Trapped Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)As a producer on this film, I have a unique perspective. I knew the script, I saw the film being shot, and I watched pieces of the editing process. However, it wasn't until we screened the film for an audience that I really got a feeling for the film. The script read like a murder mystery, but as the film played out on screen - there were a number of scenes where the audience ended up laughing. That's when I realized that although meant to be a murder/mystery type of film, it comes across more like a black comedy.
There are some great one liners in the film. 1) Where were you yesterday morning? Wait a minute, it's coming back to me now....I was in bed....with your mother. 2) I've been doing this long enough, that I can smell a murderer, and Mr....You Stink! 3) Sorry? I think we're a little late for sorry! - look at her, she's dead!
When I watch the film in it's entirety, I'm reminded of other black comedy films, such as "The Ice Harvest" with John Cusack and "Fargo".
Give it a try, and all of us at Winter Morning Pictures hope that you enjoy it!
Mike Hamilton

Click Here to see more reviews about: Trapped

Trapped is the story of a high-stakes business swindle that involves financial deviousness, emotional blackmail, sexual deception, psychological coercion, fraud, forgery, extortion, intimidation, and ultimately murder. As friends and family celebrate the successful career of Edward Roth Hutton (Corbin Bernsen), and the closing of a very important business contract for Hutton Industries, we learn that far from being his loyal senior partner, Tighe `Ty` MacArthur (Tony Bingham) is not only sleeping with Hutton's wife, Margot Schugart Hutton (Dana Hardy), but is also conspiring with Margot and a shadowy compatriot, Liam (Jeff Carpenter), to murder his boss and mentor, Hutton.

Click here for more information about Trapped

Read More...

Gungrave: The Complete Series Box Set Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Gungrave tells the tale of two best friends put on the path of their own destruction. Brandon and Harry are two street hoods who join the mafia and begin the climb the ladder, and their ascension makes a mark on everyone around them.
Gungrave is a noir, mafia story with an anime twist. It deals with the internal politics of the mob at first, before it becomes something personal for our main characters. Despite being in the business of killing, the Millenion syndicate has an unbreakable law, "Protect, and never betray the family." The "Code of Iron" drives the entire anime.
Gungrave is not a shounen. It's closer to Cowboy Bebop and Trigun at certain points. There are no bombastic characters in the mafia. These are hired killers that disassociate themselves from their dirty business. The first half of the series focuses on Bradon's, the main character, memories of the time before he died. The anime twist are the horrors that unchecked ambition created, that Brandon must fight in the second half of the series. Despite being centered around organized crime, the violence doesn't feel gratuitous, there is no drug use, and matters of love (of any kind) are relatively tame.
I definitely think Gungrave is worth a second look. If you liked Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, give this a shot. You might be pleasantly surprised.
I gaze at that gray haired hulk and think, "Beyong the Grave" was once a man. A man named Brandon Heat.I want to mention that you might want to skip the first episode of the series. It's supposed to entice you to watch more, but most might consider it misleading and confusing. Episode 2 is a much better place to start, IMO.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Gungrave: The Complete Series Box Set

Click here for more information about Gungrave: The Complete Series Box Set

Read More...

Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension) (1950) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This collection is the DVD debut for all ten of these films, and I don't even know if any of them are available on VHS. I've only seen them thanks to Turner Classic Movies playing them at odd hours, along with other cable channels presenting them over the years. They are excellent but not well remembered film noirs. I would rate them all between 4 and 5 stars. I thought I would list their descriptions, stars, and special features below, not in any particular order:
Crime Wave: (1954) Starring Sterling Hayden and Gene Nelson. An ex-con is trying to go straight, but circumstances force him into crime one more time. Gene Nelson plays a hard-nosed cop. Note a young Charles Bronson playing a minor role.
Commentary by James Ellroy and Eddie Muller
Crime Wave: The City is Dark
Theatrical trailer
Decoy: (1946) Starring Gene Gillie and Edward Norris. Sci-Fi meets Film Noir in this story of a woman who will stop at nothing to retrieve 400K stolen in a robbery. Gillie would make Barbara Stanwyck proud as she chews up man after man in her quest.
Commentary by Stanley Rubin and Glenn Erickson
Decoy: A Map to Nowhere
Theatrical trailer
Illegal: (1955) Starring Edward G. Robinson and Nina Foch. Robinson plays a D.A. whose upwardly mobile career faces a train wreck when a man he convicted is executed and then found to be innocent. After he hits bottom he resurrects his legal career, this time as a criminal attorney. The plot can be hard to follow, but Robinson's performance is great.
Commentary by Nina Foch and Patricia King Hanson
Illegal: Marked for Life
Behind the Cameras: Edward G. Robinson
Theatrical trailer
The Big Steal: (1949) Starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. The lead duo from "Out of the Past" trade wisecracks and insults in a cross-country chase over a suitcase full of stolen money. For once, Mitchum is actually not the bad guy. Almost too much fun to be considered Film Noir.
Commentary by Richard B. Jewell
The Big Steal: Look Behind You
They Live By Night: (1948) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. The story of an escaped convict trying to live a normal life with the help of his girlfriend. Granger plays the convict who isn't entirely bad, but not entirely reformed either.
Commentary by Farley Granger and Eddie Muller
They Live By Night: The Twisted Road
Theatrical trailer
Side Street: (1950) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. Granger plays a struggling husband trying to make ends meet when he spots some cash lying around in an office one day. He takes the money, but finds out it is much more than he thought. When he tries to return the money, he gets caught up in a murder mystery. Hitchcock-like in its twists and turns.
Commentary by Richard Schickel
Side Street: Where Temptation Lurks
Theatrical trailer
Where Danger Lives: (1950) Starring Robert Mitchum and Faith Domergue. The plot is somewhat unbelievable, even for Film Noir, but Mitchum gives a strong performance that makes it worthwhile. Mitchum plays a doctor who becomes taken with a patient. Due to a concussion, his judgement becomes clouded and he believes he has murdered the patient's husband. He and the woman go on the run, have some strange adventures, and then Mitchum realizes what kind of illness his new girlfriend was being treated for in the first place.
Commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini
Where Danger Lives: White Rose for Julie
Theatrical Trailer
Tension: (1950) Starring Richard Basehart and Audrey Trotter. Basehart plays a mild-mannered man whose salary and disposition are not enough for his wife. She leaves him for a tough and wealthy man. Why Basehart would want her back is anyone's guess, but he does and plans to murder his wife's new boyfriend. The tough guy is murdered, but not by Basehart's character.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward with Audrey Trotter
Tension: Who's Guilty Now?
Theatrical Trailer
Act of Violence: (1948) Starring Van Heflin and Robert Ryan. Van Heflin plays a family man trying to adapt to life after the war and internment in a prison camp. Enter Robert Ryan, who plays a man with Terminator-like determination in his quest to murder Heflin's character for something that happened during their joint stay in the German prison camp.
Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper
Act of Violence: Dealing With the Devil
Theatrical Trailer
Mystery Street: (1950) Starring Ricardo Montalban and Sally Forrest. Montalban plays a detective who, working with a forensics expert, tries to solve a murder case and exonerate the lone circumstantial suspect. One of the first films I know of to use science to help solve a murder decades before DNA made this aspect of crime solving so interesting and important.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward
Mystery Street: Murder at Harvard
Theatrical Trailer

Click Here to see more reviews about: Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension) (1950)

Ex-World War II pilot Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a respected contractor and family man. Then his troubled, gimp-legged bombardier (Robert Ryan) shows up with a gun and a score to settle. Perhaps neither man is what he seems to be as director Fred Zinnemann (The Day of the Jackal) guides a searing Act of Violence, "the first postwar noir to take a challenging look at the ethics of men in combat" (Eddie Muller, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir). Murder lives on Mystery Street. John Sturges (The Great Escape) directs a revealing-for-the-era procedural about a Boston cop (Ricardo Montalban) solving a whodunit with the help of a Harvard forsensic expert (Bruce Bennett). Welcome to CSI Noir.

Get 32% OFF

Click here for more information about Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension) (1950)

Read More...