Two years ago, Universal released a three-disc set called The High School Reunion Collection. That collection included “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Weird Science,” complete with all of the songs originally in each movie (ask anyone who ran out and bought “Sixteen Candles,” and they’ll tell you: half the music was replaced by crap filler). Now, Universal has released a set called The Brat Pack Movies and Music Collection. In this collection we have…”Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Weird Science,” PLUS an eight-song CD that contains songs from those movies, along with songs from “Pretty in Pink,” “Ferris…
Author: David Medsker
When talking with Brandon Lang, the first thing that’s readily apparent is that the man is not short on confidence. But if you’re going to make a living handicapping college and pro games, you better be sure of yourself. In fact, he was so sure that his life story would make for a great movie that he caddied at the Riviera Golf Club for three years in order to get closer to Hollywood moguls at all levels. The gig paid off; last October, Universal released “Two for the Money” (it hits DVD on January 17), starring Matthew McConaughey as Lang.…
“Casanova” is absolutely better than I expected. It’s funny, clever, charming, sweet, and just screwball enough to be plausibly zany without being ridiculous. Well, okay, until the third act, where it just goes batshit crazy, but up to that point, the movie is everything that well done romantic comedies should be, and then some. Comparisons to “Shakespeare in Love” are inevitable, and while it isn’t better than that, it’s not exactly trying to be, regardless of the myriad of similar themes. Heath Ledger plays the title character, the infamous libertine who bedded more damsels than both Paul Stanley and Gene…
“The Producers” is a nonstop laugh riot, provided that a) you have not seen Mel Brooks’ 1968 original, b) you have not seen the smash hit play on Broadway, or any of its touring counterparts, and c) you think flaming homosexuals are really, really funny. Between this and the remake of “The Longest Yard,” it’s hard to tell which movie sends gay rights father back in time. The movie’s only moment of subtlety lies in having an openly gay stage performer play the womanizing lead role. As an adaptation of a musical, it is unbelievably faithful. So faithful, in fact,…
It’s curious that “The Ringer” sat on the studio’s shelves for two years before seeing the light of day. The only explanation I can find is that the studio didn’t know how to market the movie to the public, and that notion, that it takes two years to figure out how to prepare the world for a movie about someone rigging the Special Olympics, is the most offensive thing about “The Ringer.” The movie itself is quite harmless and, like most Farrelly Brothers projects (they serve as the movie’s producers), the movie’s heart is always in the right place. The…
When we were contacted about doing an interview with a Playboy Playmate that’s starring in the brand new “American Pie Presents: Band Camp” (available on DVD December 26), we felt a lot like the kid in “Animal House” after the girl with the bunny ears and tail flies through his window, and he shouts, “Thank you, God!” to the heavens. Then they said, “Great, she’ll call you on Friday,” and we died a small death. A phone interview. Sigh. Still, the Playmate, one Angela Little (Miss August 1998), couldn’t have been sweeter, and as we soon discovered, along with her…
It seems like such an innocent time in retrospect. In the fall of 1993, when the box office champions were digital dinosaurs, run-down cowboys, and animated genies, there came a little crime movie called “True Romance.” Packed to the gills with big name actors (along with a few that would make their names in the years to come), the movie came and went at the box office in the blink of an eye. There are several reasons for this. The movie’s director, Tony Scott (“Top Gun,” “Man on Fire”), was on a streak of directing some supremely bad movies (1990’s…
Those of you who frequent our Coming Soon pages may recall that the official Bullz-Eye stance on “Aeon Flux” was that we were concerned at first about this movie, but after seeing the trailer, concluded that the movie could be a lot better than we thought it would be. By ‘we,’ I really mean me, since I write all of those bits. And I’m not too proud to admit that I couldn’t have been more wrong. “Aeon Flux” is the most unintentionally funny movie I have seen all year, the kind of movie where sexy assassins sleep in bikini type…
“Rent” is the kind of musical where dead broke people, who have just discovered that their power has been turned off by their landlords on Christmas Eve, take the screenplays that they have presumably been working on their entire lives and set them aflame in order to stay warm, only to dump the trash can that holds the screenplay’s flames – not the ashes, but the very flames that were created to keep them from freezing to death – onto the street below. The movie also takes a massive leap of faith in asking the audience to buy that this…
Mike Newell stepped into the director’s chair for “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and instantly found himself surrounded by house elves, a hack reporter, a mean-ass dragon, the evil Lord Voldemort and, even scarier, legions of “Harry Potter” fanatics just waiting for him to screw it all up. The fourth installment in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series was miles above and beyond anything the “Potter” faithful had seen up to that point, both in terms of volume (long) and tone (dark). But never mind who’s in the director’s chair: is Steve Kloves, the franchise screenwriter, able to adapt…