DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

With the release of The Woman in Black, director James Watkins addresses three particularly hot topics that have been searing the brainpans of we movie fans of late. First, will the film aid the re-launch of Hammer Film Productions, which had its heyday ...

Released in 1955, Disney’s Lady and the Tramp was the first ever animated feature to be geared for the true CinemaScope experience.  It was also the first to be told specifically from a canine’s point of view.  It’s all legs and feet all of the time; a dog’s eye view ...

As a ravenous consumer of all things horror, I have seen the frightening, I have seen the exhilarating, I have seen the okay, the passable, and even the so bad its good; and every now and then I have seen the crap, the detestable, the waste of time and money ...

Take an ‘it’ director, hot off the heels of a major franchise success, and high concept idea with a punchy title (Cowboys Versus Aliens! Magic!) that promises a new hybrid of a film, an epic cast with a respected leading man, a Hollywood legend, and a supporting ...

Twenty years after the days of Captain Kirk, Bones, and Mr Spock, Gene Roddenberry was invited by Paramount to create a new Star Trek show; something to which he had little interest in doing. His original cast were finding success on the big screen; he had been ousted from creative control ...

Ripped from the headlines of the Los Angeles Police Department’s late-1990’s corruption investigation known as the Rampart Scandal, brilliant noir writer James Ellroy’s story of Rampart narrows its focus down to Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson), a crooked L.A. street cop who takes the ...

Safe House, directed by Daniel Espinosa, is exactly the formula you expect it to be.  Action meets Thriller meets Spy vs. Spy.  Unfortunately, Safe House plays it a bit too safe and, in spite of its engaging cast, is completely forgettable.  If you’ve seen one spy-type thriller, then ...

B-movie enthusiasts and cult film fanatics can rest easy now.  The darling no-budget creature feature from 1983 finally has found a welcomed home in dazzling high definition.  Released by Elite Entertainment, The Deadly Spawn finally completes many a freak’s quest ...

While better than its predecessor in antics, acting and special effects, the dynamic directing duo of Neveldine/Taylor doesn’t exactly crank the mayhem up to the levels one might expect. It’s largely a performance piece directed by ...

Hard-hitting and full of nightmarish promise, The Ford Brothers absolutely deliver a visually stunning Zombie flick in The Dead.  It’s brutal in its gore and situationally nasty in all the write (get it?) places.  Released by Anchor Bay Entertainment, The Ford Brothers ...

Act of Valor, the gung-ho rah-rah military recruitment piece, features real Navy SEALs filmed in live-fire scenarios. That’s the film’s hook. And while the gimmick will appeal to a certain crowd of action junkies, video game enthusiasts, military veterans, and those on board with ...

Offering nothing really new or wholly fresh to the crime-saga genre, Ben Affleck, in his directorial follow-up to the grossly involving Gone Baby Gone, presents a traditional tale of Irish-American woe amongst the streets of Boston with The Town. It’s an innocent enough ...

When this reviewer was a small boy, another young boy said something nasty after only just meeting him, and it stuck in his memory for the rest of his life. Why this boy stuck in my memory is because for the first (and thankfully last) time in my life, he elicited ...

Project X, while full of promise as hinted at by its intriguing title, is a teenage Hangover syphoned through a rambling role-reversed version of Sixteen Candles and that’s about it.  Solid for a minute-long buzz, the “documentary” isn’t fueled for the long trip ...

With a little more zing to its art and a lot more zap than the laser brain shenanigans that the Shrek series has become, Puss in Boots manages to be an artful and fun spin-off.  It tickles the funny bone and hits the snooze button on all the standard sentimentalities ...