DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

Details: Created: 25 January 2020; Published: 25 January 2020; Written by Christopher Symonds

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With Disney’s current dominance at the box office, it is difficult to believe it, but they weren’t doing so well (theatrically) in the latter half of the 1980s. They had experienced, especially in the animation realm, a series of costly underperforming features and the sure thing that used ...

Details: Created: 26 September 2020; Published: 26 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Arriving just in time for a quarantined Halloween, Spooky House has re-opened its doors for all the kiddos to delight in! While not my favorite Halloween film, this quirky comedy does have some laugh out loud moments thanks to a skeleton on a toilet and his magazine reading material ...

Details: Created: 18 October 2019; Published: 18 October 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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The road trip through the zombie apocalypse continues with Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland: Double Tap, which comes some ten years after his Zombieland caught the front end of the zombie resurgence in the ‘90s and rode it into undead lore. ...

Details: Created: 22 September 2020; Published: 22 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Infidelity made private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) the man he is today. We know this having seen the excellent Chinatown, but admits as much in the opening line of The Two Jakes, the 1990 Nicholson-directed sequel to that 1974 film, now on blu-ray ...

Details: Created: 20 January 2020; Published: 20 January 2020; Written by Christopher Symonds

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The last decade of the 20th Century in movies saw the pinnacle of star-powered excess-driven extravaganzas peak with Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. One of the biggest stars in the world, at the time, he could write his own ticket, dictate all terms, and will anything he wanted into existence. That ...

Details: Created: 20 September 2020; Published: 20 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Release the blood parasites! One of the images that has long haunted my dreams and nightmares is that of a shirtless man bent over a nude woman’s body - which is placed on a desk in an office - as he opens up her stomach, pours acid into her open chest cavity and then, taking the same instrument ...

Details: Created: 11 October 2019; Published: 11 October 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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Rarely does conventional wisdom hold in Hollywood. Particularly with regards to the notion that less is more and that simplicity is superior to elaborate embellishment. Take, for instance Jerry Bruckheimer, the titan of TNT, who subscribes to the theory that if a candle is needed ...

Details: Created: 20 September 2020; Published: 20 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Family cult classics? Sure! Little Monsters is back in action because knowing that urine and apple juice are interchangeable is something one needs to know early on in life! ...

Details: Created: 12 January 2020; Published: 12 January 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Somewhere in Colts Neck, New Jersey there sets a horse farm owned by Bruce Springsteen. And on those 378 acres there is a two-story barn which, on certain nights, doubles as a performance area for Springsteen, his wife Patti Scialfa, and some close friends. The voices coming out from ...

Details: Created: 13 September 2020; Published: 13 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Sometimes the road to the altar - or in this case, the justice of the peace - is fraught with unexpected unexpected bumps along the way, like a fun media-frightened Archduke, saving a gangster from drowning, rescuing a missing cruise liner, and prank calling an insane asylum ...

Details: Created: 15 January 2020; Published: 15 January 2020; Written by Christopher Symonds

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2004’s Hellboy was a well-received if unspectacular performer at the box office, and the studios were not in a hurry to spend on another one. Undeterred, Guillermo Del Toro pressed on pitching various iterations of what could be the follow up. Oh, and since he had some time to kill ...

Details: Created: 11 September 2020; Published: 11 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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The Awful Truth might have been Cary Grant’s first SUCCESSFUL screwball comedy, but Big Brown Eyes - with its witty dialogue and snappy performances - is, for my money' worth, the FIRST screwball comedy that he starred in. Never heard of it? Change that. Quick ...

Details: Created: 04 October 2019; Published: 04 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Joker was frightening proposition for this reviewer, who has been a lifelong Batman fanatic. Firstly because it presumed to make the focus of its narrative on one of the greatest antagonists in storytelling history, without the hero; secondly because it wasn’t going to stick with ...

Details: Created: 09 September 2020; Published: 09 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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“How could it be hot when it’s Chile?” Businessman Julian De Lussac (Cary Grant) is back in Paris and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. At all. Which makes this Grant-centered film, his 17th film, a fun jaunt down the romantic comedy aisle of a bygone era. Ladies Should Listen, only ...

Details: Created: 13 January 2020; Published: 13 January 2020; Written by Michelle Duy

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Movies like Miracles from Heaven and Heaven Is for Real tell allegedly true stories of divine intervention. The latest such movie is 2019’s Breakthrough. About four years ago in Missouri, teenager John Smith (Marcel Ruiz) fell through the ice of a frozen lake. After 15 minutes underwater he clinically died. But when ...