Reel Reviews - Official Site

Using oversized Invasion of the Saucer Men Halloween masks and silver sweat suits for the look of its alien invaders, Revenge of the Spacemen is a cheaply-made homage to 1950s rock and schlock that plays for solely laughs.  The film is cheesy, occasionally funny, and  ...

Read more: Revenge of the Spacemen (2014) - Blu-ray Review

There are few people in the world who don’t know the name Freddie Mercury, whether you’re a fan of Queen, born after he died, or have lived in a cave forever. As someone born the same year as one of Queen’s greatest hits, the title of this movie, it’s seems impossible  ...

Read more: Bohemian Rhapsody - Blu-ray Review

The Return of the Vampire, now on blu-ray thanks to Shout! Factory, is the film with which Columbia Pictures flies the B-movie, with director Lew Landers (The Raven) at the helm, to new heights courtesy of the German Luftwaffe aircraft in this unofficial (but, probably, yes) sequel ...

Read more: The Return of the Vampire (1943) - Blu-ray Review

There is a darkness beneath the sky here.  Two figures are sleeping next to a campfire.  One snores and the other, with his mouth open, finds himself prey to something far more than loud noises.  A spider.  After sneaking up his body, this big bodied arachnoid falls into the sleeping  ...

Read more: The Sisters Brothers (2018) - Blu-ray Review

This is why, no matter how bad the traffic jam is, you STAY THE COURSE.  You want to get to the boxing match?  Keep your ass in line.  One wrong turn later and your entire life could be rendered null and void thanks to a dangerous neighborhood and a stray bullet. ...

Read more: Judgement Night: The Warner Archive Collection (1993) - Blu-ray Review

In film, mass audience appeal and brains rarely ever go together. Just ask Paul Blart. Yet, with his heist thriller Widows, filmmaker Steve McQueen proves that it is actually possible to make an intelligent film that is also appealing to a wide audience ...

Read more: Widows (2018) - Blu-ray Review

Poison Ivy.  The itch you shouldn’t scratch.  But we did, didn’t we?!  And we got a collection of movies that helped former child stars strip out of their past image and into something new and racy and all kinds of shocking!  That is what the 1990s brought those of us raised ...

Read more: The Poison Ivy Collection (1992 – 2008) - Blu-ray Review

Throughout A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper’s character growls out the lyrics “Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die” with a crooning intimacy that lays the familiar groundwork for what’s at play in his film about two stars passing in the night; one fading away, the other  ...

Read more: A Star is Born - Blu-ray Review

Does this mean that you WON'T be my valentine?  With those words, one scorned nerd has his revenge on a group of pretty little liars.  Valentine, directed by Jamie Blanks, is immediately better than most of the teen slasher flicks of the late ‘90s and early 2000s.  It just doesn’t  ...

Read more: Valentine: Collector's Edition (2001) - Blu-ray Review

Perhaps the only task more difficult than putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth is making an interesting film about the rather uninteresting man who first set foot on the lunar surface. Yet Damien Chazelle (La La Land) does just that with his First  ...

Read more: First Man (2018) - Blu-ray Review

In the years before the slasher subgenre officially arrived thanks to Black Christmas and Halloween, there were a few horror films that definitely played around with the idea of a psycho killer taking out teenagers with nothing but sex on their minds.   Tower of Evil, a 1972  ...

Read more: Tower of Evil (1972) - Blu-ray Review

The opening scene of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, the new film by director Fede Alvarez, hints at something really special. The darkened scene features actress Claire Foy’s character in full-on black leathers, with lighted cigarette dangling from her rigid lips, and shorn locks ...

Read more: The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) - Blu-ray Review

Camp Clear Vista is now hiring!  If you have a love for giving kids the time of their lives over summer vacation then this is the job for you.  It also helps if you have a love for horror films and long, sharp knives that are just perfect for slicing and dicing . . .

Read more: You Might Be the Killer (2018) - Blu-ray Review

Hollywood used to make fun movies like this one all of the time. They stopped when the 1990s ran up on us. Hitting my stride in the 1980s as a fat kid with a bag of popcorn in one hand and a sack of gummy bears in the other, my days were filled with Monster Squad memories ...

Read more: Goosebumps 2 (2018) - Blu-ray Review

This is a movie for anyone who has ever sent a voice message to themselves.  Whether a warning or a reminder, there’s always an interesting collision of realities that occurs when the past offers insight into the Here and Now.  William Faulkner suggested the past is never dead  ...

Read more: The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) - Blu-ray Review

There’s no grand message in Mid90s, the heartfelt new film written and directed by actor Jonah Hill who takes his first turn at bat behind the camera. And there’s really not much of a story either. This sincere little coming of age film is perfectly content to simply sit back and ...

Read more: Mid90s - Blu-ray Review

To this day, there remains something insanely special about director Brian De Palma’s Carrie.  It is based on the once-discarded novel by Stephen King, but was painstakingly adapted for the screen by Lawrence D. Cohen.  Cohen got everything about King’s first novel right  ...

Read more: Double Dragon: MVD Rewind Collection (1994) - Blu-ray Review

Once again, I do NOT get the critical backlash against this Amblin-esque tale of a boy and his dog.  A-X-L rocks.  I mean, for those teens out there that are forever the outcast or picked on by the assholes of the world out there then this movie   ...

Read more: A-X-L (2018) - Blu-ray Review

Okay, okay, okay, Uranium deals in East Africa might not sound all that exciting, but when your business associates are Humphrey Bogart, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones, and your location is Italy’s scenic Amalfi Coast, well you have the attention  ...

Read more: Beat the Devil (1953) - Blu-ray Review

Set in the bombed-out husk of 1980’s Detroit, White Boy Rick tells the rather incredible true story of Rick Wershe, Jr., a down-and-out kid who became the youngest ever FBI informant at the tender young age of 14  ...

Read more: White Boy Rick - Blu-ray Review

"Can I come with you?"  Are the people around you really who they claim to be?  This reality-bending question is at the heart of Screamers, a quiet little science fiction movie that, once seen, tugs at the back of the consciousness far more effectively than ...

Read more: Screamers (1996) - Blu-ray Review

Nothing in Bad Times at the El Royale is as it seems. Not the story, not the characters, not even the hotel itself as it sits astraddle the Nevada-California state line and wears the duality of its colliding worlds of past and present as a cherished badge of honor. ...

Read more: Bad Times at the El Royale - Blu-ray Review

Could there be anything more punk than producer Roger Corman hiring director Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World) in 1983 to direct a movie about youth alienation in Los Angeles?  I think not.  Call it Punxploitation; call it a walk on the wild side of safe suburban homes ...

Read more: Suburbia: Collector's Edition (1983) - Blu-ray Review

Nancy Drew knows too much.  There is an elegance to the mystery that surrounds A Simple Favor.  It is made so much richer thanks to the performance from Anna Kendrick who, once again, nails her character with her quirky energy and down to earth nature.  With ...

Read more: A Simple Favor (2018) - Blu-ray Review

Kitty’s back on the cell block!  Woot! Woot!  Let the sweat-dripping orgies begin! Violence in a Women’s Prison, originally released in 1982, is a damn ugly exploitation flick. Even when you lower the bar when it comes to Women in Prison flicks, this ...

Read more: Violence in a Women's Prison (1982) - Blu-ray Review

It is a film that Roger Ebert eviscerated with his review, taking the moral high ground and shaming 10 to Midnight for its portrayal of sex, violence, and the female condition.  He also took to the review to suggest that Charles Bronson was just showing up for a paycheck.  And,  ...

Read more: 10 to Midnight: Collector's Edition (1983) - Blu-ray Review

Charles Bronson is back! Our fearless avenging angel has taken to the streets once again to kick a whole lot of criminal ass. Thank GOD. I already feel safe knowing that his 32-caliber nickel Colt revolver is blazing out of its 4-inch barrel again ...

Read more: Death Kiss (2018) - Blu-ray Review

Marion “Cobra” Cobretti is back on the streets.  Wearing his Judas Priest-styled sunglasses, a must for ANY badass in the 1980s, and taking out any number of axe-swinging maniacs, his beat on the street gets a major visual HD upgrade thanks to Shout! Factory’s Collector’s  ...

Read more: Cobra: Collector's Edition (1986) - Blu-ray Review

“Wow.  I have a parasite,” says Eddie to the clerk.  He just ATE a man threatening her with a gun.  She's speechless.  What better words could there be to describe Eddie Brock’s transformative condition?   “I am NOT a parasite,” roars the raging monster within him.  We hear  ...

Read more: Venom (2018) - Blu-ray Review

It is a calm, grey day.  The surface of the water is still.  A ferry cuts calmly across the surface, careful to make gentle waves.  And then it happens.  Your worst fears become reality.  Rising from the surface of the once calm waters is a beast ...

Read more: The Giant Behemoth (1959) - Blu-ray Review