DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

The high school coming of age narrative is never out of fashion – especially when it is done correctly.  Noodling from the likes of Juno, Heathers, and Donnie Darko, Michael Goldbach’s Daydream Nation (a title borrowed from Sonic Youth’s...

Owing a huge debt to the beauty of Genndy Tartakovsky's Samurai Jack, Jennifer Yuh's Kung Fu Panda 2 exploits what worked best about the 2008 original but wraps itself in a less satisfying narrative this time around. Most of the pathos of the film ...

Come gather round, children, it is cinematic confession time.  I love me some old-school kung-fu films.  I love them for being so riddled with clichés and candy coated cornball enthusiasm and extreme violence and general goofiness.  Films like ...

Another mash-up in a long list of pop culture suicides; this is the largely inane territory of D.J Caruso’s I Am Number Four, a film that presents itself as X-Men meets Twilight by way of Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a little “Dog the Bounty Hunter” thrown in...

The Wolf Pack is indeed back.  Unfortunately, the originality of their first foray into super drunken and super funny territory does not return along with them. In what goes down as a note-for-note retread of 2009’s The Hangover, director Todd Phillips ...

The nostalgic themes and past perfect philosophy running through Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris are certainly familiar to his loyal devotees, but never before have they been presented so perfectly and so pleasantly. This is the non-abrasive Allen. Less intellectually ...

Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass) has done it again.  In what goes down as an epic battle between differing philosophies and alternate histories, Vaughn has delivered the perfect comic book movie (let me stress that: the perfect COMIC BOOK movie) ...

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a beautiful film, but it isn't a good film. While the relevance of this comment within the context of what makes a film “good” can certainly be debated, its clarity becomes...

In 1970 the western genre received a much needed injection of honest viciousness in storytelling courtesy of director Elliot Silverstein and writer Jack De Witt.  Their adaptation of a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson was something a bit revelatory for its ...

Super 8 is sci-fi fantasy fulfillment at its most complete.  Like the finest of wine-accompanying meals, J.J. Abrams’ sleek homage to the feel and look of the classic films directed and/or produced Steven Spielberg (the ones from my youth) is...

There has always been something special about Ridley Scott’s Legend.  Too bad it never gets the recognition it deserves.  Maybe, with a new coat of HD paint and a look into the Director’s Cut of the film...

It used to be, as age progressed, as one generation passed onto the next, that certain things— book, film, sport, whatever—lost their lustre. What was an eagerly awaited activity became old hat or not appropriately engaging anymore ...

The first I heard of this film was that it was gonna star that TV heartthrob from ER (that I had never seen), who had also been chosen to be the new Batman. I was not yet familiar with Robert Rodriguez and and was only just aware of...

Richard Ayoade, probably best known for his role in Britain’s The IT Crowd, accepts as his first directorial challenge, the adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s quirky, coming-of-age novel called Submarine. A daunting challenge for ...

It’s hard to believe, but this 1984 smash started out life a gritty, straight down the line, action vehicle that ended up in the hands of one Sylvester Stallone. The muscular one had a crack at rewriting it, handed it in, and caused the studio to say ...