DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

Details: Created: 25 January 2020; Published: 25 January 2020; Written by Christopher Symonds

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With Disney’s current dominance at the box office, it is difficult to believe it, but they weren’t doing so well (theatrically) in the latter half of the 1980s. They had experienced, especially in the animation realm, a series of costly underperforming features and the sure thing that used ...

Details: Created: 09 October 2020; Published: 09 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma. Two repeating syllables is all it takes to conjure up memories of pure evil slashing away at fleshy objects in the night. I know we fans of Friday the 13th and its many incarnations have been burnt before by subsequent releases of these films, but Scream Factory - issuing ALL the films together with love, care, and respect - have seriously come through with their latest release the Friday the 13th Collection ...

Details: Created: 18 October 2019; Published: 18 October 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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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. ...

Details: Created: 03 October 2020; Published: 03 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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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 ...

Details: Created: 20 January 2020; Published: 20 January 2020; Written by Christopher Symonds

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The last decade of the 20th Century in movies saw the pinnacle of star-powered excess-driven extravaganzas peak with Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. One of the biggest stars in the world, at the time, he could write his own ticket, dictate all terms, and will anything he wanted into existence. That ...

Details: Created: 03 October 2020; Published: 03 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Question for you all, Dear Readers. When is a ship not like a ship? When it’s a Ghost Ship! And, true to its name, this supernatural horror film from Dark Castle Entertainment - who previously brought to life the Thirteen Ghosts remake - doesn’t behave at all like a boat afloat as its ...

Details: Created: 11 October 2019; Published: 11 October 2019; Written by Frank Wilkins

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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 ...

Details: Created: 01 October 2020; Published: 01 October 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Candy, Mandy, Sandy, Andy and Randy! Say it again with all the joy you can muster! And then there’s Glen. Glen . . . Dandy! Yes, those are the names of possible victims in Pandemonium, a horror spoof directed by Alfred Sole (Alice, Sweet, Alice), and - whether it be via strip poker, a trampoline, javelin ...

Details: Created: 12 January 2020; Published: 12 January 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Somewhere in Colts Neck, New Jersey there sets a horse farm owned by Bruce Springsteen. And on those 378 acres there is a two-story barn which, on certain nights, doubles as a performance area for Springsteen, his wife Patti Scialfa, and some close friends. The voices coming out from ...

Details: Created: 30 September 2020; Published: 30 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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A crossdressing criminal who’s paranoia causes him to become fully committed to his matriarchal role in a hideout from the cops? Something this wild - two gay pyschopaths assuming the identities of nephew and aunt - could only come out of Florida in the 1970s, especially when you see just how ...

Details: Created: 15 January 2020; Published: 15 January 2020; Written by Christopher Symonds

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2004’s Hellboy was a well-received if unspectacular performer at the box office, and the studios were not in a hurry to spend on another one. Undeterred, Guillermo Del Toro pressed on pitching various iterations of what could be the follow up. Oh, and since he had some time to kill ...

Details: Created: 26 September 2020; Published: 26 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Arriving just in time for a quarantined Halloween, Spooky House has re-opened its doors for all the kiddos to delight in! While not my favorite Halloween film, this quirky comedy does have some laugh out loud moments thanks to a skeleton on a toilet and his magazine reading material ...

Details: Created: 04 October 2019; Published: 04 October 2019; Written by Christopher Symonds

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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 ...

Details: Created: 22 September 2020; Published: 22 September 2020; Written by Loron Hays

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Infidelity made private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) the man he is today. We know this having seen the excellent Chinatown, but admits as much in the opening line of The Two Jakes, the 1990 Nicholson-directed sequel to that 1974 film, now on blu-ray ...

Details: Created: 13 January 2020; Published: 13 January 2020; Written by Michelle Duy

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Movies like Miracles from Heaven and Heaven Is for Real tell allegedly true stories of divine intervention. The latest such movie is 2019’s Breakthrough. About four years ago in Missouri, teenager John Smith (Marcel Ruiz) fell through the ice of a frozen lake. After 15 minutes underwater he clinically died. But when ...