Back To You and Me:
Your typical Hallmark movie is all about figuring out relationships. In real life, that's a tall, tall order, but in these movies, relationships are as easy to figure as your ABCs. It's a comfort, and that's something we could all use once in a while. For instance, my spouse doesn't like me writing these reviews; she feels it's a waste of time. So every now and then I try to grab something I think she'll like to watch. She absolutely loves Hallmark Hall of Fame movies, when they're on TV - I guess it has to do with anticipation and stealing time. Because when I bring a Hallmark screener home, she's casually dismissive of the thing, showing no interest at all. Go figure! I wish my life were as easy as a Hallmark movie, then maybe I could figure it out, too.

As far as details are concerned, Syd (Lisa Hartman Black) is a successful Los Angeles doctor in a go-nowhere relatio...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Why anyone would think that Jason Mewes, Jay in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob pairing, would be the perfect person to star in an erotic vampire comedy is beyond the powers of this reviewer to deduce. But this is exactly what the producers of Bitten apparently thought.

Mewes plays Jack, a down and out paramedic on the night shift who's just been dumped by his girlfriend Sherry (Jordan Madley). He gets a bit of avuncular advice, along with buckets of good natured abuse, from his partner Roger (Richard Fitzpatrick). Life is all boring repetition until Jack meets Danika (Erica Cox). Actually, he pulls her out of a trash pile in an alley, covered in blood and terribly ill, and cares for her in his apartment. Even though she has obvious bite marks on her throat and is sensitive to light, it takes him several days to figure out that she's a vampire, preferring to believe ...Read the entire review

The Taglines:

The Movie:

For a couple years now, RHI Entertainment and Genius Entertainment have been releasing creature features that aired on the SyFy Channel (usually during their Saturday offerings of cheap science fiction and horror movies) on home video under the banner Maneater Series. The Maneater Series has become rather reliable in offering diverting, if completely forgettable, cheap creature films. There must be some kind of fan base for this series, as the line continues to flourish. Its off...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
From Miami to Hollywood, via fortune and hard work

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Music videos, The Directors Label
Likes: Stylish direction, Brett Ratner
Dislikes: Gangsta rap
Hates: The demise of Music Television

The Story So Far...
A while back, the now-seemingly-defunct Palm Pictures had the bright idea to put together DVDs of the short-form work of innovative and creative music-video directors, releasing an opening salvo consisting of discs dedicated to artists including Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry. It was a huge treat for fans of their work, or just fans of cool music videos. The second wave was a bit disappointing, with the genius of Mark Romanek paired with a few Eur...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Celebrating the work of a post-racial success

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Music videos, The Directors Label
Likes: Stylish direction, Outkast
Dislikes: Gangsta rap
Hates: The demise of Music Television

The Presentation
A while back, the now-seemingly-defunct Palm Pictures had the bright idea to put together DVDs of the short-form work of innovative and creative music-video directors, releasing an opening salvo consisting of discs dedicated to artists including Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry. It was a huge treat for fans of their work, or just fans of cool music videos. The second wave was a bit disappointing, with the genius of Mark Romanek paired with a few Euro-centric dis...Read the entire review

The Taglines:

The Movie:

For a couple years now, RHI Entertainment and Genius Entertainment have been releasing creature features that aired on the SyFy Channel (usually during their Saturday offerings of cheap science fiction and horror movies) on home video under the banner Maneater Series. The Maneater Series has become rather reliable in offering diverting, if completely forgettable, cheap creature films. There must be some kind o...Read the entire review

The Miniseries:

As a character, Tony Stark/Iron Man has always been a little too much for me to swallow. Fine, Superman's from another planet and has a catch-all array of superpowers. Batman is "just a man," but a very wealthy one with a memorable dark streak. But Tony Stark? Well, he's basically Howard Hughes - if Howard Hughes had an atomic heart implant keeping him alive, a superhuman command of the practical applications of physics, and of course enormous wealth and a king-like command of immeasurable corporate resources. Oh, and plus: Stark flies around in a rocket-powered exoskeleton that gives him the strength of ten men and access to every piece of technical data in existence.

So he's a superhero. But that's a lot of "special powers." Still, the 2008 blockbuste...Read the entire review

The Tagline:

The Movie:

For a couple years now, RHI Entertainment and Genius Entertainment have been releasing creature features that aired on the SyFy Channel (usually during their Saturday offerings of cheap science fiction and horror movies) on home video under the banner Maneater Series. The Maneater Series has become rather reliable in offering diverting, if completely forgettable, cheap creature films. There must be some kind of fan base for this series, as the line continues to flourish. Its official webs...Read the entire review

Note to Earth: If/when a meteor ever does happen to come tumbling toward the planet, threatening to wipe out all life as we know it, make sure we have more than three scientists on the case. Just a heads up there.

Yes, "Meteor" - the two-part NBC miniseries that rivaled ABC's "Impact" this summer for disaster dumbassery - goes above and beyond with the improbability, to the point we stop giggling over ridiculous bits of faulty science and start howling over massive logic holes, lazy cliché, and just plain awful storytelling. Here is a movie that tells us there is a top government research facility dedicated entirely to tracking extraterrestrial objects that could slam into the planet, but everyone who works there needs to be told what a meteor is.

The man doing the telling is D...Read the entire review

The Miniseries:

Everyone's favorite aquatic behemoth makes his Region 1 Blu-ray debut this month, raising the hopes of American Kaiju fans. Last year we heard that the Toho Co. had remastered their entire inventory of Godzilla pictures to HD for release in Japan. Hopes were high that something new would show up in the HD format, as the original Gojira is in dire need of a thorough digital going-over.

The 1954 Gojira made its official American premiere five years ago on its 50th Anniversary; for all those decades we've been enjoying an adapted version that inserts actor Raymond Burr into what was originally an all-Japanese cast. Classic Media released a Deluxe Collector's Edition DVD in 2006 that was very well rece...Read the entire review

The Movie:
 
"I often don't know where my luggage is!  That'swhat being a tourist all is about." -Twoflower, the Discworld's first tourist.
 
Originally broadcast in Englandand earning a very limited theatrical release in the US, The Color of Magic is an incredibly fun miniseries.  Created by the same team that was responsiblefor the first live-action adaptation of a Terry Pratchett novel, theentertaining Hogfather, this movie goes back to the first discworldbooks andadapts both The Color of Magicand The Light Fantastic.&...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Obviously inspired by competently made and reasonably engaging 'backwoods' horror films like Just Before Dawn, Rituals and Deliverance with maybe a bit of The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre thrown in for good measure, Backwoods isn't nearly as interesting, scary, or watchable as any of those aforementioned films. Rather, it's a boring, poorly written slug of a film that was, quite honestly, a chore to sit through.

When the film begins, a team of eight office worker types - six guys and two 'hot girls' (one of whom is Haley Duff but really, who cares) -are told by their boss that they're going to be going on a teambuilding exercise out in the boonies where they'll split into two teams and play paintball. It's never really explained what this will do to help their careers, but it is at least a set up of some sort and ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

This latest in the seemingly endless Maneater series that have been popping up on the Sci-Fi Channel and then going straight to DVD is the blandly titled Sea Beast which, like many of its sister films, throws a B-list actor into the lead role wherein he/she must square off against poorly rendered CGI monsters.

Said B-list actor is Corin Nemec who plays a fisherman named Will McKenna. When we first meet Will, he and his crew are at sea, battling a horrendous storm. Things turn from bad to worse when one of Will's crewmembers is snatched off of the deck by a seemingly transparent monster who drags him to the depths of the ocean never to be seen or heard from again. Will's bad luck continues when the guy who sold him his boat comes looking for his money but thankfully a surly old sea dog named Quint, I mean Ben (Brent Strait), saw the same monster years before. U...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Infected is a good looking movie (apart from the cheesy CG effects) but it fails to provide much depth to justify the slick presentation. This thrown together Sci Fi Channel effort pairs (some) talented actors with an implausible idea and an often silly script to provide a less then memorable movie experience.

Ostensibly, Infected is a thriller in the grand conspiracy, aliens are coming to eat our brains and eyeballs genre. Gil Bellows and Maxim Roy play Ben and Lisa, reporters at a Boston newspaper. Ben writes silly "mystery science" supplements and Lisa is on the city beat. Isabella Rossellini plays Carla, their editor. Lisa has been contacted by an informant who is alleging that the City of Boston is in league with the mysterious Whitefield company to somehow pass on the "Boston Plague" to hapless Bostonians, for unknown, though clearly sinister, reasons.Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Last Templar is a recent television miniseries repurposed by RHI Entertainment as a 170 minute film for home video release, conspicuously around the time of the theatrical run of Angels and Demons, which shares more than a passing thematic resemblance. The back cover art says that it's based upon a bestseller by Raymond Khoury.

Whether or not you enjoy this film will likely depend upon whether you can accept a 40+ Mira Sorvino as a wisecracki...Read the entire review

When I first saw Chuck Norris pull off a Ju-Jitsu armbar on a thug in an episode of Walker: Texas Ranger, I knew that the influence of mixed martial arts on fight choreography had finally arrived. Probably the best example, Donnie Yen has recently embraced this by incorporating submission and grappling moves along with the expected standard punches and kicks in S.P.L. and Flash Point. In US films, this trend has left us with the mediocre Redbelt, the hack commercial likes of Never Back Down and Fighting, and direct to video fare like Street Warrior.

When your movie starts with an opening title montage containing scenes-from-the-upcoming-film, you know you are in trouble. Anyway, set to an anonymous metal tune, the Street Warrior opening credits deliver a barrage of quick cuts, whooshes, and freeze frames of clubs, cars, bad fake titties, and bu...Read the entire review

The Movie
As a wordsmith with at least average skill, I get particularly annoyed whenever I read the phrase "Webster's dictionary defines...". It's the No. 1 no-no in writing, and I say we should hold films to the same standard. So when this brutal French-Canadian horror film finished by flashing a definition of "martyr" on the screen, it was an annoying exclamation point on what I found to be an already arduous viewing experience.

I'd love to say it's been a long time since I've passionately hated a film this much, but it hasn't (thank you, Revolutionary Road). Nonetheless, movies don't often stir up such extreme feelings in me. As...Read the entire review

The Movie:

For over a year now, RHI Entertainment and Genius Entertainment have been releasing creature features that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (usually during their Saturday offerings of cheap science fiction and horror movies) on home video under the banner Maneater Series. The Maneater Series has become rather reliable in offering diverting, if completely forgettable, cheap creature films. There must be some kind of fan base for this series, as the line continues to persist and now even has an official website loca...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Beauty Of Snakes was originally shown on Animal Planet and now arrives on Blu-ray for those who want to enjoy it on their own. So what's it all about? Well the title more or less says it all. This forty-five minute feature is essentially 'snake basics 101. It starts off talking about how there are different kinds of snakes all over the planet before moving on to different aspects of their existence. We start with a mating ritual in which we see a female garter snake shed it's skin and secrete and oil which attracts a whole host of male partners who literally cover her until all we see is a wiggling mass of snakes - freakishly impressive!

From there we lay witness to the birthing process. Snakes aren't the most maternal of creatures, tending to lay their eggs (or in rare cases give birth to live young) and then leave them to fend for themselves immediately aft...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The World's Biggest And Baddest Bugs is an hour and a half long special that's been shown periodically on the Animal Planet cable channel. It was produced by Natural History New Zealand, where it parts of it were filmed, and has now arrived on Blu-ray for all you bug fanatics. But is this really something you'll want to watch over and over again?

The documentary features noted entomologist Ruud Kleinpaste (he'll be familiar to regular Animal Planet viewers as the hose of Buggin' With Ruud), who acts as both host and narrator on our journey through the wilds of the world as we uncover some of the largest insects to ever skitter across the earth. We start with some massive cockroaches that live underground in Australia and only really ever come out after rainfall, otherwise their shells will dry out thanks to the intense heat of the desert. From there we mov...Read the entire review

The Movie:
I have to wonder whose "brilliant" marketing idea it was to release a slew of Discovery Channel documentaries as standalone Blu-ray titles, especially when, as in this case, they clock in at less than 40 minutes (!), contain no extras, and are in a full frame, 1.33:1 aspect ratio. This doesn't scream "must buy BD" material to me at least, but perhaps your mileage will vary.

Africa's Elephant Kingdom does do an acceptably visceral job of recreating the life cycle of an elephant. Told in a somewhat pretentious first person mode (which is dropped part way through, then picked up again at the end) in stentorian tones by Avery Brooks, the documentary attempts to show what life is like for this amazing species. While the opening establishing shots are an enticing tease, with beautiful aerial footage of mountains, lushly forested regions, and of course the arid plains, the bul...Read the entire review

The Movie:

When this 2008 made for cable TV action movie starts out, an undercover cop named Jack Barrett (Casper Van Diem) is wailing away on his guitar, rocking the crowd at a Los Angeles night club while his fellow detectives wait outside. One of their own is impersonating a drug dealer while wearing a wire and they're waiting for the right time to strike. When he's found out, Barrett jumps off the stage and saves the day thought shortly after the guy with the wire on gets a phone call. For some reason, Barrett takes the call - it's the dude's girlfriend, a hot Japanese chick named Miko (Kristy Wu) and she's in trouble.

Jack ditches everybody and hightails it up to the house Mike shares with her father and her stepfather. When he gets there, a ninja attacks him and then takes off - Barrett has arrived too late, Mike's father and two security guards are dead. The cops go about i...Read the entire review

The Movie
I never thought the Gorton's Fisherman killer in I Know What You Did Last Summer was as chilling as he could have been, but at least he had a cool weapon. Unfortunately, the low-budget Dead in 3 Days (In 3 Tagen bist du tot) is in dire need of a better hook. The 2006 Austrian film has a lot in common with the 1997 American thriller, but neuters the already tame genre entry--draining it of all the fun and fright.

It's the end of the school year and five friends in a blue collar town have just passed their exams, leading to some celebration. But the fun is short lived when they all get text messages saying they'll be--you guessed it--dead in three days. Nina (Sabr...Read the entire review

Review:

I'd be surprised if "Extreme Movie" didn't set a record for an extreme amount of credited writers: no less than TEN writers (including "SNL" writers Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, Will Forte and John Solomon) are credited with the script. While it's a bit more entertaining (although that's not saying all that much) than the "Movie" parodies by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer ("Date Movie", "Disaster Movie", "Epic Movie") one wonders if this picture was ignored because people thought it was another in a line of those sorts of parodies.

In fact, I was one of those people, and thought "Extreme Movie" was just another movie parody when it's a different creature entirely. The picture plays out like an "SNL" episode - rather than a cohesive film, it's actually a bizarre series of sketches - some of which get a chuckle and quite a few of which just fail enti...Read the entire review

The Film:
A "stumble flick" is the sort of movie you "stumble" across while channel surfing; usually late at night when insomnia has got a vice-like grip on you, but most other people are sound asleep. And under these circumstances--when you can't sleep, you're too tired to read, and too lazy to change the channel--a stumble flick (also know as a stumbler) can be considered perfectly acceptable cinematic entertainment. A stumbler isn't so bad you have to turn it off, or so boring it makes you fall asleep, but also not so good that if you actually do start falling asleep you feel like you might miss something of merit. None of this is to say that a stumble flick is a particularly good movie. It's not the sort of thing you should ever rent, and you would certainly never recommend one to a friend. In fact, the most you should ever say about a stumbler is something like this, "I couldn't sleep la...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Feature-length sketch comedy about teen sex

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Not Another Teen Movie
Likes: Parody movies, Jamie Kennedy
Dislikes: Unrated movies with no reason to be unrated
Hates: The [Blank] Movie phenomenon

The Movie
If they hadn't given this film the ridiculous title Extreme Movie, and instead were able to stick with the far better Everything You Wanted to Know About Teenage Sex...But Were Afraid to Ask, I would have been far more interested in it. After all, it's got a pretty fun cast that includes Matthew Lillard, Michael Cera, Jamie Kennedy and Frankie Muniz; it's directed by two of the writers of the excellent Not Another Teen Movie and it shares...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Wow.

I mean, seriously, wow.

How does one go about intelligently discussing a movie involving genetically engineered killer wasps whose stings create human drone zombies? It just can't be done. Writing a review about Black Swarm, the latest Sci Fi Channel celluloid atrocity repurposed by RHI Entertainment as part of its creature feature home video collection The Maneater Series, is a tacit acknowledgement that I watched this stinker in the first place. And the fact that I'm giving it a DVD Talk - cer...Read the entire review

The Movie
As if I needed more evidence about the pitfalls of nature, along comes Eden Lake to strengthen my conviction that campers are about as cuckoo as Cocoa Puffs: alone, in the woods, in a tent about as safe and secure as my bed sheet...are you people insane?!

Meet our latest idiots: loving couple Steve (Michael Fassbender) and Jenny (Kelly Reilly). He wants a quiet, romantic getaway in the outskirts of England at an isolated public park that holds meaningful memories from his youth. But developers have tarnished the idyllic locale (one of a few metaphors here), which is being transformed into a gated community. That doesn't deter him--and neither do the ominous radio reports about troubled kid...Read the entire review

The Movie
When it was announced that Rob Zombie would be "reimagining" John Carpenter's 1978 classic, a large contingent of horror fans cried foul. It was a polarizing film long before it was even made (much less seen), exciting and angering fans in equal amounts. When it was finally released, plenty of naysayers continued their whining, claiming Zombie had made a mess of the movie and tarnished the legacy of Michael Myers.

Personally, I don't mind remakes. Sure, Hollywood horror has become an uninspiring industry, but I loved ...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
It's too early for such a treacly Christmas film

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Christmas
Likes: Earnest Borgnine
Dislikes: Meloldrama
Hates: Chick flicks

The Movie
I can't believe it's the first week of November and I'm already reviewing my second Christmas DVD this year. If this keeps up, I'll be burnt-out on the holidays before Thanksgiving. That goes double if I get more titles like A Grandpa for Christmas, a movie that I was willing to give a chance, despite a title that definitely gave me pause, coming from the TV movie school of "A Blank for Blank." (I'm currently polishing a second draft of "A Tube Sock for Arbor Day.")

When her mom gets in a car crash, angry young Becca (Juliet...Read the entire review

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good short films
...Read the entire review

THE FILM

Before anyone takes a dump all over Rob Zombie's remake of the John Carpenter classic "Halloween," let me remind the picky bastards out there that the last time we saw Michael Myers on that big screen, he was trading karate chops with Busta Rhymes. Yeah, now this update doesn't seem so bad, does it?

As the troubled child in the Myers family (including Sheri Moon Zombie and William Forsythe), Michael (Daeg Faerch) has used his isolation to create a horrifying inner world where he tortures animals and uses masks to accept his evil nature. After slaughtering his family, Michael is sent to a mental hospital where he's put in the care of Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). After years in his cell, Michael has grown to hulking proportions (now played by Tyler Mane) and manages to escape, heading to his old hometown of Haddonfield to locate his baby sister Laurie (Scout Taylor-...Read the entire review