DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

While never released in America, Blitz is immediately entertaining. This gritty London-based serial killing actioneer might not have the smarts to survive even the most rudimentary of afterthought analysis, but Blitz is a total ...

While this American remake of the 2007 Israeli feature film called Ha-Hov will never hold up to the accolades received by its Israeli counterpart (four nominations for Israel’s Academy Awards equivalent), The Debt is nonetheless a ...

Suffer the Sadomasochistic!  Murder the Merrymakers!  Court the Claustrophobic!  Your perfect host for the evening’s anguish has arrived! Turning the tables on a fugitive-turned-party crasher is done deliciously in writer/director ...

It’s disappointing to be letdown by a film that wants to be warmly received by all its audiences.  While not ever as sharp or as blissful as Adventureland, the aim for its emotional appeal is the same. And, yet, it doesn’t quite make the mark. ...

Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike is one of the few films ever made that absolutely deserves to be touted as a visual tour-de-force.  From its spirited beginning to its cattle-slaughtering end, the film’s moving camerawork and inventive ...

With their brilliant visuals and unmatched crisp dialogue firmly in place, the announcement of The Coen Brothers’ arrival onto the scene circa 1985 was heard loud and clear.  Blood Simple was and is, having been released on blu-ray ...

Look, Raising Arizona has its haters. Many cannot look past its lampoonish treatment of reality.  Many more can't accept Nicolas Cage's performance as anything more than a physical performance of a Walt Disney cartoon. Those critical views ...

Sometimes a brother’s protection comes at a mighty high cost.  Other times, it’s as easy as a classic double cross from a couple of heels.  Joel and Ethan Coen’s Miller’s Crossing is a dark and deadly game of gangster’s following the hat. Whose hat? ...

Getting sick is never very much fun. In Steven Soderbergh’s tightly-wound Contagion, getting sick is supremely gross, a wide-spread epidemic, and a matter of life-and-death. You can refer to it as the great equalizer as none are spared ...

When Will Ferrell steps out of the comedic roles and dusts off his dramatic dancing shoes, there is a bit of magic that happens.  The cartoon charades stop and, for once, we get an honest performance from him. It’s these ...

Genre-hopping shifts into high gear with director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.  The style switch-up is as violently guttural as a Sam Peckinpah flick and as steely-eyed as Jean-Pierre Melville’s handling of exaggerated exchanges, and yet, ...

Today, remakes are an epidemic, so it might come as a surprise to some folk who turned this 80s gangster flick into a revered cult hit that it is, in fact, a remake. Unlike a lot of today’s unnecessary re-dos, Brian De Palma’s contemporizing of...

Based on Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ novel The Feather Men, Killer Elite brazens across the screen with three leading men- Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De Niro -  in one action-packed movie.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t ...

Go ahead and expel that breath of anticipation for a real good Sasquatch film, Horror Hounds and Houndettes.  Boggy Creek is a monstrous disappointment.  First-time writer/director Brian T. Jaynes assembles a crack-team of novice filmmakers and walks away with a ...

Originally released in 1996, Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners is the only heir-apparent to the throne of ‘Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice’ as it captures Burton’s delicate balance of gothic horror and comedy so well. There’s also a dynamic story...