This Review Roundup features a two film collection that was released last week that I got late and a few titles coming out this week. From Mill Creek Entertainment comes Double The Romance: Once Around/Evening. Not only had I never seen either film, I had never even heard of them despite both being packed with incredible casts. Turns out my parents had seen Once Around after describing the movie to them. Shot in New England it stars Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Danny Aiello, Laura San Giacomo and Gena Rowlands. Hunter’s character breaks up with her boyfriend on her sister’s wedding day and ends up meeting the much older Dreyfuss when she takes a job selling condos on an island. Her family doesn’t take well to the older, obnoxious and gift giving Dreyfuss. It’s very New England with scenes shot in Boston (our infamous water towers are shown) and New Hampshire. It’s quirky and off-beat with a fantastic cast doing believable accents. If you’ve ever driven through one of our rotaries you’ll get the ending. Evening is also New England based with the flashback scenes taking place in Newport, Rhode Island. If you thought Once Around’s cast was impressive, Evening is even better. Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Meryl Streep, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Glenn Close, and Barry Bostwick star in the film. Redgrave plays a dying mother to Collette and Richardson with Danes playing her younger version in flashbacks about her being a bridesmaid at a wedding, falling for Wilson after breaking up with her boyfriend Buddy (Dancy). It’s from 2007 and has Cousin Richie from The Bear (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) in it! It’s more a drama than comedy compared to Once Around, but the cast is just fantastic. A great double header for the older crowd.
Also from Mill Creek comes Deer Camp ’86. I wanted to love this because I grew up on 80s horror, but despite taking place in 1986, it feels too new. Dialogue and characters seem more 2024 than mid 80s. A bunch of diverse friends head to the woods to go deer hunting, but stop at a bar first to get their drink on (despite having enough alcohol in their Suburban to last their trip). A Native bartender befriends them, but they get into a fight with the local hillbillies and someone ends up dead. They get to camp and go out hunting (all with different guns that would use different ammo, but the film doesn’t realize that). A creature starts hunting them down and they must fight to survive. There’s the nerdy guy everyone picks on, the fat drinking guy, the black guy, the good looking white guy and the Spanish guy who’s a veteran that fought in Lebanon and let’s you know every 10 minutes. I really didn’t care about the characters and wanted most of them dead instantly especially the obnoxious fat guy who dropped the F-bomb every other word. A lot of horror movies are using the 80s as their setting nowadays and despite having a good premise, this didn’t work for me. It comes in both Blu-ray and DVD.
Kindred is a documentary about aboriginal children adopted by white families in Sydney’s northern suburbs. Both leads are filmmakers themselves who met years back and bonded over growing up in white families. The male is gay and left home at a young age. Both looked into their biological families and share similar experiences, but also different ones. With one being female and one being a gay male they both know what it’s like being aboriginals in a white family and feeling different. Him being gay gave him a different life, but overall they bonded because of their similarities. Her biological mother is the spitting image of her and he looks similar to his brothers. It’s interesting enough to hold your attention especially if you know nothing about the adoption process in Australia. Is it something I’d watch again, probably not, but it’s interesting enough for a watch.
Last we have School-Live! Complete Collection. I was not expecting this to be what it was about. A group of friends are members of their school’s living club and go about doing activities and school based things set against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. Each character has their own special trait whether it’s the main girl who mentally can’t cope, but eventually comes to terms with the apocalypse outside of her school, the one girl who carries a shovel with her to kill any zombies she encounters outside of school, the girl who is the president of the club and the older classmate who doesn’t fit in at first. I will say there’s a big twist that I really liked and it’s more of a psychological thriller than horror anime. Having known nothing about it it was a fun watch. If you are familiar with the manga maybe it differs, but I have no idea.
The Nerds Templar 