Mesmerized (1984) Review

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(More customer reviews)The premise for the film is intriguing. It is based upon the Victoria Thompson murder trial that took place in New Zealand during the late nineteenth century. Victoria is raised is some sort of orphanage from birth. At the age of seventeen, it is arranged for her to marry Mr. Thompson, a weird, older man whom she has never before met. She dutifully marries him, and when she comes of age goes to live with him in his home, which is run by his two creepy servants. Victoria soon discovers just how weird her husband really is. She ultimately takes the bull by the horns and finds herself standing trial for his murder by the time she is nineteen years old.
Jodie Foster places the role of Victoria Thompson, as if she were doing so under duress. She takes a character that is potentially sympathetic and makes her merely pathetic, leaving the viewer cold. John Lithgow fares somewhat better, as he does a credible job playing the weird Mr. Thompson, doing the best he can with the material with which he has to work. The film, unfortunately, is choppy and poorly edited, the story so muddled as to be nearly incomprehensible. The direction seems to be almost nonexistant, as it looks like it is every man for himself.
This film was originally released under the title, "Mesmerized". Word about the film must have traveled fast, as bad news so often does. When the DVD was released, it was retitled as "Shocked". The only thing shocking about this film is that it was ever released in the first place. It is a complete travesty.
The DVD itself has no meaningful special features of which to speak. The quality of the film is very poor, grainy and fuzzy. Even the cover art of the DVD has nothing to do with the film. It is simply a photograph of a contemporary Jodie Foster. All in all, this DVD is not worth buying. The only reason this film was not rated one star was due to John Lithgow's performance. If you are not a John Lithgow fan, deduct one star.

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One Six Left Review

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(More customer reviews)Having viewed One Six Right on Discovery HD Theater, I decided to get both the HD-DVD version of this film along with this "companion DVD."
However, unlike the beautifully produced original, this one is quite a let-down. While the making of One Six Right is interesting in its own right, I'm not sure if it warranted its own companion DVD, at least not in its present form.
While the interviews with Brian Terwilliger and others about the difficulties of making the film were interesting (among them, Los Angeles World Airports which owns VNY did not originally cooperate with the project), I would have liked to have seen more interviews with the pilots seen in the original. Terwilliger himself said the interviews alone consisted of 80-100 hours of raw footage, and this DVD would have been a great opportunity to include interesting parts of these interviews that had to be cut out of the original for brevity's sake.
Three of this DVD's own extras, "The Joyride", "Into the Clouds", and "Movie Montage" are already featured on the HD-DVD version with the added bonus of being in high definition, unlike the companion which is standard definition only. In fact, the extras portion of the HD-DVD version of One Six Right has better and more content than this companion DVD does.
At best, this DVD should be included with the standard definition version of the original as a two-disc set, and whatever footage isn't already duplicated in the HD-DVD version be integrated into that.

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Snakes on a Plane (Widescreen New Line Platinum Series) (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)Look, if I wanted to watch one of the greatest movies of all time... "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather" or "Jean de Florette" or "Airplane!", I would have stayed home with my DVDs. No. If I wanted subtle man-versus-vermin psychological horror, with organ music, I would have stayed home and listened to William Conrad as "Leiningen vs. The Ants".
No. No, no, no! I wanted to go out on a Friday night and I wanted to see snakes on a plane. Mo'fo' snakes on a mo'fo' plane. And that is exactly what I got.
The problems with this movie are very few. Number one, the main character in this movie is a surfer dude but the movie was shot in British Columbia. That's not a problem. Good second unit photography will have you convinced that you're on Waikiki Beach, and you didn't come to this movie to see surfer dudes, anyway. You wanted to see a CGI plane battling turbulence, and really vicious CGI snakes.
Number two, it takes about 20 to 30 minutes for the snakes to get out into the cabin and start rearing and biting. That's not a problem either. Make a list of every delicate body part you'd expect a snake to bite, and once the snakes get out, game on. You're waiting for the big python to show up? Well, that's at least an hour wait, but once he's out, game on.
Number three, it takes Samuel L. Jackson so long to drop That Line that you almost wonder if he's not ever going to say it. Again, not a problem.
Look, this movie was probably first-drafted in screenwriting class. The writers care way too much about their reluctant FBI witness to a mob hit scenario, when the audience just wants snakes. Snakes on a plane. And then when we finally hit the airport, you can do a head count of the passengers and figure out who's going to die, how, and when. There's the stuffy British business traveler (I had him pegged as the first to die), the hot-to-trot sexy young couple -- the girl's in pink thong panties, the aging flight attendant on her last flight, and the ambiguously gay male steward. Finally, the overweight comedy co-pilot with the Texas accent. The script writes itself.
But it's got snakes. Snakes on a plane. If you took the time to come to this page and rate the movie one or two stars, you clearly didn't realize what movie you were buying tickets to go see and you shouldn't have been there in the first place. If you want to see your awesomely bad snakes on a plane picture, this is literally the only movie to go see.
Sequels: Snakes on a Train. Snakes in Portland, Maine. Snakes in the Drain. Snakes in the Fast Lane. Snakes in the Cold November Rain. Snakes in a Music Video with House of Pain. Snakes in the Batter's Box with Ferris Fain. And finally... Snakes on a Train II. Bring it on!

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On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who's a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes.DVD Features:Audio CommentaryDeleted ScenesFeaturetteGag ReelMusic VideoTV SpotTheatrical Trailer

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Flightplan (Widescreen Edition) (2005) Review

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(More customer reviews)Kyle Pratt and her daughter Julia board a plane in Germany to bring the body of their beloved husband/father to his final resting place in the US. After a short nap, Kyle wakes only to discover her daughter is missing from her seat. After searching on her own, she seeks help from the crew, but none of the passengers remember seeing Julia. After further inquiries, it is disclosed that Julia wasn't even listed as traveling on the flight. Everyone writes Kyle off as being in mourning, and even unstable. For just a moment Kyle starts to believe she may be losing it, but then stands firm. Julia is her daughter, and she would not make this kind of mistake regarding something so important. As Kyle begins her own search, it shocks everyone to find out that she is in fact one of the propulsion engineers of this plane and will be searching every inch to locate her daughter.
At first I couldn't believe that none of the passengers would admit to seeing Julia, but then as they are interviewed, it is amazing how many were too busy with families, business, etc. to really notice or pay attention. I expect it is pretty much how we all are. As Kyle's sanity is brought into question, we start to wonder who is right. Did we really see Julia? Jodie Foster is so strong in this movie. I like that she is proactive instead of reactive.

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Academy Award(R) winner Jodie Foster (Best Actress, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 1991) gives an outstanding performance in the heart-pumping action thriller FLIGHTPLAN. Flying at 40,000 feet in a state-of-the art aircraft that she helped design, Kyle Pratt's (Foster) 6-year-old daughter Julia vanishes without a trace. Or did she? No one on the plane believes Julia was ever onboard. And now Kyle, desperate and alone, can only count on her own wits to unravel the mystery and save her daughter. From the producer of APOLLO 13 and A BEAUTIFUL MIND, FLIGHTPLAN is an intense, suspense-filled thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire flight.

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Flight 93: The Movie (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)This fine A&E reenactment of one slice of the confusing events of September 11, 2001 succeeds in showing the combination of ad hoc citizen response and highly professional management that greeted the high-speed unfolding of those incomprehensible events.
The grippingly eerie music of the soundtrack frames the portraits of normalcy that open the film. Early on, we are shown the names of many of Flight 93's passengers when the camera focuses on the processing of their boarding passes by a Newark flight agent. From then on, we see them as real people who find themselves the protagonists of a seemingly unreal attack.
When it becomes clear that Flight 93 is 'obviously not planning on landing', the passengers - with the encouragement or acquiescence of grieving family on the ground - do what they have to do to 'regain control of the plane'.
Flight 93 suggests the possibility that orders were given - or would soon have been given - to take the flight down as it made its erratic way towards Washington. This reviewer - a frequent flyer - applauds discussion of this possibility and believes such action should be taken in the event we again find ourselves in this predicament.
Flight 93 is not an easy film to watch. Yet it is salutary to do so, for a moment to imagine the terror experienced by civilians caught in a war in the airspace above a peaceful land, to see that evil *and* fear coexist in the eyes of the people who do such things, and to remember that sometimes the most dire of circumstances squeeze heroism to the surface of quite ordinary lives.

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Tells the story of the people on United flight 93, one of the four hijacked planes on September 11, 2001, and how they foiled their hijackers' terrorist plot.Genre: Feature Film-DramaRating: UNRelease Date: 1-SEP-2006Media Type: DVD

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