Movieman's Guide to the Movies
The Final Word on Physical Media
“Rogue”: The Complete First Season, a series airing exclusively on DirectTV, is a well made crime-drama with great performances by Thandie Newton and Marton Csokas and a compelling story that keeps you engaged throughout the 10-episode long season.
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“Jonny Quest”: The Complete Eighties Adventures is a fun enough series even if I, who grew up during that time, barely even recall ever watching it. The animation looks good and the transfers for the audio and video are both OK. Although it is feature-less, it is nice to see it get a release if only through the Warner Archives line.
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Survival Code actually isn’t an entirely terrible flick but it is a low budget, made-for-TV affair with some standard action and fight scenes. Even so, some might find it to be mildly entertaining and with a short running time, makes for a quick watch.
This “Power Rangers” Seasons 13-17 set is another solid seasons of the long-running, enduring series. Sure, its cheesy as all hell, the acting isn’t the best but it’s also entertaining in the breezy sort of way. This season set compiled by Shout Factory offers up OK audio/video transfers and some well made, newly recorded featurettes.
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Twisted Tales is an interesting concept taking more than a little cue from “Tales from the Crypt” and getting together some decent talent by Tom Holland who wrote and directed each of the nine vignettes. However, more than a few of those aren’t very good or well acted yet there’s a couple that are at least watchable including the one starring William Forsythe and Danielle Harris.
Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz is actually a decent little horror-thriller combining Nazis and zombies for a third time in this series (which honestly I had never heard of). The DVD release by Xlator doesn’t have much going for it with only a trailer and merely adequate video and audio transfers.
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Birds of Paradise is an average, down-the-road, direct-to-video flick attempting to take advantage of high profile movies, in this case duplicating Rio. As cheap entertainment, it’s OK but the animation isn’t great though the audio/video transfers are adequate enough and at the one featurette isn’t terrible.
Anna Nicole is the typical Lifetime Channel tripe with subpar acting, even from actors who tend not to be half-bad, and screenplays seemingly written by interns. The gravest sin going against this movie is that you really don’t learn a whole lot about her past and instead we get most of the items we saw in the news.
The Knot has few funny moments yet the cast seemed to get along at least making for a one-off viewing of a romantic comedy that offers little else. The DVD has OK video and audio transfers but lacks any features.
Sparks is certainly an unconventional comic book movie and considering the shoe-string budget and lightning speed schedule, it’s not a half-bad little flick with two solid performances from Chase Williamson and Ashley Bell. The DVD release offers adequate video and audio transfers while the bonus material is mostly forgettable.
Scarecrow is yet another terrible Syfy Original Movie that features, outside of the two leads, a no-name cast whose characters only serve to be flesh food for the villain but worst of all it’s just not that scary. This DVD release has no bonus material and although the video is average, the audio track does have some oomph to it.
“Dallas”: The Complete Second Season is another solid year of great drama and some fantastic acting most notably from the late great Larry Hagman who unfortunately only had a few episodes before his passing. The DVD released by Warner Brothers has some good bonus material and the audio/video transfers are both well done.
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Sorority Party Massacre fails in almost all phases from the title itself, the casting, acting and direction. I understand what the filmmakers were going after, mixing different movies and genres but it doesn’t mesh well enough, unfortunately because it did have the opportunity to be the fun kind of bad movie instead of just plain bad.
Big Sur is a solid drama featuring great performances, particularly from Jean-Marc Barr while the cinematography and score are both absolutely beautiful. The DVD released by Ketchup Entertainment is pretty minimal with good audio/video transfers but limited in the bonus feature arena.
Vikingdom isn’t a good movie, plain and simple. It’s cheaply done, the acting isn’t anything noteworthy and the story is half-baked. But worse of all, it’s just not that interesting of a movie on the whole and I couldn’t care less about anything or anybody. The DVD released by Epic has an OK amount of features while the audio/video is quite average.