DVD Reviews

Children shouldn’t play with spears.  End of story. There’s something EVIL bubbling just under the soil on this cursed farmland in Texas.  What it is though isn’t exactly too thrilled that this family has arrived.  Just witness the burning of the wooden oil pump  as a young boy ...

Achieving the impossible is easy. All one needs is a clear vision, a lofty dream, and a brazen plan to make it come true, right? At least that’s what Richard Williams would have us believe. After all, Williams – father of tennis greats Venus and Serena – had a vision in the late ‘70s that two ...

Death by trouser snake!   With a ripe sense of eeriness kicking about its engines, The Lamp (aka The Outing) begins deep in the past as a daughter watches her mother hopelessly die at the hands of a murderous Jinn. We are in Galveston, Texas circa 1893 to be precise ...

With such heavyweight Hollywood hits as the Witches of Eastwick, the Happy Feet movies, Lorenzo’s Oil, and of course, the Mad Max films – namely Mad Max: Fury Road which reignited the Miller fascination, there's simply no denying George Miller's place in the pantheon  ...

Writer/director Julia Ducournau’s sophomore feature film, Titane, is definitely one of the wildest and most shocking films that you will ever see…but in all of the best ways. You will squirm. You will grip your arm rest. You will even spew out many “No”s at the screen (trust me, I did the same). But the  ...

“That’s the one thing I’ve learned about clients. Dead ones don’t pay their bills.” Famed scientist and cheesemaker John Hay Forrest has died driving off of a cliff. It seems to be suicide, but the daughter of the noted man, Juliet Forrest (Rachael Ward) suspects something else: murder ...

Ending up in a ditch with a flat tire and no spare is just the beginning of Sue Ellen, Patty, Cindy and Rose’s problems in the regional thriller Shallow Grave ...

“Are you looking for laughs…or are you soul searching?” The reception of Douglas Sirk films have been…let’s say: mixed. Audiences of the time of its release in 1956 flocked to his pictures, but critics of the time dismissed his melodramas. They figured them as being too concerned with ...

You can slice 'em and dice 'em any which way you want to, but they simply don't make movies like this anymore!  No budget?  No problem, when done correctly!  Just ask Deke Slater, the man thought responsible for the killings at Tall Grass Country Club ...

Ah, yes, there WILL BE blood.  Double Walker, one of my favorite independent offerings from last year, arrives on Blu-ray via Kino Lorber and its recent partnership with Cranked Up Films.  While it has no bonus features, this release is certainly very welcomed ...

“I’m the master of the ghost ship!” Come for the zombie in the Nazi uniform killing random people and stay for the nonstop hilarity as director Bernard Launois gives audiences a wild tasting slice of French horror pie in Devil Story, his first and last horror film.  This is a Z-grade movie where ...

Well, this one definitely flew under the radar.  After its initial premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Mass quietly made its festival rounds, then only to be played in a very few select theaters, until finally in December, it got a VOD release, and now, to the thanks of Bleeker Street, we finally are  ...

The umbrellas.  The Flowers.  And Mother’s collapse.  Every year, it is the same thing.  Welcome to the cruel and keyed-in paranoia of Dementia 13.  If the headaches brought about by this dysfunctional family don’t get you, the axe murderer just might ...

Perhaps one of, if not the most important film movement in cinema’s history is that of the French New Wave, that made its audacious emergence in the late 1950’s and lasted until about the late 1960’s. Throwing out every rule of the dominating studio system, this movement took to the streets  ...

“Alright, they’re crazy! Isn’t everybody?” We are all crazy.  Every one of us are absolutely insane and little separates us from those poor individuals committed due to their uncontrolled impulses.  Working with this idea, Alone in the Dark condemns all of society, showing just how ...

Eddie Brock has a BIG secret! It takes a couple of views, but Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a fun, fast-paced flick that, easy to swallow, gets straight to the point as Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) continues to live with the unwanted shape-shifting symbiote known as Venom (also voiced by ...

"I can't help it, Joe! I just gotta have it!" These girls are nothing but trouble!  Smokin’ weed, sellin’ stolen cars, and knockin’ men over the head until they are unconscious and, you know, mostly left for dead.  And it is all because of the greasy tactics of Joe (Timothy Farell) and his notorious needle ...

Those turned off by the squeaky clean nature and preaching-to-the-choir reality of most faith-based films these days certainly won’t have those complaints with the new movie called Father Stu. They may find plenty of other things to complain about, but, by taking full  ...

“Didn’t you ever need someone?” “All the time.” As director Neil Jordan would describe it, Mona Lisa revolves around the idea of (and I’m paraphrasing here) a man not understanding women. And while the film does indeed center on this theme, Jordan and co-writer, David ...

After the release of his first two films, 2017’s Get Out and 2019’s Us, one thing became perfectly clear about Jordan Peele as a filmmaker: the guy undoubtedly understands the importance of baking rich themes and abstract motifs into the DNA of his stories. His films are rarely what they initially  ...

What’s the secret ingredient to your fantastic meat pies, Auntie Lee?  Inquiring minds want to know. Opening with a violent roadside altercation which results in the death of a kindly preacher (Night Patrol‘s Pat Paulsen) with a cross on his car for a hood ornament might not be for everyone, but  ...

In just five short years since the much-maligned Spider-Man 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man gets the rebooted remake in Marc Webb’s thrilling The Amazing Spider-Man.  While, before seeing the picture, one could argue the rationale of such a move on Columbia’s part, the necessity however becomes  ...

“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before!“ There was a time when those words - no, that entire opening ...

If we are to believe the film’s promotional materials, namely its poster which asks “Who Made Tony Soprano,” then The Many Saints of Newark is an origin story for the fictional gangster played by James Gandolfini in David Chase’s groundbreaking, award-winning HBO drama series ...

Zombies! Werewolves! Atomic Mutation! Intergalactic Giant Avians!  This is how you do it, kids.  Get yourself $100,000, come up with an attention-grabbing title for a movie, throw a monster in it, write the script on the quick, give yourself 6-days to shoot the movie (with an editor on the set so ...

The run of Daniel Craig as James Bond comes to its stunning and long delayed conclusion with No Time to Die, an action-packed spectacle of fun and tears that seriously delivers.  For “final” Bond films, this one satisfies on every level connecting the dots and plot points of previous entries  ...

As if we needed another reason NOT to drive through the desolate region of America’s Southwest!  The Brotherhood of Satan reminds us of all that could (and probably will go wrong) with an idea like that.  Come across a car full of dead people?  Just keep driving faster!  No one is going to be helping ...

Despite the film’s strong foundation and rather rich themes, Paul Schrader’s newest project, The Card Counter, is unsuccessful in attempts to achieve a tense and mysterious tone, and ultimately ends up as a dull, messy drama full of awkward dialogue and performances ...

“I hate boats.  I am not getting on any boats.” One Crazy Summer, for me, is a certified blast from beginning to end.  It’s massively underrated and deserves to be applauded on its own merits instead of being compared to its cinematic (and probably more traditional) ...

Like The King of Rock n’ Roll himself, Baz Luhrmann’s new film, deceptively titled Elvis (more on that later), is bold, brash, and over the top. This should come as no surprise as the Moulin Rouge! director – subscriber to the Auteur Theory of filmmaking – is known for his distinctive style and  ...