DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

Details: Created: 14 July 2020; Published: 14 July 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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It begins, hilariously enough, with some fairly shitty-looking stock footage of glaciers sliding off into the sea. Big budget this Yeti flick is not. Relatively quickly, we are whisked away to a fishing trip that quickly gets ruined by a ...

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 ...

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

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“You’ll eat my dinner or one of you walks out of here with a bullet in his head.” John Garfield, one of the original rebels in film cinema, is absolutely on fire in He Ran All The Way and, sitting right next to him, is Shelley Winters, a true partner in crime, as ...

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: 13 July 2020; Published: 13 July 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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The “witness” in this film noir title is Barbara Stanwyck. The murderer is George Sanders. I’m not spoiling anything for those who have never seen Witness to Murder. In fact, we see the murder happen in the very first scene as Stanwyck as Cheryl Draper looks out her apartment ...

Details: Created: 13 January 2020; Published: 13 January 2020; Written by Christopher Symonds

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Tenacious is the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Sylvester Stallone. He was once one of the highest-paid and most successful actors in cinema’s history, and, like most, has had his fair share of career highlights and—lets be kind—lulls. ...

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

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“No one would have believed, in the middle of the 20th century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by Intelligences greater than man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes ...

Details: Created: 05 September 2019; Published: 05 September 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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When Stephen King’s doorstop novel was adapted for TV in the 90’s, it accomplished what shouldn’t have been possible. King’s novel is a behemoth tome, with dozens of characters, and was one of his truly graphic forays into the horror genre for ...

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

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Never mess with another man's melons! Once that sick theme song from composer Charles Bernstein kicks in, you know that this film is going to be an epic showdown. It doesn't disappoint either. No clean window - be it in a car or a house - can stop him ...

Details: Created: 20 December 2019; Published: 20 December 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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There are touchstone pictures that transcend any generation, no matter when they were born, that fall under the MUST WATCH category. They are masterpieces. Films like Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of Sierra Madre, (I know! Bogart nut) it doesn’t matter. If you are a film aficionado, a general viewer, a ...

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

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The horror! The hilarity! The frauleins! Insanity follows in Horrors of Spider Island, a Z-grade schlockfest, from Germany! Released here in the United States as It's Hot in Paradise, with some cuts made so that all the girls keeping their clothes on, the horror film finally sees the light of day again ...

Details: Created: 20 September 2019; Published: 20 September 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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Polish the silver, set out the good china, and put a kettle on. The Crawleys are back! Fans of the popular PBS television series that aired for six seasons can once again spend a little time at the sprawling English countryside estate as the film version of Downton Abbey finally hits theaters. And even ...

Details: Created: 06 July 2020; Published: 06 July 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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In the wake of composer Ennio Morricone’s passing, there are few things as beautiful and as moving as his score set to the playful opening of prolific movie mogul Dino De Laurentiis’ Orca: The Killer Whale! Sure, this is a JAWS rip-off, but watching those beautiful beasts hurl themselves out ...

Details: Created: 18 December 2019; Published: 18 December 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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The Bourne series is currently five films in (as of the writing of this article) and had definitively made its mark in the action/spy genre. In a perfect storm of confluences, it hit its mark with an audience desperate to break with convention and be given something unseen in the ...

Details: Created: 03 July 2020; Published: 03 July 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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The Dynamic Duo of silent AND sound comedy return! This release has been a long time coming, but finally - thanks to Jeff Joseph in conjunction with the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Library of Congress - Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have arrived on ...