DVD Reviews

Hey Ho, Let’s Go!  It's time to head back to school – Rock 'N' Roll High School, that is – with this special 45th Anniversary Edition featuring the cult classic film newly remastered in 4K! Thank God for Paul Bartel (who plays Mr. McGree, the music teacher) at Vince Lombardi High School in this ...

Ghost stories are a dime a dozen, have been for decades, so it’s a herculean task to rise above the rest. M. Night Shyamalan, now a director of renown, managed to pull this off at the end of last century. The Sixth Sense actually managed to nearly top the box office in 1999, only being thwarted  ...

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.  And thanks to Shout Factory’s Naughty Cut of 2015’s Krampus, we get another chance to celebrate the dark lord of Christmas ...

With Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre as its reference point, Motel Hell is a seriously delicious horror film that exploits all the typical genre markers for the sake of comedy. And it’s all because director Kevin Connor (From Beyond The Grave, At The Earth’s Core) came aboard. What  ...

Joker: Folie à Deux is both a testament to the ambitious nature of its creators and a cautionary tale about trying to marry too many disparate ideas into one film. The follow-up to 2019’s critically acclaimed Joker attempts to explore themes of identity, mental illness, and self-acceptance through  ...

Pumpkinhead returns with a new 4K scan from the original camera negative! What a sad, sad story of one man’s tragic revenge.  Another viewing of Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead, newly remastered and released from Shout Factory, confirms this for me.  This cult classic and its following seems to get ...

“You don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism… Its structural perfection is only matched by its hostility.” —Ash (Alien 1979) Perfection is what Ridley Scott managed when he took his razor-sharp sensibilities, creature designs from the brilliantly disturbed mind of  ...

When is a 4K upgrade worth the double-dipping?  When it’s from Shout! Factory, of course!  Silent Night, Deadly Night, complete with a brand-new 4K transfer from the original 35mm negative, has returned!  Deck the Halls with parts of Charlie indeed! ...

It’s hard to put a finger on how he does it, but with his debut feature film, the awkwardly titled In a Violent Nature filmmaker Chris Nash has done the near impossible: create an effectively-haunting horror film by incorporating all the tired genre tropes  ...

The wait is finally over, folks! The ghost with the most is back. And even after more than 35 years, he’s as wonderfully weird as we remembered. Tim Burton's highly-anticipated revisit to the afterworld in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a delightful cinematic ...

Directed by Jason Baldoni, and written by Christy Hall from the pages of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel which spent 140 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List, It Ends With Us presents a captivating narrative that navigates the turbulent waters of trauma, love, and resilience ...

Originally titled April 29, 1992, and rumored to star Ice Cube and O'Shea Jackson, Jr. in the lead roles with Donovan Marsh behind the camera, the new crime thriller 1992 has since undergone a name change, now stars Tyrese Gibson and Christopher A’mmanuel in the lead  ...

“My husband is not my husband.” Do not trust anyone. There’s something to say about an idea which gets recycled every 20 years or so.  Such is the case with Jack Finney’s classic The Body Snatchers.  It’s tale has produced a number of classic films and a subgenre of celluloid terror which continues  ...

In her fearless directorial debut, Zoë Kravitz crafts a tense thriller in Blink Twice, inviting audiences into a world where power dynamics teeter precariously on the edge of chaos. Drawing thematic inspiration from films like Get Out, Midsommar, and Hereditary, Kravitz weaves an unsettling  ...

As a Gen-Xer back in the 80s, now looking back some 40+ years, we really were spoiled for choice in any genre of film you may wish to name. VHS was in full swing by 1984, so movies a nine-year-old had no chance of seeing in theatres were accessible on video, should an inappropriately aged horror ...

Well, it finally happened! After years of masterful passive aggressive campaigning, Ryan Reynolds finally got Hugh Jackman to come play in the Deadpool arena. There was also the teeny preconceived concern of Disney now owning the merc with the mouth and neutering him. Now sitting  ...

Filmmaker Kevin Smith, known for his witty dialogue and eccentric characters, takes us on a nostalgic ride back to the summer of 1986 with The 4:30 Movie, an earnest coming-of-age comedy that centers around three sixteen-year-old friends—Brian, Burny, and Belly—who spend their  ...

Few filmmakers catch the Hollywood breaks that M. Night Shyamalan has throughout his filmmaking career. With more stinkers than gems on his resume, the guy was practically run out of Hollywood years ago. Following that unbelievably fruitless string of terrible films beginning with 2006’s  ...

This is a movie about ghosts.  It’s a movie about not saving lives.  It’s also a beautiful film about the preservation of life . . . even when it becomes a question of exactly whose life you are saving.  It is also an underrated and often neglected film which just happens to be directed by the one and only Martin  ...

Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters, the semi-sequel to 1996’s flying-cow spectacle, Twister, is an adrenaline-pumping, big-screen thrill ride that combines the beauty of meteorological science with the chaos of nature. But at its core, Twisters is a story about people. In fact, Chung has succeeded  ...

John Locke from Lost, Admiral Pressman from Star Trek, the benevolent pacifist Alex McSween from Young Guns. All fascinating characters, all uniquely different  and all masterfully rendered real through the gifts of Terry O’Quinn. Before all these characters became known to me, the actor—apparently ...

It's time, my friends, time for all of us - the hardworking people of the world - to spend $30 and return to the haunted woods of our youth. Don't worry, though, you won't be in this forest alone. Here, there is a camp, and at that camp, you are never alone . . . for long ...

“You underestimate the power of faith.” With 2021’s Dune, Denis Villeneuve set a very high bar for himself. Delivering the perfect amount of exposition that managed to feel epic yet extremely personal but never overwhelming, the first installment that introduced audiences ...

It seems that Russel Crowe is leaning into the whole satanic menace subgenre of horror films of late.  Last year, the actor was hamming it up with a fake italian accent in the ridiculous (but fun!!!) The Pope’s Exorcism and now, while it’s much more of a sober affair (until it isn’t), he stars  ...

When Bad Boys, the first installment of the Bad Boys franchise first hit theaters back in 1995, the popularity of the buddy-cop genre was raging with such hits as Die Hard With a Vengeance, Point Break, and The Last Boy Scout tearing up the box office. Even so, Will Smith and  ...

Oh, there is nothing that can bring a smile to my face quicker than a Stephen King story sent for review. Whether his books or film/TV adaptations, more often that not it means I’m going to enjoy myself. I am one of his ‘constant readers’ and have devoured most of his adaptations, whether assigned  ...

“It doesn’t even feel like they’re trying to make a good movie.” —Gene Siskel 1996 The name Chris Farley always brings a smile to my face and sting in my heart. He was a bright, shining star, the life of the party, the consummate buffoon. I loved what he did. Graduating from SNL to movie star with fellow alum  ...

The 90s was the decade where filmmakers embraced the burgeoning new tool of CGI, after films like Jurassic Park and Independence Day showed the scope of what was now possible to get on screen. It seems an everyday thing now, much like a toaster; one can achieve some damn realistic  ...

Sequelitus has been an affliction that Hollywood has been marred with since the 80s, only now outshone by remake-itus. There are very few hit films since the 80s that haven’t been given, or forced, a follow-up. Sometimes this has born some tasty fruit indeed, even franchises of enjoyable new  ...

Long before zombies were running in 24 Days Later, there was Demons, a cheesy, neon-lit spectacle of Video Nasty delight as coke-fueled punks find themselves outnumbered by a whole lot of quick-moving lime green spewing demons who are just aching for a damn good time as Billy Idol plays  ...