Horror (2005 - 2011)

Movies: 2.5/5
Video: 3/5
Audio: 4/5
Extras: .5/5
Overall: 2.5/5

Movies:

2:13 (2008): 4/5

2:13 tells the story of a cop (writer and co-producer of the film, Mark Thompson), who is going after a serial killer who leaves a particular type of evidence to the crime scenes. At the same time, the detective is dealing with his own problems after his ex (Teri Polo, The Arrival and Meet the Parents) tries to re-connect with him. As the group gets closer to discovering the identity of the killer, they might have all ready know who it is...

If you have watched this film. does it play kind of like a Saw film? Does it also seem to have that same style of color saturation to a Saw film? Well, the film was co-produced and shot by David A. Armstrong who has worked on the first six Saw films. It appeared fairly evident as soon as the film starts. I really liked that they were able to capture that look and feel, especially since it's been a good three years since we've had a Saw film. I give the film a 4/5.

Gingerdead Man 3 (2011): 2.5/5

For what it was, a parody of numerous films ranging from Saturday Night Live, Carrie, and Silence of the Lambs; Gingerdead Man 3 is a slow paced horror film with a few laughs. Gingerdead Man 3 starts with a Silence of the Lambs parody with Gingerdead Man basically being like Hannibal Lector. Animal rights activists break in and think that all of the captive killer foods are animals. One thing leads to another and Gingerdead Man is now freed and is on the lamb. As he runs through the prison, he hears two scientists talking about a time machine that can send food back through time. He escapes and finds himself in 1976. Gingerdead Man then finds himself in between a parody of Saturday Night Live and Carrie.

The movie has a few laughs but the pacing is slow. When there is laughs, it is funny. One of the biggest flaws in the film, and slight spoilers, is that people are able to use this food time machine. Two kids finds the remote as soon as the Gingerdead Man drops it and are then sucked through time. The women were nice to look at it. I have a strong suspicion that there was a porn star present on set. She's in the background and her face is barely visible and whenever it cuts to a dance scene, whenever she's about to come into the shot, it cuts to another shot. And to point her out, she's wearing like a green jump/bodysuit; not the girl in the green dress, but suit. I give the movie a 2.5/5.

Hoboken Hollow (2005) : 2.5/5

Based on the true story of the so-called "Texas Slave Ranch" which went down in the 80's, the story deals with a group of people wrangling up hitchhikers across Texas and turning them into slaves. If you try to leave, you will be executed. In this modern day telling, Travis (Jason Connery, Alone in the Dark II) is a soldier who's lost everything after being deployed to Afghanistan. While out fighting the war, one of his best friends is killed by insurgents and returns home and soon heads out across the country after his wife leaves him. At the same time he is out, three other poor souls are taken into the ranch where they might never get out.

For what this film was, I thought it was average. If you want to watch something around the lines of this and enjoy it, go for House of 1,000 Corpses or it's sequel, The Devil's Rejects. This movie was also made around the same time C. Thomas Howell made his come back after being hospitalized and coming close to dying because of his appendix. I think for this being one of his comeback films, I think he really did good as a neutral character in the film. Michael Madsen also pops up in this for a good five minutes and his this horribly taped on mustache, but just disappears halfway through the film. And Dennis Hopper shows up for a good five minutes throughout the film as the local deputy. Hoboken Hollow tries, but at the end of the day, I give the film a 2.5/5.

Keepsake (2008): 1/5

Janine's car breaks down. She calls for a tow truck to come and get her. The man, named Earl, arrives but cannot speak because his tongue is gone. While searching for a pen in his truck, she comes across the driver's license for the real Earl and tries to make a run for it. Earl captures her and handcuffs her to a bathroom stall while a police officer comes across the empty tow truck. Earl kills the officer and takes her to a barn and keeps Janine there as his prisoner.

In my honest opinion, if I could sum this film up in one word; awful. The pacing is slow as hell and the film has these dream sequences like it's an episode of the television show Lost. And these dream sequences are pointless to the plot because of this plot twist that takes the film on a sharp left turn. I hated it. This movie was 105 minutes too long. If this would have been about 80 minutes, I would have probably liked it more. 1/5.

Killjoy 3 (2010): 3.5/5

In this third installment of the Killjoy franchise by Full Moon; Killjoy is brought back to life by a professor who bails on the ritual process. A group of college kids are house sitting for the professor when a magical mirror to Killjoy's world is brought to his household. The kids place the mirror on his wall and are soon sucked into his world of hell.

For a 76 minute horror-comedy, it works. The comedic aspects of the film worked really well for me. It's a horror film that doesn't play for the safe gags. There's blood and guts and nudity, especially with one of Killjoy's minions being just an actress, naked, and covered in paint. For a movie with a shorter time length, I give Killjoy 3 a 3.5/5.

Roman (2006): .5/5

Roman tells the story of man who is mentally unstable who falls for a girl (Kristen Bell). Once Roman (writer of the film, Lucky McKee) gets her attention, he takes her back to his place and ultimately ends up killing her. While keeping her body in his bathroom, Roman falls for another tenant in his apartment building named Eva (Nectar Rose). Eva's obsession is talking about death. Is Roman able to keep his love for Eva going with her obsession or let her go?

This film is GOD AWFUL! I do not think that I have ever sat through something that I really wanted to truly turn off. But, for reviewing this release, I had to sit through it. This and Tree of Life and Crazy/Beautiful are the worst damn movies that I have ever sat through. Lucky McKee as Roman is an uninteresting sad piece of crap that I couldn't care for. Kristen Bell must have done this movie as a favor for someone because I don't think that she would have really done something like this. Angela Bettis should stick to acting instead of directing.

Just everything about this film, I downright loathe. This film is filled with examples of filmmaking  dos and don'ts. If your film has shots that go on for far too long, that's a no-no. If your shot composition has your actress with tons of dead space above their heads, that's a big no-no. When Roman is strangling Kristen Bell's character, there's so much dead space as he's killing her at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. It's just atrocious. .5/5

Video:

2:13 (2008): 4/5

Shot on 35mm and presented in 1.78:1, 2:13 has a very beautiful HD presentation. Grain is present throughout with an instance or two of print damage that you will not really catch unless you have your eyes glued to the screen. There was some weird macro with the black levels present whenever the group of detectives go to Dwight Yoakam's sex shop in the film. Other than that, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the same transfer on the German Blu-ray release. 4/5.

Gingerdead Man 3 (2011): 2.5/5

Considering this was shot in High Definition, Gingerdead Man 3 has an average looking transfer. Whenever looking at the bitrates, the video stays in the mid-10's in the Mbps; which means that the datarate is slightly higher than a DVD. I don't know if that's just how the transfer was handled by Full Moon whenever they handed the transfer off to Echo Bridge. Towards the end of the film in the final fifteen minutes whenever the massacre happens, there's some interlacing which occurs in a few shots that's makes the video look a little rough. I give the transfer a 2.5/5.

Hoboken Hollow (2005): 3/5

Shot in the early days of High Definition, this film must have had a nice budget. Picture is nice and clear pretty much throughout. There is an exception to this as I spotted a few shots in the film, possibly re-shoots, that looked like standard definition footage blown up to HD. This was mainly in the opening chase sequence in the film where two men escaping. You'll be able to notice the shots when it switches from HD to SD. And then there's a shot where someone is looking through a hole in wood shed where you can tell that as well looked like SD footage. Also, throughout the last half hour or so when Travis is freed and it takes place at night, there's this nice sized white vertical line on the right side of the image. It is pretty distracting and it is present until the last five minutes of the film. But, the image is nice to look at, I give the visual presentation a 3/5.

Keepsake (2008): 3.5/5

Keepsake sports a very nice high definition transfer. I wonder if Echo Bridge compressed this video transfer down any as the bitrate kept around 21 kbps throughout the film. Only problems I have is that the dream sequences have a very drab and a little too much grain to the image. There was an outdoor sequence towards the end when Janine is outside and the image looked like it could have used some sort of color correction to it. Other than that, I give the transfer a 3.5/5.

Killjoy 3 (2010): 4/5

You would think by the opening studio logo shot of Full Moon Pictures that this would have a horrible transfer, but, Full Moon proved me wrong. The transfer is pretty flawless for an HD transfer. There is a few slight things here and there with the effects shots not being completely cleaned up which brings the video transfer down. A character gets decapitated, as he stands there and falls, there's a white box that falls with the body. Other than that, I give the visual performance 4/5.

Roman (2006): .5/5

Roman is a film that will never look beautiful in Hi-Def. The film was shot with a basic DV camera and it shows. When we have the first shots of Roman who is sitting in his apartment, you see how God awful the video presentation is in HD. The flaws of blowing up a Standard Definition source to High Definition show throughout the whole entire film. When Roman is out burying parts of Kristen Bell's character in a swamp like environment, the color is vibrant, but the definition is horrid! .5/5.

Audio: 4/5

Echo Bridge has given all six of the films a nice DTS-HD MA 2.0 audio track. Couldn't really find a problem with these audio presentations. I had no problems regarding turning up my sound on my television. They all sounded great. 4/5.

Extras: .5/5

Only extras included is a digital copy of all six films via Vudu. I love how Echo Bridge is pandering to Wal-Mart with all of their recent Blu-ray releases because it's printed on the artwork itself that these are "Blu-ray + Vudu Combo Pack". Maybe Wal-Mart can license out their films to Echo Bridge and we can have all of those crappy "FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT IS BACK" crap shoved onto one disc. Despicable. I give the extras a .5/5.

Overall: 2.5/5

You can pick this up for $8 at Wal-Mart. Considering that I am giving this set a 2.5/5, I can recommend it if you love indie horror films. 2:13 and Killjoy 3 are probably the best films in this set. If you're a Kristen Bell fan, go else where, these are not the droids that you are looking for. 2.5/5.

High-Powered Action Pack: "No Code of Conduct" (1998)

Movie: 3/5
Video: 2.5/5
Audio: 3/5
Extras: 0/5
Overall: 2/5

No Code of Conduct, you know, if you told me that Bret Michaels directed a movie I would laugh. But apparently in the 90's he made two films and then we now see him as a wreck trying to find love or something. Not to say that Charlie "Charles" Sheen is doing any better with his "winning"! However, with this film, it is an interesting mix. I feel Bret did a good job with the film but at the end of the day this is still an average police drama.

After an undercover cop, played by Bret Michaels who looks like he stumbled across a drug deal gone wrong in a back alley, get killed. His superior, played by Charlie's father Martin Sheen, is asked to come along to track a drug trafficking ring as back up. His son Jake, played by Charlie Sheen, stumbles across the drug trafficking while hanging out with his ex-partner (Mark Dacascos) who is out busting men looking for prostitutes. His ex-partner's partner gets killed and the vehicle the drug runners are using gets shot out. Once they get it in their possession, they learn what's so important about the van.

I am sure in the 90's when this was released, it was probably considered junk or something made for a quick buck. I honestly do not remember this film at all and seeing it came out in the late 90's, I should have knew about this but didn't. I had only learned about it last year while Charlie was going on his whole; "Tiger Blood-Winning-Mumbo-Jumbo"! And also learned that Bret Michaels had directed and co-wrote the film with Sheen and several others. Considering the twelve years that have passed since it's release, I will say that it is bit above average. Mark Dacascos always gives a great performance; especially going from the European great Le Pacte Des Loups to the Asylum's mockbuster cash-in I Am Omega. Seeing this film makes me miss Sheen's serious acting roles from Platoon and The Arrival to seeing him do a sitcom like Two and a Half Men and appearing in crappy comedies like Scary Movie 3. I'll give the film a 3/5.

The transfer is overall conflicting; the compression is horrifying on this transfer. If I still had my BD-Rom drive, I could see how much space this film took up, but I am going to guess it was probably around 12GB. The transfer is comparable to the Echo Bridge release of The Prophecy. The pro of this release is that it is in the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. There is detail, but it has to settle a bit due to the compression. I do not feel that this is a straight up SD upscale, but I can see some arguments on it, especially in the opening of the film. The video transfer is on par with an earlier Echo Bridge/Miramax release, it scores a 2.5/5.

The audio present on this portion of the disc is DTS-HD MA 2.0; it sounds great but I felt that it could be better. The techno music cues sound pretty pleasant while listening. I give the audio a 3/5. There are no extras at all; 0/5. Overall, the disc's portion of No Code of Conduct scores a 2/5. It enjoyable, but the video transfer could have been better. I would say it is worth the watch though.

High-Powered Action Pack: "Equilibrium" (2002)

Movie: 4/5
Video: 4/5
Audio: 5/5
Extras: 0/5
Overall: 3.5/5

Equilibrium, a tasteful futuristic sci-fi action flick. This is a pretty solid feature in which in the future we take drugs to hold in our emotions; to show your emotions is punishable upon death. It's a pretty straight forward film and very entertaining. Preston (Christian Bale) is a top soldier in the future; discovers his assigned patrol partner, played by Sean Bean, is not taking the drug. Preston kills him and then with a stroke of chance, he drops his vile containing the drug and is quickly seeing the world in a whole new way.

After arresting a woman who is been founding hoarding "illegal" items is awaiting death row, she slowly gets to him to help him see the path. Upon going out of the borders of their utopia, they found a group of dogs which are set to be slaughtered when a puppy runs to Preston and soon he cannot see it die and takes it off to "tested for disease". Preston soon joins the resistance to bring down the utopia so that mankind can possibly learn how to feel again.

Kurt Wimmer wrote and directed a very good film and all of the actors involved gave great performances. One of the problems I have is that there should have been more focus on the psychological aspect of Preston's struggle once he decides to quit taking the drug. If they gave another five to ten minutes to focus on that, it would have been a better movie. The action is pretty sweet too with Bale's character kicking butt left and right. Emily Watson gave a great sensual performance in her role. And Sean Bean, well, he's in his usual Sean Bean role and we know what happens to him most of the time. The film gets a 4/5.

Equilibrium is, without a doubt, the main reason to buy the High-Powered Action Pack. Echo Bridge has finally gotten an HD master for the film that is finally in it's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The initial individual release of the film was presented in an open matted, yet cropped VFX scenes, presentation. Normally, if it was open matted, I wouldn't mind because what the director intended is still there, but the cropped VFX scenes of the "gun-kata" and other scenes kills it for me. And the original release was very tempting for me, but I kept passing on it.

The video presentation for Equilibrium is not the best, but, for a ten year old film it does the job. The film shares the disc on a BD50 with two other films, being The Lookout and Supercop. The colors are pretty vibrant; there's clear and sharp definition. If you look closely at the film; there is a lot of dirt and specs and print damage on the film. Compression is noticeable in a few scenes and there's a bit of pulsing towards the end of the film. I know that might scare potential buyers away, but overall, it's still a solid transfer and the only alternate is a very expensive Japanese release. I think this master was probably made back in 2002 whenever the film was made. I doubt we'll get a remaster, but, Equilibrium scores a 4/5.

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio presentation is pretty good on this release. There's good range in hearing harp noises in the music and helps get the tone across and then you jump to the next scene where the action is booming. Echo Bridge did a great job on this portion of the disc. The audio gets 5/5.

Without any extras; the film on this portion of the disc scores a 3.5/5. We have a very nice master provided to us by Filmyard and Echo Bridge. This should have been how it was when it was originally released in May 2011. If you buy this six film set, this title's new master in OAR makes it worth it alone. Recommended.

High-Powered Action Pack: "The Yards" (2000)

Movie: 3.5/5
Video: 1/5
Audio: 2.5/5
Extras: 0/0
Overall: 1.5/5

The Yards, a great crime drama from director and co-writer James Gray (We Own the Night and Two Lovers) and co-writer Matt Reeves (Director of Cloverfield and Let Me In) about a family and it's downward spiral. Leo, played by Mark Wahlberg, returns home from his prison sentence and is met with celebration by his mother and aunt and her family. His buddy Willie and new uncle Frank give him a job offer and soon Leo is off with Willie to pay off a night guard and destroy the train parts. When the guard declines and police are called; Leo's world comes crashing down and is on the run.

I felt that this was a pretty good crime drama. It seemed that everyone put in a good performance and I feel it helps the overall emotional tone of the film. Wahlberg's quiet presence he has mostly throughout the film is different from most of the films he does now. James Caan is always great and as Leo's uncle, you see him in a tough spot and his acting is great as it shows his conflict in trying to handle the situation. Charlize's character confused me a bit in terms of how old she is supposed to be; maybe the early twenties. Also, the plot twist was easily predictable in the opening film and a bit later on before it's spilled out. The film scores a 3.5/5.

Before I go on about the video presentation, whenever a film is cropped from it's original aspect ratio, I cut the score in half and go on lower from 2.5/5. I am not sure if this is the same encode from the individual release but the video presentation is a complete nightmare as it is cropped from 2.35:1 to 1.78:1. The framing is ok, but it would help if this film was presented in it's intended scope. The grain is overblown to the max. It is frustrating as hell whenever the grain is as white as snow and it's a scene that takes place at night. And the film has a jitter and it does not stop; it goes on throughout the whole entire film. Also, I am not sure if this is really 1080p as there is some interlacing in some scenes; especially in the opening when Leo is on the train. Video scores a horrifying 1/5.

The audio presentation is DTS-HD MA 2.0 despite being listed as 5.1 DTS on the back cover. I feel that this audio is adequate. It's not a "high-powered action film" and the audio gives an overall calm when it needs to be, but it is average. The audio scores a 2.5/5. Overall, this movie is a miss on the disc; we still have Hidden Assassin and No Code of Conduct on this disc of the set to go through as well as the three films on the other disc. With no extras included for this film; this portion of the disc's content for The Yards, I give it 1.5/5.