DVD Reviews

Joe and Patrick’s summer vacation has just begun, and already their parents make them want to run away. But where can suburban teenage boys go to escape? Joe gets an idea: they’ll build their own house in the secluded woods. After making a crude birdhouse ...

MPAA Rating: This film has not been rated by the MPAA.
Runtime: 71 mins.
Director: Charles Reisner
Writer: Carl Harbough
Cast: Buster Keaton; McGuire; Ernest Torrance
Tagline: The Laugh Special of the Age. See It.
Genre: Comedy | Silents
Release Date: May 20, 1928
Blu-ray, DVD Release Date: July 6, 2010
Distributor: United Artists

MPAA Rating: R for drug content throughout, and pervasive language including some sexual references.
Runtime: 104 mins.
Director: Jonas Pate
Writer: Thomas Moffett
Cast: Kevin Spacey; Robin Williams; Gore Vidal ... complete cast
Tagline: The doctor is out.
Genre: Drama
Memorable Quote: "I'm just trying to sell smoke man. It's not that serious." ... more quotes
Release Date: July 31, 2009
DVD Release Date: May 10, 2010.
Distributor: Roadside Attractions

The election’s over, friends.  It’s time to chew bubblegum and kick ass again! Director John Carpenter had a nice run, didn’t he?  Between the late 1970’s and the early 1990’s, Carpenter was king of science fiction and horror.  Even if – as is the case with 1988’s They Live ...

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for stylized violence, sexual content, language and drug references.
Director: Edgar Wright
Writer: Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright
Cast: Michael Cera; Alison Pill; Mark Webber
Genre: Comedy | Romance
Tagline: Get the hot girl. Defeat her evil exes. Hit love where it hurts.
Memorable Movie Quote: "You punched me in the boob! Prepare to die obviously!"
Release Date: August 13, 2010
DVD Release Date: November 9, 2010.

MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime:98  mins.
Director: Harold Ramis
Writer: Brian Doyle-Murray & Harold Ramis
Cast: Bill Murray; Ted Knight, Rodney Dangerfield
Tagline: At last, a comedy that bites!
Genre: Comedy
Memorable Quote: Oh, this your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Hey baby, you must've been something before electricity.

Announced with the loud and proclaiming carnival fanfare of “Casey Jones”, the opening of Walt Disney’s Dumbo, now celebrating its 70^th anniversary, defines the sweetness that is its very soul ...

There may be only one reason to see this film.  Maybe two if you are a fan of Charlie Chaplin, but – speaking from strictly the filmgoer’s point of view – the true value of this film lies with Robert Downey Jr’s inspired performance...

The 2013 Oscars are right around the corner. The months of September - December are battlegrounds for the heavyweights of film, with a few underdogs in there to keep it fresh. Every film that comes out during this time frame is either vying for some sort of ...

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Many critics and fans have dismissed it because, to them, it’s …ehem… boring.  Okay, sure, soap operatic Star Wars it isn’t but the film – to its credit – is a most successful leap ...

Released towards the tail end of The Cold War, 1984’s Red Dawn serves as writer/director John Milius’ follow-up to his compromised stab at epic fantasy Conan the Barbarian.  With MGM finally releasing the now two-year-old remake (which is probably not ...

His name is Bond. 007. Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to others.  Regardless of what you call him, Bond is THE ultimate icon. And everyone knows icons cannot be killed. For 50 years, James Bond has been a part of our culture and - with his 23^rd adventure, Sam Mendes’ Skyfall, ...

Runtime:111  mins.
Director: Mike Hodges
Writer: Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Cast: Sam J. Jones; Max von Sydow
Tagline: He'll save every one of us!
Genre: Action | Adventure
Memorable Quote: "Flash, Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!"
Release Date: December 5, 1980
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: June 15, 2010

There’s a harsh reality for public education presented in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman and an even harsher lesson to be learned for its filmmaker.  Having directed Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman and an...

Good science fiction is a rarity these days.  With mindless CGI spectacles and other Hollyweird distractions it’s hard to communicate a decent narrative that satisfies the brain while pleasing to the senses.  Most of Hollywood builds a career out of the razzle and ...

Widely regarded un-filmable with its arching themes that span three continents, two oceans, and many years, Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi gets the big screen treatment by fearless filmmaker Ang Lee. But where the Wachowski’s came up short with Cloud Atlas, and ...

Rated: Rated PG-13 (Spain)
Runtime: 105 mins.
Director: Álex de la Iglesia
Writer: Jorge Guerricaechevarría (writer); Álex de la Iglesia (screenplay)
Cast: Elijah Wood; John Hurt; Julie Cox ... complete cast
Tagline: Crimes à Oxford
Genre: Foreign/Crime/Thriller
Memorable Quote: "If we can find out the meaning of numbers, we can find out the meaning of life."
Distributor: THINKFilm

Roman Polanski’s American debut arrived with Rosemary’s Baby in 1968 and, to this day, the film remains a blistering masterpiece of mood, art, and mayhem. There’s a reason this tale is considered by many to be the benchmark of filmic horror entertainment ...

Director: Randall Wallace
Writer: Mike Rich
Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich; James Cromwell

Whereas 2003’s Seabiscuit won gold for its story about an undersized horse that carried a troubled jockey’s emotional baggage and lifted the spirits of a nation paralyzed by the Great Depression, Secretariat is the story of a horse that wasn’t small, outmatched or expected to lose. And that’s where the film’s makers faced their biggest challenge: to craft a compelling sports story about a horse that wasn’t an underdog.

Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish) are back in the paranormal saddle again. They deserve much better material. Straining the found footage concept in an effort to top themselves, Paranormal Activity 4 quickly falls apart as our fear of the ...

Leave it to the Swedes to think up something as fascinatingly bizarre as Troll Hunter.  Using the cinema vérité style of The Blair Witch Project and combining it with strict adherence to a bit of Scandinavian folklore, filmmaker André Øvredal keeps the ...

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for drug content, some sensuality and war violence.
Runtime: 142 mins.
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writer: Eric Roth
Cast: Tom Hanks; Gary Sinise; Mykelti Williamson; Sally Field ... complete cast
Tagline: The story of a lifetime.
Genre: Drama
Memorable Quote: "Life is like a box of chocolates"
Release Date: July 6, 1994
DVD Release Date: August 28, 2001
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Rated: R for strong brutal violence, graphic sexuality, nudity, language and some drug use.
Runtime: 96 mins.
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Josh Olson
Cast: Viggo Mortensen; Maria Bello; William Hurt
Tagline: Tom Stall had the perfect life... until he became a hero.
Genre: Drama
Release Date: September 23, 2005
Studio: New Line Productions

MPAA Rating: R for sci-fi violence/gore and language.
Director: Alien: Ridley Scott; Aliens: James Cameron; Alien III: David Fincher; Alien: Resurrection: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Writer: Alien: Dan O'Bannon; Aliens: James Cameron; Alien III: David Giller & Walter Hill & Larry Ferguson; Dan O'Bannon
Cast: Sigourney Weaver; Tom Skerrit; Lance Henriksen; Charles S. Dutton; Winona Ryder
Genre: Sci-fi | Horror
Tagline: A word of warning...
Memorable Movie Quote: "Get away from her, you bitch!"
Release Date: Alien 1979; Aliens 1986; Alien 3 1992; Alien Resurrection 1997
Blu-ray Release Date: October 26, 2010.

It might be circumstance that Five Deadly Venoms, a martial arts classic from Shaw Brothers Studio, gets released the same week that Kung Fu Panda 2 is released.  Chances are, it isn’t though.  Considering the huge amount of influence this film from 1978...

In the wake of the unheralded success of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, many a fancy knockoff was produced for film and television.  The Allen Quartermain film series with Richard Chamberlain, Bring ‘Em Back Alive with Bruce Boxleitner ...

In spite of efforts to instill in our young women the notion that self-worth shouldn’t be measured by her ability to attract a husband, filmmakers continue to craft comedy from that very outmoded belief ...

What’s the measure of a man? The position he plays on the football team? How well he can hunt? The extreme to which he must be pushed before resorting to violence? While Rod Lurie’s Straw Dogs tackles ...

MPAA Rating: R for grisly afterviews of horrific and bizarre killings, and for strong language.
Director: David Fincher
Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker
Cast: Brad Pitt; Morgan Freeman; Gwyneth Paltrow
Genre: Crime | Drama | thriller
Memorable Movie Quote: "If you kill him, he wins."
Release Date: Septemeber 22, 1995
Blu-ray Release Date: September 14, 2010.

At a whopping 85 years of age and with not a single stand of visible gray hair, Wings, directed by William Wellman, is a marvel of the film industry.  Of course you know its history as the first Academy Award winner for Best Picture.  That was in 1927.  We all do ...