DVD Reviews
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- By Loron Hays
Digital or film? Those are your choices for the future of moviemaking. Do we fall forward or fall back and rely on the natural look of film to carry us into the future? Discuss. Chris Kenneally’s new documentary, Side by Side, is certain to heat up the conversation ...
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- By Loron Hays
Easily the best thing about Here Comes the Boom is that its executive producer, Adam Sandler, does not make an appearance. Designed to be a feel good movie in the vein of Rocky and Warrior, Frank Coraci’s film largely falls flat due to an uneven spread of comedy ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
The anti-hero, the McGuffin, the duplicitous femme fatale, film noir, German expressionism seeping its way into film—these things have influenced movies for longer than this reviewer’s father has been alive, and they’re things that we take for granted because ...
Read more: The Maltese Falcon - Steelbook [UK] - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
The man behind those Wu-Tang slash and burn head-bobbing beats, the RZA, makes his directorial debut and revitalizes the martial arts genre with a film saturated with ridiculous amounts of blood and high-flying kicks. You will believe a man can fly thanks to ...
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- By Frank Wilkins
Derek Cianfrance, who brought us 2010’s beautifully tragic Blue Valentine, again explores the seamy edges of family dysfunction with his The Place Beyond the Pines that premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Only this time, he shifts the ...
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- By Loron Hays
Bad hairdos, really large insects, and gore, gore, gore is what you’ll find inside this skin-crawling nest. Yes, it’s the six-legged bug who gets toasted and then roasted in this creature feature produced by Julie Corman. It’s a ow budget disaster and Scream ...
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- By Loron Hays
That’s right, fellow freaks, TerrorVision is back in print! Finally freed from its VHS prison by the kind folks over a Shout!/Scream Factory, TerrorVision gets coupled with another gory gem from the late 1980’s, Video Dead, for a nasty little double feature that will definitely ...
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- By Loron Hays
Poor Renny Harlin. What went down as arguably his best (and certainly most atmospheric) film and intended American debut, Prison, never saw the light of day in what was supposed to be its big theatrical release. Yes, Dead Heat got its slot. Tiny theatres ...
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- By Loron Hays
Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront won 8 academy awards in 1955 and could still win those awards if released, as is, today. This is more than just a movie. Kazan’s ability to capture reality is more than just magical; it’s his talent. On the Waterfront’s verisimilitude is ...
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- By Loron Hays
Ladies and gentlemen, in my time as a film reviewer I have journeyed to many a far off foreign place to bring you the news – good or bad – about new, domestic releases. I have combed the bottom of the barrel; raided your father’s closet; even traversed your ...
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- By Loron Hays
What’s big and tall and heading to theaters across the nation? Jack the Giant Slayer and, yes, it’s every bit as fee-fi-fo-FUN as it should be. It’s sure to anger the cynical moviegoer with its Princess Bride-esque Fairy Tale vibes. While the dangerously wrong-headed ...
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- By Loron Hays
Yul Brynner’s iconic silver-eyed gunslinger makes his debut on blu-ray this month and, as if no time has passed, Westworld reclaims its throne as the unstoppable thriller that it is. This lean and mean thriller was an afternoon staple of my youth but, seeing it now as an...
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- By Loron Hays
Imagine Steven Spielberg's film career without direction. What would that look like? Well, as a survivor of his output in the mid-to-late 80's, I can tell you it isn't very pretty. The adult fantasy material he churns out is Always paper-thin and fails to Hook you with ...
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- By Loron Hays
In just over an hour, silent comedian Buster Keaton achieves more laughs in College than most comedians do in their entire career. His mastery of physical comedy is in its peak form and the short, made immediately following his now certified classic The General ...
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- By Loron Hays
When it comes to teenage terror, one cannot get any better than the menacing red gelatin threat of director Irvin S. Yeaworth’s The Blob. It’s an efficient horror house scare and, as far as entertainment goes, it’s perfectly structured to still get a response from modern ...
Read more: The Blob: Criterion Collection (1958) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
The atmospheric residue of Chan-wook Park’s Stoker is not easily scrubbed off. Not that you’ll want to get clean so soon after its credits roll, though. No, the normal reaction for the type of on-screen psychosis is to bask in its glow and thank your lucky stars that ...
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- By Loron Hays
“It is a time of dread…” and so begins Willow and the partnership between actor-turned-director Ron Howard and creator/executive producer George Lucas. It wasn’t their first partnership. That was American Graffiti way back in 1973, of course. But it was ...
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- By Loron Hays
Monster movies often get a bad reputation – especially cheaply made knock-offs – but, like this multi-cultural production of cheese and carnivores, what works about them is often overlooked. It’s a shame. It’s also to be expected from a genre not ...
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- By Loron Hays
Badlands and its harrowing killing spree is pretty much still, for lack of a better word, badass. Based on the true story of one Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, writer/director Terence Malick’s debut is a poignant bloodbath; a film that doesn't ...
Read more: Badlands: Criterion Collection (1973) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
The lack of respect The Hudsucker Proxy gets is criminal. Anyone who proudly proclaims to be a Coen brothers fan should give this release a serious chance. For me, it’s an easy favorite of theirs in that it’s a straight up ballbuster of a comedy. Full of dark visual gags ...
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- By Loron Hays
Serialized science fiction rarely gets as good as Canada’s Continuum. Created by Simon Barry, Continuum centers on the dramatic conflict between a group of socially aware rebels from the year 2077 who time-travel to Vancouver, BC in the year 2012 and the ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Universal’s monster catalogue had long been dormant, come the 1950s, and a smaller British production house called Hammer were savvy enough to recognise the potential of plundering those long beloved characters. They had already made a successful foray ...
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- By Loron Hays
You’ve got my attention, Mr. Wong. Opening with a riddle involving an ax, a slug, and a reanimated neo-nazi who has had his head stitched back on with weed trimmer line, John Dies at The Endproudly announces the return of writer/director Don Coscarelli (Bubba ...
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- By Loron Hays
Roaring onto Blu-ray and VOD everywhere, are the notoriously funny Baytown Outlaws. This gang of dirtball sleazoids – much like the film with its mesh-up spaghetti western meets 1970s drive-in vibe – aren’t aiming to be taken seriously but they sure are having ...
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- By Loron Hays
Sometimes stark naked ambition alone can create a lasting legacy. Morris Engel’s Little Fugitive is all the proof you need. It’s not much to look at but its visual poetry has an unmatched beauty. It’s the tiny cub that roars. Scrappily shot in black-and-white with ...
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- By Loron Hays
Imagine if Freddy Krueger took the night off from his familiar Elm Street haunts and called in a favor to his good friend Stitches the Clown to get some revenge killing done. Stitches is that movie. Comedic and imaginative with its scares and death scenes, Stitches is ...
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- By frank Wilkins
Moody, stylish, and brimming with edgy atmosphere, Danny Boyle’s genre-bending psychological thriller Trance is the Trainspotting director doing what he does best. Only this time he does his thing in the world of fine art, applying his hard-edged style to an elaborate ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Tom Cruise has been a busy boy of late: first Jack Reacher and now a big budget science fiction adaption from the unpublished graphic novel Oblivion. The writer of that graphic novel happens to be the writer/director of the film, who vowed a couple of years ...
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- By Loron Hays
Texas writer/director/actor Larry Wade Carrell comes bucking out of the gate with a modest but forgettable full-length horror debut. While murky with a convoluted storyline that includes strange townspeople, warring brothers and a slightly haunted house ...
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- By Loron Hays
Writer/director Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell) gets the deluxe treatment with Criterion’s release of the now-classic Repo Man. The film – as absurd as it is – has its own cult legacy that will have its followers (and newcomers, I imagine) knocking over ...
Read more: Repo Man: The Criterion Collection (1984) - Blu-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