DVD Reviews

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 ...

Are you ready to take a chance again?! Written and directed by Colin Higgins (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, 9 to 5) and featuring the debut of Chevy Chase in a feature film (when he left SNL in ‘76), Foul Play - while originally dismissed by a lot of print critics at the time of its release ...

The comedic timing.  The charisma of all involved.  The breaking of the fourth wall.  Hollywood’s definitive leading man!  What’s not to love about Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House as Cary Grant takes his physical comedy and his mannerisms from the office to home construction woes ...

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  ...

Those turned off by the squeaky clean nature and preaching-to-the-choir reality of most faith-based films these days certainly won’t have those complaints with the new movie called Father Stu. They may find plenty of other things to complain about, but, by taking full  ...

A psychological thriller in which Boris Karloff does NOT play a creature of the night?  Say it ain’t so?!  But it’s true.  Isle of the Dead, produced by the legendary Val Lewton, concerns itself with that which haunts Greek nightmares: the Vrykolakas and this female vampire is certainly NOT  ...

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  ...

Primal terror has never looked this good before! Writer/Director Joe Dante (Gremlins) humorously takes on America’s culture of violence with 1981’s The Howling.  Manically led by a charging performance from Patrick Macnee (BBC’s The Avengers), The Howling and Dante – alongside Jon  ...

Madness.  Mayhem.  And, of course, MURDER.  This is what follows the anti-archetype characters of M.  It is a thriller that is meant to unsettle the viewer with its hunt for a serial killer, making it an unforgettable REEL CLASSIC ...

If we are to believe the film’s promotional materials, namely its poster which asks “Who Made Tony Soprano,” then The Many Saints of Newark is an origin story for the fictional gangster played by James Gandolfini in David Chase’s groundbreaking, award-winning HBO drama series ...

The new comedy starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson called The Hustle is an almost identical remake of the 1988 classic comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels which starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin - itself a remake of Marlon Brando’s Bedtime Story. I say “almost” because  ...

The run of Daniel Craig as James Bond comes to its stunning and long delayed conclusion with No Time to Die, an action-packed spectacle of fun and tears that seriously delivers.  For “final” Bond films, this one satisfies on every level connecting the dots and plot points of previous entries  ...

“You made two mistakes.  One was getting up and the other was making fun of Shirley Temple.” Directed by David Berlatsky and starring Gary Conway as a decorated World War II veteran who returns home to try to save his farm from being taken over by the bank, The Farmer, a ...

Suspicions!  Accusations!  It’s all on the screen in this minor film noir classic.  The Suspect arrives on blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber and I, as a fan of Laughton’s performances, couldn’t be happier ...

Despite the film’s strong foundation and rather rich themes, Paul Schrader’s newest project, The Card Counter, is unsuccessful in attempts to achieve a tense and mysterious tone, and ultimately ends up as a dull, messy drama full of awkward dialogue and performances ...

"The motion picture that follows is a fable. In it there are many nudists but only one monster. In life, it is generally the other way around." Brain dead dialogue?  Plenty of female flesh?  Monster madness?  Where do I sign up?! AGFA and Something Weird, those cool-headed ...

One wouldn’t normally equate Cary Grant with a family movie about adoption and the drama which lies therein, but perhaps that’s why Room for One More (also known as The Easy Way) lingers with viewers.  Grant, playing one half of The Roses, never gets time alone as his house is filled  ...

It’s time for Clint Eastwood to hang up his acting hat for good. There, I said it. And that’s coming from one of the guy’s biggest fans. Sure, the man is inarguably a true Hollywood legend having appeared in more than 50 films, from 1950’s sci-fis, to countless war dramas, to starring roles in a dozen or ...

Fishing with grandpa was never as wild and as out there as in this slasher satire!  That’s right, Gorehounds and Guppy Heads, Blood Hook is back to get you in the mood for some more summertime hijinks . . . and this time all the muskie madness and mutilations are completely uncensored!  Whoop  ...

“She’s afraid of the big bad wolf.  Tra la la la laaaaaa.” It Happened One Night remains a phenomenal romantic comedy.  After all these years, this pre-code American film - which was made when being a reporter was idolized and the screwball comedy was only just hitting its stride - still hits all the perfect notes as ...

The intense stage lighting. The stylized production design. The black gloved-hand killer. The dramatic and often weirdly over-stylized music with electronic throbbing Goblin-like rhythm and pulses.  And, yes, the buckets of blood splashed everywhere.  If this were the 1970s, the best decade for  ...

007 who?  The Man From Hong Kong has all that you crave! Operating as if Inspector Fang Sing Leng (Jimmy Wang Yu) was the one and only James Bond, The Man From Hong Kong blows its action sky high and delivers a spirited action-adventure flick that could only come out of the pages of ...

The Marx Brothers are coming! The Marx Brothers are coming!  Well, after a bit of exposition that is as Casablanca (and others like that film) get a big kiss-off thanks to the parody on display throughout the 86-minutes that make up A Night in Casablanca.  This REEL CLASSIC might not be the ...

This low budget ($300,000 USD) slasher film, made by a USC graduate in the late 70s, 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 simple tale worth it alone. It’s cementing  ...

Independent films don’t get any more baadasssss than with Melvin Van Peebles at the helm.  Recognize that right now and we can remain on speaking terms.  The collective black consciousness is alive and well in his filmography and, thankfully, his independent output left a lasting mark on pop ...

It’s hard to conceive in this era of remakes that some redos in the history of cinema go on to become classics in their own right. For genre fans, John Carpenter’s The Thing is often cited as a prime example. For comedy, however, Billy Wilder’s beloved cross-dressing romp, Some Like It  ...

Only three years after Halloween swept the world up in the antics of Michael Myers, John Carpenter reluctantly returned to write the follow up, after pressure from Akkad and especially producer Irwin Yablans. Halloween 2 would be financed, written, filmed and released in 1981. They didn’t mess  ...

“Doctor!  Doctor!  She’s . . . dead.” A horror triple feature from the vaults of the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA)?  Yes, please!  Call it the return of the Drive-In schlock.  Hell, call it whatever you want.  I call these films - Help Me . . . I’m Possessed, Carnival of Blood, and Night of the ...

"What a story!  Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, All About Eve continues to shine bright thanks to the dazzling performance of Bette Davis as Margo Channing as she takes Anne Baxter as ...

Candyman. Do you dare say it? We’re coming up on 30 years since the hook-handed killer – known affectionately as the Candyman – haunted the honeycombed halls of the Cabrini-Green housing project in 1992’s Candyman. And now he’s back to paint those same corridors red in a ...