DVD Reviews
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- By Christopher Symonds
Back in the early Noughties, Joss Whedon was synonymous with punchy genre series that, more often than not, dealt with strong female protagonists and thrilling plots. As if cursed by his own success, Whedon tried to branch out from vampires and slayers to the sci-fi with the ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
One look at Spielberg’s filmography and it’s hard to imagine the man has ever set a foot wrong. But alas, just before the 1980s dawned, he took a misstep with the (at the time) expensive comedy 1941. Not to rest on his laurels, he doubled down in 81 and 82 and introduced the ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
This low budget ($300,000 USD) slasher film, made by a recent (in the 70s) USC graduate, would spawn countless sequels and give its backers some serious profits, the world horror auteur John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. Those things make the love for this ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
This reviewer is a little slow to update to new technologies. When it came time to replace some of my old equipment, I dove deep into the pros and cons of the next (and many say last) generation of home movies: 4K. The pros and cons of yet another format are involved and not a blanket statement. For example ...
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- By Frank Wilkins
The road trip through the zombie apocalypse continues with Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland: Double Tap, which comes some ten years after his Zombieland caught the front end of the zombie resurgence in the ‘90s and rode it into undead lore. ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Stanley Kubrick was a director of unparalleled technical mastery in his time. There isn’t a film fan, or filmmaker out there that hasn’t delved deep into the many works he produced over three decades before his untimely death. His subject matters were always ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
In the late 70s and early 80s, the short form ‘mini-series’ was a chance for networks to stretch their muscles with event storytelling. Long before HBO and Netflix and Amazon showed that feature film budgets and top shelf talent could not only match the quality of storytelling in cinema, but best ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
William H. Boney, for a 20 something misanthrope, made quite the imprint on the world. Whether it’s a sad indictment on our global culture that these types of people cement themselves into history or a tip of the cap to a now alien time and ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Young Guns successfully entertained the 1988 box office to the tune of 45 million dollars. The film chose to focus on the revenge of Billy the Kid and the regulators on his employer’s killer and once Jack Palance caught one between the eyes ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Sylvester Stallone was infamously underrated and dismissed until he stormed the box office and got an Oscar nomination for Rocky. By 1982 he’d attained enough box office clout to name his next project and what he decided to do was First Blood, an adaptation of a novel by David Morell that had been in ...
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- By Frank Wilkins
Interior: DARK, GIN-SOAKED MOVIE THEATER CAMERA - SLOW PAN LEFT TO RIGHT. It was a dark and stormy night. Flickering frames of light pierced the smoky darkness, casting shadows on the tattered silver screen. The projector’s jittery rays revealed the forlorn faces of a checked-out audience while the stormy night’s deafening ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
There are few directors out there that have the distinction of making sequels to hit films that not only reach the quality of the original, but surpass it. James Cameron is one of them. He is an auteur that never rested on his laurels, always coming at things with a fresh take for a follow up and never settling for ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
With word trickling down a new Matrix entry is on the way that will include Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss), it feels timely to receive the 4K versions of the trilogy in the post to review. Let’s get to it. ...
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- By Frank Wilkins
Hollywood needs more war films. Despite the pig-headed durability of the world’s war machine providing an unending supply of source material, the genre has largely become abandoned with only the occasional passion project popping up from time to time around Veteran’s Day. For decades, the underserved ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
We are so spoiled for choice in this day and age that sometimes brilliance and gold that should never be missed can get left in the wake of unending wave of stuff. In a world of remakes, amazing movie magic, remakes of Planet of the Apes are not as instantly well known as ...
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- By Michelle Duy
When Una (Rooney Mara) was 13, her neighbor Ray molested her. They carried on a secret 3-month long relationship, at which point they planned to run away together. But then Ray (Ben Mendelsohn) disappeared. He wound up serving 4 years ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
‘It’s a mad house! A mad house!’ So it felt to me finding the entire Planet of the Apes cinematic journey in this new mammoth sized 50th anniversary set in the mail. I’ll try to keep the review succinct as there are 5 movies in the original series, the Tim Burton remake and the ...
Read more: 50 Years of Planet of the Apes: 9-Movie Collection - Blu-ray Review
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- By Christopher Symonds
If the last couple of years have taught us anything it should be never underestimate Sylvester Stallone. He was mocked at the beginning of his career and brought us Rocky. His popularity waned in the late 90’s and when word trickled down he was reviving not only his famous ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Three years would pass before another go around with John Rambo and produce the most (at the time) violent action movie ever made. It marked a continued tonal shift of the character that had good intentions hidden in cartoonish, ham fisted ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
For a very long time, I wished that First Blood had been a one and done deal. But it arrived in the 1982, and anything from the 80s onward that made the studios money would like get a sequel with a roman numeral next to it. The remainder of that decade saw ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Although this isn’t the first of Disney’s attempts to redo their animated back catalogue, I think it had the hardest job. The mastery of motion capture technology and the sophistication that computer generated animation has reached allows them to deliver ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Pixar never cease to surprise me. On the sole summary of one of their stories, I almost never get a sense of just how much I may fall in love with whatever they’re dishing out. Toy Story, The Incredibles, Coco, you name it, I’ve underestimated their power to completely ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
I don’t cry in movies. It’s just not my way. But I have to confess that twenty years ago, upon sitting down to watch Steven Speilberg’s World War II magnum opus, the recreation of the Normandy invasion put a lump in my throat and fogged my eyes with tears for its ...
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- By Frank Wilkins
There’s a key scene about halfway through A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood in which cynical journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), utters under his breath, "he's about the nicest person I've ever met.” Of course, Lloyd is talking about Fred Rogers, the host of ...
Read more: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - Blu-ray Review
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- By Christopher Symonds
The first time I heard the name Mike Mignola was after I received a set of his Topps comic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As a lifelong comic reader, I’m ashamed to say I’d missed his ...
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- By Christopher Symonds
Misery is just about this reviewer’s favorite Stephen King adaptation. Its director, Rob Reiner, was the only one entrusted with that adaptation because the author knew the director would adapt it well. The reason that King knew he would adapt it well ...
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- By Frank Wilkins
Filmmaker Sam Mendes gets down and personal with his new film, 1917 about two young British soldiers sent on an impossible mission to save hundreds of their fellow soldiers. Though largely fictionalized, his tale comes from an actual account told by his paternal grandfather who served in the ...
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- By Loron Hays
If one of the final moments of director J. J. Abrams’ Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker - two lightsabers sinking into the sands of Tattooine - hits you rather hollow, it is by the director’s choice. The Skywalker Saga is over with this film, but what’s shocking is that it really doesn’t feel ...
Read more: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Blu-ray Review
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- By Christopher Symonds
The Bourne series is currently five films in (as of the writing of this article) and had definitively made its mark in the action/spy genre. In a perfect storm of confluences, it hit its mark with an audience desperate to break with convention and be given something unseen in the ...
Read more: Bourne: The Ultimate Collection - 4K Blu-ray Review
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- By Christopher Symonds
There are touchstone pictures that transcend any generation, no matter when they were born, that fall under the MUST WATCH category. They are masterpieces. Films like Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of Sierra Madre, (I know! Bogart nut) it doesn’t matter. If you are a film aficionado, a general viewer, a ...
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Movie Reviews
Morbidly Hollywood
- Colorado Street Suicide Bridge
- Death of a Princess - The Story of Grace Kelly's Fatal Car Crash
- Joaquin Phoenix 911 Call - River Phoenix - Viper Room
- Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
- Suicide and the Hollywood Sign - The Girl Who Jumped from the Hollywood Sign
- The Amityville Horror House
- The Black Dahlia Murder - The Death of Elizabeth Short
- The Death of Actress Jane Russell
- The Death of Brandon Lee
- The Death of Chris Farley
- The Death of Dominique Dunne
- The Death of George Reeves - the Original Superman