DVD Reviews

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 ...

John Carter is a pulp-soaked spectacle of science fiction sound and vision.  With eye-popping 3D effects that “whiz-bang” and “golly-gee” the senses down to their sockets, John Carter is a planet-hopping celebration of pulpy matters and pulse-rattling pomp ...

John le Carré has one of the most critically lauded spy writers in the world for many decades, and, now in his eighties, continues a regular and popular output of novels for the world to devour. The real life former SIS operative has carved himself out ...

From the so-bad-it’s-good camp comes this little slice of 1970’s low-budget cheese and PG-rated sleaze.  The year was 1971 and, from the colorful lab sets and hilarious man-in-a-monster-suit attacks, America was obviously afraid of two-legged fish attacks ...

Fresh off the rousing success of last year’s Bridesmaids, four members of that cast rejoin for Jennifer Westfeldt’s indie comedy Friends With Kids, an anemic little film that hits in stops and spurts but ultimately feels like nothing more than a feature-length sitcom ...

Played for laughs and not for scares, famed producer/director Roger Corman’s cult classic from 1960 arrives on blu-ray with little fanfare, but what a celebration it is for its fans.  The Little Shop of Horrors is a comedy masterwork that still resonates ...

While truly never a fan of director Tarsem Singh’s work (movies such as The Cell and The Fall), there’s no denying his visual style makes for a convincing foundation with which to build a movie upon.  Enter Immortals.  Every single frame of this film looks like the gold-encrusted ...

Filmmaking brothers Jay and Mark Duplass have carved out a nice little niche for themselves as a pair of brilliantly creative artists who continue to turn life’s seemingly innocuous little circumstances into finely crafted works of art: a mother trying to cope with ...

The Hunger Games, based on the first book in a trilogy by Suzanne Collins about a state-run TV talent show where 24 teenagers fight against each other for food, will capture everyone’s attention this weekend.  It’s a movie where its lead character - a headstrong female ...

Released from Kino International this month, a company set to conclude its run of Keaton high definition transfers soon, is a glimpse at the rarely seen and hardly heard version of the silent comedian.  The Lost Keaton: Sixteen Comedy Shorts presents Buster Keaton’s ...

Time was when the mention of a double act with Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller would have had this reviewer racing for the nearest cinema. They are two of the most indelible and successful comedians the world has ever seen. In recent years, however, their output has ...

Rule breaker.  Savvy business man.  Trend setter.  Lover of the bare female form.  Forget Don Draper, legendary director/producer Roger Corman is the original Mad Man.  No other man could get actor Jack Nicholson to absolutely weep (albeit from behind a sharp pair ...

The Horror genre just got a much needed kick in the pants courtesy of Drew Goddard (Cloverfield) and his co-writer Joss Whedon (The Avengers).  I won’t mince words here; Cabin in the Woods is indeed a game changer.  It might even be THE game changer for ...

War Horse is a beautifully shot throwback to another era of filmmaking.  Sentimental in style and full of clichés it wholeheartedly rides straight into the sunset, this World War I epic about a boy and his horse could have easily been made in the 1950s.  It’s wide-eyed ...

In what amounts to the soft rock version of Alexander Payne’s hard-hitting The Descendants, one family – led by the accomplished acting skills of Matt Damon - mourns the loss of their mother (and his character’s wife) with the purchase of a zoo ...

Snake Plissken is back. Whoops.  I mean, a super-spy go-to-government stud named Snow (Guy Pearce, playing Kurt Russell, adorned in a ‘Warning: Offensive’ t-shirt) is back on the job in co-directors Stephen St. Leger & James Mather’s Lockout.  It’s cheesy ...

What a great exploitation idea: the Marines vs. Charlie Manson. The sentence alone should have grossed $50 million, right?  Not in 1985.  Not by a long shot.  Yet, somehow Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except managed to sear straight into its audience’s brain cells ...

Leave it to the French to redefine both ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘nightmare’.  With one unflinching swipe of the hand, director Xavier Gens (Frontiers) wipes away any lasting memories of The Road or Doomsday and makes A Boy and His Dog look like a family trip to the ...

John Carpenter’s remake of a revered 1950s B-Movie became even more revered than the film it honoured. It was a masterpiece in paranoia, tension, and deftly showed our shortcomings as a species, and how far we yet have to go ...

Now this is how it’s done! Back in 2008, when we were being prepped for Iron Man, the fledgling Marvel Studios told us that this was the beginning of a grand odyssey; one that would ensnare multiple characters from their pages in multiple movies before ...

Jason Statham is no stranger to the mess of pulp found inside his latest redemptive mission, Safe.  Written and directed by Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans), the rock’em, sock’em movie plays for eye-catching wit and the absolute crushing of skulls. You see, Statham ...

Writer/Director Delmer Dave’s eerie classic from 1947, The Red House, finally gets its just reward.  Long listed as a favorite film from many critics (but not often seen by the public), the suspense contained inside one abandoned farmhouse is murderously clever and highly ...

When is a horror film not a horror film?  Essentially, that’s the question when writing a review for writer/director Ti West’s latest release, The Innkeepers.  Like Rosemary’s Baby and The Shining before it, The Innkeepers manages to rise above its genre and prove that ...

Is there a more influential 15 minutes in film history?  Famed director Martin Scorsese – who featured the celebrated Georges Melies and his film in his award-winning Hugo – doesn’t think so.  You shouldn’t either.  In what goes down as the most important blu-ray ...

Rage monster Mel Gibson is proving to audiences that he still has that maverick edge.  While unmedicated antics continue in his private life, the actor can still make for an appealing good-spirited criminal.  Get the Gringo, a grit-in-the-teeth production ...

The fine art of deconstruction has a name and it is Haywire. Director Steven Soderbergh has found himself a brand new muse.  Mixed Martial Arts champion, Gina Carano steps out of the ring and in front of his camera for Haywire, a revenge-driven action movie ...