DVD Reviews

Polish the silver, set out the good china, and put a kettle on. The Crawleys are back! Fans of the popular PBS television series that aired for six seasons can once again spend a little time at the sprawling English countryside estate as the film version of Downton Abbey finally hits theaters. And even ...

Octavia Spencer has been a staple in movies for years. She’s a talented, larger than life actor that almost always stands out in an ensemble, or kills it in a cameo. Quite rightly, she has been campaigning for a lead role in something that steps out of what she’s usually offered and  ...

In 1991, New York biographer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) finds herself in dire straits: she has lost her job, fallen 3 months behind on rent and can’t afford the vet bills for her beloved sick cat. Her agent (Jane Curtin) is less than helpful, ignoring Lee’s phone calls ...

Joker was frightening proposition for this reviewer, who has been a lifelong Batman fanatic. Firstly because it presumed to make the focus of its narrative on one of the greatest antagonists in storytelling history, without the hero; secondly because it wasn’t going to stick with ...

Ca-Ca-Crazy lives here and, if you are anything like me and my warped sensibility, you are gonna love it  ...

Rarely does conventional wisdom hold in Hollywood. Particularly with regards to the notion that less is more and that simplicity is superior to elaborate embellishment. Take, for instance Jerry Bruckheimer, the titan of TNT, who subscribes to the theory that if a candle is needed ...

Very early in the history of film different filmmakers sought to tell the story of the world’s infamous vampire. Bram Stoker’s most famous creation has influenced popular culture, in all its’ incarnations, since it appeared in 1897 - some might argue to the point of oversaturation. In the ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

‘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  ...

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 ...

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  ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...