Comin'
At Ya! 3D (1981/MVD
Visual Blu-ray)/Home
Invasion (2015/Sony
DVD)/Kansas City
Confidential (1952/Film
Detective Blu-ray)/Life
Tracker (2013/Olive
Blu-ray w/DVD)/MI-5
(2015/Spooks
franchise/Lionsgate Blu-ray)/Terminus
(2014/Umbrella PAL Import DVD)
3D
Picture: B- Picture: B-/C+/B-/C+ & C/B/C+ Sound:
B-/C+/B-/C+/B/C+ Extras: C-/D/D/C/C-/C- Films:
C+/C-/B/C-/C-/C
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Terminus
Import DVD is now only available from our friends at Umbrella
Entertainment in Australia, can only play on Blu-ray and/or DVD
players that can handle PAL DVDs and can be ordered from the link
below.
Here's
a big helping of the latest genre releases....
Ferdinando
Baldi's Comin'
At Ya! 3D
(1981) is a belated Spaghetti Western with Tony Anthony, who had
played The
Stranger
in four previous such films, but he is a (slightly?) different
character here in what is another Revenge Western as his character's
newlywed wife is kidnapped by two evil brothers. He's out to get her
back and settle all scores in the process, including where new
injustices surface.
Well,
the script is fairly good, though we've seen this story before as
this film arrived when both the late 1960s/early 1970s 3D trend and
original Spaghetti Western cycle had come to an end, but this
well-promoted film was a surprise hit and launched the a third wave
of the 3D craze in Hollywood. The makers go bonkers showing off 3D
in every way, shape and form they can squeeze it in, which drives 3D
critics crazy to this day. It may be over the top, but it is amusing
enough and is almost a spoof of 3D, plus has appreciated in value now
that we're in the safe fourth wave of the digital 3D era.
They
were having fun here and it shows, Out in time for Tarantino's
Hateful
Eight,
you should definitely see this one at least once, but don't expect a
masterwork of any kind.
A
new trailer and montage of clips of the film are the extras, plus you
can see more about Anthony's Stranger
films at these links...
Original
trilogy on DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13487/Coffy+(1973/American+International/MGM/Ar
Get
Mean
Blu-ray/DVD (fourth Stranger
film)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13849/Get+Mean+(1975/Blue+Underground+Blu-ray/DVD
To
show you how tired David Tennant's Home Invasion (2015) is, it is a
home invasion film that could not think of a better title as a woman
(Natasha henstridge from Species) is having a friend over when they
are interrupted, the visiting gal is shot to death and the madness
begins. We have seen this all before, it is badly written, actors
like Jason Patrick and Scott Adkins are also wasted, but most of
all... my time was wasted for Panic
Room-ultra
lite.
Stuck
in the 1980s, if you've seen a few of these films, you know
everything
that will happen here, so this should not even have been greenlit.
Yawn....
There
are no extras.
Phil
Karlson's Kansas
City Confidential
(1952 is back on Blu-ray for a second time, this time issued by the
Film Detective label. This excellent Film Noir was reviewed in two
versions before (Film Chest and MGM) which you can read more about
along with the film itself at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10822/Kansas+City+Confidential+(1952/HD+Cinema+Clas
This
new release is now the definitive version of the film and all the
others are obsolete, though there are sadly no extras on this new
edition, it is worth your time and the best way to see the film
outside of a nice film print.
Joe
McClean's Life
Tracker
(2013) is a science fiction film with too many talking heads, too
much bad digital video (on purpose too!) and casts Kyle
XY
star Matt Dallas in another tale of odd genetic madness, this time
with a story about how DNA sampling can predict what will happen to
the people tested. An interesting idea on some level, it plays like
a bad version of Spielberg's problematic Minority
Report
and never begins to convince me of the premise very much.
The
actors aren't really given much to do either, so this just drags on
and on and on, though the extras show us they thought they were doing
more than got achieved there. Overall, this is sadly a dud.
Two
Behind The Scenes clips, three featurettes and two trailers (long &
short) are the extras.
Bharat
Nalluri's MI-5
(2015) is the first theatrical film from the BBC hit series also
known in the U.K. as the Spooks
franchise, a series we've reviewed elsewhere on this site, but one I
never particularly liked. Looking like a rushed package deal to get
some James Bond dollars, it is just a played-out 'Arab terrorist
penetrates the agency' tale that is only for fans of the show if
that, but it reminded me also of when X-Files
did their first feature film and destroyed their franchise for good.
In this case, there's not much to ruin and this is really trite and
routine. For diehard fans only!
Digital
Copy, Deleted Scenes and a Making Of featurette are the only extras.
Marc
Fumire's Terminus
(2014) is an Australian sci-fi flick about the U.S./Middle East
entanglements getting so bad, a nuclear winter might be coming very
soon, with a mechanic (Jai Koutrae) having doomsday visions and
possibly extra-terrestrial contact that caused it. The script mixes
familiar ideas with prototypical ones and it is none too convincing
overall, starting with mixed results in recreating small town USA.
The cast and makers are trying, but this never clicks, so at best, it
is a semi-interesting failure that's for hardcore genre fans at best.
Oh well.
Deleted
Scenes are the only extras.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 MVC-encoded 3-D - Full Resolution digital High
Definition image on Ya!
has some good 3D moments (overdone or not) and some where you get
some ghosting and alignment issues, some of which can be traced to
the source material as visible in the 2D version, but a few might be
some recoding issues with the 3D itself. Still, this is not bad for
an orphan film its age, like so many 3D productions. First used on
The
Stewardesses
(reviewed elsewhere on this site), the SpaceVision 3D system (Optimax
III) usually works well for its time, is additionally fun since its
real cinemascope and continued to be used for years to come. Maybe a
little more work could be done in the future n this film, but both
versions play just fine otherwise. Someone ought to try it out now
with new film stocks.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on Kansas
in a 1.78 X 1 frame can show the age of the materials used, but this
is superior to the previous Blu-ray release even with some minor
detail issues and improvements in grey scale, Video Black and Video
White are most welcome.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Tracker
is back and fourth between all kinds of problematic (sometime son
purpose) video sources and we get our share of 1.33 X 1 video, though
it never gels or looks very good overall, so the DVD version is
especially hard to watch and the poorest performer on the list.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on MI-5
is also a digital shoot that looks better, but is also a bit generic
and weak, similar to the unmemorable shooting on the TV series and
with so many shots of London, calls attention to how it cannot
compare to the recent James Bond films.
The
remaining anamorphically enhanced DVDs rank second place for
performance with the 1.78 X 1 image on Invasion
a mixed bag that has some good shots and some bad ones, which we can
also say for the 2.35 X 1 presentation on Terminus
that also has some generic sense to it if more style. I would be
curious to see if either improved on a Blu-ray.
As
for sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on MI-5
is better than the same on Ya!,
if more generic. The 3D film's soundmaster shows its age and was
only so well recorded apparently during production. Tracker
has the poorest sound in both format presentations, sometimes with
the audio purposely having location audio issues, but other flaws are
from production issues, so be careful of volume switching or high
volume playback.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes on Kansas
was a surprise in some of the detail it had at times, clarity that
outdoes the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono from the older Film Chest
Blu-ray and the improvement is even more noticed than the image
upgrade. Nice.
The
stand-alone DVDs both have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 that are not bad
for action thrillers, but sport inconsistent soundfields, though
Terminus'
mix is more convincing overall.
To
order the
Umbrella PAL-format import DVD of Terminus,
go to this link for it and other hard to find releases:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
