DVD Reviews

Visual artist Corin Hardy’s directorial debut is, indeed, something to see.  Opening this weekend here in Kansas City, the horror film grabs viewers with its sheer intensity and atmospheric effects.  It’s a hard one to immediately shake off which is why my rating easily gets rounded ...

Rated R due to the amount of bloodshed and on-screen violence, director Peter Jackson returns one final time (maybe) to the fields of Middle-Earth and delivers The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition. Available this week, the new cut features 20 minutes of unseen moments. ...

There are few things more unforgettable and terrifying in the cinematic annuals than Emil Jannings as Mephisto in F. W. Murnau's Faust. Who? That's your first response. I know, I know. Unfortunately, when it comes to horror, the entire silent era of filmmaking gets overlooked   ...

After the success of Rocky Balboa (both critically and commercially), if you’d have asked me should the character of Rocky return for yet another installment I would have said “no” and quite emphatically.  In fact, to my friends and family and any stranger who dared  ...

Adding to the supernatural splendor of Ghost Story are the matte paintings of Albert Whitlock and Syd Dutton. They add so much life to this frightening tale that it’s rather shocking to discover that the majority of them were edited out. Recognizing it as a forgotten art form  ...

Ho ho ho! Merry friggin’ Christmas! Have you been naughty or nice this year? Fuhget about Sandy Claws, it is Krampus who really wants to know. Writer/director/producer Michael Dougherty (Trick 'r Treat) returns to cinemas to spread the Christmas cheer and jeer in a  ...

How well do you know the people around you?  I mean, really, really, really know them?  Those closest to you, in fact?  That’s the question Goodnight Mommy dares to ask its viewers.  Trust me when I suggest to you that filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fialas   ...

Call me disappointed. (Oh yes, I did.) With such rich source material and a near bottomless barrel of timeless literary themes from which to pull, how does Ron Howard miss with In the Heart of the Sea, his adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s best-selling book about  ...

Charlie Chaplin had his pathos. The melancholy Buster Keaton chased his inventive nature for great sight gags. So where does that leave the third clown of the silent era of film, the beloved Harold Lloyd? He's America's Everyman, winning over audiences with a  ...

September 10th, 1993.   It was my senior year of high school.  On that day, I had just turned 18 and had no idea that my life was soon to changed by a television show.  It was a Friday night.  I should have been out with my friends, cruising up and down Main Street in the   ...

My main exposure to Scientology once came from snippets of that infamous Tom Cruise video and a vague memory of 1980s Dianetics commercials. So the documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief filled in many blanks, showing how the cult attracts   ...

Quentin Tarantino does it again! Honestly though, was anyone expecting anything less from the already star studded director?  The Hateful Eight is a prime, albeit stunning example of why Tarantino is one of the few filmmakers in the industry today that treat film as a work of art ...

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu returns to cinemas this year with a harrowing journey into the bruised and bloodied heart of the relatively undiscovered landscape of the American territories in the early 1820s.  If last year’s Oscar-winning Birdman was the director’s  ...

Writer/director Woody Allen continues to make moviemaking look easy.  While a shade darker in tone than his last few releases, Irrational Man is still 100% Allen in its themes and execution.   The title sequences, the jazz, the impeccable cast, the mood; it’s all here and  ...

It is simply impossible to write about the events in The Boy without breaking into a serious case of the giggles.  The absurdity of a young woman babysitting a doll in a mansion that just drips with gothic goo is ripe for parody.  The situation knows no bounds and yet   ...

Sinister 2 is not a good film. At all. To be clear, it lacks the spark that made the original flick a better than the average horror offering. Screenwriters Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill got lucky with the first film but they choose – here in the second installment – to unravel ...

Dreams don’t come true without a lot of failure,” the voiceover narrates in Walt Before Mickey (2015). To prove its point, the film then spends much of its 107-minute running time showing the huge amount of failure Walt Disney endured, before he finally hit it big with the   ...

The skadoosh has returned.  After a five-year break, things effortlessly click back into place for the third (and more probable than not) final Kung Fu Panda movie.  It is an animated feature that hugs as much as it kicks with Po’s (Jack Black) swift swipe-to-air combos.  ...

Goosebumps, directed by Rob Letterman (Gulliver's Travels, Monsters vs. Aliens, Shark Tale), might have hit theaters about a year ago but the $131 million hit film is only just now hitting shelves on blu-ray.  Trust me when I suggest to you that the film – full of monsters, laughs,   ...

The 2009 parody novel by Seth Grahame-Smith gets the big screen treatment (after a series of delays, setbacks, and a cast of changing actors) but the end result – a frenzied mess of stitched together and remarkably sullen clichés regardless of the genre - is simply not ...

The golden age of Hollywood, with its authoritative studio system, juicy scandals, and nosy gossip columnists at every turn, gets a loving homage by Joel and Ethan Coen in Hail, Caesar!, a film that pulls back the curtain on the Hollywood movie-making machine the pair   ...

Forget the box of chocolates, dude.  I can think of no better valentine for this hallmark-hijacked   date than taking the object of your affection to witness the vulgarity-spouting vigilantism of Deadpool, a comic book character originally created by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld  ...

Rejoice, Poe fans! With the release of Extraordinary Tales on blu-ray this week, we finally have something we can rave(n) about. This new anthology of animated horror offers a lot for fans to appreciate. With narrations provided by Sir Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Julian  ...

Ladies and Gentlemen, Robert Eggers has arrived.  The Witch is easily the most disturbing horror film I’ve seen in theaters in a long, long while. Writing and directing an impressive debut, the creative artist behind The Witch has done a lot of things right, including the research ...

Toss this title in $10 dollar "so bad it's hilarious" bin at Wal-Mart, folks, because that's where Gods of Egypt is headed. Visionary director Alex Proyas (Dark City) goes the loopy B-movie route and, at the very least, offers audience a chance to laugh with his latest feature Gods of  ...

Fritz Lang brought Woman in the Moon to life a mere two years after his most important film, Metropolis. It is a less ambitious adventure but still manages to break the established rules of the time period as it combines science-fiction with espionage and romance and delivers   ...

There is something painfully simple at work deep in the mechanics of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur. It is a child-like simplicity that woefully recalls some of the problems a lot of people had with Brave. Neither one is a bad film but, if I am being completely honest, both   ...

It is safe to say that Disney's Zootopia is the shot in the arm that the animated community needed. It's exciting, funny, and completely (without apologies, mind you) subversive at each and every turn. Whip-smart and wild, it's the one sure thing this weekend when it  ...

With more bang than it has any right to, 10 Cloverfield Lane sizzles as a convergence of two seemingly unrelated ideas provide an entertaining and wildly cracked ride. It is, hands down, the best genre film I've seen since Cabin in the Woods. High praise indeed and,   ...

It was required viewing in my freshman film course.  That was my introduction to The Manchurian Candidate and, after having written many words about it, the film continues to seer its way into my thoughts.  One can easily glance at its cast and dismiss it BUT only fools   ...