| The Sentinel (Widescreen) | | Posted Sunday, September 03, 2006 11:52:01 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | Clint Eastwood may be a little too old (plus he kind of already did his own version of this movie in 1993's In the Line of Fire), but Harrison Ford could have been The Sentinel's lead and lent the same kind of top-flight Hollywood superstar craft that Michael Douglas brings as a superstar secret service agent fighting a frame-up in a panicky countdown to peril. That the marquee name could have belonged to anyone with the same chops as Douglas is no slam to him, Ford, Eastwood, or anyone else of their ilk. The Sentinel is a crackling good thriller because everyone involved is working at the top of their game. Pete Garrison (Douglas) is on the presidential protection detail when another agent is murdered. A creepy informer tells Garrison about an elaborate assassination conspiracy that's related and well underway. Garrison also happens to be having an affair with the First Lady (Kim Basinger), the stress of which causes him to flunk a lie detector test when word of the plot to kill the president becomes more than just paranoia. Garrison is soon on the run, being hunted by his protege David Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland, whose 24 experience gives his performance an extra edge). But Garrison is the best, using all his secret service wiles (and there are plenty, the details of which give added tension and authenticity to the taut script) to evade his former comrades as the clock ticks. You can often see the plot thickening a mile away, and as much as the movie wants to keep us guessing, the real bad guy is an easy mark for the audience. But the energy and kinetic skill which propel the action are always spot on and enough to keep us from caring about the giveaways. Co-star Eva Longoria is miles away from her Desperate Housewives role and miles away from any real import of character in the movie. But the rest of the cast and the whooshing forward momentum of style and anxiety are plenty to keep The Sentinel in full-tilt suspense mode from beginning to end.--Ted Fry... | |
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| | | Sharpe's Challenge | | Posted Sunday, September 03, 2006 3:51:34 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | A year after the battle of Waterloo, dispatches from India warn that a local Maharaja is threatening British interests. Wellington sends Sharpe to investigate on what turns out to be his most dangerous mission to date. The last scout sent, Sharpe's best friend Sergeant Harper -- has gone missing and reports suggests that the real power behind the risings is Colonel Dodd, a malcontent East India Company Officer, and that the Maharaja has gathered into his impregnable fort. Once inside the fort things do not quite go as Sharpe has planned.... | |
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| | | Poseidon (Widescreen Edition) | | Posted Saturday, August 26, 2006 3:51:39 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | The 1972 disaster hit The Poseidon Adventure was ripe for a big-budget CGI remake, and who better to helm it than thriller expert Wolfgang Petersen, director of Das Boot and The Perfect Storm? It hardly matters that a TV movie remake (also based on Paul Gallico's original 1969 source novel) was made less than a year before, because Petersen's version is far more spectacular, with shocking digital effects, massive sets, amazing stunt-work and enough fire and water to fill five movies with challenging worst-case scenarios. Once again, the plot concerns the capsizing (by a massive "rogue wave") of a state-of-the-art luxury liner, and the struggle of a small group of survivors (including Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum, and Richard Dreyfuss) to climb upwards, to the ship's hull, in their treacherous quest for a safe exit. Unfortunately, most of these characters are two-dimensional and under-developed (especially when compared to the 1972 film's all-star cast), and the unimaginative screenplay by Mark Protosevich (reportedly worked on by several uncredited writers) subjects them to a rote series of obstacles that grow increasingly routine and repetitious, not to mention contrived and illogical. Again, it hardly matters, because Petersen's handling of non-stop action is so slick and professional that Poseidon gets by on sheer adrenaline. The capsizing scenes are nothing less than awesome, with some effects so real (and so horrifying) that younger and more sensitive viewers may need to look away. And while it lacks the engaging humanity of the 1972 version, Poseidon is certainly never boring. Faint praise, perhaps, but you'll get your popcorn's worth of mindless entertainment. --Jeff Shannon... | |
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| | | Pulp Fiction (Collector's Edition) | | Posted Saturday, August 19, 2006 3:51:32 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | With the knockout one-two punch of 1992's Reservoir Dogs and 1994's Pulp Fiction writer-director Quentin Tarantino stunned the filmmaking world, exploding into prominence as a cinematic heavyweight contender. But Pulp Fiction was more than just the follow-up to an impressive first feature, or the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival, or a script stuffed with the sort of juicy bubblegum dialogue actors just love to chew, or the vehicle that reestablished John Travolta on the A-list, or the relatively low-budget ($8 million) independent showcase for an ultrahip mixture of established marquee names and rising stars from the indie scene (among them Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Julia Sweeney, Kathy Griffin, and Phil Lamar). It was more, even, than an unprecedented $100-million-plus hit for indie distributor Miramax. Pulp Fiction was a sensation. No, it was not the Second Coming (I actually think Reservoir Dogs is a more substantial film; and P.T. Anderson outdid Tarantino in 1997 by making his directorial debut with two even more mature and accomplished pictures, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights). But Pulp Fiction packs so much energy and invention into telling its nonchronologically interwoven short stories (all about temptation, corruption, and redemption amongst modern criminals, large and small) it leaves viewers both exhilarated and exhausted--hearts racing and knuckles white from the ride. (Oh, and the infectious, surf-guitar-based soundtrack is tastier than a Royale with Cheese.) --Jim Emerson... | |
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| | | Poseidon (Two-Disc Special Edition) | | Posted Friday, August 18, 2006 7:51:34 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | The 1972 disaster hit The Poseidon Adventure was ripe for a big-budget CGI remake, and who better to helm it than thriller expert Wolfgang Petersen, director of Das Boot and The Perfect Storm? It hardly matters that a TV movie remake (also based on Paul Gallico's original 1969 source novel) was made less than a year before, because Petersen's version is far more spectacular, with shocking digital effects, massive sets, amazing stunt-work and enough fire and water to fill five movies with challenging worst-case scenarios. Once again, the plot concerns the capsizing (by a massive "rogue wave") of a state-of-the-art luxury liner, and the struggle of a small group of survivors (including Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum, and Richard Dreyfuss) to climb upwards, to the ship's hull, in their treacherous quest for a safe exit. Unfortunately, most of these characters are two-dimensional and under-developed (especially when compared to the 1972 film's all-star cast), and the unimaginative screenplay by Mark Protosevich (reportedly worked on by several uncredited writers) subjects them to a rote series of obstacles that grow increasingly routine and repetitious, not to mention contrived and illogical. Again, it hardly matters, because Petersen's handling of non-stop action is so slick and professional that Poseidon gets by on sheer adrenaline. The capsizing scenes are nothing less than awesome, with some effects so real (and so horrifying) that younger and more sensitive viewers may need to look away. And while it lacks the engaging humanity of the 1972 version, Poseidon is certainly never boring. Faint praise, perhaps, but you'll get your popcorn's worth of mindless entertainment. --Jeff Shannon... | |
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| | | Inside Man (Full Screen Edition) (2006) | | Posted Tuesday, August 15, 2006 5:51:46 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | Spike Lee scored his biggest hit to date with Inside Man, an unconventional thriller with fascinating details in the margins of its convoluted plot. The screenplay (by first-timer Russell Gerwitz) could've used a few more rewrites; it moves at a brisk pace but in hindsight a lot of it doesn't make sense. That makes Inside Man more fun to watch than to think about afterwards (when you discover plot holes big enough to drive a truck through), but it's curiously involving, especially as NYPD Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) struggles to outsmart a high-stakes bank robber (Clive Owen) who, along with a well-trained crew of accomplices, has seized control of a Wall Street bank, turning what initially looks like a hostage crisis into a personal crusade to expose some mysterious evil secrets. As you might expect from the director of Do the Right Thing, Lee seizes several satisfying opportunities to examine post-9/11 issues of racial prejudice and domestic terrorism, and the mysterious "problem solver" Madeline White (Jodie Foster) is worthy of her own movie, as eerily sinister as she is vaguely defined. With the benefit of his most stellar cast to date (including Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor), Lee's seems more interested in character details than well-crafted suspense, but that doesn't stop Inside Man from being engrossing, subtly amusing, and quirky enough to qualify as a welcomed break from the formulaic thrillers that are Hollywood's bread and butter.--Jeff Shannon... | |
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| | | Sentinel (2006) (Ws Sen) | | Posted Sunday, August 13, 2006 5:51:41 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | Clint Eastwood may be a little too old (plus he kind of already did his own version of this movie in 1993's In the Line of Fire), but Harrison Ford could have been The Sentinel's lead and lent the same kind of top-flight Hollywood superstar craft that Michael Douglas brings as a superstar secret service agent fighting a frame-up in a panicky countdown to peril. That the marquee name could have belonged to anyone with the same chops as Douglas is no slam to him, Ford, Eastwood, or anyone else of their ilk. The Sentinel is a crackling good thriller because everyone involved is working at the top of their game. Pete Garrison (Douglas) is on the presidential protection detail when another agent is murdered. A creepy informer tells Garrison about an elaborate assassination conspiracy that's related and well underway. Garrison also happens to be having an affair with the First Lady (Kim Basinger), the stress of which causes him to flunk a lie detector test when word of the plot to kill the president becomes more than just paranoia. Garrison is soon on the run, being hunted by his protege David Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland, whose 24 experience gives his performance an extra edge). But Garrison is the best, using all his secret service wiles (and there are plenty, the details of which give added tension and authenticity to the taut script) to evade his former comrades as the clock ticks. You can often see the plot thickening a mile away, and as much as the movie wants to keep us guessing, the real bad guy is an easy mark for the audience. But the energy and kinetic skill which propel the action are always spot on and enough to keep us from caring about the giveaways. Co-star Eva Longoria is miles away from her Desperate Housewives role and miles away from any real import of character in the movie. But the rest of the cast and the whooshing forward momentum of style and anxiety are plenty to keep The Sentinel in full-tilt suspense mode from beginning to end.--Ted Fry... | |
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| | | La Femme Nikita - The Complete Fourth Season | | Posted Saturday, August 12, 2006 9:51:41 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | The fourth season of the espionage action series La Femme Nikita might've been its last, were it not for a heroic effort to revive the show by its fans. Since the campaign was a success, the fourth season remains an exciting chapter in the cult series' history, and one with a startling denouement that left audiences begging for more. The crux of the series pits Section One's sinister head, Operations (Robert Eugene Glazer) against Nikita's partner/lover Michael (Roy Dupuis), who has been deemed expendable; meanwhile, Michael must find a way to deprogram Nikita (Peta Wilson) from the brainwashing that has turned into a destructive killing machine. Highlights from this season include the two-parter "Man in the Middle" and "Love, Honor and Cherish," which finds Nikita betrothed to a wealthy industrialist (Maxwell Caulfield) who is Section's next target; "No One Lives Forever," in which Nikita is granted her freedom in exchange for the murder of the man who killed her father (whose identity is one of the season's most gasp-worthy surprises); and the three-part conclusion ("Face in the Mirror," "Up the Rabbit Hole," and "Four Light Years Farther"), which reveals stunning news about Nikita's true identity, delivers a unpleasant fate for one of the major characters, and leaves the rest in particularly dire straits. Were this the conclusion of the series as intended, the fourth season certainly provided a worthy wrap-up, with more than its share of intrigue and last-minute plot twists; as it stands, it's exceptionally fun TV, with a fine balance of action and romance between the charismatic and attractive. Wilson and Dupuis. The six-disc set includes all 22 episodes of the fourth season; Eugene Robert Glazer provides commentary for two episodes, "Time to Be Heroes" and "Sympathy for the Devil," on which he's respectively joined by director Brad Turner and writer Peter Lenkov; there's also a collection of deleted scenes with commentary by Christopher Heyn assistant to the show's executive consultant Joel Surnow, and a gag reel. --Paul Gaita... | |
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| | | Mr. Moto Collection, Vol. 1 (Mr. Moto Takes A Chance / Mysterious Mr. Moto / Thank You Mr. Moto / Think Fast Mr. Moto) (4DVD) | | Posted Friday, August 04, 2006 9:51:53 PM by BlogJeeves Team | | Bonus Features: **Mr. Moto Wave 1 includes Mr. Moto Takes A Chance, Mysterious Mr. Moto, Thank You Mr. Moto and Think Fast, Mr. Moto. **All available for the first time on DVD plus The Mr. Moto Collection Volume One** Episode Description: Disc 1: Mr. Moto Takes a Chance Disc 2: Mysterious Mr. Moto Disc 3: Thank You Mr. Moto Disc 4: Think Fast Mr. Moto... | |
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| | | Ultimate Avengers 2 | | Posted Thursday, August 03, 2006 3:51:34 AM by BlogJeeves Team | | To save humanity, the Earth's mightiest heroes must reunite for a rematch of heroic proportions. Mysterious Wakanda. It lies in the darkest heart of Africa, unknown to most of the world. An isolated land hidden behind closed borders, fiercely protected by its young king - the BLACK PANTHER. A king hold the fate of the entire earth in his hands. Because brutal alien invaders are coming, soon to fill every sky and control every land, seeking what is buried beneath ancient Wakanda. That leaves the Black Panther with a single option, one that goes against the sacred decrees of his people-to ask for help from outsiders. And so he turns to--- The Avengers - Captain America. Iron Man. Thor. Giant Man. Wasp. And the Incredible Hulk. These mightiest of heroes have battled the aliens before, and barely survived. They thought it was over. They were wrong.... | |
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