DVD Reviews

Imagine if Freddy Krueger took the night off from his familiar Elm Street haunts and called in a favor to his good friend Stitches the Clown to get some revenge killing done.  Stitches is that movie. Comedic and imaginative with its scares and death scenes, Stitches is ...

Moody, stylish, and brimming with edgy atmosphere, Danny Boyle’s genre-bending psychological thriller Trance is the Trainspotting director doing what he does best. Only this time he does his thing in the world of fine art, applying his hard-edged style to an elaborate ...

Tom Cruise has been a busy boy of late: first Jack Reacher and now a big budget science fiction adaption from the unpublished graphic novel Oblivion. The writer of that graphic novel happens to be the writer/director of the film, who vowed a couple of years ...

Texas writer/director/actor Larry Wade Carrell comes bucking out of the gate with a modest but forgettable full-length horror debut.  While murky with a convoluted storyline that includes strange townspeople, warring brothers and a slightly haunted house ...

Writer/director Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell) gets the deluxe treatment with Criterion’s release of the now-classic Repo Man.  The film – as absurd as it is – has its own cult legacy that will have its followers (and newcomers, I imagine) knocking over ...

I’ll be blunt. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, both as a film and a Star Trek entry, is not very good.  It isn’t completely without joy (it’s the few chuckles that save this from being a complete downer) but the older the film gets the harder it becomes to defend its ...

Writer/director Jeff Nichols’ love of Mark Twain shines brightly through every frame of his latest film called Mud, the story of a young boy’s coming of age in Southeastern Arkansas’ sultry delta region. While the film’s river setting, its teenage protagonists, and ...

So concludes the four picture deal that began so spectacularly in 2008 with Marvel’s major cinematic gamble: Iron Man. Now three stand-alones/and a crossover film later, has that film gotten a worthy third entry? Phase Two of Marvel’s cinematic universe kicks off with ...

Romantic comedies don’t get more manipulative than writer/director David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook.  They typically can’t get any more damaged either.  Centered rather seriously upon mental illness, Russell constructs a fragile film built upon instability ...

Writer/director Shane Carruth is one bold son of a bitch.  Upstream Color is proof of that.  He is also the thinking man’s filmmaker and delivers, four years after Primer - his stunning debut - a follow-up that is equally disturbing.  His visuals are poem-like ...

Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, Andy Muschietti’s Mama is not unlike an atmospheric fairy tale.  It’s focused on a pair of orphaned siblings left to fend for themselves for five years.  They aren’t alone, though.  The spindly figure in the billowing in the deep shadows is ...

Saying goodbye is a hard thing to do.  Given that most television dramas overstay their welcome and most science fiction shows never get the chance to say hello, the fifth and final season of Fringe is one lucky dog.  Fox essentially allowed this show - with a cut ...

Created, produced, and written by Bob & Harvey Weinstein, The Burning is a slasher picture about summer camp, horny teenagers, and a prank gone seriously awry.  Released in 1981, The Burning – directed by Tony Maylam – offers nothing new to the genre ...

Disturbing is a word that comes to mind after finally seeing this horror anthology.  Interesting also comes to mind.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t all add up to be a winning combination.  While largely uneven – and sometimes just simply too bizarre for its own good ...

Pop-pops everywhere, celebrate! Olive Films continues their archival campaign to bring long-forgotten into the HD realm with Cary Grant’s Father Goose.   It is a true classic of the romantic comedy genre and, released in December of 1964, went on to earn two ...

Oh my glob!  The very first season of Adventure Time has finally crash-landed onto Blu-Ray!  Run to the stores, grab it along with some sugary snacks, and settle in with 26-magical themed episodes of F-U-N. Created by Pen Ward, Adventure Time is just about as ...

Starring the legendary Peter Fonda, this action-packed double feature release from Shout Factory features a couple of classic drive-in B-movies – Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Race with the Devil – from 1974 and both, no matter how you put it, are worth checking out. ...

It’s time, once again, to barrel down the post-apocalyptic Fury Road, Mad Maxinators.  Put the pedal to the medal and hang on tight.  There’s no place to rest easy.  Not anymore.  Not with the evil Toecutter (Hugh Keays-Byrne), the disfigured ...

Houses made of candy and witches that eat babies await you in writer-director Tommy Wirkola’s Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters; a re-imagining of the classic children’s tale.  Of course, with amped up violence and super terrific scares galore, the tale – especially ...

“Use my body.” With that enticing command, Tobe Hooper’s science fiction bonanza, Lifeforce, (s)explodes onto the screen with an interesting premise involving Haley’s comet and a smokin’ hot chick who walks around the ENTIRE movie without any clothes on.  That’s not ...

Writer/Director Joe Dante (Gremlins) humorously takes on America’s culture of violence with 1981’s The Howling.  Manically led by a charging performance from Patrick Macnee (BBC’s The Avengers), The Howling and Dante – alongside Jon Landis’ An American ...

At long last, Harold Lloyd arrives in high definition.  Buster Keaton got his respect from Kino.  Charlie Chaplin continues to get his from Criterion and now, with the lovingly restored Safety Last, the bespeckled silent clown Harold Lloyd finally gets his time in the Blu-Ray ...

Upside Down is not a very good romance as far as storybook fables go.  It is; however, fairly strong and needlessly complicated science fiction.  For my money, I’ll take the latter any day of the week.  After all, this is a concept film and – in order for any part of the ...

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the ...

Offering a tongue-in-cheek solution to the homeless problem that plagued nightly news during the 1980s, Street Trash is a horror-comedy that goes out of its way to offend everyone … regardless of their bum status.  In doing so, the film earns its underground cult ...

Created by the rich mind of J.G. Quintel, Cartoon Network’s newest original series Regular Show is anything but what its title suggests.  The animated series focuses on the hilarious misadventures of a blue jay named Mordecai (voiced by Quintel) and a ...

In this increasingly creatively vacuous arena we call Hollywood it is something of a miracle when (A): someone can present a new take on something; and (B): it actually gets made. Credit goes to Summit then for this wonderfully fresh spin on a zombie story, based ...

Predicting the right wing's media dominance with an intelligent script and a captivating group of actors of course WUSA – upon on its initial release in 1970 – was a giant flop.  I’ll wager a bet that some of you have never even heard of the film but know of its ...

Fresh from the success of 1978’s Halloween, director John Carpenter returns to horror and its star Jamie Lee Curtis for his follow-up feature film.  The Fog is a supernatural horror flick that is heavy on atmosphere and creativity and, in spite ...

Cheese never gets as gooey as it does in William Sachs’ bloody awful The Incredible Melting Man.  Originally intended to be a spoof of horror films until money hungry producers – realizing there’s more money to be made in a serious horror film - got a hold ...