Archive Page 107
May 20th, 2020 by Brandon Peters
On January 30th of this year, Michael Schur’s The Good Place came to its natural conclusion. Schur may not be a household name, but the guy is responsible as a writer or producer for unarguably some of the best television comedy of the last decade. While his name might not ring a bell, perhaps The Office, Master of None, Parks and Recreation or Brooklyn Nine-Nine ring a bell? And if you’ve not indulged in those, well you may want to start taking a gander. Of all his creations and efforts, The Good Place might just be he’s crowning jewel. More than character, more than comedy, its a bit of discovery, mystery and a full on philosophical exploration of a good many things regarding the human life and afterlife. The great people at Shout! Factory are doing us all a good solid and making sure this series gets its rightful do on Blu-ray instead of finding itself on a lame DVD or sentenced to be found on streaming services only. You’ll be able to pick up their complete series set complete with some bonus features and all episodes when it arrives on May 19th! Continue reading ‘The Good Place: The Complete Series (Blu-ray Review)’
May 20th, 2020 by Brandon Peters
We Summon The Darkness was a Fantastic Fest hit last year, a new entry to the ever growing list of quality indie horror comedies we’ve seen in the last few years. It boasts a cast of the Alexandra Daddario and Johnny Knoxville and nifty spin on common horror plots/twists/turns. The Blu-ray is coming on June 9th, so let this digital review promote that a bit as the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented review copies of this film from going out or being easily feasible. The digital release was on April 10, so you can rent or buy it now for pretty solid, affordable pricing. Hell, the Blu-ray is only currently $16.99 to pre-order, so maybe you just jump on it (Though my review, while positive, may tell you otherwise). However, you may choose, one of the ways to watch is on Amazon Prime, and it helps the site a little when you use the Amazon Associates paid link below to do so. But, it is also available via Vudu, AppleTV and FandangoNow if those are your preferred avenues. Continue reading ‘We Summon The Darkness (Digital HD Review)’
May 20th, 2020 by Brandon Peters
Adventure awaits as one of TV’s favorite DC Super Heroes flies into homes with the release of Supergirl: The Complete Fifth Season on Blu-ray and DVD on September 8, 2020 from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. Fans can purchase the sets which, in addition to all 19 super-powered episodes from season five, also contains The Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2019, deleted scenes and a gag reel. A limited-edition bonus disc featuring all five DC Crossover Event Crisis on Infinite Earths episodes will be available exclusively for fans who purchase the Blu-ray. Supergirl: The Complete Fifth Season is priced to own on DVD and , which includes a Digital Copy (U.S. only). Supergirl: The Complete Fifth Season is also available to own on Digital via purchase from digital retailers. Continue reading ‘SUPERGIRL: THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON Is Flying Into Homes On Blu-ray September 8th!’
May 19th, 2020 by Brandon Peters
DreamWorks Animation presents TROLLS WORLD TOUR, a music- filled, exciting adventure that’s sure to make the whole family sing, dance, and have fun again and again. Join Poppy, Branch, and the rest of the Trolls in the all-new Dance Party Edition exclusively on Digital June 23, 2020 and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-Ray™, and DVD July 7, 2020 from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. The Dance Party Edition includes an interactive dance party mode where viewers are introduced to dance moves to learn while they watch the film, lyrics to sing along, and surprises featuring their favorite characters! This special Dance Party Edition includes bonus content, such as an exclusive original short film starring the unforgettable Tiny Diamond, deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes exclusives with the power-house musical cast of Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson, Mary J. Blige, George Clinton and many more. This fun and entertaining family film is the must-own movie of the summer. Continue reading ‘The Most Controversial Film Of 2020, TROLLS WORLD TOUR, Defies Theaters With A 4K Blu-ray July 7th!’
May 19th, 2020 by Brandon Peters
Just in time for the seventh season premiere of the highest-rated series on The CW, fans will be zooming into stores to pick up The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment releases the Blu-ray and DVD on August 25, 2020. Averaging over 1.8 million viewers weekly*, viewers will be able to speed-watch all 19 gripping episodes from the #1 series on The CW, plus a never-before-seen “Kiss Kiss Breach Breach – Noir” episode with commentary by showrunner/ executive producer Eric Wallace. Other special features include: The Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2019, deleted scenes and a gag reel. A limited-edition bonus disc featuring all five DC Crossover Event Crisis on Infinite Earths episodes will be available exclusively for fans who purchase the Blu-ray. The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season is priced to own on DVD and Blu-ray, which includes a Digital Copy (U.S. only). The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season is also available to own on Digital via purchase from digital retailers. Continue reading ‘THE FLASH: THE “COMPLETE” SIXTH SEASON Speeds On To Blu-ray August 25th!’
May 19th, 2020 by Gerard Iribe
One of the most genre-defining (not to mention genre-defying!) horror-comedies imaginable, and one of the key Hong Kong blockbuster hits of the 1980s, the popularity and influence of Mr. Vampire cannot be overstated. Spawning at least four sequels and countless spin-offs and imitations, this Hong Kong horror-comedy to end them all was an understandable crowd-pleasing sensation, and triggered a wave of jiangshi (“hopping vampire”) movies. Produced by the legendary Sammo Hung, the original Mr. Vampire is essential viewing for anyone interested in the 80s golden age of Hong Kong cinema. In a career-making performance, the late Lam Ching-ying is Master Kau, expert on all matters of the supernatural. When Kau and his two bumbling students, Man Choi (famous comedian Ricky Hui) and Chou (Fist of Legend‘s Chin Siu-ho), exhume a corpse for reburial, things go frighteningly and hilariously awry when the cadaver is revealed to be a hopping vampire. With the undead on the loose, Master Kau is blamed for the chaos, and must work with his students to put the spirits to rest before the vampire’s own granddaughter (80s Hong Kong action icon Moon Lee) gets bitten. Fighting the vampires with everything from sticky rice to filing down the bloodsucker’s fangs, the trio must defeat an increasing number of ghoulish dangers. Continue reading ‘‘Mr. Vampire’ [Eureka Classics] on Blu-ray July 20, 2020!’
May 18th, 2020 by Gerard Iribe
A haunting horror fairytale set against the backdrop of Mexico’s devastating drug wars. Tigers Are Not Afraid follows a group of orphaned children, armed with three magical wishes, running from the ghosts that haunt them and the cartel that murdered their parents. Filmmaker Issa Lopez creates a world that recalls the early films of Guillermo del Toro, imbued with her own gritty urban spin on magical realism to conjure a wholly unique experience that audiences will not soon forget. Continue reading ‘Tigers Are Not Afraid (Blu-ray Review)’
May 17th, 2020 by Gregg Senko
Though it has been a few months since the release of the Star Wars: Dooku – Jedi Lost in both audio and print form, it was only recently that I concluded the nearly six and a half hour audio format of the story from Random House Audio. It is important to note that this is not an audio book, but rather an audio drama, and the difference between the two is quite significant. There is a full cast of actors complete with the musical accompaniment of John Williams’ work and cinematic sound effects to boot. As for the book form, it is important that fans know it is not a novel and instead reads exactly like a script. With all that in mind, let us take a deeper look at Dooku – Jedi Lost.
Continue reading ‘Star Wars: Dooku – Jedi Lost (Audio Drama Review)’
May 16th, 2020 by Peter Paras
Katie Holmes is stuck at home with a possibly possessed doll; as are the rest of us, if we’re so inclined to check out the sequel to 2016’s surprise horror hit The Boy. Brahms: The Boy II was released about a month before the global pandemic would keep nearly all humans on planet earth indoors. Some would fill their time with cute, adorable fare like Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Others swung the other way, with more horrific forms of entertainment. In this era, mileage will vary on wanting to intentionally be trapped for nearly ninety minutes with Annabelle’s better-dressed spiritual sibling. I have kept up with the thrills (Contagion really holds up!). So does this Blu-ray release have inventive new ways to make us uncomfortable spending time looking into the dead-eyed stare of a creepy porcelain boy? Review after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Brahms: The Boy II (Blu-ray review)’
May 15th, 2020 by Aaron Neuwirth
This August, Paul Schrader’s seductive thriller
The Comfort of Strangers– adapted by Harold Pinter from the novel by Ian McEwan- will join the Criterion Collection in a new 4K restoration. A landmark of poetic realism that went on to influence the French New Wave, Jean Renoir’s Provence-set drama
Toni will make its first appearance on Blu-ray and DVD. Also debuting on home video is Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker’s
Town Bloody Hall, an electrifying record of second-wave feminism and its discontents that captures a legendary 1971 debate between Norman Mailer and four prominent female thinkers and activists. Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s urgent political thriller
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum will also debut on Blu-ray. Plus, our
previously announced fifteen-Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda will collect the life’s work of an artist who never stopped expanding the notion of what a movie can be.
Continue reading ‘Renoir, Schrader, Varda & More Coming to The Criterion Collection August 2020’
May 15th, 2020 by Gerard Iribe
This trio of classic 1930s horror films—Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, and The Raven—is also distinguished by a trio of factors regarding their production. Most notably, each film is based on a work by master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe. Part of the legendary wave of horror films made by Universal Pictures in the 30s, all three feature dynamic performances from Dracula‘s Bela Lugosi, with two of them also enlivened by the appearance of Frankenstein‘s Boris Karloff. And finally, all three benefit from being rare examples of Pre-Code studio horror, their sometimes startling depictions of sadism and shock a result of being crafted during that brief period in Hollywood before the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code’s rigid guidelines for moral content. Director Robert Florey, who gave the Marx Brothers their cinema start with The Cocoanuts in 1929, worked with Metropolis cinematographer Karl Freund to give a German Expressionism look to Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), with Lugosi as a mad scientist running a twisted carnival sideshow in 19th-century Paris, and murdering women to find a mate for his talking ape main attraction. Lugosi and Karloff teamed forces for the first time in The Black Cat, a nightmarish psychodrama that became Universal’s biggest hit of 1934, with Detour director Edgar G. Ulmer bringing a feverish flair to the tale of a satanic, necrophiliac architect (Karloff) locked in battle with an old friend (Lugosi) in search of his family. Prolific B-movie director Lew Landers made 1935’s The Raven so grotesque that all American horror films were banned in the U.K. for two years in its wake. Specifically referencing Poe within its story, Lugosi is a plastic surgeon obsessed with the writer, who tortures fleeing murderer Karloff through monstrous medical means. Continue reading ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, and The Raven on Blu-ray July 20, 2020!’
May 14th, 2020 by Gerard Iribe
Years after a bacterium killed 31 million people, David Oscar must come out of hiding and face his past. He is tracked down by the remaining members of his former rebel group, who persuade him to take part in an important mission which they believe will lead to a cure for the infected and will destroy the pharmaceutical company they believe to be responsible for the sickness. As they break into a secure facility expecting to find the cure, they discover a young girl who has been held captive and subjected to experiments for years. As David and his companions help her escape the company facility, the mutation inside her body manifests itself and the rebels discover why she has been kept under lock and key all this time. Continue reading ‘‘Kill Mode’ on Blu-ray & DVD June 16, 2020!’
May 14th, 2020 by Gregg Senko
Well it’s about time! Pick your poison, as chances are whatever anyone’s hobbies are, they have likely been slowed, ceased or altered in some way. Comic books are no exception as many have been left reading old back issues or even nothing at all. That has all taken a solid turn for the better during the virus lockdown. To being with, digital comics made their splash last week with print comics releasing this week. Among the first out was Marvel’s long-awaited reboot of Doctor Aphra.
Continue reading ‘Comics Are Back! and also Doctor Aphra #1’
May 14th, 2020 by Brandon Peters
Paramount is unloading a trio of Tom Cruise headlining films on May 19, including Top Gun, Days of Thunder and the 2005 Steven Spielberg adaptation of War of the Worlds. No doubt these were ready to be released in anticipation of Top Gun: Maverick this summer, but alas that film has moved to December. Luckily these 4K Ultra-HD Blu-rays move on as originally planned. This review is covering War of the Worlds, a film I actually hold close to my heart as it has a special place for me. It was the first film I saw in the fabled Grauman’s Chinese Theater when I moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2005. I enjoyed the film well enough then and more upon subsequent viewings, but regardless of its quality I will always carry that special memory with me. Nonetheless, as mentioned, it arrives on 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray on May 19th and you can land yourself a copy of it to hopefully be delivered as soon as it can using the Amazon Associates link following the review. Continue reading ‘War Of The Worlds (2005) (4K UHD Blu-ray Review)’
May 13th, 2020 by Brian White
Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is a movie title I have loved saying over and over for some time now. It rolls off the tip of my tongue like a youth’s belly skin does over a wet Wham-O Slip ‘N Slide. It’s also my number one most favorite film of 2020 and NOTHING can top it. I was looking forward to this one for over 3 years since I authored this insightful 4K Review of 2016’s Suicide Squad HERE. If you really do think about it, one might even say I was born to write this Blu-ray review like some fateful, divine intervention, deity kind of crap. Needless to say if I never see another movie in 2020 due to COVID-19, I’d be perfectly content as I have my just about near perfect as you can get, Harley Quinn movie, and all the endless merchandise I was lucky enough to get my grubby hands on in bulk (from the UK too). And I do mean in BULK, but I digress. The time has finally come down below to intelligently construct a fair, honest review of why I feel Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is so hotdog, damn good. Continue reading ‘Birds of Prey (4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray Disc Review)’
May 11th, 2020 by Brian White
Days of Thunder here finds me doing some of my first writing in a long time. While I immensely enjoy the downtime that the “Quarantine of 2020” provides I can’t help but ultimately feeling lazy from too much sleep and my vice, heavy Call of Duty playing. However, it’s time to shake the cobwebs off and get back to work here. That starts with Days of Thunder, which makes its 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray debut on May 19th courtesy of Paramount. I have a secret as it relates to this movie. I have never seen Days of Thunder before. Thus I signed myself up for this assignment. Top Gun and War of the Worlds, which are also coming out on 4K disc the very same date, are a no-brainer purchase for me (I’ll let the other reviewers cover them). Sink or swim I wanted Days of Thunder. I figure the worst case scenario is I dodge a bullet on a blind buy, but I’m hoping to completely smitten just like I am with virtually every other Tom Cruise feature. So c’mon! Let’s get those engines started, baby! Vroom! Vroom! Continue reading ‘Days of Thunder (4K UHD Blu-ray Review)’
May 11th, 2020 by Aaron Neuwirth
The
Criterion Collection is celebrating the boundless creative vision of
Agnès Varda with a comprehensive collection of her genre-blurring, culture-shaping films. Bringing together all thirty-nine of her features, shorts, and documentaries for the first time, this fifteen-Blu-ray box set also contains extensive special features- many created by Varda herself- including introductions to the films, interviews with and tributes from family and friends, once-banned and unfinished works, behind-the-scenes footage, archival programs, and more. The edition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated 200-page book, with notes on the films and essays on Varda’s life and work, as well as a selection of her photography and images of her installation art.
The Complete Films of Agnès Varda captures the restless curiosity and radical imagination of a true original who invented a new cinematic language.
Continue reading ‘This August – The Criterion Collection Celebrates THE COMPLETE AGNÈS VARDA, A 15-Disc Collectors Set’
May 9th, 2020 by Adam Toroni-Byrne
Well, it finally happened… We finally have Top Gun in 4K. The iconic action classic finally hits home in the best way to watch films at home. The sights, the sounds, the sweat, the soundtrack. The film is a cultural standpoint for blockbuster filmmaking. There is something special that radiates through this movie that is almost unexplainable. At one point, this was a film I avoided like the plague. Does the film still hold up? How about the transfer? Let’s go in depth below, and don’t forget to click the paid link at the bottom to preorder your copy of Top Gun, available May 19th!
Continue reading ‘Top Gun (4K Blu-ray Review)’
