June 5, 2008
LOST COLONY: THE LEGEND OF ROANOKE [NR]
review by Robert Newton
As if the script for this Sci-Fi Channel movie had been unimaginatively lifted directly from a handful of Wikipedia pages, so plods this sleepy, 
hollow historical yarn about what may have happened to the English colony off the coast of North Carolina in 1587. Supposedly, every last man, woman and child disappeared without a trace from the island garrison. These are their stories (with some hokum about soul-sucking Norse spirits thrown in, apparently, to appease the large contingent of sci-fi and horror fans who were flooding Sci-Fi’s offices with cards and letters demanding The Evil Viking Dead).
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June 4, 2008
THE ANIMATION SHOW 3 [NR]
There comes an age in every animation fan’s life when they realize that the festival that once got them to drive an hour-and-a-half in the rain — The Spike & Mike Festival of Animation — is just plain gross. At that age, they also realize that the midnight movie brand name has little to do with art, and a hole lot to do with fart. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
For those who want a bit more of an existential punch with their big-screen flip books, there is The Animation Show, an annual festival featuring some of the best and funniest animated shorts from around the world. The 2007 touring show, presented here by festival co-founder Mike Judge’s former bosses at MTV (he did a little show for them in the ’90s called “Beavis & Butt-head”), is a great complement to the previous two volumes (available as a bundle), and has a little something for everyone.
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MINUTEMEN [NR]
review by Robert Newton
It’s no Back To The Future, but this Disney Channel movie is still somewhat fun, even if it does pander a bit to the ‘tweens. It’s about three baby-faced high school kids named Virgil (Jason Dolley), Charlie (Luke Benward) and Zeke (Nicholas Braun) who build a time machine in the school’s basement so that they can spare their fellow geeks regular humiliation and, of course, benefit socially from knowing what’s going to happen before it does.
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May 29, 2008
SHORT CIRCUIT: SPECIAL EDITION [PG]
While the timing of this re-release of the minor 1986 comedy hit about a sentient robot named Johnny 5 may be suspect — a month before Pixar’s annual windfall, Wall-E (about a robot who looks suspiciously like Johnny 5) — it doesn’t diminish its appeal and staying power. The pic starred a pre-punchline Steve Guttenberg as Dr. Newton Crosby, an AI pioneer whose work is used by the military to create five prototype soldier robots. When he learns that one of his creations has become self-aware after being struck by lightning, he teams with animal lover Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy) and Crosby’s Indian assistant Ben Jabituya (Fisher Stevens) to protect its human rights. Hijinks ensue (and zany hijinks will ensue if the Weinsteins cast Ben Stiller for their planned 2010 remake).
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May 19, 2008
INDIANA JONES: THE ADVENTURE COLLECTION [PG/PG-13]
The words “double dipping” may bring a smile to the face of an 8-year-old who thinks he’s going to get a chocolate-covered treat, but to even the most casual of DVD collectors, those words are usually used to express the betrayal felt by the regular “up yours!” from one of the movie studios. Double dipping is the practice of repackaging a movie or movies with new bonus features or additional footage and selling it to the same established fan base that bought it when it was new. New Line did it with Lord Of The Rings. MGM has done it a number of times with the James Bond movies. And how many times have Star Wars fans forked over good money to re-purchase their beloved childhood memories every time George Lucas wants to buy another horsey for his Skywalker Ranch?
Appropriately, the trilogy of Indiana Jones movies that Lucas produced with pal Steven Spielberg between 1981 and 1989 have been given the double-dip treatment, and fans who preemptively eBayed their original issue 2003 box sets are going to want to go back online and try to buy them back after seen how lean Paramount’s latest issue of the three movies really is.
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ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE [NR]
Before Ken Burns was the renowned documentarian Ken Burns, there was Tony Palmer, providing exhaustive coverage on a variety of subjects to television audiences. His filmography over the last 40 years is impressive, including topics as diverse as the U.S. space program (The Space Movie), opera legend Maria Callas (La Divina: A Portrait) and one truly bizarre pairing of two incredible phenomena — the Third Reich and the Fab Four (All This And World War II). Upon the urging of pal John Lennon in the mid-70s, Palmer set out to document the progress and significance of popular music to date. The result was 17 episodes of Very Serious Discussion, told by not only learned scholars of the day, but many of the artists who made 20th century what it was. Over 30 years after it was first broadcast, it has been fully remastered and is finally available for home viewing, and boy, is it one doozy of a box set.
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May 7, 2008
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May 1, 2008
SILK [R]
No one who saw this year’s Best Picture nominee Atonement could fail to be moved by its stunning images and intricately composed shots. Whatever its faults, the film painted picture after startling picture, which makes its snubbing for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Direction for helmer Joe Wright all the more inexplicable. Atonement was able to move forward under the strength of its plot, but the same cannot be said for last year’s Silk, a period piece adaptation more pretty than it is moving. Still, period-drama fans will appreciate the beauty of the film for what it is, if uncoupled from action.
The film focuses on the courtship and relationship of French silkworm hunter Hervé Joncour (Michael Pitt of Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and his wife, the schoolteacher Hélène (Keira Knightley, taking a more passive role in this movie than she did in Atonement). Hervé left the army in order to marry Hélène, allowing himself to be courted by local silk merchant Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) into going on a series of missions to replenish the town’s supply of silkworms. As disease strikes litter after litter of the worms, Hervé is forced to leave his wife for longer and longer stretches, culminating in an overland journey to Japan, where he deals with a local warlord (Koji Yakusho) and becomes infatuated with his wife (Sei Ashina). As the political situation in Japan is destabilized, Hervé fears never seeing his mistress again, even while Hélène despairs over her inability to bear children.
The Chocolat meets Cold Mountain machinations of the narrative are driven by Pitt’s slow, dreamlike narration over gorgeous shots of foggy hills and lush gardens. Despite their inexplicable American accents, Pitt and Knightley have very good chemistry and make their continent-spanning love affair believable, even up to the overwhelmingly predictable finale. It’s not perfect, but some of its images are curiously indelible.••• –Ellen Wernecke
Ellen Wernecke is a contributor to EDGE, and her work has appeared in The Providence Journal and Publishers Weekly. She lives in New York City.
April 20, 2008
ALIEN NATION: ULTIMATE MOVIE COLLECTION [NR]
It would seem that intelligent and well-written science fiction series like “Alien Nation” (1989-90), based on “V” creator Kenneth Johnson’s 1988 sci-noir film that starred James Caan as an L.A. cop paired with Mandy Patinkin’s alien “Newcomer” for a partner, are naturally short-lived. Ask any fan of “Buffy” papa Joss Whedon’s half-season of the space western, “Firefly,” which network Fox also didn’t know what to do with. A testament to the legs of Johnson’s creation was the fact that four years after cancellation, the stronger and more experienced Fourth Network brought the show back in the form of five TV movies, all gathered in this compact but meaty 2-disc box set. But don’t let the slimness fool you. Each movie comes with a full-length commentary, and there are not only four making-of featurettes, but also the warm-and-fuzzy 2007 reunion taped at Johnson’s house, entitled “A Family Gathering - A Retrospective” (see below for additional special features).
The five movies - Dark Horizon (1994), Body and Soul (1995), Millennium (1996), The Enemy Within (1996) and The Udara Legacy (1997) - pick up where the series left off, and detail the further exploits of Detective Matthew Sikes (Gary Graham) and his Newcomer partner George Francisco (Eric Pierpoint). Like the series, each movie is alternately fun and serious, is heavily character-driven and explores - with mixed results - the Big Issues of Racism, Bigotry and Immigration. Even when the story lines are not fresh, the alien culture becomes less alien with each film, until the Newcomers drinking sour milk to get drunk and dining on raw rodent meat is no longer a novelty, instead being just something that these bald, spotty-headed people do (and their mating rituals are even hotter than Klingon sex). Although the metaphorical posturing is occasionally heavy-handed (like Johnson’s Holocaust parable “V” was) the writing is still smarter than the boilerplate buddy cop shows that “Alien Nation,” at first glance, resembles. Sci-fi fans aching after the loss of “Battlestar Galactica” should rent the 22 episodes of the series and these 5 films, and fans of the show can presently pick both sets up for under $50 on Amazon.com (no endorsement implied). –Robert Newton
*SPECIAL FEATURES: Kenneth Johnson commentary on all 5 features; photo galleries; gag reels; 4 making-of featurettes; 25-minute reunion featurette “A Family Gathering - A Retrospective”
March 18, 2008
SOUTHLAND TALES [R]
It’s a proven fact that if you bait a hook with a deliciously dark treat like Donnie Darko, fans will rabidly clamor for more. When news first broke that the 2001 cult film’s director, Richard Kelly, would direct a Matrix-like sci-fi ensemble piece about the end of America, fans got all tingly, not having been sated by the Kelly-penned Kiera Knightley action dud, Domino. When 2006 came and went with only the Cannes crowd peeping mysteries of Southland Tales, those formerly giddy fans started to grumble, “When are they going to release it?” A year-and-a-half later, those same fans will finally get to see it, changing their tunes and asking, “Why are they going to release it?”
Dwayne Johnson, dropping the “The Rock” moniker for the first time (perhaps out of embarrassment after having seen the film), plays a movie action hero who stumbles upon a conspiracy to control the world. Another wrestler – Roddy Piper – made a movie with John Carpenter in 1988 called They Live; it was smart and succinct and didn’t pretend to be anything more than an ironic, “Twilight Zone” styled entertainment. Kelly’s bloated, overreaching indulgence, though, is like a gin-soaked subway busker shamelessly seeking praise for getting through a verse of “My Way” without a mistake, or a child who has graduated to Crayolas after and extended painting-with-poo period. It’s that much of a jalopy, and it’s an insult to endure.
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