DVD Reviews

People are still talking about Hammer Films and for good reason.  We are referring to, after all, a bedrock of lavish horror films that have withstood time and changing tastes.  Uniquely antiquated in style and very, very British, this independent production company originally ...

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro returns to the gothic and raids it like an undiscovered goldmine in his latest film, Crimson PeakBe warned, though.This is not the horror film you are expecting as the trailers are a bit misleading.  This is horror by way of serious-minded novelists like  ...

There’s a lot to like in Steven Spielberg’s Cold War-era spy thriller Bridge of Spies: reliving memories of those old “duck and cover” educational films; fedora-clad G-men tracking shadowy figures who dart in and out of New York subway cars; clandestine prisoner swaps between  ...

Hilariously off-putting in its documenting of an anti-liberal, pro-Bush time period in American history, 2004’s Team America arrives on blu-ray this week from Warner Bros thanks to a newly minted distribution deal with Paramount. While the film’s creators have gone on the ...

There is an opportunity lost within The Last Witch Hunter, an opportunity to be much bigger in scope than it actually comes across as being.  You may enjoy the fantasy flick but you’ll have to sit through a lot of the humdrum before getting there.  This is slight entertainment  ...

Being the second holiday-themed adventure for the Toy Story gang, one could easily expect the celebrated spirit of movie one, two, and three to be a bit diminished.  That is, thankfully, not the case with The Toy Story That Time Forgot, last year’s offering on ABC to kickoff  ...

As if he were preaching to the choir with his latest film, director David Gordon Green tells us in Our Brand is Crisis that politics is a dirty business. And with a timely subject matter so ripe for sleazy material, the opportunities with which to entertain us are seemingly endless ...

Warner Home Video outdoes itself this Halloween season with the release of a 4-film Special Effects Collection on blu-ray.  The set includes Mighty Joe Young (1949), Son of Kong (1933), Them! (1954), and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953); all of which are new   ...

It is upon us. For, thankfully, a fourth time, Daniel Craig returns as James Bond and delivers yet another quality entry in his stint as the super spy bulldog with a taste for drink and dames.This time though, Skyfall’s director Sam Mendes - who also returns for a  ...

Visual artist Corin Hardy’s directorial debut is, indeed, something to see.  Opening this weekend here in Kansas City, the horror film grabs viewers with its sheer intensity and atmospheric effects.  It’s a hard one to immediately shake off which is why my rating easily gets rounded ...

Rated R due to the amount of bloodshed and on-screen violence, director Peter Jackson returns one final time (maybe) to the fields of Middle-Earth and delivers The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition. Available this week, the new cut features 20 minutes of unseen moments. ...

There are few things more unforgettable and terrifying in the cinematic annuals than Emil Jannings as Mephisto in F. W. Murnau's Faust. Who? That's your first response. I know, I know. Unfortunately, when it comes to horror, the entire silent era of filmmaking gets overlooked   ...

After the success of Rocky Balboa (both critically and commercially), if you’d have asked me should the character of Rocky return for yet another installment I would have said “no” and quite emphatically.  In fact, to my friends and family and any stranger who dared  ...

Adding to the supernatural splendor of Ghost Story are the matte paintings of Albert Whitlock and Syd Dutton. They add so much life to this frightening tale that it’s rather shocking to discover that the majority of them were edited out. Recognizing it as a forgotten art form  ...

Ho ho ho! Merry friggin’ Christmas! Have you been naughty or nice this year? Fuhget about Sandy Claws, it is Krampus who really wants to know. Writer/director/producer Michael Dougherty (Trick 'r Treat) returns to cinemas to spread the Christmas cheer and jeer in a  ...

How well do you know the people around you?  I mean, really, really, really know them?  Those closest to you, in fact?  That’s the question Goodnight Mommy dares to ask its viewers.  Trust me when I suggest to you that filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fialas   ...

Call me disappointed. (Oh yes, I did.) With such rich source material and a near bottomless barrel of timeless literary themes from which to pull, how does Ron Howard miss with In the Heart of the Sea, his adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s best-selling book about  ...

Charlie Chaplin had his pathos. The melancholy Buster Keaton chased his inventive nature for great sight gags. So where does that leave the third clown of the silent era of film, the beloved Harold Lloyd? He's America's Everyman, winning over audiences with a  ...

September 10th, 1993.   It was my senior year of high school.  On that day, I had just turned 18 and had no idea that my life was soon to changed by a television show.  It was a Friday night.  I should have been out with my friends, cruising up and down Main Street in the   ...

My main exposure to Scientology once came from snippets of that infamous Tom Cruise video and a vague memory of 1980s Dianetics commercials. So the documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief filled in many blanks, showing how the cult attracts   ...

Quentin Tarantino does it again! Honestly though, was anyone expecting anything less from the already star studded director?  The Hateful Eight is a prime, albeit stunning example of why Tarantino is one of the few filmmakers in the industry today that treat film as a work of art ...

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu returns to cinemas this year with a harrowing journey into the bruised and bloodied heart of the relatively undiscovered landscape of the American territories in the early 1820s.  If last year’s Oscar-winning Birdman was the director’s  ...

Writer/director Woody Allen continues to make moviemaking look easy.  While a shade darker in tone than his last few releases, Irrational Man is still 100% Allen in its themes and execution.   The title sequences, the jazz, the impeccable cast, the mood; it’s all here and  ...

It is simply impossible to write about the events in The Boy without breaking into a serious case of the giggles.  The absurdity of a young woman babysitting a doll in a mansion that just drips with gothic goo is ripe for parody.  The situation knows no bounds and yet   ...

Sinister 2 is not a good film. At all. To be clear, it lacks the spark that made the original flick a better than the average horror offering. Screenwriters Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill got lucky with the first film but they choose – here in the second installment – to unravel ...

Dreams don’t come true without a lot of failure,” the voiceover narrates in Walt Before Mickey (2015). To prove its point, the film then spends much of its 107-minute running time showing the huge amount of failure Walt Disney endured, before he finally hit it big with the   ...

The skadoosh has returned.  After a five-year break, things effortlessly click back into place for the third (and more probable than not) final Kung Fu Panda movie.  It is an animated feature that hugs as much as it kicks with Po’s (Jack Black) swift swipe-to-air combos.  ...

Goosebumps, directed by Rob Letterman (Gulliver's Travels, Monsters vs. Aliens, Shark Tale), might have hit theaters about a year ago but the $131 million hit film is only just now hitting shelves on blu-ray.  Trust me when I suggest to you that the film – full of monsters, laughs,   ...

The 2009 parody novel by Seth Grahame-Smith gets the big screen treatment (after a series of delays, setbacks, and a cast of changing actors) but the end result – a frenzied mess of stitched together and remarkably sullen clichés regardless of the genre - is simply not ...

The golden age of Hollywood, with its authoritative studio system, juicy scandals, and nosy gossip columnists at every turn, gets a loving homage by Joel and Ethan Coen in Hail, Caesar!, a film that pulls back the curtain on the Hollywood movie-making machine the pair   ...