Also, check out the best movies I’ve reviewed and all the movies I’ve reviewed.
| The Ruling Class | Reviewed 10/24/2002 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 8 |
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| When Jack’s aunt asks him how he knows he’s God, Jack replies, “Simple. When I pray I find I’m talking to myself.”
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| Almost Elvis | Reviewed 8/29/2002 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 7 |
| Elvis has become our Hercules: a hero on the way to becoming a god. When I hear, in “Almost Elvis,” that “Elvis is a name for something that we have in us, or we don’t,” it is hard not to think about the similar statements for other gods and divinities.
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| Almost Famous | Reviewed 1/15/2002 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 9 |
| This is the best DVD I’ve seen yet. It has not one, not two, but three discs: the third disc is a CD with music by Stillwater, including the Led Zeppelin-like “Fever Dogs”. Thought the snippets of that song was cool, it was too bad they didn’t write the whole thing? Fret no more, they did write the whole thing, and at least five other songs, all on the CD.
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| Thelma & Louise | Reviewed 11/4/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 5 |
| I’d forgotten just how good this Ridley Scott movie was. I’ve never seen it in the theater, only on television in chopped format. Seeing it in its original widescreen is night and day. The chopped version is also on the this DVD; I recommend avoiding it. Ridley Scott’s advertising background betrays him: he doesn’t just point the camera, he composes every frame.
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| Tokyo Drifter | Reviewed 5/21/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 5 |
| A quirky B-Grade mafia film from 1966 Japan’s 2-movie a week Nikkatsu studio and cult favorite Seijun Suzuki. Filmed in “original, glorious Nikkatsu-scope”.
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| The Mummy | Reviewed 5/5/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 6 |
| “The Mummy” is a light-hearted, CG-heavy remake of the original from the thirties. But it is also heavy on historical realism, incorporates some very good acting, and is a lot of fun to boot.
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| King of Hearts | Reviewed 5/1/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 6 |
| An incredibly quirky movie about an insane asylum in World War I: the townsfolk all leave as the invading army comes, leaving the inmates to take over the town. And a Scottish ornithology expert mistaken for an ordnance expert to interact with them while trying to find out how the Germans plan to blow up the town.
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| The Seven Samurai | Reviewed 4/22/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 6 |
| Probably the most influential samurai film, starring Toshirô Mifune and directed by Akira Kurosawa. It inspired more than just samurai: “The Magnificent Seven” was “Seven Samurai” remade into one of the most influential westerns.
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| U.S. Marshals | Reviewed 4/14/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 5 |
| The unknown sequel to the 1993 movie “The Fugitive” stars Tommy Lee Jones as Marshal Sam Gerard. Can it really be a sequel if it doesn’t include the original lead? At least it sucks, which is the true sign of a sequel.
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| Being There | Reviewed 4/13/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 6 |
| Peter Sellers’ last and in my opinion best work, based on the story by Jerzy Kosinski (and with a screenplay written by him). This is a quietly funny, provocative, and touching film about “down to earth” philosophies.
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| Blade | Reviewed 4/4/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 8 |
| The best modern vampire movie I’ve seen, this is not a horror movie at all: it’s an adventure, related as much to comic books as to movies. And it’s almost an early “screen test” for “The Matrix”, related to “The Matrix” through “Dark City” and Hong Kong action films. This is an action film. You know right from the first scene that this movie is here to show asses being kicked.
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| Salem’s Lot | Reviewed 4/2/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 5 |
| When this movie came out in 1979 I missed seeing it, although I had enjoyed the book immensely. I was, honestly, just plain too scared to see it “live” on screen. The book was scary enough. Perhaps it would have been frightening then, I don’t remember myself well enough (I do remember sleeping with a cross after reading the book). It is not very frightening now.
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| Detroit Rock City | Reviewed 3/31/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 9 |
| Four Cleveland high school kids ditch school in 1978 to see KISS at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Along the way they pick up Natasha Lyonne. What a trip!
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| Altered States | Reviewed 3/31/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 5 |
| I did not see this movie when it came out in 1980, but I had definitely heard of it. As I recall, it had quite a reputation. I think that in some ways, “Altered States” was the last gasp of the sixties/seventies drug movies. It is a fascinating movie of extremely questionable science investigating the religion of self.
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| The Shawshank Redemption | Reviewed 1/21/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 5 |
| In what might be considered a “forerunner” to “The Green Mile”, Tim Robbins plays Andy Dufresne, a convict in Shawshank prison in this very beautiful, if sugary, story. Highlander fans will also recognize Clancy Brown as the main prison guard.
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| North Dallas Forty | Reviewed 1/19/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: |
| The “Any Given Sunday” of 1979, and probably as controversial. I was willing to see Nick Nolte in any number of crappy movies after seeing North Dallas Forty (I think I gave up after 48 hours).
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| One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | Reviewed 1/19/2001 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 6 |
| Jack Nicholson leads an all-star cast that wasn’t all-star at the time, in a “typically” Milos Forman film dealing with issues of freedom, totalitarianism, and responsibility, all contained in a nuthouse.
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| Capricorn One | Reviewed 11/23/2000 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 5 |
| A totally strange collection of actors, this 1978 conspiracy film holds up fairly well. It was never great, but it is pretty good. Bonus: O.J. Simpson gets to be the first black astronaut (at least, American astronaut) in space, or would have, if the mission hadn’t been faked. Movies in 1978 were more ahead of the curve racially than real life.
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| Total Movie | Reviewed 10/29/2000 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 6 |
| The first issue of “Total Movie” magazine comes with a very impressive DVD. The contents of the magazine are a bit variable, but $8 for “Troops” with a director’s commentary is worth it. Note that Total Movie has been cancelled by their parent company. More info at Home Theater Forum.
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| The Rocky Horror Picture Show | Reviewed 10/14/2000 | Purchase | Overall Rating: 7 |
| Oh, it’s nicer than Betty Munro had! With an audience participation track, outtakes, interviews, and deleted musical scenes, this DVD promises to be the best Rocky Horror ever.
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The rating scale runs from 1 to 10, with 10 being a great movie (or DVD, or feature, or transfer), one being horrible.
There are two sections for the review. A “capsule” review, and then a more in-depth review. The in-depth review may contain spoilers. You are hereby warned.
Recommendation: If the recommendation says “rent”, the link is to NetFlix.Com; if the recommendation says “purchase”, the link is to Amazon.Com. I use NetFlix because they are the only on-line DVD rental place I’ve used, and they are very good. If you know of another on-line DVD rental site, let me know and I’ll check around on Usenet to see how good they are.
I use Amazon because they pretty much guarantee that the links I make will always work. Amazon also pays me every time you buy something by hitting one of my links; this does not affect my recommendation: I do not recommend that you purchase anything that I haven’t already purchased or plan to purchase imminently. I would have to sell about 20 items to break even in this manner, which doesn’t happen. It makes no sense for me to recommend a purchase when I don’t really mean it.
Talk About it: This links to Usenet discussion messages, people talking about the movie on Usenet. Usenet is the major discussion area on the net. Not only are the best and most wide-ranging discussions there, but the best tools exist for reading Usenet. I find that I can easily handle Usenet discussions that are ten, twenty, or even a hundred times more active than e-mail or web-based discussions. This is because the management tools, such as MT Newswatcher on the Macintosh, make it very easy for me to filter the interesting from the uninteresting.
I also provide three other sources for on-line reviews, just because I like reading other people’s reviews, and I think you will too: Usenet reviews, DVDFile reviews, and IMDB Reviews.
Movie Details: The Internet Movie Database is a wonderful resource for movie information. It includes information about the DVDs, about the cast, about the movie itself, and includes reviews from people on the net, and trivia about the movie: goofs, quotes; and it allows you to update the information if you know something about the movie that isn’t listed.
Cast Listing: A direct link to the cast listing for this movie on the Internet Movie Database.
Last Memo Enabled: DVD has the ability to let you watch a movie partway, take it out, and then start from where you left off. On my Pioneer, this is called “Last Memo”. A large number of DVD discs have disabled this feature, which is a shame, and really detracts from the usefulness of DVD. This is, after all, something that VHS does naturally: if you take a VHS tape out, and then put it back in tomorrow, it will start from where it left off. I find that when I get home from the office and start making dinner, I’m much more likely to pop in a DVD that has Last Memo enabled. To make it easier, I’ve listed all the movies that are both enhanced widescreen and last memo enabled.
Features: DVDs often have features besides the movie itself. The trailer is often included; and commentary about the movie, interviews with the cast, etc. I’ve rated these features 1 to 10, with 1 being practically worthless, 10 being a superior feature.
Format: DVDs can play back in a number of formats. The best is “widescreen anamorphic” which will play back on both widescreen and normal televisions. The second best is “letterbox”, which plays back the full theatrical release of the movie. Finally, there is “pan and scan”, which chops off the sides of the movie so that it ‘fits’ on a normal television. With Pan & Scan you are almost always missing important parts of the movie. If you do not have a widescreen TV when watching letter box and widescreen, you’ll see black bars at the top and bottom of your screen. This is simply because movies are wider than televisions, and in order to show you the full movie, the movie has to be shrunk top to bottom to show the full movie left to right. If the black bars bother you, make sure that DVDs you purchase have both letterbox/widescreen and pan & scan. To make it easier, I’ve listed all the movies that are both enhanced widescreen and last memo enabled.
“Widescreen Anamorphic” has the ability to play a pan & scan version as well for those who prefer (perhaps on smaller televisions) to have the picture fill the screen. However, most discs do not enable this feature. If I notice that this feature of Widescreen Anamorphic is enabled, I’ll mention it. It sounds like a great idea that could save a lot of space on DVDs that can then be used to include other features. (It would be even better if widescreen included the full area, and the pan & scan was then able to pan up and down--and we could set our own matting.)
Some older movies were never made in a wide, panoramic version. To differentiate between these movies and chopped movies, I’ll call them “Academy Format”. A movie listed as Academy Format is the full theatrical release; a movie listed as pan and scan is a chopped movie.
Unskippable Openers: Some movies can have annoying openers that they do not let you skip. Sometimes there can be up to three or more of these that you are forced to watch with every movie. On a DVD, this is silly. I can see having a skippable studio opener, but putting an FBI warning, or worse, an FBI warning, a couple of advertisements, a studio opener, and a manufacturer opener is showing a profound lack of understanding about the nature of digital entertainment.
The Obligatory Anti-DIVX Editorial
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