DVD Reviews

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 ...

Once again, director Tim Burton gets the quirk right and, once again, he’s come under fire for doing what he does so well: recapturing the world as he sees it with the camera.  Regardless of your feelings for Burton and Depp ...

Warning: the following release is intended for Grindhouse aficionados and trash trailer lovers only!!! Proving itself to be a bit of a history lesson in trash cinema, 42^nd Street is an exploitation lover’s wet dream: almost four hours of nothing but badass trailers ...

No, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has not flipped his lid.  The real-life pranks and antics he scored big laughs with in Borat and Bruno have been replaced with actors, but the dark and scathing commentary still underscores his latest, The Dictator.  Cohen still ...

Offering a little slice of horror to start off the summer, writer/producer Oren Peli (the brain behind Paranormal Activity) revisits the found footage phenomenon and presents us with a collection of nasty-looking nuclear mutants on a European vacation.  Many audience ...

Lethal Weapon is more than a franchise.  It’s more than a movie, too.  Created at Warner Brothers at a time when scripts with original ideas found themselves getting made (instead of reboot after reboot after remake after remake), Lethal Weapon is a force of ...

Prepare to roll your eyes.  I’m about to make a declaration that will probably offend some and cause a mild panic in others. Ready? Moonrise Kingdom is the absolute best Wes Anderson film. With this passionate look at the past, it seems the director of...

If you are at all like me, you see the possibilities that the gimmick of a man on a ledge somehow pulling off a jewel heist while pledging his innocence could sell itself on an assumed B-movie premise.  At once, all the white-knuckled moments flashed across your ...

Found footage films have primarily been outpouring from the horror genre, since The Blair Witch Project showed the film biz they could make a pretty penny; some to great success, most to a weary sigh. When Chronicle promos started to pop up, it caught the attention ...

It’s been about a week since I have seen Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.  Its themes – both haunting and human – have been resting inside me while I contemplate the dynamics of what I’ve seen.  Since then, I have seen the adverts on the television with the ...

While it started as an internet sensation, the real life story of an elderly man kicking ass and taking names on a bus has erupted into a full-fledged B movie starring genre geek favorite Danny Trejo. In Bad Ass, it seems Trejo is humanity’s last best hope for justice on ...