Month: July 2016

Blu-ray Review – Porkys (1981)

Reviews

Set during the 1950s, Porky’s follows a group of high schoolers who band together to get their wimpy mate laid. After a couple of failed attempts they discover that there’s a strip club out of town known as Porky’s, where it’s the place to “get it”. The lads find themselves royally screwed over and embarrassed by the sleazy club owner and his brother, the local law enforcer. When the crew at Porky’s take it too far with the lads, they devise a plan of revenge on old Porky and his redneck crew.

Who knew that famous shower scene from the eighties actually had another 90 minutes tied onto it?! Written and directed by A Christmas Story director Bob Clark, I’m surprised to see that this is actually quite a nice little comedy. It’s not overly crude or demeaning to women and there’s genuinely fun scenes in the film.

The aftermath of the shower scene where Coach Balbricker gets her hands on one of the “lads”, she’s begging the principal to have the students line up and drop their drawers, the stifled laughter from the male coaches and the principal himself is hilarious.

When watching the Special Features it highlights several positive messages behind the film, as they tackle racism and anti-Semitism! Doesn’t sound like the same film where Kim Cattrall gets turned into Lassie, does it?

The Special Features also include a full audio commentary with the film’s director Bob Clark. They also keep him around for a 15 minute interview where he dishes out the gossip on his production woes. Nudie website tycoon “Mr. Skin” hosts a feature titled Skin Classics where he laments on his fondness for Porky’s and delves into the details about raunchy teen flicks from the eighties onwards.

Arrow has even paid particular attention to the trailers; 9/10 trailers on your standard DVD/Blu-ray release usually include the main feature’s trailer and several other trailers from their current catalogue. Arrow included the original trailers for Porky’s as well as the original trailers for the sequels; Porky’s II: The Next Day and Porky’s Revenge! Nice touch!

4/5

DVD Review – The Guillotines (2012)

Reviews

Set during the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese Emperor assembles a team of soldiers equipped with deadly cutting edge weapons. The group of soldiers are titled “The Guillotines” and are sent on a quest to eliminate the rebel leader known only as Wolf.

At first they manage to overcome Wolf’s men, but a member of the team is captured by Wolf, and this member happens to be the daughter of the Emperor. The Emperor demands that the remaining Guillotines plan a full assault on the Wolf and his rebel army rescuing his daughter at all costs.

Director Andrew Lau hops on the bandwagon with every other Chinese director nowadays, shilling out his Chinese war period piece. Whilst the initial plot seems straightforward, the pay off in the second half of the story is quite interesting. Shawn Yue, Li Yuchun, Huang Xiaoming and Ethan Jung do deliver the necessary acting chops needed for the film. I always know that Shawn Yue is a safe bet in movies, but the rest of the cast do well also.

The film itself is decent, but it has the same trouble as most films of this type do, it tends to get pretty dull at points. It’s just shy of two hours and damn, if they could only have tightened it to 90 minutes, we’d have a stronger movie. I do feel a good quarter of this film is people grieving, grieving and even some slow-motion grieving, slavers and all!

The action sequences are decent, but rely on a fair use of CGI, which isn’t surprising as the contraption they are flinging around looks a lacrosse stick mixed with a frisbee rejected from the last Saw movie. The use of CGI during battle scenes also gives the director a chance to be all screw-ball-scramble with the camera angles and quick-cutting MTV style editing.

Overall The Guillotines is a decent watch for fans of Asian cinema, but it’s nothing new.

2/5

Blu Ray Review – The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Reviews

In 1984 moviegoers were treated the ultimate sci-fi light speed adventure, a movie that would change the world for generations – that film is; Back to the Future. Another Sci-fi action light speed adventure movie snuck out that year; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Starring a young Peter Weller as the martial arts master/expert neurologist/rock musician, Buckaroo Banzai as he is testing the limits of a Jet car he created alongside his band of scientists; the Hong Kong Cavaliers.

The Jet Car sends Buckaroo through the solid matter of a mountain – collecting a mysterious orb from alien race. The aliens have been scouring the earth for years disguised as humans trying to retrieve the orb. Now it’s up to Buckaroo and his merry crew to save the earth from their invasion.

Buckaroo Banzai is a nutty, weird and wonderful movie. I have never seen this film prior to reviewing it and I came away enjoying it! It is easiest the perfect example a cult Sci-Fi B-Movie from the 80’s. It has all the elements, handfuls of famous actors (before they were famous), funky music and actors wearing rubber aliens masks!

Coming off of its 30 year anniversary, the cult classic DVD/Blu-Ray label Arrow are known for their generous amount of special features when it comes to celebrating the classics. Buckaroo Banzai is no exception with over a dozen special features including; Interviews, Audio Commentaries, Q&A Panels, Making Of and alternative, extended and deleted scenes – Oh my!

My particular favourites from the bunch is the forty minute Lincoln Centre Q&A which was filmed as part of the 2011 New York Film Festival featuring Peter Weller and John Lithgow moderated by “the Human Hockey Jersey” Clerks director Kevin Smith. Weller and Lithgow seem pleasantly overwhelmed by Smiths appreciation for the film. Weller is razor sharp on mic, at one point where he notices an audience member has nodded off, he stops talking about the film and urges the audience to wake him and teases that he’s on narcotics. Lithgow has his fair share of stories, highlights include that he used his Italian make-up artist as his dialogue coach and went as far as get the artist credited in the film as Mr. Lithgow’s Dialogue Coach.

Other notable features on the disc include Banzai Radio, a 10 minute audio only interview, a primitive podcast almost where Denise Okuda and Terry Erdman discuss fans reactions to Banzai at conventions – creating merchandise and the possibilities of having Buckaroo Banzai released on DVD in the near future. If those features aren’t enough there’s also fourteen! Aye, fourteen deleted scenes included in this release.

Blu-Ray: 5/5

Film: 3/5

Blu-Ray Review – The Rocket (2014)

Reviews

Director Kim Mordaunt invites us on the journey of Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe), a child who lives in a remote village situated in the Laos mountains. When his mother gave birth to him, she gave birth to a stillborn child as well; in Laos culture it’s bad luck when twins are born, one is considered blessed, whilst the other is labelled as a curse.

After a series of unfortunate events Ahlo, his family and his entire village are left homeless in a shantytown. His wise old grandmother is convinced that Ahlo is cause of all of this bad luck. He meets a young orphan girl Mila (Loungnam Kaosainam) who is being raised by her uncle, Laos’ answer to the King of Soul, James Brown!

I’ve just given you a loose plot of The Rocket as I want you to look out for this marvellous little film. The footage, the faces and the beautiful setting makes you believe you’re watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel. You cannot fault the cast of this movie; sure you’ll hate the bull-headed stubbornness of the grandmother, but it shouldn’t spoil the film for you.

The film is a slow burner; obviously the main pay off is at the end of the story but I was surprised to see the film’s running time was one hour thirty minutes, it felt closer to two hours.  Yet despite that downside, there is a fair amount of positive points to the film. The children in the cast are wonderful. The whole premise of the festival in the third act is entertaining. I’d like to imagine that 90% of this cast is made up of Laos locals, the banter amongst the festival goers and the judges is spot on.

Eureka’s Blu-ray release is the obvious choice for this film, the colours of the forest and the water are crystal clear – it looks wonderful. The Special Features on the Blu-ray include a feature length commentary from Kim Mordaunt as well as a near 20 minute interview with the director. He does in depth with the making of the film, what inspired him, how the cast related to one-another etc.

Overall The Rocket is a wonderful gem of a movie, it won’t be for everyone, but I think for fans of Beasts Of The Southern Wild, this is right up their street!

4/5

DVD Review – Jay & Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie (2013)

Reviews

Jay and Silent Bob, the drug dealing duo last seen in Kevin Smith’s Clerks II return to our televisions, animated on this occasion. Director Steve Stark animates a script written by Kevin Smith, based on his graphic novels and produced by his partner in crime, Jason Mewes.

The story follows the dynamic duo as they look to become crime fighting superheroes. They somehow manage to hop, skip and jump over several well-known origin stories that are presented to them. They eventually win millions of dollars after buying scratch cards and pay their way into the superhero life style as Bluntman and Chronic. They find themselves battling a group of super villains that discover that they’ve all ended up in prison by the bluntsabers of the pair of spandex wearing stoners.

Jay & Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Movie is pure fan appreciation at its finest. Animator Steve Stark first caught Smith’s attention when sharing videos bringing Smith’s podcasts to life through his style of animation. A few years down the line, why not give him a feature length story?

The film is genuinely funny at times, myself and my wife both had to stop what we we’re doing and get let out a great belly laugh. Then on some occasions the film could get a little tiresome; Steve’s Smodimations were wonderful as great 3-5 minute chunks of animation, but with Groovy Movie being well over an hour it becomes a struggle.

One of the notable characters brought back to life in this movie is Cock Knocker, a villain last seen in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back played then by Star Wars actor, Mark Hamill. Now with this movie being a low budget animated adventure, Kevin Smith pops up in animated form breaking the fourth wall to inform you that they couldn’t get Hamill, but they did get Tara Strong – the voice actress know for ‘Powder Puff Girls‘ and ‘My Little Pony‘! This decision just removed me from the whole experience, the deliberate high pitched tones of Strong just didn’t work for me at all.

From my recollection this film was made with a budget no higher than $70,000, but hell the audio sounds pretty ropey at times, some dialogue from Jason Mewes and some others seems muffled at times, I know it’s a tight budget, but I felt that the audio needed to be a number one priority, it needs to be crystal clear if it’s being layered over animation.

Overall it’s a decent watch for Kevin Smith fans and Smith’s fans alone.

3/5

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