‘Blink Twice’ Movie and Blu-ray Review

Posted on November 8, 2024 by The Ultimate Rabbit

The following review was written by Ultimate Rabbit correspondent, Tony Farinella.

“Blink Twice” is a film with ambition, style, and some big goals. It does not always achieve those goals from a filmmaking perspective, but it’s an interesting directorial debut from actress Zoë Kravitz, who also co-wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum. The film also opens with a trigger warning for audiences, which is something I don’t think I’ve seen before from a big screen movie. I’ve seen it before on TV shows when a particular episode is going to show scenes involving abuse, suicide, or rape. “Blink Twice” has become one of the most-talked about movies of 2024, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a film that is either going to piss audiences off or leave them with a lot to ponder.

Our film opens up introducing us to Frida (Naomi Ackie) who, along with her friend and roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat), work a ritzy and glamorous exclusive event, where she runs into Slater King (Channing Tatum). He was recently forced to step down as CEO of his company after a scandalous event which forced him into therapy. He claims to be a changed man and has also apologized publicly for his behavior. When he runs into Frida and Jess, they are invited to his private island, where they have to put their phones in a bag. It seems to be your typical rich, glamorous party with drugs and over-the-top behavior, but Slater insists he has toned down his behavior. The longer Frida and Jess spend at this private island, the more they suspect something is up. Can they put the pieces together?

Kravitz has assembled an all-star cast for her feature film debut. The film features unique screen performances from Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Geena Davis, Kyle MacLachlan, and Simon Rex. While their performances are unique and out there, unfortunately these are not characters that are particularly well-written or fleshed out. Since they are good actors, they chew up the scenery. However, I can only imagine how much more effective these performances would have been if these characters were not so one-dimensional. The stand-out performance comes from Tatum, who gives a chilling, eerie and unnerving performance.

The first 45-60 minutes are repetitive and boring at times, even though the film is shot beautifully and looks fantastic. As a director, Kravitz has a keen eye behind the camera. This is a gorgeous film featuring beautiful people looking their best while doing very bad things. The film is much more interesting in the third act when certain elements of the plot are revealed to the audience. I wanted the film to be more like the third act, which was lively, intense and exciting. The film lost me for the first hour or so, which is why it was too little, too late to save it as a whole.

I could examine all of the issues and themes which are rather on-the-nose, but I don’t think it would serve my review. I think Kravitz has A LOT to say, and she’s not shy about how she goes about presenting that message. Is it preachy at times? Yes, but it didn’t take me out of the film or make me lose interest in the story. As a matter of fact, it did the opposite for me—it left me with a lot to think about long after the credits rolled. It made me want to see what she has up her sleeve in the future as a filmmaker. “Blink Twice” is a film that gains traction the more you think about it and the further removed you are from it as an audience member. It was the lack of action and the pacing which took me out of the film in the first hour.

Overall, “Blink Twice” almost lost me entirely for a good chunk of its running time. This is something that cannot be ignored. If I wasn’t reviewing the movie, I would have shut it off. Yes, I enjoyed the scenery and the acting, but the plot took way too long to get moving. That being said, I also can’t ignore the power and the impact of the film’s final act along with the energy Kravitz brought to this film as a director. After the movie was over, it stayed with me and I thought about it for a long time. This is a movie that is below average for the first 45-60 minutes before it ends with a bang for the final 30-35 minutes. This is a brainy film. I give it a slight recommendation with some hesitation.

* * out of * * * *

Blu-ray Info: “Blink Twice” is released on a single-disc Blu-ray from Warner Brothers Home Entertainment. The film has a running time of 102 minutes and is rated R for strong violent content, sexual assault, drug use and language throughout, and some sexual references. It comes with a digital copy of the film as well.

Blu-ray Audio/Video Info: “Blink Twice” looks good on Blu-ray, but I’m not sure why this film didn’t get a 4K release. This film was screaming to be released on 4K, and I’m not sure why they didn’t offer that option. It is still a solid Blu-ray, but a 4K transfer would have been eye-popping and mesmerizing. The Dolby Audio is also solid, but an Atmos track would have been preferred for this movie. Subtitles are included in Parisian French, Castilian Spanish, Italian, English, Latin Spanish, and Canadian French.

Special Features:

NONE

Should You Buy It?

Considering this film should have received a 4K release and there are no special features on this Blu-Ray disc, I don’t think it is a film you need to purchase right away. It also doesn’t come with a slipcover for the Blu-ray. For a collector like me, I enjoy a slipcover over the Blu-ray case. For the time being, it is a film worth seeing, despite how frustrating it can be at times. I’d recommend you rent the film from a digital platform like Amazon, YouTube or Apple TV. It’s worth renting digitally and checking out. I’m looking forward to the next film from director Zoë Kravitz, as she impressed me with her first offering.

**Disclaimer** I received a copy of this film from Warner Brothers to review for free. The opinions and statements in the review are mine and mine alone.

Ultimate Rabbit Audio Commentary on ‘Pump Up The Volume’

Posted on June 20, 2023 by The Ultimate Rabbit

Okay everyone, The Ultimate Rabbit is doing something new here, at least for him. I am doing my first ever audio commentary, and it is for the 1990 film, “Pump Up The Volume.” Written and directed by Allan Moyle, it stars Christian Slater as Mark Hunter, a high school student who has been uprooted from his hometown in New York and now lives with his parents in Paradise Hills, Arizona. Depressed and lonely, Mark ends up venting his frustration with his situation, and the world at large, on a pirate radio station where he performs under the name of Hard Harry. Chaos ensues as more and more students begin listening in, and parents and school officials do what they can to shut him down.

Now everyone who knows me best knows just how much I love “Pump Up The Volume” (click here to read my review). I first saw it at Crow Canyon Cinemas with my mother back in 1990, and it felt like a godsend to me personally. I very much related to what Mark Hunter went through as he struggles to adjust to a new environment he has been unwillingly thrust into, and I loved how Moyle deals with adolescent struggles and emotions in a real and intelligent way.

Currently, there is no special edition of “Pump Up The Volume” anywhere. It was recently released on Blu-ray, but the only special feature on it is the theatrical trailer. Perhaps Criterion, Arrow Video, Shout Factory or Vinegar Syndrome can show this film the love it deserves.

Basically, this commentary track is to be played as you watch your own copy of the film at home, be it on DVD, Blu-ray or Digital. Feel free to listen in as I try to provide information on the film’s making, and of what it still means to me all these years later.

You can check out the audio commentary below.

Nicholas Meyer on the Making of ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’

Posted on August 31, 2019 by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally written back in 2011.

With “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” co-writer and director Nicholas Meyer described it as being different from the previous films in the franchise due to it being “political in context.” At a Q&A which was held after a screening of it at the Egyptian Theatre, Nicholas said the story came about when he met with Leonard Nimoy. The story focuses on the Federation making an uneasy truce with their longtime enemies the Klingons, and it deliberately reflected the relations between the United States and Russia at the time the film was made.

Nimoy described the idea of having an “intergalactic Chernobyl” and of “the wall coming down in space” to Meyer, and the story came out from there. As it happens, the coup which took place in Russia happened around the time “Star Trek VI” was released, and Meyer said his dentist saw how the film predicted it would happen. His response was to see “The Undiscovered Country” again as he didn’t realize this was the case.

Watching it today made Meyer realize there was no way anyone could have anticipated the changes coming, be it the collapse of the Soviet Union or the current events in the Middle East. He said it all makes the Cold War seem good in retrospect. Indeed, with the wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, the scene where Spock forces a mind meld on Lieutenant Valeris to get information now seems like torture. Although Meyer said Spock’s intention in the scene was to just get information, he winces at it now and says it’s hard to watch when Valeris moans in Vulcan agony.

For the character of Klingon General Chang, Meyer freely admitted he wrote the part with Christopher Plummer in mind. This was largely due to how he loved listening to Plummer’s recording of “Henry V,” and he made it clear to the film’s casting director, Mary Jo Slater, that she should not come back to Hollywood without him. Incidentally, Mary’s son, whom you just might recognize, makes a cameo in the film as an officer aboard the Starship Excelsior.

“Star Trek VI” was the last movie which featured the original crew of the starship Enterprise. Meyer described every day as being “normal” until the last one. At that point, the whole cast became very cranky, and they forgot lines of dialogue which some of them did not like in the first place. The whole cast had been together for 30 years, and since they go back a long way, they approached the end of it all in a very “bewildered” state. One thing’s for sure, the signatures from the cast at the movie’s end were not hokey in the slightest.

This also turned out to be the last “Star Trek” movie which series creator Gene Roddenberry got to see before he died. Meyer said his interactions with Roddenberry were “minimal” as Roddenberry was not officially involved with the movies after “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and was relegated to being an “executive consultant.” Apparently, Roddenberry was incensed that the screenplay for “Star Trek VI” made the crew out to be racist, but it did give this movie its much needed dramatic conflict. He died three days after he viewing a rough cut of it, and the movie is dedicated to his memory just as it should have been.

Looking back, “Star Trek VI” questions whether we have reached the end of history, and it is clear we have certainly not. It served as a perfect swan song for the original cast and was a much better movie than its predecessor (“Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”) which almost destroyed the franchise. It also provided us with one of the greatest pieces of dialogue ever in a “Star Trek” movie:

“You’ve never experienced Shakespeare until you’ve read him in the original Klingon.”

So true!

Why ‘Pump Up the Volume’ Remains My Favorite Teen Movie

Posted on April 6, 2018 by The Ultimate Rabbit

Pump Up The Volume movie poster

Of all the movies I have seen about being a teenager, “Pump Up the Volume” is still far and away my favorite. It is also the one which hit me the hardest emotionally as, after seeing all these movies about nerds and jocks fighting each other on school grounds, this one had characters I could actually relate to. I grew up during the years of “Beverly Hills 90210” which infected us with a fantasy version of the high school experience where you could have your troubles as a teenager but would still come out of it with a smile, a cute boyfriend or girlfriend and some fancy, fancy clothes which made you look oh so incredibly cool. This movie does not exist in that fantasy world, thank goodness, and I would love to see Hollywood produce more movies like it.

Allow me to give you some background information about myself as it will inform how strongly I feel about this movie. My family had moved around quite a bit when I was a kid, but it actually didn’t bother me much until we moved from Southern California to Northern California. I lived in Thousand Oaks for five years, and at that point it was the longest I had ever lived in one place. For once I felt settled, and then my dad quit his job and got a new one up north in the Bay Area, and my whole life went into major upheaval as I had no choice but to move with my parents and away from a place which truly felt like home.

I had to start all over again making new friends, and even after all these years it still feels so unfair to have been put through this moving thing one time too many. I became very antisocial and withdrawn as I was so frustrated and depressed at this situation I was thrown into. For a while, it felt like I could not talk to anybody as I didn’t know what to say. In retrospect, the fact I got through adolescence in one piece seems like a miracle.

“Pump Up the Volume” features a character who went through something very similar. Christian Slater gives one of his all-time best performances as Mark Humphreys, a high school senior who has just moved with his family from New York to a suburb in Arizona which appears to be located in the middle of nowhere. He is a shy and withdrawn kid, clearly not happy about his situation. He can’t talk to anybody, not even to his parents who he feels completely alienated from. But by night he is Happy Hard On, a pirate radio DJ who operates an underground station in the basement of his parents’ new home. While Mark is very quiet in the classroom, he comes to life on the radio and rants about his new neighborhood and the world he is growing up in with complete abandon.

As time goes on, his radio program starts drawing in more and more listeners who relate to what he is going through. Chaos begins to reign at his high school and the adults work to control the situation, having no idea of what the kids are really going through. This scares Mark to the point where he wants to stop doing his show, but since this is one of his biggest outlets for the frustration and aggression he constantly feels, he can’t bring himself to stop. It’s through his venting that he suddenly becomes the voice everyone needs to hear, especially the kids.

“Pump Up the Volume” covers a lot of ground that other teenage movies don’t bother to, and it’s much more down to earth than others in the genre which, for myself, was a huge relief. I got so used to seeing movies about the classroom dork winning the girl of his dreams or beating out the jocks that made him believe he was so uncool. Watching movies like those when I was a teenager just made me feel more ostracized than I already did, so “Pump Up the Volume” was a godsend in how it had a main character I could actually relate to. Adolescents need movies like this to make them realize they are not the only ones going through rough times, and to make them see how being a teenager is not always what we expect it to be.

In one scene, Mark takes a call from a kid who admits he likes guys and ends up describing a truly humiliating situation he got trapped in. In another, he takes a call from a listener who has written him a letter saying he wants to kill himself, and when Harry asks him why, the listener says with tears coming out of his eyes, “I’m all alone.” But as Mark quickly admits, maybe it is okay to be alone sometimes, and that in the end we are all alone. It sucks, but there seems to be no real escaping this fact. Then again, I have no problem with anyone proving me wrong there. I can’t think of another teen movie before this one that dealt with such down-to-earth characters.

A lot of people have complained the adult characters are largely one-dimensional. While I can definitely see some validity in this argument, I also remember seeing these seem people at my high school. Believe me, these people do exist. Annie Ross plays Loretta Creswood, the principal of Hubert Humphrey High, and she is a true bitch in every sense. Loretta lives to see her students get the highest SAT scores in the state, and she has no time for troublemakers whom she sees as having no interest in education. I have friends of mine who are teachers, and they do not hesitate in telling me just how much they hate the principals they work with. The way they are described to me, they are just as bad as the one Ross plays in this movie.

Then you have Mark’s dad, Brian (played by Scott Paulin), who at first seems oblivious about how to deal with his son’s problems, but then he turns out to be the students’ savior when upon realizing they need to be heard, not talked down to. At the same time, Loretta doesn’t show the least bit of regret in expelling those students she feels are undeserving of an education. Paulin is terrific in making Brian seem like much more than the average parent, and he makes the character a heroic educator as we how much he values the fact everyone has the right to an education.

Another great performance comes from Samantha Mathis who plays Nora Diniro, a total rebel and a free spirit who never apologizes for who she is. Nora ends up befriending the terribly shy Mark, and she later comes to discover his secret identity. Nora eventually becomes Mark’s conscience as she makes him realize the powerful effect he has on the kids in the town and on her as well. When he wants to back out when things get too dangerous for him, she angrily reminds him he has a responsibility to the people who believe in him.

There’s a great scene where the two of them are outside in Mark’s backyard when he desperately wants to communicate to Nora, and she tries to make him as comfortable as possible. Nora even ends up taking off her sweater and stands in front of Mark with her breasts bared; forcing Mark to look into her eyes as they quickly make a connection not easily broken. Both Slater and Mathis have fantastic chemistry together, and Mathis creates the kind of free spirited character we all would have loved to have been like in high school.

“Pump Up the Volume” climaxes with the walls closing in on Mark as the adults try to figure out his real identity and shut him down for good. The fact he continues to be defiant even as the authorities get closer and closer to catching him was really inspiring to me. You want to see him, in the words of Jack Black from “School of Rock,” stick it to the man. Then Slater delivers this piece of dialogue which still stays with me:

“High school is the bottom. Being a teenager sucks, but that’s the point! Surviving it is the whole point! Quitting is not going to make you strong, living will. So just hang on and hang in there.”

“Pump Up the Volume” still resonates very deeply for me all these years later. It came out in the summer of 1990 which was, ironically the summer before I started high school. This movie became one of the things which kept me going through adolescence even when I got very, very depressed. Unfortunately, it was a box office flop on its initial release, but it has since gained a strong following on home video and DVD. It’s a following I hope will continue to grow, and maybe if we’re lucky, there will eventually be a special edition DVD and Blu-ray containing documentaries, trailers, audio commentaries and even music videos. Hey, Criterion Collection, are you listening?

“Pump Up the Volume” also contains one of my all-time favorite soundtracks. My only problem with it is it doesn’t have Leonard Cohen’s version of “Everybody Knows” which serves as the perfect song to open the movie with. Instead, we have the version by Concrete Blonde which comes on towards the end when Mark makes his last stand against the powers that be. I certainly don’t want to take away from their cover of the song as they did a great job on it, but Cohen’s version is perfect fit for Mark’s state of mind. It also would have been cool to get some of Cliff Martinez’s film score on the soundtrack as well as I really loved how it sounded. Still the soundtrack does have a lot terrific tracks from The Pixies, Soundgarden, Cowboy Junkies and Sonic Youth.

For me, “Pump Up the Volume” was a godsend. It gave me a character who was dealing with the same problems I dealt with when I was a teenager, and there were few, if any other, movies which contained individuals like him. Most teen movies back then just left me with a never-ending feeling of utter resentment as they featured kids who got to experience things I never did and felt robbed of. All the misfits, social rejects and those who felt dejected and rejected need and deserve a movie like “Pump Up the Volume.” After all these years, it remains very close to my heart, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

*** * * * out of * * * ***