken a wrong turn in live? Puh-lease. Only Michael Weston is given a role with any real meat on it, but even his crazy antagonist is never given the attention it deserves. Now, if the film followed him around instead of Milo, maybe we’d have something interesting to watch. It might not be “American Psycho,” but it would definitely be better than this.
Jason Zingale
10/6/2008
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The Rebel
Earning the title of highest-grossing Vietnamese movie of all-time is sort of like a Vietnamese chef who’s renowned for the best American hamburger in his country – true, but not exactly as amazing as it sounds. Credit the makers of “The Rebel,” then, for not only delivering the first true Vietnamese actioneer, but actually making it good enough to compete with China and Hong Kong’s nonstop supply of martial arts films. “The Rebel” takes place in 1922 Vietnam where French colonial rule is being challenged by a group of resistance fighters. In response to the rebel activity, the French government has hired Vietnamese agents to track down and kill them, but when one agent (Johnny Tri Nguyen) becomes tired of spilling the blood of his own countrymen, he teams up with the daughter (Tranh Van Ngo) of the rebel leader and incurs the wrath of his boss, Sy (Dustin Nguyen, of “21 Jump Street” fame), who’s been promised a promotion if he can capture the traitors. Directed by Charlie Nguyen, “The Rebel” is just as much of a historical drama as it is a martial arts film, and as such, it has a pretty decent story to tell when its characters aren’t busy kicking ass. Of course, as with most Dragon Dynasty films, the main draw of “The Rebel” is the action, and believe it or not, there’s some really great stuff here. Johnny Tri Nguyen, whose biggest role to date is as Tobey Maguire’s costumed stunt double in the first two “Spider-Man” films, isn’t the greatest actor in the world, but he’s got moves that most action fans have never seen before, and that alone is worth the price of admission.
Jason Zingale
9/28/2008
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Vipers
Their movements seem simple enough, but snakes are hard to animate well. Heck, even the snakes in “Snakes on a Plane” looked dodgy, and they presumably had ten times the budget that the makers of “Vipers” had. Needless to say, any straight-to-video release about genetically altered vipers (who have super-potent venom and crave human flesh, dunt dunt duuuhhhhhh) has no choice but to look cheesy, and the snakes in “Vipers,” well, don’t look much better than this one.
That’s a far cry from the DVD cover, which shows vipers the size of anacondas, their mouths agape like the snakes in the old-school video game “Dragon’s Lair.” Tara Reid is the top-billed actor, and thankfully they don’t have her miscast as a doctor or scientist; in fact, she runs a greenhouse and is found to be growing weed, yuk yuk. After two early kill scenes, the movie plunges us head-first into some Eden Island melodrama. Teenaged daughter hates parents, parents hate each other, woman blames Tara Reid for breaking it off with her fiancé who ultimately signed up for the military and died, etc. None of it really matters after the halfway mark, because most of these characters are dead. Corbin Bernsen pops up here and there as a different kind of viper, the corporate exec who is tight with Homeland Security and willing to bomb the island in order to save his company’s bottom line. It’s all very Sci-Fi Channel (and makes it debut on that channel this Sunday), though the DVD release features some ramped up gore, language and boobies. If you need a snakes-run-amok movie, seriously, go rent “Snakes on a Plane.” It’s not great, but it’s better than this.
David Medsker
9/19/2008
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Archive
Complete Movie ArchivesAlfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection
Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection
Billy Madison/Happy Gilmore Collection
The Blues Brothers: 25th Anniversary Edition
The Brat Pack Movies & Music Collection
Elvira's Movie Macabre: Volume One
Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan
Ghostbusters: Double Feature Gift Set
John Ford / John Wayne Film Collection
Kermit's 50th Anniversary Collection
Planet of the Apes: Legacy Collection