DVD Reviews

“The next time I have to come in here I’m cracking skulls.” The Breakfast Club, in which the late great writer/director John Hughes gives voice to the voiceless, has finally been officially considered a masterpiece.  With this release, all the critical-minded Neo maxi  ...

Because sometimes older is better.  Martin Campbell.   Pierce Brosnan.  Jackie Chan.  When these three titans of hard-hitting action go toe-to-toe, you are definitely going to want to see the results.  Those artists – two actors and one director (responsible for GoldenEye ...

It is a valley of ash that fills the screen; dull and without expression. Little hope resides here. It is a dull and gray atmosphere that washes over us; full of cold notions as K (Ryan Gosling) arrives at a protein farm with the sole duty to retire the replicant who operates this farm ...

It has been a while since American military forces have deployed a good old-fashioned 19th-century horseback cavalry charge as an effective battlefield tactic. But that’s exactly what happened in the days immediately following the 9/11 tragedy as an elite U.S. Special  ...

Tsunamis.  Hurricanes.  Firenados?  Well, alrighty then.  This is the largely uninspired world of Geostorm, a movie that phones in more than just a series of sad performances all trapped within the pages of a story that appears to have been written by a teenager who lets the  ...

Some people enjoy playing with Rubik's cubes. Others, like me, don't know how to solve them and wind up wanting to throw the cubes against the wall in frustration. I had that same chucking-a-Rubik's-cube feeling many times while watching Darren Aronofsky's latest  ...

The only thing more confusing and carelessly constructed than the Winchester mansion itself, is the story that tries to explain why the house was built in such a haphazard manner in the first place. Construction began on the real-life Winchester House in 1886 and was never ...

The Elseworld has arrived, DC fans! There is a shadow that stalks the corners of the alleyways in Gotham City.  Another one – separate but just as severe – darkens the very top of roofs.  His shadow looms larger.  One of those threatening shadows carries a long, steely ...

Pretty harshly assessed by critics of the day, Kindergarten Cop, the follow up collaboration between the 'Austrian Oak' and director Ivan Reitman, was still a massive financial success back in 1990 when it took over 200 million on a (now) paltry budget of around 15 million. ...

It is a sad fact that talent doesn’t necessarily equate to a career of note or at all in Hollywood. There are literally hundreds of thousands of talented people out there that will never get their shot in the spotlight. Every so often, however, someone manages to bridge this gap from  ...

The obsessed fan/love interest movie is a well-trodden one nowadays, with some truly stellar entries in the sub-genre (Misery, Fatal Attraction) and some truly awful ones; but one, to my surprise, that is rarely brought up is one of the earliest on this subject ...

Let’s get this out of the way quickly: this reviewer is a white male from Australia in his early 40s. I have not, nor will I ever refer to another person or cast with a preface of black, Asian, jupitarian, or anything else, because to this small fry in the world, we are people. I am ...

Having toiled for years in the Blumhouse movie factory as both intern and paid hand, it is readily evident that many good things rubbed off on Desolation director Sam Patton, as his first feature film is a certified gem in the world of indie horror. ...

We all have that one friend. That over-stimulated, under-acknowledged, hyper-competitive jerk to whom everything in life is a game with an undeniable winner and a loser. There are a whole bunch of those kind in Game Night, the latest film by 2015’s Vacation reboot  ...

What does it mean to be human? What separates us from other life forms? Does the same self-destruction that plagues us humans show up outside the human world? All grand questions to which the answers are really unknown. Or, at least, largely unproven. That does not ...

The Avenger of the Innocent returns! There is a masterful elegance that chugs alongside this murder mystery throughout its entire journey. From beginning to end, Murder on the Orient Express is an expression of old fashioned mechanics.  There really is no other ...

When most people hear the word “history,” they think of a dry, boring subject full of dull facts to memorize. But that’s not the impression you get from Denial, based on the true story of a historian in the 1990s who takes on a Holocaust denier in court. Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Wiesz)  ...

The rhinos are back! And so are the laughs, as we have the rare sequel that actually works because it dares to do something a bit different with our expectations. Not that anything in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is all that intelligent, mind you, but the charm from the  ...

To this day, there remains something insanely special about director Brian De Palma’s Carrie.  It is based on the once-discarded novel by Stephen King, but was painstakingly adapted for the screen by Lawrence D. Cohen.  Cohen got everything about King’s first novel right  ...

The horror genre is going to some interesting new places of late. With the recent critical and box office success of last year’s Get Out, the acceptance of last month’s intoxicating mind trip Annihilation, and now with A Quiet Place’s rousing world premier at Austin’s SXSW  ...

Look, if this is THE END of the Insidious series, then okay, I can live with it. After all, Insidious: The Last Key gives Lin Shaye (as parapsychologist Dr. Elise Rainier) more room to shine than ever before. She does, too. Even if the script and the directing is bit of a dullard, she  ...

Rampage is really big. And really dumb. And, yes, really fun. The film works because NEVER EVER does it take itself seriously. How could it?! After all, this is a film whose only requirement is that it have a giant lizard (er, alligator), a giant wolf, and a giant ape pulverizing buildings into ...

It begins with The Temptations. You know the groove. The high-hat and then the bass guitar; both working to dig deeper.   Papa Was a Rolling Stone, after all. And while the groove sets in, we see – with retro credits flashing upon the screen – actress Taraji P. Henson as she suits ...

And the late-career action hero rebirth of Liam Neeson successfully concludes with The Commuter.  That’s right, folks, this is it for Neeson.  Well, that’s if he is to be believed.  Is The Commuter the high note it needs to be for such an announcement?  Not really.  It is, at its  ...

The must huggable and snuggable bear is back spreading optimism as if it was marmalade itself! Paddington (voiced again by Ben Whishaw) returns in this brilliant sequel that both kids and adults will absolutely love. Paddington 2, directed again...

Cary Grant. Irene Dunne. Together again or – if we are speaking chronologically – for the very first time as The Awful Truth, being originally released in 1937. It is, as film historians recognize, a cinematic match made in Heaven as these two talented individuals run circles around each other ...

Because you don’t mess with Cher. Just ask director Lasse Hallström or Frank Oz, who was first originally hired to take over the reigns from Hallström before he, too, was booted. And then there is Emily Lloyd. Poor Lloyd got dropped so suddenly (due to Cher’s whim about ...

Like the Basket Weaving 101 class offered to help fulfill those elective credits in college, Life of the Party should have been a slam dunk. Just put the funny person in funny situations, roll camera, cut, print, and go to the bank. But there’s a reason I’m not a filmmaker. And it’s the same ...

Much of the fun and joy of watching a Star Wars movie these days comes not from discovering something new, but rather from revisiting everything old with a new set of eyes. Whether the original series of sequels and prequels or within the Star Wars Story ‘tweeners,  ...

It can’t be easy to emote well under a face full of prosthetics, but Jacob Tremblay does a great job doing just that in Wonder. Based on the bestselling children’s novel by R. J. Palacio, Wonder tells the story of 10-year-old August “Auggie” Pullman. In many ways, Auggie’s like a ...