Reel Reviews - Official Site

Wow.  A HUGE existential hurdle has just been crossed by a person who was raised on the set of the original film.  Makes sense then that the Ghostbusters story here in Ghostbusters: Afterlife is told from the viewpoint of a child discovering the truth about their own ghostbusting grandpa ...

Read more: Ghostbusters Afterlife - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review

The “Brother Man from the Motherland” returns to settle yet another score!  Can you dig it? Funked up by Isaac Hayes’ incredible score and theme, Richard Roundtree is back in action as Harlem P.I. John Shaft in this trio of signature blaxploitation offerings from directors...

Read more: Shaft/Shaft’s Big Score/Shaft in Africa: The Warner Archive Collection (1971 - 1973) - Blu-ray...

Director Jack Arnold was Universal’s go-to guy when they wanted a quick hit.  He proved himself mightily as he churned out classics like It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), Tarantula (1955), and The Incredible Shrinking  ...

Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume V: Outside the Law (1956) - Blu-ray Review

Wasted talent. That’s the most economical way to sum up The 355, a female-led globetrotting espionage action thriller that finds its multi-racial cast of Hollywood A-listers muddling through a script so lazily written it gives generic a bad name  ...

Read more: The 355 - Blu-ray Review

Can we talk about Super Fly’s opening for a minute?  Street shot and completely on the - pardon the pun - fly, this engaging opening is one hell of a way to open Super Fly, the late Gordon Parks, Jr. (Three the Hard Way, Aaron Loves Angela) film.  Right away, we are caught up in the  ...

Read more: Super Fly: Warner Archive Collection (1972) - Blu-ray Review

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 ...

Read more: King Richard - 4K UHD + Blu-ray Review

Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan was, at one time, a place of filth and absolute poverty.  Back then, it was known as one of the roughest neighborhoods in Manhattan; a better place to be from than to be in.  Bordered by the Hudson River on the west, Eighth Avenue on the east, 59th Street on the  ...

Read more: Angels with Dirty Faces: Warner Archive Collection (1938) - Blu-ray Review

Hey, BU-DDY.  Eric is out for blood.  And, really, who can blame him?!  Disfigured when some greedy commercial real estate developers set fire to his house in order to build a mall over it, Erik now hides himself in the air ducts and the subterranean passageways, cutting anyone who dares cross  ...

Read more: Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1989) - Blu-ray Review

Think it’s just the rainy day blues that has this mind reader down in the dumps?  Think again.  Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, Night Has A Thousand Eyes might be classic B-movie material (due to its supernatural sources), but the film is both poetic and engaging as one mind reader  ...

Read more: Night Has A Thousand Eyes (1948) - Blu-ray Review

“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 ...

Read more: Written in the Wind: Criterion Collection (1956) - Blu-ray Review

“Is your sword for hire?  I would pay anything for it. What is wrong?  Is your sword too small. . . “ Go BOLD or GO HOME, right?  Surely, that must have been behind this sword and sorcery romp as a bad king dares to raise a demon from the depths of Hell in order to conquer even more land for  ...

Read more: The Sword and The Sorcerer - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Collector’s Edition (1982) - Review

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  ...

Read more: Titane - Blu-ray Review

“Immoral women shouldn't work in banks, you know. They might corrupt the young dollar bills.” Small towns can be so wonderful, can’t they? Everybody knows one another so well. It can be like having one giant family with the sense of comfort and love gushing from the community. Well, why  ...

Read more: Hot Saturday (1932) - Blu-ray Review

Beginning with an explosion which levels a poppy field, Cleopatra Jones is one bad mutha!  Drug trafficking is about to get the red light thanks to her blazing guns. With an undefined beauty and a ...

Read more: Cleopatra Jones: Warner Archive Collection (1973) - Blu-ray Review

Sometimes the good country air can be harmful to your health.  Such is the frightening territory of this atmospheric thriller which sees a small-town recluse turn murderer.  The woman projects nothing but EVIL while, at the same time, being nothing but pleasant in conversation.  She’s a  ...

Read more: The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946) - Blu-ray Review

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 ...

Read more: Double Walker (2020) - Blu-ray Review

Dirty O’Neil, released during the same year as The Swinging Cheerleaders and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is yet another on wild romp through exploitation flicks.  It is essentially about the love life of a small-town cop.  Filled to the bring with backseat action, corny one-liners, and lots  ...

Read more: Dirty O'Neil (1974) - Blu-ray Review

“The mob doesn’t think. It has a mind of its own.” In 1933, some loud-mouthed man with a tiny mustache and a weird haircut rose to power in the country of Germany. His name, I believe, was Adolf Hitler. You may have heard of him, no? Well, he established a dictatorship to replace ...

Read more: Fury (1936) - Blu-ray Review

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  ...

Read more: Mass (2021) - Blu-ray Review

Jack Hill is BACK in a BIG way! For anyone who “hates” on exploitation film auteur Jack Hill’s The Swinging Cheerleaders for its objectification of women – namely cheerleaders – there’s a need for a brief lesson in film and cultural history.  Made during the 1970s, Hill’s movie was a very ...

Read more: The Swinging Cheerleaders: Arrow Video 2K Restoration (1974)

“You stinkin’ rat!” For crime flicks, High Sierra, directed by Raoul Walsh, is indeed a watershed moment as the gangster pictures of the 1930s gave way to the fatalism found in Film Noir, which would dominate the 1940s.  Making spectacular use of its locations ...

Read more: High Sierra: Criterion Collection (1941) - Blu-ray Review

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  ...

Read more: The Celebration: Criterion Collection (1998) - Blu-ray Review

Stop Motion animation addicts rejoice!  Monster from Green Hell has been unleashed and, for those few seconds of stop motion glory, it’s worth it! ...

Read more: Monster From Green Hell: The Film Detective Special Edition (1957) - Blu-ray Review

Metallic hands and dark glasses!  There can be only one Dr. Gogol!   Maybe it is the warning that is issued as the film begins in total blackness or maybe it is the way that Peter Lorre is lit and filmed throughout this horror film, but Mad Love absolutely works its twisted ways in a modern viewing and ...

Read more: Mad Love: Warner Archive Collection (1935) - Blu-ray Review

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 ...

Read more: Venom: Let There Be Carnage - 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray Review

An American Werewolf in London begins with Blue Moon howling across the speakers while pastoral settings flicker by.  It isn’t until we get to “Written and Directed by John Landis” before we see any signs of life and it is a truck full of sheep, with two young American backpackers, David (David  ...

Read more: An American Werewolf in London 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray Limited Edition (1981) Review

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo.  Need I say anymore?  I don’t really think so, but I’ll flex.  The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a certified REEL CLASSIC of silent, cinematic horror and it begins right there with Chaney’s performance as the deaf, half-blind, hunchbacked bell-ringer of the famous Cathedral of ...

Read more: The Hunchback of Notre Dame: 4K Restoration (1923) - Blu-ray Review

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  ...

Read more: The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray Set (Limited Edition) - Review

Exploitation flicks don’t get any nastier than this!  You've been warned.  If there is any thread of humanity left within you, you'll just stop reading now and go about your day.  Nothing to see here. Still here?  Goooooood.  Then you already know just how absolutely AWESOME this film is and, yeah, there's plenty to see.  I don't know  ...

Read more: Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) - Blu-ray Review

It’s Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn. Are you sold on it yet? No? Alright, let’s talk: When you think about Tracey-Hepburn films, Frank Capra’s 1948 State of the Union is certainly not as revered or remembered in the way that Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, or even Guess Who’s  ...

Read more: State of the Union (1948) - Blu-ray Review