Shared Darkness

Do you like roundhouse kicks? I mean, do you really like roundhouse kicks? Do you like watching them, talking about them, performing them in awkward fashion in your living room, reminiscing about how you once deployed one that one time in middle school against Nelson Bandercourt, who’d never again have the temerity to ask if your older sister was dating anyone? If there were a Roundhouse Kick of the Month Club, would you not only be a founding member, but also campaign for its presidency by shaking hands and roundhouse kicking babies? Do you also really hate Nazis, and spend considerable time daydreaming about roundhouse kicking them? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then Chuck Norris’ The Cutter is for you, my friends… The Cutter is for you.

The Net 2.0, The Russian Specialist and The Escapist. This film apparently was long in gestation, a pet project of producer Avi Lerner, but there’s no discussion of that here, alas. That means we’re left to judge solely on implementation rather than hope and omission. C- (Movie) D+ (Disc)

The archive-stuffing party train simply does not stop. To wit, this review of Beethoven’s 4th, originally published upon its 2004 DVD release:

Judge Reinhold and former Saturday Night Live star Julia Sweeney headline this family comedy,
scripted by John Loy and directed by David Evans — the latest installment in the
series about a slobbery St. Bernard and the havoc he inevitably wreaks wherever
he goes. Here the story is one of mistaken canine identity after Beethoven
attends an obedience school, only to be mistakenly switched with Michelangelo,
a perfectly trained hound from a rich and snooty family. Plenty of staged
antics (in which, say, Beethoven launches someone through the air on a see-saw,
or causes them to backflip wildly and lose their hold on a pot roast) and
slow-mo, canted angle and point-of-view shots pepper the production, which is
cookie-cutter, franchised entertainment, a long way from the madcap originality
of the first film.

Still, kids will no doubt like it, since there is after all
the humiliation of various grown-ups. Adults, meanwhile, may find passing
amusement in the film’s flagrant obviousness (it’s kind of like witnessing the
donuts being made at Krispy Kreme), though I have to admit it is a bit
disconcerting to witness Reinhold launch into a celebratory “cabbage patch,”
then slap his own ass and say,
“What’s my name? What’s my name?” That
I didn’t see coming. One can only anxiously await series reinvention with Beethoven’s 9th, in which Beethoven and
a reincarnated Air Bud team up to solve canine mysteries and foil the evil
designs of one Spuds McKenzie. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)

The archives continue to swell here at Shared Darkness, this time in the form of a DVD review of The Dirty Harry Collection, originally published upon its release in 2001. Still relevant in these troubled times, though, I’d argue… especially for when I begin my own campaign of justice against those who’ve crossed me. What… did I just type that? Nevermind, read on:

Queasy times usually spawn cinema of social justice with
heroes who kick ass first and take names later. Perhaps the most famous example
of this was Clint Eastwood’s steel-tough cop “Dirty” Harry Callahan, a
character who burst onto the scene in 1971 and eventually made ’80s cineplexes
safe for the jingoistic exploits and catchphrase quips of Sylvester Stallone’s
Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s various monosyllabic head-bashers. Taken
collectively, Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The
Dead Pool represent one of the more enduring anti-heroes of the past two
decades; as stand-alone films, of course, they are of various quality.

The best
of the bunch, the original finds Callahan on the heels of a man known only as
the “Scorpio Killer,” while The Enforcer, co-starring Tyne Daly, wrings a few
drops of contemporary intrigue with its focus on murderous political
extortionists. Available individually or as a complete boxed set, Warner Bros.’ The Dirty Harry Collection features Callahan the way fans want him — in crisp new digital
transfers. Appropriately, the DVD extras are strongest with the original film
and trail off somewhat thereafter. Period behind-the-scenes documentaries for
the first three films are desperately unhip, but still kind of interesting,
particularly to frame the films within the context of the times. The easily
navigable Dirty Harry disc has a slick new half-hour retrospective on the
series analyzing the character and his place in the action genre, and there are
also interesting interviews with Hal Holbrook, Ted Post, the aforementioned
Schwarzenegger and Robert Ulrich, as well as a “memorable lines” section. Of
course no Dirty Harry retrospective would be complete without some thoughts
from the man who made everyone’s day by first uttering, “Make my day…,” and Eastwood
delivers, with comments about Harry’s long-barrelled vision of justice both fun
and well-reasoned. B (Movies) B+ (Discs)