A Bullet for Sandoval Blu-ray Review: Grim, Dark Revenge Western
Spaghetti Westerns are marked by their high drama, brutal and sometimes over the top action, and morally ambiguous heroes. But ...
Read More 
Book Review: Atlas Comics Library No. 1: Adventures into Terror Volume 1
The mainstream American comic book is the home of the super-hero. But that was just its final evolution. While the ...
Read More 
The Legend of Zorro 4K UHD Review: Not So Legendary
The Mask of Zorro (1998), while not a perfect movie, had a near-perfect sense of tone, and fantastic casting. Antonio ...
Read More 
Alien Outlaw Blu-ray Review: Happily Senseless Sci-fi Western
There's an aspect of a movie like Alien Outlaw (1986) that is review-proof. It's not trying to be "good", in ...
Read More 
Red Dragon (2002) 4K UHD Review: Hopkins’ Last Lecter
While Silence of the Lambs is justly Thomas Harris's most famous story about Hannibal Lecter, it's the previous novel, Red ...
Read More 
The Black Phone 4K UHD Review: Unnerving Kidnapping Tale
Proper new screen horror villains are rare. While it seems like they pop up all the time, the ones that ...
Read More 
Night of the Demons 2 Blu-ray Review: Angela Comes Back, Better
Night of the Demons 2 is a direct-to-video sequel to Night of the Demons, released six years later. It's cheaper, ...
Read More 
Night of the Demons 4K UHD Review: Shameless & Shameful Evil Dead Rip-off
When I saw the opening credits of Night of the Demons, I had the feeling that the animated floating demons ...
Read More 
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm 4K UHD Review: Batman in Love
In the last couple of decades, DC has been aggressive about adapting its comic book stories into films. Some of ...
Read More 
Foolish Wives Blu-ray Review: The First Million Dollar Picture
Erich von Stroheim, the director of Foolish Wives, was well known for his aristocratic and military background. He was a ...
Read More 
City of the Living Dead 4K UHD Review: Where Zombies Are Ghosts
What makes Italian horror films of the '70s and '80s exciting is that anything can happen. What makes them infuriating ...
Read More 
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Danke Schoen for a Perfect Movie
For a certain segment of the population, this is the movie. The movie. One of my older brothers. My high ...
Read More 
Nightbreed 4K UHD Review: Clive Barker’s Monster Mess
It's unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising that Clive Barker hung up his directing hat. He made his first film, Hellraiser, ...
Read More 
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: A Master Reflects
With a master artist, their later works are impossible to judge outside of the context of their careers. One could ...
Read More 
Book Review: Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers: The Count Roquefort Case and Other Stories: The Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 3
The third in Fantagraphics reprint series, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: The Count Roquefort Case and Other Stories: The Disney ...
Read More 
Book Review: Scrooge McDuck: The Dragon of Glasgow by Joris Chamblain and Fabrizio Petrossi
Scrooge McDuck is best known from either DuckTales, or from the 1983 Disney Short, "Mickey's Christmas Carol." There he played, ...
Read More 
Book Review: Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge: Operation Galleon Grab by Giorgio Cavazzano
While never a major draw in the United States, comic book stories starring the main line Disney cartoon characters, Mickey ...
Read More 
The Truman Show 4K UHD Review: Prescient Dystopic Satire
What's frightening about The Truman Show, a dystopic nightmare about the co-option of human experience and survival in a corporate ...
Read More 
The White Buffalo Blu-ray Review: Bizarre Prairie Jaws
There's potential in the idea of The White Buffalo. A pastiche of real world characters (Wild Bill Hickock, Crazy Horse, ...
Read More 
Time Bandits Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: A Child’s Nightmare Fantasy
Is Time Bandits a children's movie? It stars a child, and there's nothing on the face that a child shouldn't ...
Read More 
Tales from the Gimli Hospital Redux Blu-ray Review: Oddest of Odd Bedfellows
David Cronenberg, fellow Canadian and not a stranger to weirdness once said, "You haven't truly seen a foreign film until ...
Read More 
The Bridges at Toko-Ri Blu-ray Review: The Toll of War
Korean war movies all tend to have a sense of ambivalence. WWII movies, even when they have obligatory scenes of ...
Read More 
Book Review: Doris Danger: Giant Monsters Amok by Chris Wisnia & Ricky Sprague
As the American comic book industry developed in the '60s, it became significantly less diverse. Superheroes eventually became, essentially, the ...
Read More 
Violent Streets (1974) Blu-ray Review: Blood and Guts Yakuza Story
It might be a form of survivorship bias, but movies "demystifying" or "deglamorizing" yakuza seem to outnumber any other kind ...
Read More 
Samurai Wolf 1 & 2 Blu-ray Review: A Scruffier Yojimbo
The first director a Western audience thinks of for classic samurai films is Akira Kurosawa. After all, his Seven Samurai ...
Read More 
Branded to Kill Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Yakuza Movie as Experimental Art
Goro Hanada's life is spinning out of control. His wife spends all his money, so he's always on the financial ...
Read More 
All-Star Superman 4K UHD Review: Great Comics, Okay Movie
Superman is a difficult character to write good stories about because… he's Superman. Impervious to damage, always the strongest and ...
Read More 
Backtrack (1990) Blu-ray Review: Dennis Hopper’s Lost… Piece
Backtrack feels like one of the weird indie comedy-crime-dramas that came out in the wake of Pulp Fiction's success. It's ...
Read More 
Heat (1986) Blu-ray Review: Burt Reynolds Comes Back Fighting
They call him "Mex." His name is Nick Escaflante (Burt Reynolds), and we meet him drunk in a bar hitting ...
Read More 
The Big Easy (1986) Blu-ray Review: Corrupt Cop Chews Scenery
For Remy McSwain (Dennis Quaid), life in the Big Easy is smooth. He's got his big smile (he's Dennis Quaid, ...
Read More 
The Maltese Falcon (1941) 4K UHD Review: Bogart’s Big Break
Is The Maltese Falcon a film noir? To many viewers, it's not a question. It's black and white. There's crime. ...
Read More 
Book Review: Fools Die on Friday by Erle Stanley Gardner
Donald Lam knows the girl's a phony. He knows from the second he sees the monogram on her cigarette case ...
Read More 
Dead Silence (2007) 4K UHD Review: Scary Dolls Don’t Do Anything
James Wan has had an interesting career. An absolute underdog, coming from Malaysia via Australia, he made the film Saw. ...
Read More 
Dragonslayer (1981) 4K UHD Review: Great Dragon, Murky Movie
The title Dragonslayer brings to mind knights in shining armor. Villainous, fire-breathing wyrms. Damsels chained to posts in sacrifice to ...
Read More 
The Vagrant (1992) Blu-ray Review: Baffling, but Never Boring Horror Film
The Vagrant has about four movies worth of themes and plots, but less than a single film's coherence. It's weird, ...
Read More 
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Blu-ray Review: Puss Meets Death for the Ninth Time
The Shrek series has been dormant in the cinema for over a decade, since the release of the first Puss ...
Read More 
Book Review: The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1925-1927
Krazy Kat is the kind of thing that doesn't happen. The comic strip ran for almost 30 years despite irritation ...
Read More 
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Grinding Relentless Horror Classic
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre deserves its reputation. For grisliness, for nastiness. And for excellence. It's a rare movie that ...
Read More 
Kubo and the Two Strings 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Stop-motion Tribute to Samurai Cinema
Kubo and the Two Strings is the story of an estranged family coming together. It is the story of a ...
Read More 
The Boxtrolls 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Charming, Odd, Ugly Beautiful?
Stop motion animation is a pretty weird medium. It was an early special effects trick, long since superseded by technology. ...
Read More 
Book Review: Talespin: Flight of the Sky-Raker and Other Stories: The Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 2
Disney Afternoon was a staple of after-school procrastination for nearly a decade, from 1990-1997. Several of those years included my ...
Read More 
Three Colors Trilogy Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Enigmatic Masterpieces About People Connecting
The Three Colors of this film trilogy, Blue, White, and Red, are so-chosen for the French tri-color flag (sorry, U.S.A.) ...
Read More 
El Vampiro Negro (1953) Blu-ray Review: An Argentinian “M”
Film noir as a genre is rather over-subscribed. It existed for a relatively brief period in the ‘40s and ‘50s ...
Read More 
Silent Running 4K UHD: Sci-Fi Hippy Dreams Dying
One of the things that made Star Wars such a huge hit was the state of '70s cinematic sci-fi. Because ...
Read More 
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 4K UHD Review: Calamitous Christmas Classic
Clark Griswold, the epitome of the American Middle-Class male, is on a slow burn. He has a vision of perfection. ...
Read More 
Planes, Trains and Automobiles 4K UHD Review: Thanksgiving’s Annual Lesson
Neal Page is not a bad guy. He's tightly wound, a little too serious, but the most important thing to ...
Read More 
Contraband (1980) Blu-ray Review: Explosively Violent Crime Action
Contraband comes in like a cool stylish Italian crime thriller and goes out like a Lucio Fulci gore fest. Being ...
Read More 
Elf (2003) 4K UHD Review: Farrell and Favreau Hit
Elf is a strange premise, anchored on a strange performance. Will Ferrell plays the grown-up version of a baby from ...
Read More 
The Nun and the Devil Blu-ray Review: Which Mother Will Prove Superior?
Despite the title, the Devil does not make a physical appearance in the Italian The Nun and The Devil (1973). ...
Read More 
The Company of Wolves 4K UHD Review: Little Red’s Wolf Fetish
The Company of Wolves (1984) is only kind of a werewolf movie, in that werewolves in the 20th century took ...
Read More 
The Kindred (1987) Blu-ray Review: Practical Effects, Impractical Storytelling
The difference between bad practical effects and bad CG is that bad practical still look like effort. Bad CG looks ...
Read More 
Casablanca 4K UHD Review: Here’s Looking at UHD
There's an old joke about a woman who saw Hamlet for the first time and hated it. "It was all ...
Read More 
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Blu-ray Review: ’80s Friendly Alien Invasion
E.T. is Jaws inverted. They both involve invasions of small communities by an alien entity. In one, the invasion disrupts ...
Read More 
Blind Fury (1989) Blu-ray Review: ’80s Action Meets Japan Pulp
Eighties action was more fun. The special effects were often primitive. The martial arts was less fluid, the camera work ...
Read More 
Happy Birthday to Me (1981) Blu-ray Review: Canuxploitation Slasher Slog
Post Halloween, the slasher was the go-to low budget money maker. The formula is so simple (young people, bloody death, ...
Read More 
Army of Darkness 4K UHD Limited Edition Steelbook Review: Long Live the Medieval Dead
Army of Darkness was my personal introduction to the Evil Dead. Because of Universal's awful marketing at the time, however, ...
Read More 
The Lost Boys 4K UHD Review: Flashy ’80s Vampire Flick
Half of the The Lost Boys is a moody gothic music-video styled horror movie. The other half is the '80s ...
Read More 
Le Corbeau Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: A Poison Pen French Noir
France has always been one of the centers of cinema in the world. After all, the Lumiere brothers rivaled Edison ...
Read More 
The Old Man Movie Blu-ray Review: Cows Udders End the World
When three Estonian kids are left in the country to spend the summer with their dairy farming grandpa, they expect ...
Read More 
Event Horizon 4K UHD Review: Atmospheric Space Chiller
At first glance, Event Horizon looks like a rip-off of Alien. A crew in space, far from any aid, investigating ...
Read More 
Flatliners (1990) 4K UHD Review: Visually Stimulating Psychological Thriller
Doctors lead very exciting lives in movies. Every doctor I've known in real life has been a little dull. Intelligent, ...
Read More 
Desperate Hours Blu-ray Review: Hostage Thriller Boils Over
Desperate Hours is based on a classic thriller scenario: a family held hostage in their own home by a criminal. ...
Read More 
The Deer King Movie Review: Beautiful, If Overly Complicated Fantasy
Van, the protagonist of The Deer King, is a big man. Probably the biggest in the salt mine where he's ...
Read More 
Edge of Tomorrow 4K UHD Review: Groundhog D-Day
It is a strange time to look at a film that earned hundreds of millions at the box-office and wonder: ...
Read More 
Panda! Go Panda! Blu-ray Review: Proto Totoro Anime Film
In my estimation, Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro is one of the greatest films ever made. It's an almost perfect fantasy ...
Read More 
True Romance 4K UHD Review: Sick Love, Slick Film
True Romance isn't a Quentin Tarantino movie. His name is on the screenplay. It has many scenes which no other ...
Read More 
Raiders of the Lost Ark Limited Edition Steelbook 4K UHD Review: Cinematic Adventure Perfection
Watching as a child, I knew that Raiders of the Lost Ark was a great adventure. It had everything you ...
Read More 
Candyman (1992) 4K UHD Review: Urban Legend, Urban Horror
Of the many great things about Bernard Rose's Candyman, one of the best is that it isn’t structured like a ...
Read More 
Children Who Chase Lost Voices Blu-ray Review: Fantasy Adventure about Loss
Asuna is a happy girl. She's lucky to be happy since she spends so much of her time on her ...
Read More 
5 Centimeters Per Second Blu-ray Review: A Story about Distance
The title refers to the speed at which cherry blossoms fall to the earth. It is practically the first line ...
Read More 
The Place Promised in Our Early Days Blu-ray Review: Sci-Fi Sentimental Teenage Drama
The Place Promised in our Early Days is set on an alternative Earth on the brink of war. Some part ...
Read More 
12 Monkeys (1995) 4K UHD Review: Time-Travel Tragedy
Terry Gilliam lives to be idiosyncratic. In a British comedy troupe, Monty Python, he was the American. In Hollywood filmmaking, ...
Read More 
Wild Things 4K UHD Review: High Level Sleaze
Wild Things is trash. But it's a kind of exquisite trash. It's the best Cinemax-style soft porn ever made. It's ...
Read More 
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 4K UHD Review: End of the Classic Western
The ubiquity of the popularity of the Western is a cultural phenomenon that is hard to fathom. It wasn't just ...
Read More 
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Season 13 and The Gizmoplex Debut Today
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a show that will not die. It has moved through so many incarnations, starting on ...
Read More 
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) 4K UHD Review: Loud, Blaring Classic Adaptation
There's so much to love about Kenneth Branagh's take on the story of Frankenstein and his monster, but there is ...
Read More 
To Sleep So as to Dream Blu-ray Review: Ode to Silent Japanese Cinema
What an odd film. To Sleep So as to Dream (1986), the directorial debut of Kaizo Hayashi is many things. ...
Read More 
The Godfather Trilogy 4K UHD Review: A Restoration You Can’t Refuse
The most written about American films in history have to be Citizen Kane, Psycho, and The Godfather. All are epochal ...
Read More 
SXSW 2022 Review: In the Court of the Crimson King
I've seen King Crimson once in concert. It was at the Greek in Los Angeles in 2017, and I went ...
Read More 
The Legend of the Stardust Brothers DVD Review: ’80s Japanese Manic Musical
The Legend of the Stardust Brothers is overlong, amateurishly acted, and schizophrenically directed. It has several scenes that make no ...
Read More 
Evil Eye plus The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) Blu-ray Review: Slick in Italian, Murky in American
Nora has a very bad first night in Italy. The relative she is visiting dies of a heart attack right ...
Read More 
Alligator (1980) 4K Ultra HD Review: Jaws in the Sewers
It's always nice when a movie tells you exactly what it's about in the title. This film is a monster ...
Read More 
The Capture (1950) Blu-ray Review: Complex Modern Western Crime Narrative
Lin Vanner (Lew Ayres), the protagonist of The Capture (1950), accidentally shoots an unarmed man. He believes the man is ...
Read More 
Rich and Strange Blu-ray Review: Marriage in Crisis
Alfred Hitchcock is known as primarily a director of thrillers, and after he came to the U.S. in 1939 it ...
Read More 
Red Angel (1966) Blu-ray Review: Disturbing War Hospital Drama
Red Angel is about a war-time nurse, and it lives up to themes implicit in the name. Nurse Sakura Nishi ...
Read More 
The Toolbox Murders (1978) 4K Ultra HD Review: Gruesome Grindhouse Exploitation
The difference between exploitation and horror is attitude. In a horror movie, you sympathize with the victim. In exploitation, your ...
Read More 
Shock (1977) Blu-ray Review: Bava’s Final Film
Shock is the final film that Mario Bava directed and is commonly regarded as an underwhelming swan song. He was ...
Read More 
Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People Movie Review: Punk is NOT Dead
Angeli is an apparently extremely famous cartoonist in Brazil. He has created several iconic characters that are, and combined shock ...
Read More 
Krampus: The Naughty Cut 4K Ultra HD Review: Anti-Santa Extended Edition
A fan of folklore often feels a pang of loss when one of the creatures or legends you cherish suddenly ...
Read More 
David Byrne’s American Utopia Movie Review: Beautifully Filmed but Imperfect Concert
David Byrne is one of those typical outsider becoming insider American stories. He set out to make oddball music, and ...
Read More 
Wife of a Spy Blu-ray Review: Understated Japanese Spy Thriller
Wife of a Spy is the latest film by Japanese craftsman Kiyoshi Kurosawa. He was one of several filmmakers, along ...
Read More 
The Ghost Ship/Bedlam Double Feature Blu-ray Review: Two Val Lewton Suspense Thrillers
Val Lewton ran the horror film unit at RKO Picture from 1942 to 1946. The massive success of Cat People, ...
Read More 
Some Came Running Blu-ray Review: ’50s Melodrama Feels Familiar
Prestige dramas in each decade in American cinema each tend to have their own flavor, and in the '50s, it ...
Read More 
Middle Earth Ultimate Collector’s Edition 4K Ultra HD Review: Beautiful Box but Incomplete
The Lord of the Rings is a landmark of modern cinema. New Line's audacity of committing to a trilogy before ...
Read More 
Night Has a Thousand Eyes Blu-ray Review: Psychic Thriller a Near Miss
What a great title. Night Has a Thousand Eyes. It evokes a sense of mystery, even of terror. The opening ...
Read More 
The Beast Must Die (1952) Blu-ray Review: Argentinian Revenge Noir
The structure of The Beast Must Die is the first thing to notice about it. It has a now standard, ...
Read More 
Karen Dalton: In My Own Time DVD Review: Sad Songs, Sad Life
Karen Dalton, as described by one of the participants in this documentary, was one of the few folk singers in ...
Read More 
Batman: Year One Commemorative Edition 4K Ultra HD Review: Good Batman Story Unexceptionally Told
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns made a bigger splash, but of the two famous Frank Miller revisionist Batman stories of ...
Read More 
Mad Love (1935) Blu-ray Review: Grotesque ’30 Body Horror
Mad Love would be a long lost Universal horror film had it not been made by MGM. It has a ...
Read More 
Book Review: Hitchcock and the Censors by John Billheimer
Alfred Hitchcock was a weird guy. That's not a slur on his character, but a statement of fact. He was ...
Read More 
In the Shadow of Hollywood: Highlights from Poverty Row Blu-ray Review: Independent ’30s B-Movies
Entertainment is often called a recession-proof (or even depression-proof) industry. The theory being that even when people are at their ...
Read More 
Universal Classic Monsters: Icons of Horror Collection 4K Ultra HD Review: Four Classic Horrors
The longevity of the iconography of the Universal monster films in popular culture is truly remarkable. A single image of ...
Read More 
Deep Red (1975) 4K Ultra HD Review: Argento’s Giallo Swan Song
In Deep Red, Dario Argento finally synthesizes his art and obsessions, and creates a film where the entire visual strategy ...
Read More 
Demons I & II Blu-ray Review: Italian Gore Shlock Romp
One of the keys to great schlock is integrity, and sincerity. Schlock that works cannot ever let the audience know ...
Read More 
Vera Cruz (1954) Blu-ray Review: Twisty Western Caper
Vera Cruz (1954) is an interesting western: it's a buddy movie where the buddies never really like each other. It's ...
Read More 
Dune (1984) 4K Ultra HD Review: Beautiful, Fascinating Mess of an Adaptation
Dune is probably unfilmable. The problem is not the special effects required, nor is it the scope of the action. ...
Read More 
Death Screams (1982) Blu-ray Review: Regional ’80s Slasher Artifact
There used to be a thing called regional cinema in the U.S. Hell, there used to be a thing called ...
Read More 
Children of the Corn (1984) 4K Ultra HD Review: Beating Up Kids in 4K
In the cottage industry of Stephen King adaptations, it's strange that one of his early stories about killer kids has ...
Read More 
The Window (1949) Blu-ray Review: The Boy Who Cried Murder
There's a good reason to hate films focused on kids: they're obnoxious. If they're cute, it's usually a cuteness at ...
Read More 
The Village Detective: A Song Cycle Movie Review: Meditation on Ruined Film
Around 2016, an Icelandic fishing boat caught something unusual in their nets. The ship was a bottom trawler, which sends ...
Read More 
The Cat O’ Nine Tails 4K Ultra HD Review: Convoluted Giallo Murder Mystery
The frustrating thing about Dario Argento is not the bad parts of his movies: it's the good ones. When he's ...
Read More 
Bugsy Malone Blu-ray Review: Bizarre and Charming Kiddie Gangster Musical
Bugsy Malone is one of those movies whose existence is very difficult to explain. It's a pastiche of gangsters and ...
Read More 
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 4K Ultra HD Review: Dario Argento’s Debut Giallo
Dario Argento is one of those "stylish" directors who, at some point in his career, allowed the style to completely ...
Read More 
Hail to the Deadites Movie Review: Evil Dead’s Biggest Fans
Horror movie fanatics are a different breed. They've attached themselves to a genre, and usually one film or series in ...
Read More 
Dead & Buried (1981) 4K Ultra HD Limited Edition Review: Uncovered ’80s Horror Gem
Dead & Buried takes place in a small town, which is always bad news in a horror movie. Those are ...
Read More 
I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes Blu-ray Review: Limp Mystery Noir
There's a tendency amongst enthusiasts of film noir to use it as a badge of quality. If some old movie ...
Read More 
Irezumi (1966) Blu-ray Review: Revenge and Obsession
"Irezumi" is the Japanese word for a style of tattooing. It employs the use of a long wooden-handled needle that ...
Read More 
Drunken Master II Blu-ray Review: Pinnacle Chan Martial Arts
The fun of any of Jackie Chan's early Chinese movies is in the thrill of seeing someone doing something potentially ...
Read More 
The Final Countdown (1980) 4K Ultra HD Limited Edition Review: Great Planes, Great Set-up, No Story?
The scenario and set-up are almost perfect for an alternative history science fiction story: a fully loaded modern (in 1979) ...
Read More 
Django (1966) 4K Ultra HD Review: A Spaghetti Western Icon
Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy might have signaled the international recognition of the spaghetti western, but it was Django that launched ...
Read More 
They Won’t Believe Me Blu-ray Review: Melodrama Noir
There are two elements normally present in a classic film noir. One is a main character, usually male, with decent ...
Read More 
Isle of the Dead (1945) Blu-ray Review: Atmospheric Chiller from Val Lewton
The key to the enduring appeal of the horror movies that Val Lewton produced for RKO in the '40s lies ...
Read More 
History Is Made at Night (1937) Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Love Crosses the Atlantic
Director Frank Borzage, who grew up with Hollywood, making (and acting in) silents from 1916 and remaining active up to ...
Read More 
Perdita Durango 4K Ultra HD Review: An Evil, Evil Love Story
An important key to understanding Perdita Durango, the character: her boyfriend is a bank-robbing Santeria priest who, in front of ...
Read More 
The Day of the Beast (1995) 4K Ultra HD Review: Surrealist Spanish Horror Comedy
With solemn music, steady angles and serious lighting, The Day of the Beast opens with a pair of priests in ...
Read More 
Southland Tales Blu-ray Review: Strange but Strangely Compelling
Stepping in through the door right when the millennium was opening up and carrying with it a sense of doom ...
Read More 
JSA: Joint Security Area Blu-ray Review: Death on the DMZ
There's only one place along the Korean DMZ that soldiers from the North and South stand across from one another, ...
Read More 
Tremors (1990) 4K Ultra HD Review: Monster Movie in Perfection
Tremors takes place in a town called Perfection (population: 14). It’s an ironic name, because the only thing perfect about ...
Read More 
Survivor Ballads: Three Films by Shohei Imamura Blu-ray Review: Stories of Hardship and Endurance
Shohei Imamura was one of the grandmasters of Japanese cinema in the second half of the 20th century. His first ...
Read More Bartender (2006) Blu-ray Review: A Calming Aperitif of a Show
Anime in the popular imagination is...I was about to say Dragonball, but that shows my age. Sailor Moon? One Piece? Inuyasha? Once or twice ...
Read More Versus (2000) Blu-ray Review: Samurai Zombie Yakuza Action
Japanese cinema at the beginning of the 21st century was fun. There was an explosion of cinematic talent coming from ...
Read More 
Crash (1996) Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: An Anti-Erotic Film
"Prophecy is dirty and ragged", says Vaughan, while complaining about the cleanliness of the tattoo he gets on his chest. ...
Read More 
Vigilante (1982) 4K Ultra HD Review: Gritty Death Wish Redux
Vigilante, a Death Wish-inspired action drama from 1982, does so many interesting and fun things that it's a shame it ...
Read More 
Weathering with You (Limited Collector’s Edition) 4K Ultra HD Review: Prettier Colors, More Insight
Whatever misgivings I had about 2019's Weathering With You when I reviewed it a couple of months ago in its initial ...
Read More 
Chernobyl (2019) 4K Ultra HD Review: Harrowing, Horrifying Disaster Story
Chernobyl is a horror story with two monsters. One is technological, the other is human. The human horror caused the ...
Read More 
Daughters of Darkness (1971) 4K Ultra HD Review: Mysterious, Sensuous Vampire Story
On the first level, Daughters of Darkness is a film about a newly married couple who encounter an intriguing, if overly familiar ...
Read More 
Cold Light of Day (1989) Blu-ray Review: Portrait of a British Serial Killer
Obscure, cheap, short, and brutal, Cold Light of Day is a surprising discovery of British cinema. Shot on 16mm, the occasionally extremely ...
Read More 
Graveyards of Honor Blu-ray Review: Grim Yakuza Renegade Dramas
Both Kinji Fukasaku and Takashi Miike were unlikely survivors in their different eras of Japanese cinema. They both were highly ...
Read More 
Warning from Space Blu-ray Review: Starmen Waiting in the Sky
All science fiction is dated. Even the most up-to-the-minute, forward-looking piece of work is still a work of its time, ...
Read More 
Split Second (1992) Blu-ray Review: Blade Runner and Alien’s Stupid Baby
Stealing the antagonist from one Ridley Scott movie and the world building (and star) from another, Split Second could have been a ...
Read More 
Flash Gordon (1980) 4K Ultra HD Review: Garish and Spirited Comic Action
George Lucas's inspirations for Star Wars were many. He was a voracious reader of golden age science fiction, and picked elements he ...
Read More 
Black Test Car + The Black Report Blu-ray Review: Japanese Businessman Noir
One of the enduring images of contemporary Japanese culture is the salaryman. The rather anonymous guy in the suit who ...
Read More 
Pitch Black 4K Ultra HD Review: Riddick Starts Here
Pitch Black was released in 2000, and it feels very much like the last science fiction action film of the '90s. ...
Read More 
Weathering with You Blu-ray Review: Anime Girls Make the Rain Stop
In a 2021 Tokyo that is drenched with constant rainfall, there's a rumor going around about a so-called Sunshine girl: ...
Read More 
The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection 4K UHD Review: Four Masterworks of Suspense
Alfred Hitchcock is known as the master of suspense, but that's too limited a title for him. Where his talents ...
Read More 
The New York Ripper 4K Ultra HD Review: Sleazy Exploitation American Giallo
The New York Ripper is sleazy. It contains sleaze. It is about sleaze. In its semi-coherent narrative, it indulges in the ...
Read More 
The House by the Cemetery 4K Ultra HD Review: ‘Damn Tombstones!’
It's probably not accurate to say Lucio Fulci is an acquired taste. It's more accurate to say, of all the ...
Read More 
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie Blu-ray Review: Slick ’90s Horror Anthology
The anthology movie seems like it is always going out of style, and yet it seems to crop up again ...
Read More 
She Dies Tomorrow Movie Review: Meditation on Impending Doom
The premise is in the title: She Dies Tomorrow. She knows she's going to. She's certain of it. So certain ...
Read More 
Ride Your Wave Blu-ray Review: Touching Romance Becomes Ghost Story
For the first half hour of Ride Your Wave, it seems like Masaaki Yuasa was tackling something he'd only ever flirted ...
Read More 
Dream Demon Blu-ray Review: Newly-Unearthed ’80s Horror Fantasy
An obscure British release from 1988 that never made it to the states theatrically, Dream Demon's major problem is that it ...
Read More 
The Mad Fox Blu-ray Review: Kabuki-styled Cinematic Fantasia
Tomu Uchida is not one of the big names of Japanese cinema in the West, even though he had been ...
Read More 
Inferno of Torture Blu-ray Review: Torsos, Tattoos, and Torture
Inferno of Torture is the third of Teruo Ishii's ero-guro (erotic grotesque) films that have recently been released by Arrow Video. Orgies ...
Read More 
Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) Blu-ray Review: Love and Madness
Morgan is going mad. Or maybe he was always a little mad, but it became too much and wasn't as ...
Read More 
Sound! Euphonium: The Movie – Our Promise: A Brand New Day Blu-ray Review: One More Year of Music
Does anything one does in high school matter? At the time, it seems all dreadfully important, and some people see ...
Read More 
Promare Blu-ray Review: Hyper Kinetic Superhero Firefighters
There's barely a still moment in Promare, a science fiction anime film about firefighters who not only put out blazes but ...
Read More 
Their Finest Hour: 5 British WWII Classics Blu-ray Review: That British Stiff Upper Lip
The Second World War is a different story, depending where it's told. For Americans, it can be complex (how our ...
Read More 
The Bolshevik Trilogy: Three Films by Vsevolod Pudovkin Blu-ray Review: Silent Soviet Masterpieces
First and foremost, Pudovkin was a Soviet. His art was propaganda, because he believed in the cause. He's a contrast ...
Read More 
Come to Daddy Blu-ray Review: Twisty, Twisted Story of Family
Come to Daddy is a twisty movie. A lot of its narrative power comes from its plot surprises, so as a ...
Read More 
My Bloody Valentine (1981) Blu-ray Review: Superb Slasher Restored
My Bloody Valentine was, if not quite a box-office bomb, a severe disappointment. It was released right at the height of ...
Read More 
FLCL Progressive/Alternative Blu-ray Review: A Classic Badly Revived
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided the writer with a free copy of the Blu-ray reviewed in this article. The opinions ...
Read More 
Trapped (1949) Blu-ray Review: Great Restoration of a B-movie
Film noir are crime movies, but not all crime movies are film noir. There has to be an element of ...
Read More 
Book Review: Making Moon by Simon Ward
Hard sci-fi differentiates itself from the other kind by trying to follow the rules of physics and take place in ...
Read More 
Millennium Actress Blu-ray Review: Animated Japanese Film Fantasia
It's a love letter to film, a historical overview of early to mid-century Japan, and a biography of an actress ...
Read More 
The Fan (1981) Blu-ray Review: Bloody ’80s Stalking Thriller
The Fan was made in 1981. It's about a deranged man who kills people. He uses a special weapon to do ...
Read More 
Stephen King’s Storm of the Century (1999) DVD Review: Intriguing Premise at Snail’s Pace
TV made sense as its own thing until about 20 years ago. Nowadays, what constitutes TV is so sprawling and ...
Read More 
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping Blu-ray Review: Musical Parody Mostly Amusing
Comedy, like horror, is largely critic-proof, because the power of the genre lies in an immediate emotional reaction. You get ...
Read More 
The Dead Center Blu-ray Review: Mostly Effective Psychological Horror
A spiral is integral to The Dead Center's imagery and story. A spiral appears on the photographs of a body from ...
Read More 
Ringu Collection Blu-ray Review: Ghostly Revenge, Again and Again
Horror as a genre tends to go through brief periods of inspiration, followed by long slogs of imitation. If you're ...
Read More 
Genius Party & Genius Party Beyond Blu-ray Review: Dozen Odd Egg Japanese Animations
Short movies get kind of short shrift because... they're short. And even though our modern mode of considering a "film" ...
Read More 
Morituri (1965) Blu-ray Review: Hidden Naval WWII Classic
The cliché is, they don't make them like they used to. But, damn it, movies like Morituri don't get made anymore. It's ...
Read More 
The Big Fix (1978) Blu-ray Review: A Hippy Neo-noir Lament
Despite being such a sunny city, Los Angeles is the home of noir. All those sun bleached streets are hiding ...
Read More 
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) Blu-ray Review: Same Gore, Less Story
It's strange that so many horror movies spawn enormous franchises when the surprise and the unknown are central to the ...
Read More 
Hellraiser (1987) Blu-ray Review: Clive Barker’s Semi-professional Debut
Roger Ebert hated Hellraiser when it came out, giving it half a star. He starts with the money quote Stephen King gave ...
Read More 
True Believer (1989) Blu-ray Review: Blisteringly Performed Courtroom Drama
True Believer has been released on Blu-ray in one of Mill Creek's Retro VHS Look packages. While it's the same dimensions ...
Read More 
The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Gentle Ozu Comedy
The first thing to get used to in an Ozu film is the camera perspective. He never (or at least ...
Read More 
Akio Jissoji: The Buddhist Trilogy Blu-ray Review: New Wave Filmmaking, Naked Ladies
It's difficult to put a modern film-fan in the mind of a viewer from the past, because of the nature ...
Read More 
The Leopard Man (1943) Blu-ray Review: Subtle, Underrated ’40s Chiller
Based on Cornell Woolrich's dark novel, Black Alibi, The Leopard Man was the first property Val Lewton wanted to develop when he became ...
Read More 
Yakuza Law Blu-ray Review: Gory Fun Yakuza Anthology
Yakuza Law is not even in the top-five craziest movies made by Teruo Ishii, and in it, a man rips out ...
Read More 
Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Blu-ray Review: Fun, If Over-packed, Crossover Event
Crossovers are fun because they can never really be consequential. Popular characters are the tent poles of multi-billion dollar corporations ...
Read More 
John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars Blu-ray Review: Sad Retread from a Master
The hero of John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is introduced asleep and handcuffed to a train. It seems like an apt metaphor ...
Read More 
Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki Blu-ray Review: Master Filmmaker’s New Challenge
Hayao Miyazaki has announced his retirement several times throughout his career, but in 2013 it looked like he meant it. ...
Read More 
The Brain (1988) Blu-ray Review: Giant Brain Eats Man
There are levels to shlock. And inside many a terrible movie, there are seeds of interest and enjoyment. The Brain is, ...
Read More 
A Silent Voice Blu-ray Review: Bully Redemption in a Subdued Tone
There's a certain style in Japanese storytelling and film-making where the important things are what is not shown, what is ...
Read More 
The Magnificent Ambersons Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: A Flawed Masterpiece, but Still a Worthwhile Film
Before getting into the history of the film: the mangling by the studio, the likely deliberately destroyed edited footage, and ...
Read More 
Tideland Blu-ray Review: Childhood, Love, and Necrophilia
In a recorded introduction to Tideland, director Terry Gilliam states flat out, "Many of you are not going to like ...
Read More 
Mind Game (2004) Blu-ray Review: Endlessly Confusing, Endlessly Fascinating
The first couple minutes of Mind Game contains, after a brief scene of a girl being chased onto a subway ...
Read More 
Street Mobster Blu-ray Review: Gritty, Nasty Yakuza Drama
Street Mobster is a rough, often ugly story about Okita, a common street thug who tries to eke out a ...
Read More 
The Third Murder Movie Review: All Justice, No Truth
There shouldn't be much to the murder trial. After all, the murderer has already confessed. The prosecution is pushing for ...
Read More 
Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! Blu-ray Review: Undercover Yakuza Hijinks
Seijun Suzuki, one of the stable of directors at Nikkatsu in the '50s and '60s, Japan's oldest film studio, was ...
Read More 
The Bloodthirsty Trilogy Blu-ray Review: Dracula Goes East
As one of the great national cinemas, the Japanese movie industry has invented whole cloth many genres and excelled in ...
Read More 
Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years Vol. 2 Border Crossings: The Crime and Action Movies Blu-ray Review: Nikkatsu Noir
Seijun Suzuki is one of the more famous Japanese directors of the '60s, when younger filmmakers were taking the rein ...
Read More 
Basket Case (1982) Blu-ray Review: Enthusiastically Silly and Sleazy
My conscience tells me I have to recommend this release, because it is a superb home video version of Basket ...
Read More 
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno Blu-ray Review: Lost Masterpiece or Dodged Bullet?
There's a little cottage industry of documentaries about movies that didn't get made. Every few years one of them pops ...
Read More 
Eagles of Death Metal: Nos Amis Blu-ray Review: Friendship in the Face of Evil
Until the Paris Terrorist attack on November 13, 2015 where their concert at the Bataclan was targeted leaving 89 dead, ...
Read More 
An Actor’s Revenge Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Kabuki Costumes in Modernist Cinema
Yukinojo, the kabuki female impersonator who gets the titular vengeance in Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge (1963), is a tough ...
Read More 
Kameradschaft Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: A Cry for Cooperation
It's difficult to separate Kameradschaft from its historical context. Released in 1931, this story of cooperation between French and Germans ...
Read More 
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) Blu-ray Review: Uncovering Cinematic Buried Treasures
In an industry that is lately obsessed with making films available in multiple different versions, both in medium of delivery ...
Read More 
Jerome Bixby’s The Man From Earth (2007) Blu-ray Review: Science Fiction Chamber Play
A man is confronted by his friends after he walks out on his going-away party. He's been a local professor ...
Read More 
Glory (2016) DVD Review: Bulgarian Tragicomedy Depressed Me
One of the reviews quoted on the box for Glory describes it as "Frank Capra Meets the Dardenne Brothers". I ...
Read More 
The Captive (1915) Blu-ray Review: War, Romance, Forced Labor
The Captive is a story of war-time deprivation and how terrible circumstances can bring disparate people together. There's gun battles, ...
Read More 
Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) Blu-ray Review: Rural Murder Italian Style
There's an old saying in Classic Hollywood, attributed to Howard Hawks, that a good movie is "three good scenes, no ...
Read More 
Terror in a Texas Town (1958) Blu-ray Review: Swedish Sterling Slays Slinger
Watching older movies, it's fun to remember sometimes how much all media is created as much by the times as ...
Read More 
The Slayer (1982) Blu-ray Review: Marital Crisis Solved by Slayer
Achieving notoriety in the early '80s (at least across the pond) for being one of the Video Nasties, films legally ...
Read More 
Book Review: Unchained Melody: The Films of Meiko Kaji by Tom Mes
To much of the post-Millennium western cinematic audience, Meiko Kaji was introduced with her voice. Both the theme songs from ...
Read More 
Children of the Corn (1984) Blu-ray Review: Killer Kids Get Religion
Cult movies aren't the same as good movies. Good movies generally have decent production values, interesting stories and scripts, nuanced ...
Read More 
The Big Knife (1955) Blu-ray Review: Poison Pen Letter to Hollywood
The Big Knife (1955) is several things at once. It's a Hollywood movie about how awful Hollywood is. It's a ...
Read More 
Hana-bi Blu-ray Review: Violence, Beauty, and Beautiful Violence
Off-beat and enigmatic, with a timeline that eschews strict linearity, Hana-bi (originally released in 1997 in the states as Fireworks) ...
Read More 
Soul on a String DVD Review: Astonishing Vistas, Ambiguous Story
Soul on a String offers the visuals (and the length) of an epic Western, and even some of the story ...
Read More 
Down Down the Deep River DVD Review: A Tribute to an ’80s Childhood
It seems rare in American arts that people are allowed to do more than one thing. It seems almost greedy ...
Read More 
New Battles Without Honor and Humanity: The Complete Trilogy Blu-ray Review: More Frenzied Yakuza Madness
Battles Without Honor and Humanity has been called the Japanese Godfather, and while it has some similarities (depicting daily life ...
Read More 
After the Storm (2016) Blu-ray Review: Human Drama is Equally Sad, Sweet
The premise sounds like a high-concept, wacky comedy: down on his luck novelist and sometimes private detective follows around his ...
Read More 
In This Corner of the World Movie Review: Daily Life in Wartime
In This Corner of the World is a Japanese animated movie that tells the wartime story of Suzu, a sweet ...
Read More Warlock Collection Blu-ray Review: Satan’s Son Starts Franchise
Like House II, Warlock was one of those movies that I remember seeing heavily advertised on television as a kid, ...
Read More 
The Fencer Movie Review: Touching Soviet-Era Sports Drama
Never before have I seen a sports movie whose main emotional tone was quiet dread. One look at the title: ...
Read More 
Zaza (1923) Blu-ray Review: Swanson’s Spitfire Star Turn
It's hard to get around the fact that, for a modern movie viewer, silent movies are a lot of extra ...
Read More 
Doberman Cop (1977) Blu-ray Review: Sonny Chiba’s Hick Dirty Harry
Kinji Fukasaku, of Battles Without Honor or Humanity fame, is best known as the director of hard-edged, cynical material with ...
Read More 
The Unholy (1988) Blu-ray Review: Damp Devil Movie Gets Superb Release
Devil movies work best when they have a core of revelation. They need characters to struggle against the reality of ...
Read More 
Caltiki the Immortal Monster (1959) Blu-ray Review: Bava’s First Horror Bash
Every era gets the horror monsters it deserves, I think. In the '30s and '40s old literary monsters were brought ...
Read More 
House: Two Stories Blu-ray Review: ’80s Horror Done Weird
House II is one of the few movies I can remember seeing ads for on TV when I was watching ...
Read More 
Cops vs. Thugs (1975) Blu-ray Review: Corrupt Cops Combat Corporatization
Of the spate of Japanese movies that infiltrated the American consciousness at the beginning of the 21st century, when the ...
Read More 
Brain Damage (1988) Blu-ray Review: Schlock That Loves Being Schlock
There's a certain genius to Brain Damage (1989). Thousands of horror movies are made which simply copy the last popular ...
Read More 
Good Morning (1959) Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Japanese Master’s Flatulent Comedy
Comedy doesn't tend to get the respect of drama in movie writing. Like horror, its effectiveness depends on whether or ...
Read More 
Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism Blu-ray Review: Radical Politics and Radical Filmmaking
Some movies offer formal challenges as part of their appeal. They might have sequences of the narrative where the viewer ...
Read More 
Dead or Alive Trilogy Blu-ray Review: Literally Explosive Cinematic Madness
The opening six minutes of Dead or Alive, one of the first films of Takashi Miike to get international attention, ...
Read More 
Mifune: The Last Samurai DVD Review: Japan’s Greatest Actor Profiled
Toshiro Mifune is one of the most dynamic actors who's ever played on the big screen. He was an animal ...
Read More 
We Are X Blu-ray Review: Hair Metal and Heartache
Early in We Are X, Yoshiki, the leader of the band is asked in an English-language interview why the band ...
Read More 
Ludwig (1973) Blu-ray Review: Lots of Castles, Little Story
Strange for an explicitly socialist director of the mid-20th century, but Luchino Visconti was unabashed in his almost fetishistic adoration ...
Read More 
Your Name Movie Review: Bodies Swapped, Heartstrings Tugged
For what is on the surface a sweet, elegiac coming of age romance, Your Name gets pretty ambitious. It starts ...
Read More 
Book Review: LOAC Essentials Vol. 8: King Features Essentials 1: Krazy Kat 1934 by George Harriman: Rare Dailies of the Kraziest of Komics
It is ironic that, in the era of the Internet which has disrupted so much of modern publishing, it has ...
Read More 
Psychomania Blu-ray Review: Inexplicable Zombie Biker Cult Movie
Other people's movie cults are just weird. My own cult obsessions are, of course, completely justifiable and unquestionable (Big Trouble ...
Read More 
The Handmaiden DVD Review: Period Thriller, Twisty and Twisted
Movies that depend on plot twists have a number of complications forced on them, in order to be good and ...
Read More 
Black Society Trilogy Blu-ray Review: Madman Miike’s (Relatively) Somber Saga
Takashi Miike is the Japanese director who will, seemingly, film anything. And anything does not just mean he'll put the ...
Read More 
Blair Witch Blu-ray Review: Murky Modern Updating Misses Mark
Ambiguity is a central attribute to satisfying horror movies (I write "satisfying" because, if the box office is any indication, ...
Read More 
Book Review: To Pixar and Beyond by Lawrence Levy: Surprisingly Accessible Financial Memoir
If Toy Story had flopped, it would have been the end of Steve Jobs. Remembered in his later life for ...
Read More 
C.H.U.D. Blu-ray Review: Cheesy Happenings, Underwhelming Direction
What's weird about C.H.U.D. is how much it's like a real movie. An '80s horror flick, it has the feel ...
Read More 
The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast Blu-ray Review: Extensive, Exhausting Exploitation Experience
Enormous multi-movie box sets (especially expensive ones) have two real audiences: already devoted fans, and movie buffs who want to ...
Read More Private Property Blu-ray Review: Sizzling Hot Forgotten Noir
Made just on the cusp of the broadening of censorship rules in Hollywood, Private Property was probably too much, too ...
Read More 
Dark Water Blu-ray Review: A More Intimate Ring of Terror
While it's not entirely accurate to say that Ringu was the first J-horror movie (the momentum for that had been ...
Read More 
Woman in the Dunes Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Digging out a Life in Sand
Every night, the woman shovels sand from the bottom of a hole, which gets carted up by a rope pulley, ...
Read More 
Female Prisoner Scorpion: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Review: She’d Have Killed Bill in the First Movie
Despite all the blood, boobs, torture, cruelty, crazy lighting schemes, and wild camera angles, the most indelible image in these ...
Read More 
The Invitation (2016) Movie Review: Paranoia, Isolation, and a Good Wine Party
Writing about a movie like The Invitation is a delicate business, because much of its effectiveness depends on the surprise ...
Read More 
Person of Interest: The Fifth and Final Season DVD Review: Goodbye to the Machine
Disclaimer: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided Cinema Sentries with a free copy of the DVD reviewed in this post. The ...
Read More 
Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan Blu-ray Review: Master of Monsters Revealed
The advent of DVD extras has, I think, cost a toll on entertainment documentaries. I've seen reviews that refer to ...
Read More 
Blood and Black Lace Blu-ray Review: Astonishingly Beautiful Depiction of Ugliness
Blood and Black Lace, a lurid proto-slasher movie with gruesome and copious violence, is one of the most visually beautiful ...
Read More 
Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Volume 2 Blu-ray Review: Some Things Don’t Translate
Japanese cinema is samurai showdowns, tough gangster pictures, or calm, quietly devastating domestic dramas. Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi. Oh, and Godzilla. ...
Read More 
The Assassin (2015) Blu-ray Review: Mesmerizingly Beautiful, Maddeningly Obtuse
It's hard when reviewing a movie to admit that you don't get it. If you have enough ego to broadcast ...
Read More 
The Zero Boys Blu-ray Review: A Thrill-less Thriller
Execution is the most important aspect of any thriller. A science fiction movie with good ideas can stand pokey pacing ...
Read More 
Barcelona Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Innocent Imperialists Abroad
The first thing to get about Barcelona is the movie is sympathetic to its protagonists. Fred and Ted are cousins ...
Read More 
Outlaw Gangster VIP: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Review: Gangster and Outlaw, All in One
How is being an Outlaw Gangster different from just being a gangster? By definition, they're all outlaws, aren't they? It ...
Read More 
Evangelion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo DVD Review: Giant Robots with Daddy Issues
This will take some explaining. In the mid '90s, the anime TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion sparked something of a ...
Read More 
Let There Be Light: John Huston’s Wartime Documentaries Blu-ray Review: From Propaganda to Trauma
It's odd to feel nostalgia for a time one never lived in, and to envy men who are fighting in ...
Read More 
Book Review: The Art and Making of Hannibal: The Television Series: A Gleefully Grisly Souvenir
When I first heard about the Hannibal TV show, it seemed like a joke - the apotheosis of the modern ...
Read More 
Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Volume 1 Blu-ray Review: Action Heroes ’50s Japanese Style
The Nikkatsu Diamond Guys title comes from a marketing scheme from nearly 60 years ago. Nikkatsu is a studio in ...
Read More 
David Bowie, The Heart’s Filthy Lesson, Se7en, and Me
David Fincher led me to David Bowie. I doubt that was a typical path to the Thin White Duke, but ...
Read More 
Bone Tomahawk DVD Review: Rare Horror Western Hybrid
One of the problems with the modern Western is the seemingly desperate need for creators to seem superior, both to ...
Read More 
Wake Up and Kill Blu-ray Review: Gritty but Unengaging Criminal Bio-pic
Wake Up and Kill isn't quite a traditional gangster film. There's a philosophy to the gangster film that requires a ...
Read More 
Requiescant Blu-ray Review: Massacred Mexican Communist Revenge
As Westerns go, Requiescant is an odd one. Its story isn't all that unusual - a young boy's entire Mexican ...
Read More 
Tenderness of the Wolves Blu-ray Review: Serial Killer Social Drama
German cinema during the '70s belonged to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The director was incredibly prolific from an annoyingly precocious age. ...
Read More 
Attack on Titan: The Movies: Part 1 & Part 2 Review: Anime-Inspired Cinematic Insanity
Of the various pleasures of Japanese cinema, for me one of the greatest is to see stuff on screen that ...
Read More 
Big House, U.S.A. Blu-ray Review: Lean, Tough ’50s Crime
This was an unexpected treasure. Big House, U.S.A. (which is a completely undescriptive, absolutely terrible title for this grim thriller) ...
Read More 
The Hee Haw Collection DVD Review: Stockholm Syndrome in the Cornfields
The first hour of watching The Hee Haw Collection might have been the longest hour of anything I've seen. The ...
Read More 
Cemetery Without Crosses Blu-ray Review: Franco-Spanish Spaghetti Western
Filmed in Spain, with a mostly French cast directed by (and starring) the French Robert Hossein and with a screenplay ...
Read More 
He Ran All the Way Blu-ray Review: Beautiful Cinematography Elevates Standard Noir
He Ran All The Way was written by Dalton Trumbo and directed by John Berry, both just before they were ...
Read More 
Person of Interest: The Complete Fourth Season DVD Review: A.I. Supercomputer Battle Royale
Every season of Person of Interest ends with some kind of apocalypse, some place to recover from. A lot of ...
Read More 
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Blu-ray Review: A Magical Series About Real Magic in England
There are people who cannot handle fantasy. There are viewers who think that any mention of the specifically impossible (instead ...
Read More 
Stray Cat Rock Blu-ray Review: Motorcycle Girl Gangs and Hippy Crime Sprees
On an interview on this disc, director Yasuharu Hasebe talks about how ephemeral the movies he made were. “I expected ...
Read More 
Society Blu-ray Review: Glorious Mess of an ’80s Horror Movie
Horror movies are often critiqued as metaphors, largely in an attempt to approach them in terms that distance critics from ...
Read More 
The Searchers Blu-ray Review: Revisionist Western Before There Were Revisionist Westerns
Taking a highly praised classic on is a tricky business for any film reviewer. A movie as celebrated and revered ...
Read More 
Retaliation Blu-ray Review: Japanese Gangster Exploitation Mayhem
One of the joys of watching old exploitation movies like Retaliation is that the inexpensive filmmaking meant that a documentary ...
Read More 
The Friends of Eddie Coyle Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Crime, Lowkey, and Unsentimental
Released about a year after Coppola's crime epic, The Godfather, The Friends of Eddie Coyle was seen by some critics ...
Read More 
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control Movie Review: Skewed Look at Human Behavior
The title might throw a viewer off - 'Out of Control'. A documentary about things being out of control sounds ...
Read More 
Blind Woman’s Curse Blu-ray Review: Gory Japanese Ghosts and Yakuza Fun
Blind Woman's Curse, directed by Teruo Ishii and due out on Blu-ray on April 21 from Arrow Video, is a ...
Read More 
A Walk Among the Tombstones Blu-ray Review: Somber, Slow Detective Throwback
Looking at the trailer for A Walk Among the Tombstones, one would be forgiven for assuming it is a Liam ...
Read More 
The Vanishing (1988) Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Thriller as Character Study
The missing person is the greatest motif of the mystery story. Even if the murder story is more common (and ...
Read More 
UHF Blu-ray Review: Constant Parodying, Semi-Constant Laughter
"Weird Al" seems to be perpetually "coming back". It's surprising to see, in a world where all careers have peaks ...
Read More 
Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars DVD Review: A Parallel Adventure in the Galactic Empire
Phineas and Ferb works almost entirely on the basis of their engaging formula. While there have been occasional efforts to ...
Read More 
Father Brown: Season One DVD Review: Uninspired Priest Detective Series
It is difficult to determine where Father Brown fails more completely: as an adaptation, or as a mystery show in ...
Read More 
Any Given Sunday 15th Anniversary Blu-ray Review: Oversized Game Meets Oversized Filmmaker
Recently at lunch, I was watching ESPN with the sound off at a local bar. For 20 minutes, the anchors ...
Read More 
Rocks in My Pockets Movie Review: Animated Exploration of Suicide and Depression
Rocks in My Pockets begins with a detailed discussion of suicide by hanging, with all angles fully explored, from how ...
Read More 
Hidden Kingdoms Blu-ray Review: Contrived Narratives Meet Astonishing Nature Footage
Nature shows have to balance the nature with the show. The point of watching animals do stuff is to see ...
Read More 
The Book Thief Blu-ray Review: Familiar but Compelling Wartime Drama
It's almost always stupid to say, "They don't make films like this anymore" to describe some character drama. It's usually ...
Read More 
Books Review: Starting Point: 1979-1996 and Turning Point: 1997-2008 by Hayao Miyazaki: Unique Memoirs from an Animation Genius
Hayao Miyazaki's downbeat personal sensibility, constant self-doubt, and pessimism are nearly absent from his works. My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery ...
Read More 
Dragons: Defenders of Berk Part 2 DVD Review: Mostly Satisfactory Season Ender
How to Train Your Dragon 2 looks, at least from the early trailer, like it is willing to take risks ...
Read More 
Book Review: Weird Fantasy, Volume 1: Glossy Reprint of Classic SF Comic
EC Comics holds a special place in comic book history. After all, it was EC comics in particular that were ...
Read More 
Dragons: Defenders of Berk Part 1 DVD Review: Another Half Season of Dragon Training
They've changed the title. Dragons, the TV series continuation of the hit CGI movie How to Train Your Dragon was, ...
Read More 
Himizu Movie Review: Compellingly Weird Coming-of-age Drama
Weird movies (and Sion Sono makes nothing but weird movies) can only be really successful story vehicles if they properly ...
Read More 
Guilty of Romance Movie Review: Sexy Thriller with Tacked-on Murder
Izumi seems like the perfect wife, by her husband's sterile and demanding definition of perfect. She has his slippers in ...
Read More 
Book Review: Gasoline Alley: The Complete Sundays, Volume One 1920-1922 by Frank King
Reading archives of old comic strips can be odd, because not only were these never meant to be perennial entertainment, ...
Read More 
Book Review: Hellboy: The First 20 Years by Mike Mignola
Hellboy: The First 20 Years is a celebration, not necessarily of the character, but of the artist and writer who ...
Read More 
Wicked Blood Blu-ray Review: Southern Meth Generic Crime Drama
The film's title, Wicked Blood, implies that it will be about family, and I suppose it is. It evokes the ...
Read More 
The Agatha Christie Hour: Complete Collection DVD Review: Agatha Christie’s Also-Rans
When I was a young television viewer, I had romantic notions about TV in Britain. The only British TV I ...
Read More 
Milius Movie Review: The Director Who Wanted to be a General
For a man who has had many triumphs, John Milius is seen as a tragic figure - he's the one ...
Read More 
Bryan Ferry: Live in Lyon DVD Review: Smooth, Professional Concert Crooning
After a certain age, all British rock musicians seem to funnel into one style of music. It begins gradually (and ...
Read More 
In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey DVD Review: Straightforward Look at Oddball Musician
Nothing is obscure anymore - or nothing can remain obscure. Internet information proliferation flattens structures. Getting information on John Fahey ...
Read More 
Sanguivorous DVD Review: Super-Arty Asian Vampires
At 56 minutes, Sanguivorous has a quality rare in experimental/avant garde cinema - it knows if it isn't going to ...
Read More 
Vikings: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Review: Old Gods Make Decent Drama
The images that are conjured by the words "History Channel scripted series" are not too exciting. It makes one think ...
Read More 
Waking the Dead: Season Eight DVD Review: Forensic Cop Show, Overwrought and Desperate
An advantage many British shows have over American television is that they usually have far fewer episodes. A show will ...
Read More 
American Horror Story: Asylum Blu-ray Review: Absolutely Insane, but It Works
American Horror Story is more about horror than it is horror. It has the tropes, and the imagery, of real ...
Read More 
Birth of the Living Dead Movie Review: Timely Revisiting of Horror Classic
At the risk of sounding hipsterish, I'm sick of zombies. Zombies are so done. When I was a young Night ...
Read More 
Brainwave DVD Review: Interesting Lectures, but Missed Opportunity
Brainwave is an annual lecture/conversation series that has been presented by the Rubin Museum of Art in New York since ...
Read More 
Haven: The Complete Third Season DVD Review: Supernatural TV Series Dives into Some Pitfalls
There are two major pitfalls that supernaturally themed TV shows can easily fall into. First, since these shows have to ...
Read More 
Blandings: Series 1 DVD Review: The Great Wodehouse (Somewhat) Well Adapted
P. G. Wodehouse, an incredibly prolific British humorist (writing nearly 100 books, and many plays, movies and short stories) was ...
Read More 
Robotech 2-Movie Collection DVD Review: The Shadow Chronicles Collector’s Edition and Love Live Alive: A Robotech Sequel and A Long, Long Clip Show
Robotech was the introduction to an entire generation to the wonders of anime (at the time called Japanimation), and (perhaps ...
Read More 
Shoah Criterion Collection DVD Review: Superb Release of Haunting, Tragic Film
Shoah is a film about trains. Inside its nearly 10 hours of running time, the image and movement of the ...
Read More 
Strike Back: Cinemax Season Two Blu-ray Review: 21st Century Production Values, ’80s Action Sensibility
Throughout Strike Back's second season, a single episode did not go by where someone was not shot in the head ...
Read More 
Dragons: Riders of Berk Part 1 and 2 DVDs Review: More Vikings, More Dragons
How To Train Your Dragon was a surprise, a CGI-animated action adventure story with humor and real heart coming from ...
Read More 
The Gangster (2012) Blu-ray Review: Ambitious but Flawed Gangland Epic
Classic gangster movies followed a specific arc, probably best codified in the original Scarface (1932) - the audience follows the ...
Read More