DVD Reviews

Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish) are back in the paranormal saddle again. They deserve much better material. Straining the found footage concept in an effort to top themselves, Paranormal Activity 4 quickly falls apart as our fear of the ...

Leave it to the Swedes to think up something as fascinatingly bizarre as Troll Hunter.  Using the cinema vérité style of The Blair Witch Project and combining it with strict adherence to a bit of Scandinavian folklore, filmmaker André Øvredal keeps the ...

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for drug content, some sensuality and war violence.
Runtime: 142 mins.
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writer: Eric Roth
Cast: Tom Hanks; Gary Sinise; Mykelti Williamson; Sally Field ... complete cast
Tagline: The story of a lifetime.
Genre: Drama
Memorable Quote: "Life is like a box of chocolates"
Release Date: July 6, 1994
DVD Release Date: August 28, 2001
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Rated: R for strong brutal violence, graphic sexuality, nudity, language and some drug use.
Runtime: 96 mins.
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Josh Olson
Cast: Viggo Mortensen; Maria Bello; William Hurt
Tagline: Tom Stall had the perfect life... until he became a hero.
Genre: Drama
Release Date: September 23, 2005
Studio: New Line Productions

MPAA Rating: R for sci-fi violence/gore and language.
Director: Alien: Ridley Scott; Aliens: James Cameron; Alien III: David Fincher; Alien: Resurrection: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Writer: Alien: Dan O'Bannon; Aliens: James Cameron; Alien III: David Giller & Walter Hill & Larry Ferguson; Dan O'Bannon
Cast: Sigourney Weaver; Tom Skerrit; Lance Henriksen; Charles S. Dutton; Winona Ryder
Genre: Sci-fi | Horror
Tagline: A word of warning...
Memorable Movie Quote: "Get away from her, you bitch!"
Release Date: Alien 1979; Aliens 1986; Alien 3 1992; Alien Resurrection 1997
Blu-ray Release Date: October 26, 2010.

It might be circumstance that Five Deadly Venoms, a martial arts classic from Shaw Brothers Studio, gets released the same week that Kung Fu Panda 2 is released.  Chances are, it isn’t though.  Considering the huge amount of influence this film from 1978...

In the wake of the unheralded success of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, many a fancy knockoff was produced for film and television.  The Allen Quartermain film series with Richard Chamberlain, Bring ‘Em Back Alive with Bruce Boxleitner ...

In spite of efforts to instill in our young women the notion that self-worth shouldn’t be measured by her ability to attract a husband, filmmakers continue to craft comedy from that very outmoded belief ...

What’s the measure of a man? The position he plays on the football team? How well he can hunt? The extreme to which he must be pushed before resorting to violence? While Rod Lurie’s Straw Dogs tackles ...

MPAA Rating: R for grisly afterviews of horrific and bizarre killings, and for strong language.
Director: David Fincher
Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker
Cast: Brad Pitt; Morgan Freeman; Gwyneth Paltrow
Genre: Crime | Drama | thriller
Memorable Movie Quote: "If you kill him, he wins."
Release Date: Septemeber 22, 1995
Blu-ray Release Date: September 14, 2010.

At a whopping 85 years of age and with not a single stand of visible gray hair, Wings, directed by William Wellman, is a marvel of the film industry.  Of course you know its history as the first Academy Award winner for Best Picture.  That was in 1927.  We all do ...

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence and a scene of sensuality.
Runtime: 122 mins.
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Writer: Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay); Stephenie Meyer (novel)
Cast: Kristen Stewart; Robert Pattinson; Billy Burke ... complete cast
Tagline: When you can live forever what do you live for?
Genre: Action | Horror
Memorable Quote: "What did you expect? Coffins and dungeons and moats? " ... more quotes
Release Date: November 21, 2008
DVD Release Date: March 17, 2009

Saving the best for the last, director Edgar Wright and star Simon Pegg nicely wrap up their “Cornetto” trilogy with The World’s End.  It is a movie that is refreshing and hilarious and – shockingly enough – full of heart.  If you thought Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz was ...

Rated: Rated PG-13 for some sex-related comments.
Runtime: 108 mins.
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Writer: Catherine Johnson
Cast: Amanda Seyfried; Stellan Skarsgard; Pierce Brosnan; Meryl Streep ... complete cast
Tagline: A mother. A daughter. Three possible fathers. Take a trip down the aisle you'll never forget.
Genre: Musical/Comedy
Memorable Quote: "Last time I saw your mother she said she never wanted to see me again." ... more quotes
Release Date: July 18, 2008
DVD Release Date: December 16, 2008

Rated: for thematic elements and some mild language.
Runtime: 97 mins.
Director: Joe Camp
Writer: Joe Camp
Cast: Chris Kendrick; Nick Whitaker; Christy Summerhays ....complete cast
Genre: Family/Drama
Tagline: Rules are Made to be Housebroken.
Memorable Quote: "Why do you stay with him? He doesn't love you"

A Fistful of Dollars / For a Few Dollars More / The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

MGM Home Video has made available on sparkling Blu-ray, a classic spaghetti western trilogy starring Clint Eastwood.

Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo

MPAA Rating: Not rated by the MPAA
Runtime: 161 mins.
Director: Sergio Leone
Writer: Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach
Tagline: They formed an alliance of hate to steal a fortune in dead man's gold.
Genre: Western
Memorable Quote: "Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. We're gonna have to earn it. "
Release Date: December 29, 1967
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: May 11, 2010

Per un pugno di dollari

MPAA Rating: Not rated by the MPAA
Runtime: 99 mins.
Director: Sergio Leone
Writer: A. Bonzzoni & Víctor Andrés Catena
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch
Tagline: This short cigar belongs to a man with no name. This long gun belongs to a man with no name. This poncho belongs to a man with no name. He's going to trigger a whole new style in adventure.
Genre: Western
Memorable Quote: "When a man's got money in his pocket he begins to appreciate peace. "
Release Date: January 18, 1967
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: May 11, 2010

Per qualche dollaro in più

MPAA Rating: Not rated by the MPAA
Runtime: 132 mins.
Director: Sergio Leone
Writer: Sergio Leone and Fulvio Morsella
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef
Tagline: The man with no name is back... The man in black is waiting! As if one wasn't enough . . . as if death needed a double!.
Genre: Western
Memorable Quote: "No, old man. Thought I was having trouble with my adding. It's all right now."
Release Date: May 10, 1967
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: May 11, 2010

With Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro has turned in an almost perfect summer blockbuster.  It's been hyped to death and it might not live up to the hype - but it is a whole lot of fun.  And in a summer that has not been full of it at the box office, that surely counts ...

Ah, the mystique of beauty and youth. Woody Allen returns to his existential comedy roots and finds a new leading lady in the muse of the always remarkable Emma Stone with Magic in the Moonlight, his 46^th film. You can think whatever you want to think about him. Allen doesn’t care ...

It’s time to get on the Wingard/Barrett bandwagon. If you missed last year’s You’re Next, a twisty-turny little revisit to the home-invasion slasher genre, then that’s a good place for you to start. The director/writer team has been on quite a roll with segments in V/H/S,  ...

SNL alums Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader reteam for Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins, a meaty little love story with sibling rivalry and family dysfunction as its central themes.  You’d be forgiven for expecting this to be a riotous comedy. After all, it does star one of ...

The little television series that could, Showcase’s Continuum, returns to Blu-ray via Universal Studios Home Entertainment and a 3-disc Season Three set. The series is broadcast here in the United States on Syfy and, well, let’s not kid ourselves, you still aren’t  ...

Only one part of
Psycho
may be underrated

: the stylized intro with its opening credits. Horizontal and vertical lines rush across the screen. Words appear cut apart, split into stripes until they line up and right themselves. They foreshadow the splitting of characters’ psyches  ...

Rated: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor.
Runtime: 90 mins.
Director: C.B. Harding
Writer: Bear Aderhold & Tom Sullivan
Cast: Michael Edward Rose; Glenn Morshower; Larry the Cable Guy ... complete cast
Tagline: G.I. Joke.
Genre: war/comedy
Memorable Quote: "We are in the most dangerous city in the world, except maybe for Detroit."
Theatrical Release Date: May 11, 2007
DVD Release Date: September 4, 2007

In his characteristic way of illustrating the sharp contrasts of flawed people dealing with the most difficult situations, Alexander Payne adapts the Kaui Hart Hemmings novel, The Descendants by emphasizing the comical, devastating, and revealing moments ...

Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street is a gripping and forgotten classic of the film noir era.  Lang, being one of the several German filmmakers that helped shaped and mold and experiment with the film medium, arrived in Hollywood in the late 1930s, but most of his post-silent ...

Ever have that crazy dream – nightmare really, and usually recurring – of being asked to give a live presentation for which you’re completely unprepared? Or, what about the one where you have to take a final exam...

Apparently, Back to the Future wasn’t all that unique of a time travelling movie.  I’m sure producer Michael Nesmith (of The Monkees) and director William Dear, the co-creators of the 1982 sci-fi/western Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann in which a ...