DVD Reviews

More than half a century since its original release, the announcement made from The Killing still rings loud and clear: director Stanley Kubrick, the auteur of the detached antirealism voice in cinema, has arrived ...

With my “cool” card revoked for my favorable review of Fright Night, let me go ahead and suggest that maybe the mid-to-late 1970s and '80s were a better fit for writer/director John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing). After a nine-year-absence his latest ...

The collective cry of The Big Lebowski’s cult has been answered.  Finally, after many DVD releases and Special Editions and whatnot, The Coen Brothers’ detective farce of mayhem, murder, and marijuana gets its HD debut. It’s been out for over 13 years and is....

Producer/Writer/Director and genuine gothic genius Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) continues to flirt with the idea of man and monster cohabitation in his latest production. Reducing the size of the monster to something no bigger than a ...

Regardless of what the film’s title may suggest, Ned (Paul Rudd) isn’t really an idiot. It’s just that his brutal honesty is perceived as stupidity. And that’s where screenwriters David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz find their hook in Our Idiot Brother, a ...

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...

When it was first announced that Piranha, the 1978 original spoof of Jaws, which was directed by Joe Dante, written by John Sayles, and produced by Roger Corman was going to be remade, an audible groan was heard from the masses. This would never work so...

While being a huge fan of the gore-tastic Laid to Rest, there’s a bit of disappointment that washed over me while watching its sequel.  Sure, the canvas is larger this time but…well, that’s just it…the canvas of action is larger and the claustrophobic atmosphere that ...

My love of film began as a four-year old in 1979 being taken to a small town drive-in, and, for the first time in my young life, being completely transfixed by what unfolded before me. Watching Star Wars was remarkably formative for me ...

It isn’t often that cancer is the subject of a young man’s sort of coming-of-age tale but, thankfully, we are all the better for it.  50/50 are the chances of one man’s survival rates against the rare type of aggressive cancer that he has in director ...

The Biblical themes and Shakespearean influences running throughout Disney’s masterpiece, The Lion King, are part of why this gem is more than a perfect film.  The rich music - songs by Elton John and Tim Rice ...

There are a million reasons to list explaining why Real Steel shouldn’t work.  Much will be made of the obvious comparisons between Over the Top and its many Rocky punching bag beats.  So much so, the consensus will be that Stallone should ...

There’s an early scene in The Ides of March in which Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), the press spokesman for a Democratic presidential candidate confidently exclaims, “nothing bad happens when you’re doing the right ...

By gum by golly, if The Bad Seed doesn’t still crackle with classic horror intensity.  Directed by Mervyn LeRoy and nominated for four academy awards, this suburban thriller is as raw and refined as day one...

The coldness of director Matthijs van Heijningen’s remake/reboot/whatever you want to call it of The Thing isn’t due to its icy Norwegian camp setting (although, even the obvious is taken for granted here). It’s the paper-thin characters ...

Sporting the same rebellious spirit as the 1984 original, but with a rejuvenated vision, Footloose revisits the small southern town where loud music and dancing are banned to protect the innocent. This time though with Craig Brewer at the helm ...