DVD/Blu-ray Reviews

Monster movies often get a bad reputation – especially cheaply made knock-offs – but, like this multi-cultural production of cheese and carnivores, what works about them is often overlooked.    It’s a shame.  It’s also to be expected from a genre not ...

Badlands and its harrowing killing spree is pretty much still, for lack of a better word, badass.  Based on the true story of one Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, writer/director Terence Malick’s debut is a poignant bloodbath; a film that doesn't ...

The lack of respect The Hudsucker Proxy gets is criminal.  Anyone who proudly proclaims to be a Coen brothers fan should give this release a serious chance.  For me, it’s an easy favorite of theirs in that it’s a straight up ballbuster of a comedy.  Full of dark visual gags ...

Serialized science fiction rarely gets as good as Canada’s Continuum.  Created by Simon Barry, Continuum centers on the dramatic conflict between a group of socially aware rebels from the year 2077 who time-travel to Vancouver, BC in the year 2012 and the ...

Universal’s monster catalogue had long been dormant, come the 1950s, and a smaller British production house called Hammer were savvy enough to recognise the potential of plundering those long beloved characters. They had already made a successful foray ...

You’ve got my attention, Mr. Wong. Opening with a riddle involving an ax, a slug, and a reanimated neo-nazi who has had his head stitched back on with weed trimmer line, John Dies at The Endproudly announces the return of writer/director Don Coscarelli (Bubba ...

Roaring onto Blu-ray and VOD everywhere, are the notoriously funny Baytown Outlaws.  This gang of dirtball sleazoids – much like the film with its mesh-up spaghetti western meets 1970s drive-in vibe – aren’t aiming to be taken seriously but they sure are having ...

Sometimes stark naked ambition alone can create a lasting legacy.  Morris Engel’s Little Fugitive is all the proof you need. It’s not much to look at but its visual poetry has an unmatched beauty.  It’s the tiny cub that roars. Scrappily shot in black-and-white with ...

Imagine if Freddy Krueger took the night off from his familiar Elm Street haunts and called in a favor to his good friend Stitches the Clown to get some revenge killing done.  Stitches is that movie. Comedic and imaginative with its scares and death scenes, Stitches is ...

Moody, stylish, and brimming with edgy atmosphere, Danny Boyle’s genre-bending psychological thriller Trance is the Trainspotting director doing what he does best. Only this time he does his thing in the world of fine art, applying his hard-edged style to an elaborate ...

Tom Cruise has been a busy boy of late: first Jack Reacher and now a big budget science fiction adaption from the unpublished graphic novel Oblivion. The writer of that graphic novel happens to be the writer/director of the film, who vowed a couple of years ...

Texas writer/director/actor Larry Wade Carrell comes bucking out of the gate with a modest but forgettable full-length horror debut.  While murky with a convoluted storyline that includes strange townspeople, warring brothers and a slightly haunted house ...

Writer/director Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell) gets the deluxe treatment with Criterion’s release of the now-classic Repo Man.  The film – as absurd as it is – has its own cult legacy that will have its followers (and newcomers, I imagine) knocking over ...

I’ll be blunt. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, both as a film and a Star Trek entry, is not very good.  It isn’t completely without joy (it’s the few chuckles that save this from being a complete downer) but the older the film gets the harder it becomes to defend its ...

Writer/director Jeff Nichols’ love of Mark Twain shines brightly through every frame of his latest film called Mud, the story of a young boy’s coming of age in Southeastern Arkansas’ sultry delta region. While the film’s river setting, its teenage protagonists, and ...