Category: Movie DVD Quicktakes (Page 23 of 41)

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder

February 24, 2009 /

“Futurama” goes out with a bang on “Into the Wild Green Yonder,” their fourth and supposedly final full-length movie. As Leo Wong begins construction on a galaxy-wide miniature golf course that will require the destruction of a dwarf star, Leela joins a group of eco-terrorists to stop him, while Fry inherits mind-reading abilities that enable him to battle the Dark Ones as they plot the star’s destruction. It’s a typical, gleefully labyrinthine “Futurama” story, but for the first time in these DVD movies, they’re more focused on having fun than being overly clever (compared to, say, “Bender’s Big Score,” where the writing staff was just showing off). They also have a great time setting up the apparent deaths of several characters, and gave the fans a happy, though open-ended, finale. Bravo, gentlemen. Oh, and the smooth crooner that sings the opening number? That would be Seth McFarlane. Yes, that Seth McFarlane.

Click to buy “Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder”

External Movie DVDs, Movie Comedies, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

Alien Raiders

February 24, 2009 /

Direct-to-DVD releases are tough to gague. Are we supposed to grade them using the same criteria that one would use for a theatrical release because a movie’s a movie, or should we cut it some slack because by the very fact that it’s being issued straight to DVD. even the studio knows that it’s B-grade material at best? Either way, despite the familiarity of the material and its dreadfully generic name, “Alien Raiders” is a decent little flick for fans of monster sci-fi. Carlos Bernard (Tony Almeida on “24”) leads a group of well-armed renegades into a supermarket in the middle of rural Arizona in order to stop an alien infestation, and once their “spotter” is killed, the group has to use less pleasant methods in order to determine which hostages are infected. It’s basically the plots for “The Thing,” “The Mist” and “The Negotiator” thrown into a blender, though it’s wisely but frustratingly stingy with the details on the alien species they’re battling. The acting is actually pretty decent (though a little of Rockmond Dunbar’s bluster goes a long way), but the story is rather thin, leading to the predictable “shocker” finale. Still, we’ve seen far worse movies than this at the multiplex.

Click to buy “Alien Raiders”

Action Movies, Horror Movies, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

Extreme Movie

February 20, 2009 /

Only the Weinstein Company would sink so low as to advertise Michael Cera as the star of “Extreme Movie.” Though it makes sense to highlight his involvement because he’s the biggest name in the cast, his role is so small that it doesn’t deserve more than a special guest credit. Granted, his brief appearance is the funniest thing about the film (a cybersex chat turned rape fantasy gone wrong), but it’s shady marketing nonetheless. If anyone is the star of “Extreme Movie,” it’s former “Punk’d” player Ryan Pinkston, who plays a geeky virgin looking to score with his high school crush. His story is the closest thing to a plot in the movie, but even that’s stretching it. Most of the film’s 75-minute runtime is made up of a series of sketches involving a group of sexually active teenagers. Andy Milonakis falls in love with an adult sex toy in one of the more clever vignettes, while Matthew Lillard plays himself in a series of uncouth “The More You Know”-styled sex education commercials. With the exception of Cera’s portion, though, most of the film is a mess – which isn’t surprising when you consider that no less than 10 different writers have been credited for the screenplay. Directors Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson may be responsible for one of the best spoof movies of its generation (“Not Another Teen Movie”), but now they’re guilty of making one of the worst.

Click to buy “‘Extreme Movie”

External Movie DVDs, Movie Comedies, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

Soul Men

February 14, 2009 /

Considering just how little soul Malcolm D. Lee’s “Soul Men” has for a movie starring two of the industry’s most charismatic actors, it probably should have been called something else instead. Perhaps a more appropriate title would be “Motherfuckers,” because co-stars Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson utter the word at least a hundred times throughout the course of the film. Now, I’m all for Jackson channeling his inner badass, but it doesn’t have the same comedic punch when everyone around him joins in on the fun. Mac and Jackson probably had the time of their lives playing two has-been back-up singers who agree to participate in a reunion performance honoring the death of their former frontman, but the audience wouldn’t know it from watching the film, which is littered with old fart jokes circa 2002. An all-too-familiar buddy comedy that hinges entirely on the chemistry of its two stars, “Soul Men” is mediocre at best, and I shudder to think at how bad it would have been had neither actor been involved. God rest Bernie Mac’s soul, because while he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a great actor, he certainly deserved a better sending off than this.

Click to buy “Soul Men”

External Movie DVDs, Movie Comedies, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

Gospel According to Al Green

February 12, 2009 /

Al Green’s angelically seductive voice is unequaled in R&B, and perhaps all of popular music, and the hits he made with legendary producer Willie Mitchell include some of the most evocative songwriting of the early seventies. He might have reached the same heights of mass acclaim as such R&B contemporaries as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson were it not for a disturbing incident in which an obsessed girlfriend badly scalded him with boiling grits and then committed suicide. Within a few years, the singer became the Reverend Al Green, bought his own church, and for a time abandoned secular pop music entirely.

This fascinating 1984 documentary details the period in which Green became a deliberately obscure figure, allowing the singer to tell his own story in addition to performing some astonishingly good gospel and also preaching at his Memphis Full Gospel Tabernacle. He even deigns to break his own no-secular-music rule and performs a transcendent version of his love song supreme, “Let’s Stay Together” – a performance strong enough to almost make us forget “Pulp Fiction” and that bandage on the back of Ving Rhames neck. Director Robert Mugge’s film captures Green at his musical best – still only in his late thirties and absolutely at the top of his game. A must for fans of both classic soul and gospel music, “Gospel According to Al Green” reveals a conflicted, slightly eccentric, but always utterly sincere performer, while presenting an awe-inspiring reminder of the musical and emotional power of the African-American church.

Click to buy “Gospel According to Al Green”

Documentaries, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews

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