DVD Talk DVD Reviews
Suits: Season One
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The Series: Suits: Season One is one show that got through my radar. Even when I saw the cover art for the DVD, I was like, "What is this?" I watched a promotional spot and thought, why not? It was one of the best choices I've ever made when reviewing a television show in recent memory!
Suits tell the story of Harvey Spector (Gabriel Macht), a highly successful attorney who hires Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) as his associate. The problem is that Mike has no credentials. What he does have is the mutant ability (I kid about the mutant part) to remember and absorb information at a moment's notice. Actually, not only in a moment's notice, but he retains even the most trivial and archaic information from years past. Think of Mike like the Bradley Cooper character Limitless, but without the fantasy aspect of that flick.
Harvey and Mike are bound by this secret, beca...Read the entire review
Machine Gun Preacher
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THE FILM:
There's a powerful story in the life of Sam Childers, a junkie turned activist for Sudanese orphans, but Machine Gun Preacher, from Monster's Ball director Marc Forster, feels more like a highlight reel of Childers' highs and lows. Gerard Butler gives a committed performance in the lead role, weathering much emotional turbulence, and Forster wastes little time on unnecessary exposition, choosing instead to send Childers to Africa soon after he hits rock bottom. Childers' Jekyll and Hyde personality makes it difficult to completely root for him, and, if Machine Gun Preacher is accurate, Childers is not afraid to combat violence with violence.
Car 54, Where Are You? - The Complete Second Season
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More holdups in the Bronx, more Brooklyn-bred fights, more traffic jams in Harlem backed up to Jackson Heights. Car 54, Where Are You? (1961-63), the sublimely silly sitcom created by The Phil Silvers Show/Sgt. Bilko's Nat Hiken, returns for 30 more episodes, The Complete Second Season, its final year. Despite bizarre behind-the-scenes headaches that have the makings of a great Tim Burton or maybe John Waters comedy, the show itself is unaffected, as funny as ever, even better insofar as its ensemble cast of coarse New Yorkers is richer and loopier than before.
Shanachie Entertainment's all-region first season release was an obvious labor of love, and featured a funny and informative interview (by comedian Robert Klein) with two of the show's last surviving stars, Hank Garrett and Charlotte Rae. This set has an equally beguiling, one-of-a-kind extra feature, plus good video t...Read the entire review
Adam-12: The Final Season
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Reed and Malloy on their last patrol...and just at the right time, too. Shout! Factory, that vigilant defender of vintage television, has finished up what Universal dropped with Adam-12: The Final Season, a 4-disc, 24-episode collection of the NBC police procedural's seventh and last go-around for the 1974-1975 season. Starring Martin Milner and Kent McCord, Adam-12's final season doesn't hold too many surprises for loyal viewers; if anything is different here, it's a small but discernable flagging of energy, both in the scripting and the performances. Still, fans of this genre and particularly of WebbLand's rigid aesthetics will find Adam-12: The Final Season to their liking. No extras in this bare-bones, good-looking set.
Some backgroun...Read the entire review
The Story Of Rock N Roll Comics
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The Story of Rock 'N' Roll Comics:
It's hard to know if this documentary is a full-blown case of First Amendment (In)Justice ala The People Versus Larry Flynt or just a fairly interesting story for a limited group of people. The subject of the story, Todd Loren - publisher of Rock and Roll and Revolution Comics - would have you believe the former, even if in action it seems like Loren himself chose to ride the truth train for convenience only. In which case, director Ilko Davidov should have been advised to take his own stand with this movie - to come out swinging either for, or against, Todd. It's advice he seems to have cautiously hedged against. This fundamental lack of mooring, combined with a super-specific, limited market of interested viewers, means that many of you who think you're interested now will wonder later if you're still as engaged.Detroit-born Loren started his min...Read the entire review
Carol Channing - Larger Than Life
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THE MOVIE:
I'm sure it's possible to dislike Carol Channing, but I'm not sure how. In Dori Berinstein's documentary Carol Channing: Larger Than Life, she strolls Broadway's "Shubert Alley" and points out the theaters nearby where she's played ("There are ghosts," in the Booth Theater, she tells us. "Wonderful ghosts of great actors!"). She comes upon members of the cast for Next to Normal, who have stepped out during their matinee, and says, of the opportunity to perform on Broadway, "We should pay them!" She mentions that she's almost 90, and the young men burst into spontaneous applause; "I don't know why you applaud that, it just happened!" she exclaims. "I had nothing to do with it!"
So yes, she's delightful--charming and funny, and a terrific storyteller (and who else is still around who can tell a story about Edward G. Robinson?). Her persona is comically over ...Read the entire review
Descendents
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THE FILM:
Those looking for George Clooney should look elsewhere; this Descendents is about a group of nomadic children uniquely immune to the virus that turned the rest of humanity into zombies. A Chilean import from Director Jorge Olgu n, Descendents has some interesting matte-painting backgrounds and low-budget effects, but the film is an exercise in style over substance. With a story that could have been told in 15 minutes and seemingly endless flashbacks to uninteresting plot points, Descendents is dead on arrival.
Read the entire review
The Shrine
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The Movie:
In terms of horror movies, The Shrine has a lot of elements that hearken back to seventies classics of the genre: human sacrifice, devil worship, remote villages populated with extra creepy, backwards locals, even a forest permanently shrouded in ominous fog. Eschewing the easy plot devices, cheap scares and casual cruelty of a lot of modern films, it aims more for a pervasive feeling of dread, and largely succeeds.Carmen (Cindy Sampson) is a feisty journalist, who's been busted down to cub reporter status after writing an unspecified controversial story. Determined to get back in the big leagues, she shuns the humdrum assignment to investigate why bees are dying off in the Midwest, and instead convinces her boyfriend and photographer Marcus (Aaron Ashmore) and na ve young intern Sara (Meghan Heffern) to jet off to Poland to find out what happened to a missing hiker, ...Read the entire review
Kink Crusaders
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The Movie:Whips and boots and chaps, oh my ... in covering the ins and outs of the 2008 edition of the International Mr. Leather (IML) competition held annually in Chicago, Michael Skiff's documentary Kink Crusaders sheds some light on a subset of the gay male community that many gay men try to distance themselves from. Sure, the parade of big, burly guys in head-to-toe cowhide might appear somewhat intimidating (and stereotypical) at first, but this doc goes out of its way to prove that devotees of the kink/leather community are not too dissimilar from the rest of us.
Kink Crusaders is a straightforward, modestly produced but never boring mix of interviews and on-scene footage from the competition, which comes across as a mixture of business convention and beauty pageant. The doc explores the 30th edition of the IML, a nice round number and a good excuse to look back on how f...Read the entire review
Chronicle
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The Film:When passionate film geeks put their brains together at the end of the year and produce countless lists highlighting 2012s biggest cinematic surprises, it wouldn't surprise this writer one bit to see Chronicle on many a one. With only a few episodes of the show Kill Point to his name, director Josh Trank successfully marries a small-scale domestic drama with some big-time visuals, while screenwriter Max Landis (see if you can guess who his dad is) formulates a plot that, while unashamedly a construct of a dozen familiar strands, finds novelty in how it approaches the basic idea of three teenagers obtaining and nurturing superpowers. With unknown Dane DeHaan in the lead, Chronicle is not without significant faults (we'll discuss several of them below) but the old-school appeal of a non-sarcastic film that embraces its outlandish premise is hard to pass up.
Whate...Read the entire review
Route 66: The Complete Series
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Reviewer's Note: Over the years I've had the pleasure of reviewing the various seasons of Route 66, so for this new Shout! Factory series release, I'll port over my thoughts from those previous reviews, along with new details about this terrific disc set.
Arguably the best drama anthology of the 1960s, and Shout! Factory, that champion of vintage television, has put it all together into one neat little package, you highway ribbon wanderers, you existential soul-searchers. Route 66: The Complete Series has, for the first time ever, all four seasons of the iconic classic, Route 66, starring Martin Milner, George Maharis, and Glenn Corbett, neatly tucked away on 24 discs―that's all 116 episodes from its original 1960 to 1964 CBS run. I'm not sure if Roxbury/Infinity (who previously owned the DVD rights to the series) ever released the fourth season of ...Read the entire review
Madison County
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The Taglines:YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE.KISS YOUR AXE GOODBYE.The Movie:
Image Entertainment's cover slip for their recently released DVD of Madison County is a great example of ludicrous home video art - replete with two garish "poster" images of the film's pig-masked and axe-wielding killer and the lame yet chuckle-worthy tagline "Kiss your axe goodbye" in blood red type. The package is reminiscent of grindhouse and drive-in promotional material of yesteryear. And like the great majority of those films, Madison County does not quite successfully deliver the b...Read the entire review
Borgia: Faith and Fear - Season One
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THE PROGRAMWhile not airing on any American TV network, "Borgia: Faith and Fear" did find a home on Netflix, possibly due to Showtime's dissolution of their deal with the company, taking away Showtime's more well known and acclaimed series covering similar ground, "The Borgias" from reaching Netflix viewers. The series is the brainchild of Tom Fontana and although presented as 12, roughly one-hour episodes, it appears in European markets, the series aired six nights, with a pair of episodes each airing. Upon learning this fact after watching the first two episodes separately, it's actually preferred method of tackling this technically sound but increasingly repugnant and moderately flawed series.
I offer full disclosure, the series only piqued my interest after learning of the Borgia family thanks to the "Assassins Creed" games where they were given the role of antagonists to hero...Read the entire review
Norman Mailer: The American
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THE MOVIE:
There is a great documentary to be made on the life of Norman Mailer: legendary writer, famed raconteur, failed politician, occasional filmmaker, notorious womanizer, renowned drinker. That great documentary has yet to be made; Joseph Mantegna's Norman Mailer: The American, put politely, is not it. Shabbily assembled and glancingly shallow, this brief 2010 portrait offers some bracing footage and tantalizing ideas, but either the subject is too immense, or the filmmaker was simply unable to lick him.
After a trailer-style prologue setting up his life and achievements, the film catches up with Mailer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, circa 2006. He's unapologetic and candid ("I'm too old to sell myself"), and from there Mantenga jumps back to the writer's childhood. There is no narration--Mailer provides much of it himself via interviews, and his biographers help ...Read the entire review
Doctor Who: Dragonfire
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The Show:
When I first saw Sylvester McCoy's take on The Doctor I haveto admit that I wasn't impressed. Butthat was years ago, soon after they aired and I only managed to view acoupleof stories. I had heard that the laterseasons were darker and generally better, but I never took the time tosearchthem out. I seemed to recall that inMcCoy's first year on the show, Dragonfirewas the stand-out offering, so when it was released I did some checkinganddiscovered that The Doctor Who Appreciation Society voted it the beststory ofthe season and in a poll taken by the TV station UK Gold it was votedthe bestadventure during McCoy's tenure. That'spretty impressive.&a...Read the entire review
Man on the Train
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The Film:
Some people get ridiculously bent out of shapes when American versions of foreign films get made. Sure, it seems silly that some people won't watch a movie because it has subtitles. I've always laughed at anyone who says, "I watch movies to watch movies, not read 'em." At the same time, I'm amused by those who exist on the opposite end of the spectrum, screaming of the purity of foreign films, and the blasphemous nature of Americanized remakes, produced solely--or at least seemingly solely--for the troglodyte audiences that hate to read subtitles. I play the neutral stance of Switzerland in this matter. I love Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and I also love John Sturges's The Magnificent Seven. I thought Fabian Bielinsky's Nine Queens was a great movie, while Gregory Jacobs's American remake Criminal was not nearly as good, but was still entertaining. Luc ...Read the entire review
Treasure Houses of Britain
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THE PROGRAM"Treasure Houses of Britain" presents a simple enough and well-intentioned premise to viewers. Spend five, roughly 45-minute episodes exploring notable historical houses of Britain and in the process treat viewers to amazing, often decadent visuals, while employing host Selina Scott to inform viewers on not only the basics of each house, but appropriate historical and technical context where necessary. If you are old enough to remember it, the premise might recall distant memories of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Fortunately, the series never sinks to the depths of being as tacky as that aged relic, but two episodes in, it quickly becomes apparent, even a modicum of spirit and vibrancy would make this very poorly paced series more easy to digest.
Beginning with "Burghley House" the series establishes a pattern it follows to completion: take viewers through the h...Read the entire review
Satan's Slave Katarina's Nightmare Theater
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The Product:
When the history of home video is written, few will deny the impact and import of DVD. Unlike VHS, which became a product of scientifically dimishing returns (technically and aesthetically), the promise of preservation has lead many studios and distributors to take advantage of the one and done dynamic. Indeed, many believe that once they place a title on the format, they no longer have to worry about keeping the fans happy. They've more or less done their job. And while the question of added content (or the lack thereof) constantly countermands such a position, the truth is that many obscure or outright unnecessary releases benefit greatly from a collection of complementary material. Take Satan's Slave, for example. Already available in severely edited, full screen versions, this mid '70s shocker is held in high regard by devotees of its cast and its creator - director N...Read the entire review
Time Team: Unearthing the Roman Invasion
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Time Team is an educational British television series that has aired since 1994. The show sends a team of researchers to a suspected archaeological site with just three days to uncover evidence and solve an archaeological mystery. It's kind of an archaeology game show with professional pride as the grand prize. This set collects twelve episodes that focus on the Roman occupation of Great Britain from the 1st century A.D. through the 4th century A.D.
The team, led by host Tony Robinson, includes numerous archaeologists, diggers, artists, and experts of the Roman age. The meat of...Read the entire review
Black Cobra
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The Series:Somewhere in the film Black Cobra, co-directed by Scott Donovan and Illy Mlegar, is a storyline but you have to want to pay attention to it to find it. You'd think, given the cool cover art and the tough sounding title and the fact that a guy named T.J. Storm headlines the thing that this would be ninety minutes of wall to wall ass kicking, the kind of B-grade straight to video martial arts film that can be a whole lot of fun if you're in the right mood for it. Unfortunately it does itself in by committing the ultimate B-movie sin... it veers off into the boredom zone.
But yeah, that story, it goes a little something like this... a tough guy with dreadlocks named Sizwe Biko (the aforementioned Mr. Storm) has to work with some bad guys in order to spring his dad who has landed in some serious hot water with the powers that be in South Africa. What do they want him t...Read the entire review
King Arthur and Medieval Britain
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THE PROGRAMThe allure of the King Arthur legend has endured centuries and remains popular today. In the hands of Hollywood, the Arthurian legend often takes a bias towards emphasis on the more fantastic elements: the Lady in the Lake and Merlin most prominently. The History Channel has scoured its archives and collected various programs produced on Arthur, presented in a brisk two-disc set appropriately titled "King Arthur and Medieval Britain." Viewers interested in the subject should be warned though, as the two most recent programs in the set date back to 2004, with the oldest stretching almost a decade further, airing original on A&E in 1995. However, don't let that scare you away, because most familiar with the long history of The History Channel, much of the network's finest programming remains far back in its archives, before the days of sensationalism and "reality" program...Read the entire review
Underworld: Awakening
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THE MOVIE:
Vamps and Werewolves...why can't they just get along? After 3 Underworld films that found the species tearing at each other's throats, you would think some sort of d tente would be possible. Instead we have a 4th entry in the franchise that demonstrates how some wars never end...they just get postponed.
Underworld: Awakening kicks off by pitting the Vampires and Lycans against an unexpected but extremely dangerous enemy: mankind. You see, us humans caught wind of the creatures living in our midst and we didn't like it one bit. In fact we hated their otherness so much that we reached for the sickening practice of genocide. The purge (as the film puts it) saw Vampires and Lycans executed en masse with only a few survivors managing to eke out an existence underground. Selene (Kate Beckinsale), the death dealer, and her hybrid lover Michael tried...Read the entire review
Strip Strip Hooray
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The Series:The first 'new to DVD' release that Something Weird Video has released since last year's H. G. Lewis documentary, Strip, Strip Hooray! is a collection of six burlesque features that were previously (and are still) available individually on DVD-R from the company directly. This two disc set, however, is a much better bargain and is jam packed with more bumping, grinding, twirling and thumping than you can shake a stick at, Jack! And just wait until you thrill to the latest gags from some of the worst comedians to ever walk a dusty old theater stage. Awww.... burlesque features. So much to love! So without further ado...
DISC ONE:
Midnight Frolics (1949):
Filmed on location inside the Balasco Theater in Los Angeles, our feature kicks off in grand styles as a gorgeous Latina hits the stage running and offers up a pretty impressive flamenco d...Read the entire review
The Flaw
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THE FILM:
One probable reason that longtime documentary trouper James Sington's (In the Shadow of the Moon) 2010 film The Flaw has not received greater attention is that it tells very much the same story already put forth in Michael Moore's splashier, more dramatic, and more sensational Capitalism: A Love Story, a film that beat it to the punch in responding to the 2008 financial meltdown with an unflinchingly critical look at some long-held (and, as it turns out, wrongheaded) economic presumptions. But in documentary, as in fiction films, it's not so much what the story is as the way t...Read the entire review
Houston Astros 50th Anniversary Collector s Edition
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The Movie:For all the talk about franchises who seem to be cursed or found a degree of bad luck, the Houston Astros quietly are on the radar in terms of franchises who have not seen any postseason success. The team has fielded their share of All-Stars and eventual Hall of Fame winners, but now in its 50th season, they only have one World Series appearance on their resume, a loss to the Chicago White Sox in 2005. Regardless, the team has a devoted following through the half century of existence, and this Collector's Edition helps show off the Astros' highlights through the years.
The five-disc boxed seat is composed of two different aspects of the Astros; four discs include the best moments in Astros history: Nolan Ryan's record-tying fifth no-hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1981, Mike Scott's division-clinching no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants in 1986, the Astros...Read the entire review
The Fields
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The Fields:
The Fields is one weird film. I give all credit to writer B Harrison Smith and directors Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni for putting this together. Everyone gets props for coming up with something as odd as a gothic suspense movie headlining Cloris Leachman and Tara Reid. The former, a name you don't often associate with genre movies, and the latter, a name that doesn't seem to have been involved in movies much at all lately. This movie however, based on actual events, is the place where subtlety and flat-out weirdness meet in a decrepit farmhouse.When his parents can't stop pointing guns at each other in the summer of 1973, eight-year-old Steven (Joshua Ormond) finds himself living with his wacky parents in the middle of a Pennsylvania cornfield. Steven's obsessive fear of the Manson clan combines with his demented grandmother Leachman's predilection for horror movies, (a...Read the entire review
Laverne & Shirley: The Fifth Season
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"What's da matter wit you, Shirl? You're no fun anymore!"
Perhaps it was that dreaded fifth season sitcom curse. CBS DVD and Paramount, roused from their slumber concerning this classic sitcom series, have regrouped four years later to release Laverne & Shirley: The Fifth Season, a 4-disc, 25-episode collection from the ABC monster hit's disastrous 1979-1980 season. Decidedly hit-and-miss in terms of quality, with a game-changer in format that's abandoned rather quickly (when the girls join the Army), there's still enough left-over laughs here for devoted Laverne & Shirley fans...but most of those viewers would also admit this outing wasn't the series' best by a long shot. Some honest-to-god extras are included here in this nice-looking transfer.
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Exclusive Story
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The Movie:
The brisk-paced racketeering drama Exclusive Story is a good example of the kind of reliable b-product MGM put out in the '30s. While other studios churned out formulaic b-movies that looked like program fillers, MGM's production standards were so high that even a routine actioner like Exclusive Story had a certain panache and polish which ultimately makes films like it comparable to the other studios' "A" releases.
Starring dapper Franchot Tone and gorgeous Madge Evans, Exclusive Story is one of the more recent releases from Warner Home Video's valuable Warner Archive series of made-on-demand (m.o.d.) DVD reissues. The film, although not particularly outstanding, is a fun flick worth checking out for those ...Read the entire review
Knuckle
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The Film:It usually only take one backyard tumble or one bloody scrape in a fight to realize that the movies make it all look so beautiful. Real violence comes in an unsteady flurry of punches delivered by unchiseled bruisers looking to hurt, and bad. Ian Palmer's Knuckle has that notoriously winning combination of real violence and dangerous men that has made the internet a frequent madhouse whenever a particularly loathsome street fight shows up on the interwebs. Unfortunately, in covering the often verbal and occasionally physical infighting between two close-knit Irish Traveler families, Palmer, despite following the clans for over a decade, fails to conjure much in the way of substance. That leaves Knuckle in a rut of bad feelings and swollen fists, and not much else.
The genesis for this documentary saga becomes innocently enough, with Palmer acting as shooter-for-hire a...Read the entire review
Marvel Anime: Iron man - Complete Series
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The Series:The first series in the Marvel Anime line of animated series which take classic and established Marvel Comics characters and give them a Japanese spin was the twelve episode 2010 production of Iron Man. As Marvel more or less gave Japanese animation studio Madhouse, the production company responsible for the show, carte blanche to do with the characters as they saw fit, this isn't quite the typical Iron Man origin story you might expect it to be.
Based on a script by legendary comic book scribe Warren Ellis, the storyline sees wealthy industrialist Tony Stark (voiced by Keiji Fujiwara in the Japanese version and Adrian Pasdar in the English version) head east from America to Japan where he intends to assist in the construction of a new Arc Reactor energy station but just as importantly intends to demonstrate the capabilities of Iron Man Dio, which he hopes w...Read the entire review
Fantasy Island: The Complete Second Season
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Fantasy Island:
Kids today can't understand how horrible we had it in the 1980s. I was born in 1969, which means the thing to do as an eight-through-thirteen-year-old - five years, but a lifetime - the thing to do was plop down on the couch with mom every Saturday night to watch the likes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. The scariest thing is how much we enjoyed it. Mr. Roarke and Tattoo, your gentle hosts on Fantasy Island were gods to us. (OK, maybe not Tattoo, R.I.P.) Their variety show wish fulfillment gig was an endless balm for the abrasions of life. Does that wholly satisfactory formula work now, in the cruel Teens of the 21st Century? Does it even matter?It matters to Generation X folks, who inherited, or were at least subjected to their parents' addiction to the stars of Yesteryear. Maybe it's not all that strange, considering the success of Dancing Wi...Read the entire review
Primitive London + London In The Raw: Jezebel Double Feature
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London In The Raw/ Primitive London Double Feature:
London In The Raw
Mondo Movie enthusiasts will find little to be enamored of as they dive down to the bottom of the barrel with this documentary. Purporting to show the seamy underbelly of London in the swinging sixties, this 80-minutes of mostly recreated flotsam might have been somewhat shocking to yokels from way back when, but said yokels would have to be pretty damn sheltered to get their kicks watching zippy dorks singing songs of political satire in nightclubs.With dour narration, we delve into those unsavory places (or: unsavoury, if you will) where adults like to have fun. But first, we must contend with pointed commentary on life in contemporary London, involving such outr incidents as kids in uniforms going to school. Further explaining the vagaries of life in the big city, video of a weird old bum playing a p...Read the entire review
Planet Of Vampire Women
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The Movie:
When one hears of a film entitled Planet of the Vampire Women, there are certain expectations as to the content. There will probably be violence, nubile women, aliens and quite possibly blood sprayed copiously about the ample bosoms of the aforementioned females. Planet of the Vampire Women indeed has all of these, but little else.In the far future, a daring group of space pirates, led by the saucy Captain Trix Richards (Paquita Estrada), steal a large sum of money from a satellite casino, and flee in a stolen spaceship, pursued by indomitable lawman Falco (Jawara Duncan). Trix and her band, who are mostly attractive young women, though they also include the very male cyborg Jones (Keith Letl) and sketchy Dr. Calaveras (Stephen Vargo), try to hide on a mysterious nearby planet. Strange electrical storms soon cause them to crash, along with their law enforcemen...Read the entire review
If Winter Comes
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"Oh, wind, if winter comes,
Can spring be far behind?"Unreservedly square, ludicrously polite...and wholly entertaining. Warner Bros.' own M.O.D. (manufactured on demand) service of hard-to-find library and cult titles, the Archive Collection, has released If Winter Comes, Metro-Goldwyn's 1947 tasteful weeper based on an early 1920s bestseller by A.S.M. Hutchinson, and starring Walter Pidgeon, Deborah Kerr, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh, Binnie Barnes, and Dame May Whitty. One of those idealized, gentile English melodramas that M-G-M studio head Louis B. Mayer adored, If Winter Comes isn't as well known today as its more famous antecedents (certainly 1942's Mrs. Miniver), and its artificially manipulated moralizing will no doubt cause consternation for today's aggressively silly. However, that cast is a powerhouse, the production is super M-G-M glossy,...Read the entire review
Young Goethe in Love
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THE FILM:
In attempting to sidestep the wary expectation of musty, library-bound decrepitude that is the burden of any literary biopic or period piece (and this film is both), the people responsible for Young Goethe in Love (i.e., director Philipp Stolzl and cowriters Christoph Muller and Alexander Dyoyna) have steered it to the opposite extreme, making the kind of bargain that their subject -- one of the Faust legend's best-known and most important bards -- would recognize all too well. They've pulled out all the stops in order not to scare off the kids, and they have in the process almost entirely betrayed anything valid or worthwhile they could have made of the project (and even backhandedly insulted the pandered-to, supposedly post-literate young ...Read the entire review
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