DVD Reviews

In 1965, rebel American director Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop) conceived of two westerns and decided to film them back-to-back in the Utah desert.  Surreal and gritty, these two westerns would prove Hellman’s skill at brilliantly analyzing the genre.  Shot for famed  ...

Inspired by writer/director/producer and all around film icon Roger Corman, Stuart Gordon – the director of From Beyond and Re-Animator – decided to film another script while he still had the use of a large Italian studio space.  Dolls, about a group of possessed toys  ...

“This stuff is way beyond Ouija boards, you guys.” Do we need to ask why?  Someone somewhere at MGM couldn’t leave well enough alone and that’s the only answer you’ll get.  Of course, Pumpkinhead has to return and, of course, an irritating group of teenagers ...

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the tale of a madman told through the eyes of another madman; a film so daunting it’s horrifying. Yes, here it is: the very first horror film and still its influence is felt. There is no argument there. It is also, with its exaggerated backgrounds and sharp  ...

There are little things more unsettling than zombie Nazis rising from calm waters somewhere off the coast of Florida. These top secret storm troopers cannot be stopped once they’ve risen from the depths of Hell’s ocean. Shock Waves, one of the handful of "sleeper"  ...

Classic films are often ahead of their times. L’Avventura is living proof of that statement because the mysteries in Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterwork are still being discussed and unveiled. The language of the film is still being decoded. Reviled, loathed, and heavily  ...

Based on the popular television serial, Hammer Studios produced a trilogy of science fiction gems featuring the talents of Professor Bernard Quatermass in the 1950s and 60s.  Their first film, The Quatermass Xperiement brought them a box office hit and a major film distributor.  It also ...

The 80s were certainly the era for sequels galore and drew a road map for how Hollywood would produce movies into the future. The franchises spawned, by and large, in that era still exist today. One of the only comedic franchises that proved in its early entries to be a  ...

Adios, Matt Smith.  Hullo, Peter Capaldi!  Doctor Who: The Complete Eighth Series (but, really, 34th) starts and ends with a celebrated bang involving a dinosaur in London and the return of The Master (or should that be The Mistress?).  The character of Clara Oswald  ...

Front Line Assembly sampled it.  Magician Criss Angel recreated one of its more dangerous illusions.  Only now, almost 20 years later, can the definitive version of Lord of Illusion - a film that is more of an artifact for a 1990s time capsule than a film in and of itself - be  ...

It seems that Marvel Studios can do no wrong, doesn’t it? I mean they bravely come out swinging a few years ago with a roster of characters that the average movie goer doesn’t know, and interweave a multi-film narrative into a multi-billion dollar earner that trounces all  ...

Up until this week, this Roger Corman-produced slasher/comedy was long overdue on blu-ray. It was originally made in 1982 on a shoestring budget and featured as many boobs as it did grizzly power-tool murders. Directed by Amy Holden Jones (who turned down editing  ...

Yes, it’s true that Sabotage is profane, gory, mean-spirited, and violent as hell. In fact, it may very well be one of the most violent mainstream films in decades. It’s like the love child of a grind house slasher and a Sam Peckinpah western. And it’s also true that Arnold ...

Here’s an Under the Skin viewing tip: know that Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who inhabits the skin and clothing of a human female, scours the Scottish Highlands luring unsuspecting male hitchhikers into her nondescript panel van before seducing them to a nearby location  ...

Never before in the history of motion pictures have the changes that happen inside the female body when a girl gets her first period been explained so clearly then in Ginger Snaps, a female-led werewolf movie from the early part of the 1990s. Oh, sure, the werewolf  ...

Marketed as the first film to feature old action dogs Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger together as top-billed stars in the same film, Escape Plan is not the high-octane action thriller we were led to believe. Ironically however, neither is it the compelling ...

Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is baaaaaaaaack! From truck commercials to actual news takeovers, Anchorman 2 might possible be one of the most overhyped sequels to come around since the Ghostbusters discovered pink slime bubbling beneath the streets of ...

Leonardo DiCaprio comes roaring back – and boy, does he roar – from his lifeless turn in this past Spring’s humdrum The Great Gatsby with a booming performance in The Wolf of Wall Street, which also represents somewhat of a return to form for Martin Scorcese, whose ...

"Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in," screams Al Pacino in The Godfather III.  I now know how he feels.  Honestly, the only way to begin a review of Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is with that famous non-haunted quote.  Why? Because ...

The old-school vibe that haunts George Clooney’s Monuments Men is leaving some critics and audiences absolutely cold as stone.  There are a lot of slow fades and a lot of dissolves and plenty of Frank Capra-like charm as curators, architects, and art historians scour Europe  ...

Raise your hand if you thought making yet another movie based on a children’s toy was a terrible idea. And keep it up if The Lego Movie’s trailers did nothing to convince you otherwise that a feature-length movie starring those dastardly little plastic land mines would end  ...

“Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.” When first receiving the news of a new Robocop film, I was a bit skeptical. Reasons being that the original was so cheesy, and so “eighties,” shall we say, that a new film seemed an odd venture. However, upon viewing the fresh ...

Proving that he’s not going down without a fight, 61-year-old Liam Neeson returns for another early year no-brainer action flick (something like six films in as many years) in Non-Stop. This time he’s an alcoholic air marshal receiving threatening texts while on board a  ...

Turn the masculinity to eleven!   I must admit, venturing into 300: Rise of an Empire, I wasn’t skeptical per-say, more curious. However, the curiosity prevented the unwelcomed preconceptions of the mystery I was about to partake, and I’m glad it did. Relatively  ...

Blazing with filmmaker Wes Anderson’s usual zippy energy, your stay at The Grand Budapest Hotel will certainly not disappoint. The madcap movie is a wonderful example of Anderson’s eye for detail and his rapier-wit and, while being his newest and freshest comedy, is  ...

Continuum is the best science fiction show currently on television. It is also probably the best Science Fiction show that you aren’t watching. Currently beginning its third season, Continuum is a Canadian-based import starring Rachel Nichols as Kiera Cameron, ...

Disney is not quite ready to drop the whole “pirate” act - at least not yet. The Pirate Fairy – the fifth in a series of Tinker Bell movie adventures and a prequel to Peter Pan – arrives in stores this Tuesday. It’s not as cinematic as what we’ve come to expect from Disney  ...

It ain’t a Christmas party until someone breaks an iPhone. If that’s true, then the couples in The Best Man Holiday had a crazy good time—they even threw in a smashed iPad, to boot. The rowdy revelers were first introduced to audiences back in 1999, in the romantic comedy The Best Man ...

Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla tears into theaters this coming May so why not the tie-ins into stores and shelves, too?! Originally released in 1963 here in the United States, King Kong vs. Godzilla is simply a must-own for any fan of either monster. This co-production between  ...

The classic feel of an afternoon matinee flick fuels the second of Toho's King Kong pictures. King Kong Escapes had a long gestation period and, while different monster villains were proposed (like Frankenstein), it was finally settled that Kong would battle himself  ...