DVD Reviews

Spielberg’s recurring motif of fathers and sons gets a cat-and-mouse twist in this comedic caper from 2002.  Starring Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio, Catch Me If You Can gets much of its gusto from their remarkable performances and Spielberg, working with ...

Anthology horror, especially if you grew up in the 1980s and thrived on those awfully bloody VHS finds you discovered, rarely gets any better than V/H/S.  That being said, if you don’t have a clue as to what the term VHS is referring to then this film is simply not for ...

If this is the future of filmmaking, count me out.  I hate to say it, folks.  It seems that writer/director Peter Jackson might have gone the way of Star Wars guru George Lucas.  In look, in tone, in spirit, and in adventure Jackson's long awaited and eagerly anticipated ...

The debut feature film of writer/director Benh Zeitlin is an unshakable force of nature that is not soon forgotten.  Winner of the Camera d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival as well as the Grand Jury Prize for Drama at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival ...

You’ve probably never heard of this film (and I suppose I’d worry about you if you had).  Be that as it may, the producers of Death Valley were betting that it’d be a hit back in the day with horror hounds and gore girls across America.  In 1982, Universal took another ...

Michael Ritchie’s The Island, written by Jaws scribe Peter Benchley and based upon his book, might have sunken quickly at the box office during its original deployment in 1980 but that hasn’t stopped it from coasting on a new wave of popularity ...

Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and American Dad, knows a thing or two about subversive comedy.  With Ted, he creates a live-action movie about a teddy bear that comes to life as part of a lonely boy’s falling star wish and the military technology that hard-wires ...

Much like the actual midnight raid that resulted in the discovery of and immediate killing of Osama bin Laden, Katheryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty sneaks up and packs a mighty powerful emotional wallop upside the head.  It’s an unsuspecting final result, to be sure ...

Something is wrong with the children of Mars and only Santa Claus can solve their mystery moodiness.  With enough misguided Christmas cheer to make the Hallmark channel all a-quiver with silent fright, a band of goofy green Martians (wearing green tights ...

“A Liberal Arts education will solve all your problems,” jokes writer/director/actor Josh Radnor (from CBS’ How I Met Your Mother).  It’s an ironic statement from the character he plays in his own Liberal Arts and one that certainly complicates matters between his ...

Judd Apatow is an unquestionably funny filmmaker. The man’s comedic genius knows no bounds of either box office potential or human decency. With his signature comedies The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, he showed that injecting a story with a warm heart and ...

Stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk With Me reads more as a testimony from within the bleak halls of a go-nowhere relationship than about his marvelously dry stand-up comedy routine.  Yes, he sleepwalks and jokes about suffering from an REM behavior ...

Pixar’s first foray into fairy tale territory started life out as The Bear and the Bow, went through a change of directors—losing their first female director, Brenda Chapman to the usually quoted creative differences—and came out the other end ...

After the fiasco that was 1995’s Judge Dredd, fans of the popular character from British anthology 2000AD would wait almost two decades to see their beloved anti-hero return to the big screen. The order of the day for writer Alex Garland was to tell it straight ...

While it certainly isn’t high art and, at times, as awful as you expect it to be from the wrong-headed trailers, Texas Chainsaw 3D – being billed as the direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original (and the only in a long line of sequels to claim as such) – isn’t, much ...

With a rat-a-tat throwback style that echoes the gangster films of yesteryear and a fedora-wearing swagger that suggests dark alleys and women with dangerous curves, director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less) brings audiences back to the ...

This movie – no, this phenomenon – will change your life.  Permanently. Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, having already earned freakish line-quoting followers in Los Angeles and New York through its communal (and sold out) midnight showings, is now High Definition ...

While far from perfect, Brian Cunningham and Matt Niehoff’s Overtime isn’t the total loss that it easily could have been.  You’ve got a low-budget film starring former WWE superstar Al Snow and a cast of other unknowns battling an alien-virus that turns people into ...

House at the End of the Street (otherwise known as 101 Generic Minutes) is a bad career location for Jennifer Lawrence.  She’s too talented of an actress to get caught up in a supposed suburban horror film that is neither scary nor any good.  A haunted house ...

If you missed the lackluster Stolen in its initial 14 day theatrical run, well, I don’t blame you.  Easy to watch when the brain is switched off, the film is largely a sloppy affair that can’t decide on a silly or sadistic tone. While not a complete loss thanks to the scenery chewed by everyone BUT...

I’m not trying to be funny here, but how many of you heard about The Jazz Singer before you actually saw it?  It turns out the revolution was televised (in a roundabout manner of speaking).  Moving pictures were meant to have sound and, in 1927, the technology ...

Quite simply, Two-Lane Blacktop is the purest road movie to ever exist. Revisiting Monte Hellman’s classic is not unlike listening to remastered Jimi Hendrix on 180 gram vinyl; a mood-altering earnest trip through the countercultural consciousness complete ...

The family tree gets a bit uprooted in the fantastic Hannah and Her Sisters.  Set between two family thanksgivings, this 1986 offering from writer/director Woody Allen is rich in storytelling flow – as the characters take turn narrating the events – and ...

Don’t call it a comeback.  He’s been here for years.  Yeah, I said it.  I couldn’t think of a better opener than quoting a little LL Cool J for you all.  And, listen, it’s deserved.  Arnold Schwarzenegger, last seen firing blanks in The Expendables 2, returns for another ...

With inspired gonzo guffaws and slapdash guerrilla filmmaking stylings, Sleepers is the funniest Woody Allen film to appear before his artistic vision made him a household name.  Allen, a longtime fan of silent clowns like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, throws ...

Sweat. Dust. Violence. And beer. These are the outback facts of life in Ted Kotcheff’s hard-hitting Wake in Fright.  An Australian film long thought lost due to the ravages of time, Wake in Fright stands proudly alongside Mad Max and Picnic at Hanging Rock as high ....

Ready for something new from Jason Statham?  Something like a romantic comedy?  Look elsewhere.  This is meat and potatoes Statham.  The protagonist of a series of thrillers by the author Donald Westlake, writing under the pseudonym Richard Stark ...

“Gross,” my wife said to me while studying the artwork on Olive Films Blu-ray release of Paramount’s Ticks, a low-budget creature feature from 1993.  It was followed by, “what the hell is wrong with you?” Ticks, to be sure, is my cup of malt-o-meal comfort ...

Bursting with the same joy captured inside Domenico Modugno’s recording of Volare, To Rome with Love continues Woody Allen’s successful European vacation.  The comedy is just shy of the usual laughter and a definite step down from his most successful film ...

The unsettling case of the West Memphis Three gets yet another documentary - that’s four now. But West of Memphis is different. Aside from the passing of time - some 18 years - that has uncovered additional evidence, recanted testimony, and incompetent forensics...