DVD Reviews
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- By Loron Hays
Michael Ritchie’s The Island, written by Jaws scribe Peter Benchley and based upon his book, might have sunken quickly at the box office during its original deployment in 1980 but that hasn’t stopped it from coasting on a new wave of popularity ...
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- By Loron Hays
Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and American Dad, knows a thing or two about subversive comedy. With Ted, he creates a live-action movie about a teddy bear that comes to life as part of a lonely boy’s falling star wish and the military technology that hard-wires ...
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- By Loron Hays
Much like the actual midnight raid that resulted in the discovery of and immediate killing of Osama bin Laden, Katheryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty sneaks up and packs a mighty powerful emotional wallop upside the head. It’s an unsuspecting final result, to be sure ...
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- By Loron Hays
Something is wrong with the children of Mars and only Santa Claus can solve their mystery moodiness. With enough misguided Christmas cheer to make the Hallmark channel all a-quiver with silent fright, a band of goofy green Martians (wearing green tights ...
Read more: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
“A Liberal Arts education will solve all your problems,” jokes writer/director/actor Josh Radnor (from CBS’ How I Met Your Mother). It’s an ironic statement from the character he plays in his own Liberal Arts and one that certainly complicates matters between his ...
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- By Frank Wilkins
Judd Apatow is an unquestionably funny filmmaker. The man’s comedic genius knows no bounds of either box office potential or human decency. With his signature comedies The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, he showed that injecting a story with a warm heart and ...
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- By Loron Hays
Stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk With Me reads more as a testimony from within the bleak halls of a go-nowhere relationship than about his marvelously dry stand-up comedy routine. Yes, he sleepwalks and jokes about suffering from an REM behavior ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Pixar’s first foray into fairy tale territory started life out as The Bear and the Bow, went through a change of directors—losing their first female director, Brenda Chapman to the usually quoted creative differences—and came out the other end ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
After the fiasco that was 1995’s Judge Dredd, fans of the popular character from British anthology 2000AD would wait almost two decades to see their beloved anti-hero return to the big screen. The order of the day for writer Alex Garland was to tell it straight ...
Read more: Dredd (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray) [UK] - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
While it certainly isn’t high art and, at times, as awful as you expect it to be from the wrong-headed trailers, Texas Chainsaw 3D – being billed as the direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original (and the only in a long line of sequels to claim as such) – isn’t, much ...
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- By Loron Hays
With a rat-a-tat throwback style that echoes the gangster films of yesteryear and a fedora-wearing swagger that suggests dark alleys and women with dangerous curves, director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less) brings audiences back to the ...
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- By Loron Hays
This movie – no, this phenomenon – will change your life. Permanently. Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, having already earned freakish line-quoting followers in Los Angeles and New York through its communal (and sold out) midnight showings, is now High Definition ...
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- By Loron Hays
While far from perfect, Brian Cunningham and Matt Niehoff’s Overtime isn’t the total loss that it easily could have been. You’ve got a low-budget film starring former WWE superstar Al Snow and a cast of other unknowns battling an alien-virus that turns people into ...
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- By Loron Hays
House at the End of the Street (otherwise known as 101 Generic Minutes) is a bad career location for Jennifer Lawrence. She’s too talented of an actress to get caught up in a supposed suburban horror film that is neither scary nor any good. A haunted house ...
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- By Loron Hays
If you missed the lackluster Stolen in its initial 14 day theatrical run, well, I don’t blame you. Easy to watch when the brain is switched off, the film is largely a sloppy affair that can’t decide on a silly or sadistic tone. While not a complete loss thanks to the scenery chewed by everyone BUT...
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- By Loron Hays
I’m not trying to be funny here, but how many of you heard about The Jazz Singer before you actually saw it? It turns out the revolution was televised (in a roundabout manner of speaking). Moving pictures were meant to have sound and, in 1927, the technology ...
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- By Loron Hays
Quite simply, Two-Lane Blacktop is the purest road movie to ever exist. Revisiting Monte Hellman’s classic is not unlike listening to remastered Jimi Hendrix on 180 gram vinyl; a mood-altering earnest trip through the countercultural consciousness complete ...
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- By Loron Hays
The family tree gets a bit uprooted in the fantastic Hannah and Her Sisters. Set between two family thanksgivings, this 1986 offering from writer/director Woody Allen is rich in storytelling flow – as the characters take turn narrating the events – and ...
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- By Loron Hays
Don’t call it a comeback. He’s been here for years. Yeah, I said it. I couldn’t think of a better opener than quoting a little LL Cool J for you all. And, listen, it’s deserved. Arnold Schwarzenegger, last seen firing blanks in The Expendables 2, returns for another ...
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- By Loron Hays
With inspired gonzo guffaws and slapdash guerrilla filmmaking stylings, Sleepers is the funniest Woody Allen film to appear before his artistic vision made him a household name. Allen, a longtime fan of silent clowns like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, throws ...
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- By Loron Hays
Sweat. Dust. Violence. And beer. These are the outback facts of life in Ted Kotcheff’s hard-hitting Wake in Fright. An Australian film long thought lost due to the ravages of time, Wake in Fright stands proudly alongside Mad Max and Picnic at Hanging Rock as high ....
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- By Loron Hays
Ready for something new from Jason Statham? Something like a romantic comedy? Look elsewhere. This is meat and potatoes Statham. The protagonist of a series of thrillers by the author Donald Westlake, writing under the pseudonym Richard Stark ...
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- By Loron Hays
“Gross,” my wife said to me while studying the artwork on Olive Films Blu-ray release of Paramount’s Ticks, a low-budget creature feature from 1993. It was followed by, “what the hell is wrong with you?” Ticks, to be sure, is my cup of malt-o-meal comfort ...
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- By Loron Hays
Bursting with the same joy captured inside Domenico Modugno’s recording of Volare, To Rome with Love continues Woody Allen’s successful European vacation. The comedy is just shy of the usual laughter and a definite step down from his most successful film ...
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- By frank Wilkins
The unsettling case of the West Memphis Three gets yet another documentary - that’s four now. But West of Memphis is different. Aside from the passing of time - some 18 years - that has uncovered additional evidence, recanted testimony, and incompetent forensics...
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- By Loron Hays
Searching for Sugar Man clocks in a swift 85 minutes but the true story it tells – about an unknown folk-rock artist from Detroit, Michigan who doesn’t even know he’s bigger than Elvis in South Africa – is one you will never forget. Rodriguez is his name ...
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- By Loron Hays
It has been a decade since last we heard from director Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours) and his latest, Bullet to the Head, offers no explanation for the ten year silence. No apology needed from the maestro, mind you. Just sit back and enjoy the one-liners. Bullet to ...
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- By Loron Hays
Well, at least it tries to do something different with the whole superhero genre. Imagine if DC’s Justice League or Marvel’s The Avengers were fractured and driven apart by one of their villains for all eternity. Imagine if that villain was Jigsaw from the SAW series ...
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- By Loron Hays
It’s been heralded as a minor classic. It’s also the first movie to showcase zombies – whether the walking dead or just poisoned. Let’s be honest, though. It’s far beyond the appropriate time to recognize Victor Halperin’s White Zombie as a masterpiece of horror. ...
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- By Loron Hays
Yippee ki yay, double-dipper! It’s Die Hard’s 25th anniversary celebration but you won’t find much of a party going on here. The disappointing collection from 20th Century Fox is essentially the same transfers we’ve seen before, making this only a stop-gap release until ...
Read more: Die Hard: The 25th Anniversary Collection - Bu-ray Review
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Movie Reviews
Morbidly Hollywood
- Colorado Street Suicide Bridge
- Death of a Princess - The Story of Grace Kelly's Fatal Car Crash
- Joaquin Phoenix 911 Call - River Phoenix - Viper Room
- Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
- Suicide and the Hollywood Sign - The Girl Who Jumped from the Hollywood Sign
- The Amityville Horror House
- The Black Dahlia Murder - The Death of Elizabeth Short
- The Death of Actress Jane Russell
- The Death of Brandon Lee
- The Death of Chris Farley
- The Death of Dominique Dunne
- The Death of George Reeves - the Original Superman