Archives:  A - E      F - N      O - Z       Posters       Message Boards     
Who We Are and Why We Do What We Do

Your Donations support the Site

Buy Cranky stuff

Buy Movie Posters

   BLU-RAY DVDs:
Batman Begins
Black Hawk Down
Blade Runner
Casino Royale
Dark Knight
District Nine
Defiance
Fast and Furious
Fast and Furious movies set
Fifth Element
The Hangover
Incredible HULK
Inglorious Basterds
Iron Man
Kill Bill 1 & 2
James Bond Ultimate ed v1James Bond Ultimate ed v2James Bond Ultimate ed v3
Julie & Julia 
Moon
Public Enemies
Rambo box set
Silence of the Lambs
Sin City
This is Spinal Tap
Terminator
Terminator Salvation
Terminator 2
Top Gun
Total Recall
300
Transformers: Revenge of Fallen
Ultimate Matrix coll
Twilight
Underworld
Watchmen (dir cut)
X-Men Trilogy
X-Men Wolverine

BLU-Ray for family DVDs
Bolt
A Bug's Life
Cars
Chronicles of Narnia set
Coraline
Ghostbusters
Harry Potter & Chamber of Secrets
& Goblet of Fire
& Order of Phoenix
& Prisoner of Azkaban
& Sorcerers Stone
Ice Age/Alvin + Chipmunks set
The Incredibles
Jungle Book
Juno
Kung Fu Panda
Monsters Inc
Nightmare Before Xmas
101 Dalmatians
Pinocchio
Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
Pixar short films
Ratatouille
Santa Clause
Santa Clause 2
Sleeping Beauty
Spiderwick Chronicles
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White & 7 Dwarfs
Star Trek motion pictures set
Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (1-3)
Star Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Transformers SE
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE

Search engine by FreeFind

click to search site

        Now in Release:
    2012
A Perfect Getaway
The Blind Side
A Christmas Carol
An Education
Fifty Dead Men Walking
Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Invictus
Is Anybody There?
It's Complicated
Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
The Lovely Bones
My Sister's Keeper
New in Town
Nine
Pirate Radio
Precious
The Proposal
Red Cliff
The Road
Shrink
St. Trinian's
The Strip
Surrogates
Taken
The Uninvited
Up in the Air
Young Victoria

    DVDs on Sale:
Aliens Quadrilogy (set)
An American in Paris
Batman Begins
Blade Runner
Coraline
The Dark Knight
Day the Earth Stood Still
Defiance
Die Hard collection 1-4
District Nine
Last Days of Fillmore West
Fast & Furious movies set
Forrest Gump
Gone With the Wind
The Hangover
Alfred Hitchcock set
Indiana Jones trilogy
Inglorious Basterds
Iron Man SE
Lord of Rings 12 discs
Marx Bros set
Ultimate Matrix set
Milk
Monty Python - Holy Grail
Moon
Public Enemies
Sin City
South Park Movie
Star Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Terminator Salvation
Up
Wall-E
Watchmen - Ultimate cut
Woodstock
X-Men Trilogy
X-Men Origins Wolverine

DisneyPixar & family DVDs
Alice in Wonderland
Bambi
Beauty and the Beast
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Bolt
Cinderella
Coraline
E.T.
Harry Potter yrs 1-4 set
Harry Potter
 & Chamber of Secrets
 & Goblet of Fire
 & Prisoner of Azkaban
 & Sorcerers Stone
 & Order of Phoenix
Kung Fu Panda
The Lion King
Mary Poppins 45th LE
Pinocchio
Ratatouille
Santa Clause
Santa Clause 2
Shrek Trilogy
Simpsons Movie
Spider-Man Trilogy
Star Trek movies set
Star Trek TOS (TV)
ST:TNG complete tv set
Star Wars Trilogy (1-3)
Star Wars Trilogy (4-6)
Wallace and Gromit
Wall-E SE

Looney Toons
Golden Age DVD
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Rocky & Bullwinkle DVD
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Popeye the Sailor DVD
v.1  1933 - 1938
v.2  1938 - 1940
v.3 1941 - 1943
75th anniversary coll.ed.

Privacy Policy

IN SHORT: Looks great. Talks too much.

Cranky doesn't agree wholeheartedly with the guy who sat behind him at the sneak preview of Snake Eyes -- who walked out muttering "that was the worst thing I've ever seen" -- 'cuz he's seen worse. Snake Eyes is one of those movies where everybody involved tries too hard to make a top notch mystery-thriller, and delivers a dud that's not to my taste.

It should've been. Cranky, in general, likes the work of all the principals involved (and, yes, once he got over the Phelps nonsense, director Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible wasn't that bad a flick). The premise is simple: Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage) an on-the-take cop with one wife, one kid, one girlfriend and an envelope in his pocket every Friday, stands inches away from an assassination of the Secretary of Defense at a heavyweight boxing match. The ticket is courtesy the DOD's security officer, Navy Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise) who is off chasing a suspicious redhead when the bullet hits the mark. The assassin is killed. A mysterious blonde (Carla Gugino) is wounded. Santoro behaves like the loser he is and accuses the heavyweight champ (Stan Shaw) of throwing the match, and thus costing him ten grand. Something Shaw tells Santoro makes the latter behave like a real cop, and he pieces together the real story from the tales of three witnesses.

Think a bit and you can probably figure it out from the above paragraph. That doesn't give you the why or wherefore in a story that has enough twists built in that the potential for a killer story is obvious. There is so much thought given to the details of the investigation, and a very clever idea for the climax of the movie, that the disappointment is total.

Cranky felt like he was sitting through bits and pieces of other creator's work. Screenwriter David Koepp has turned out a David Mamet-like script without the curse words. Everything important, character-wise, is buried in the dialog. Normally, that would be worth applauding, but in this case the characters are so over or underplayed that the flick is, basically, all talk. Nicolas Cage tries too hard to make Santoro into a bigger than life focus of all attention. Gary Sinise's Navy Commander Kevin Dunne is so tightly wrapped that when he comes undone the net result is a long monologue

Brian DePalma, as is his right, continues in the path of Hitchcock and produces a visually elaborate story that gives "it" away too soon and doesn't know when to end. The camera shoots at odd angles. It swoops over hotel rooms and through the crowds at the Atlantic City arena where the film is set, and looks marvelous. DePalma fails to reign Cage in, and the actor's over the top introduction creates an unlikeable character who doesn't win you over when he finally does the right thing.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Snake Eyes, he would have paid . . .

$3.00

Wait and rent it.