The Movie:

There are a lot of Puppet Master movies out there. A whole lot of them. And while the first f few original entries hold up rather well, some of the more recent entries in the ongoing sage of Charles Band's most famous creation are… less than great. So why should you care about Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich? There are a few reasons, actually. The first, and probably most interesting, is that the script was written by S. Craig Zahler, the same man who recently directed Bone Tomahawk and Brawl In Cellblock 99 (see them both if you haven't yet). The second reason? Udo Kier has a small role and Udo Kier is always great. Always. The third reason? This movie essentially hits the ‘reset' button on the franchise and serves as a new starting point, pushing aside all previous continuity and telling a genuinely entertaining story.

Edgar (Thomas Lenn...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Alan Parker once said that he decided to helm The Commitments because the project combined the two things he felt most comfortable with as a director: Staging music and working with young people. Parker is a master in visualizing music in an exciting and daring way (Pink Floyd The Wall), and he has a unique knack for extracting natural and seemingly effortless performances from young actors (Birdy). Hell, sometimes he does both at the same time, as witnessed in Fame and Bugsy Malone.

Therefore, it shouldn't b...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by Alan Parker in 1991 and based on the book by author Roddy Doyle, The Commitments gets a twenty-fifth anniversary special edition Blu-ray release to commemorate a quarter century of being both awesome, and criminally underappreciated! Sure, the movie has a solid following, there's no doubt about that, but this isn't just a good movie or a quirky movie, this is a legitimately great movie. Quite frankly, it's surprising that it took this long to hit Blu-ray given how damn good its sound track is (movies like this really benefit from lossless audio!), but hey, better late than never.

Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) lives in Dublin and quite frankly, his life is dull. He wants more, he wants excitement, he wants to do something different than just work away his days like everyone around him. He also wants to travel, see things and explore the world. How to do ...Read the entire review

"Bone Tomahawk" managed to evade my radar for the better part of the year until receiving a text from a friend at work who viewed it via a streaming service. On paper, the cast alone whetted my appetite for a solid western, a genre that, frankly, sees a lot of direct-to-video grade-D garbage these days. Written and directed by novelist S. Craig Zahler, "Bone Tomahawk" arrives quietly on Blu-Ray, a week removed from Quentin Tarantino's second entry into the genre, the magnificently filmed in Ultra Panavision "Hateful Eight". Going in an opposite direction from Tarantino's big screen stage production, "Bone Tomahawk" seeks to subvert the viewer's perception and understanding of the modern western by borrowing from the traditional and soaking it in an underlying tale of horror.

Although not overtly in the straight horror genre as "Ravenous", "Bone Tomahawk" is more akin to "The Searchers" meet...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Written and directed by Tom Stoppard and based on his stage play of the same name, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead takes two of Shakespeare's most minor of characters (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were bit part players in The Bard's classic Hamlet) and puts them front and center in their own take on some familiar events. It is, basically, the story of Hamlet from their point of view.

In a nutshell, the King Of Denmark has summoned Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) to Elsinore Castle and of course, they oblige. The meet various oddball characters on their travels and, upon their arrival, figure out that it's going to be up to them to try and sort out just exactly what it is that's eating away at Prince Hamlet (Iain Glen). As the events of Shakespeare's play begin to unfold at the castle, they become involved, or not involved,...Read the entire review

Full disclosure; I've never seen the original. In case neither have you, it's a 1976 film of the same name "loosely based on a true story." Basically, it's a slasher film with a hooded killer known as the Phantom who wreaks havoc in Texarkana. But it has a cult following, if not as large as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and has warranted a sequel/remake. Perhaps I would have let it pass on by, not appreciating the origin and assuming that it was just another horror reboot, if it weren't for Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. He directed the critically successful Read the entire review

The Movie:

The tragedy of Adam Sandler is not that he keeps making juvenile, mean-spirited, painfully unfunny "comedies" through his Happy Madison production company. The tragedy is that he's an immensely talented actor who's either relegated to or wants to keep doing bottom of the barrel material. Even though my frustrations about Sandler continuously putting out material we know is way below his talents is palpable, it's hard to blame him for going back to the well that made him successful in the 90s, one that still makes him a hefty amount of cash.

Whenever he tried his hand at dramatic roles, it resulted in continuous failure at the box office. In a way, Sandler created a collective monster of staggeringly low IQs in his vast core audience. They're the ones who practically bankroll his terrible Happy Madison movies, but dare to stray from that awful formula for even a second, ...Read the entire review

The Rewrite is the latest film fromwriter-directorMarc Lawrence (Music and Lyrics, Two Weeks Notice). Itagainreunites the filmmaker with actor Hugh Grant. The film is one ofLawrence'smost thoughtful and moving efforts. Indeed, The Rewrite mayactually bethe crowning achievement of Lawrence's filmmaking career to date.

Keith Michaels (Hugh Grant) used to be one ofHollywood'sgo-to screenwriters. He made a successful screenplay which became thefilmParadise Misplaced and ultimately won him a Oscar for Best OriginalScreenplay.Yet that was so many years ago. Keith now has trouble finding anyscript work(even re-writes) after a string of unsuccessful films and he's havingtroublepaying the bills. His agent...Read the entire review

Note: Please see the audio section of this review for an update on how to identify and / or receive a replacement with the corrected stereo track.

Originally hitting the stage in 1986, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods is a comic collision of famous fairy tales, bringing Jack and his magic beanstalk into the same story as Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood, among others. As Disney's big-budget movie adaptation, featuring Meryl Streep as the Witch, is about to hit screens, Image is bringing the original 1986 production to home video, in the form of a special performance recorded for the US public television program "American Playhouse" in 1991. This performance features all but one of the original cast members, including Chip Zien and Joanna Gleason as the baker husband and wif...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In this latest directorial effort from Brian Trenchard-Smith (the man who gave us Stunt Rock and Escape 2000 among plenty of other Ozlpoitation classics!), Thomas Jane plays Peter Roberts, a former race car driver who has given all of that up for the quiet life. He now makes his living as a driving instructor. He's not a wealthy man but he makes enough to support himself, his wife Tessa (Yesse Spence) and his daughter and he lives on the Gold Coast of Australia, which judging by the scenery shown in this movie, looks like a pretty nice place to hang your hat.

The problem is, however, that Peter is bored by his domesticated status. Things take an interesting shift one day when he takes an appointment with a visiting American named Simon Keller (John Cusack). Peter never once questions why a tourist hanging out in Australia temporarily would want to take drivin...Read the entire review

The Movie:

It's all well and good to pay attention to guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger, marquee stars who draw a crowd and what not, but if you consider yourself an action movie fan you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't pay attention to the solo efforts of some of their The Expendables co-stars. Those in the know have probably seen a lot of Dolph Lundgren's recent solo efforts, many of which are a lot of fun, but so too should they spend some time with Gary Daniels. The star of early 90s action flicks like Ring Of Fire and American Streetfighter has had a string of solid straight to video fight films released recently, and 2014's Misfire continues the trend started by pictures like Forced To Fight and Hunt To Kill.

Directed by R. Ellis Frazier, the movie stars Daniels as a D.E.A. agent named Cole who is bound and determined to ...Read the entire review

No, wait, I had a really good Tomahawk Chop joke saved up for this. I thought I had it, but...

The Movie:

Directed by Paco Cabezas, 2014's Rage, written by Jim Agnew and Sean Keller (the guys behind Dario Argento's Giallo), sees Nicholas Cage playing a man named Paul Maguire. Like a lot of people in movies with titles like Rage, Paul has a past, one that he's not all that proud of. See, he was once a very violent criminal, a bad man, the kind who hurt people. That's all behind him now, however, as he's living life on the straight and narrow and trying to be the best dad that he can be for his daughter Caitlin (Aubrey Peebles) and the best husband that he can be to foxy wife Vanessa (Rachel Nichols). Things seem pretty balanced for the guy until late one night he's old by a cop named Peter St. John (Danny Glover) that Caitlin has been kidnapped, snatched from their home where just a short while ago she and two boys where hanging out.

Caitlin's friends talk ...Read the entire review

I don't review a lot of (relatively) new movies, but was drawn to Devil's Knot (2013) because its director is Atom Egoyan, the Canadian filmmaker behind such excellent and unique films as Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and Ararat (2002). Devil's Knot, adapted from Mara Leveritt's 2002 book and based on the West Memphis Three murder investigation and subsequent trial, apparently is Egoyan's first "Hollywood" (i.e., American-financed) feature.

It was not a success. After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival last September, the film had only a limited theatrical release in Canada and none at all in the United States, despite comparatively big-name stars like Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth. Instead, Devil's Knot went directly to video-on-demand in May and was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews.

Most of the criticism stems from the fac...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Co-written and co-directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson, 2013's All Cheerleaders Die (a remake of their 2001 low budget debut of the same name, sadly not included on this release) takes the cattiness of high school and turns it into a horror comedy, making it clear right off the bat that we're not to take any of this all too seriously. In the film's opening scene we see a cheerleader mess up a jump and land on her head. Boom. She's dead. Enter Maddy (Caitlin Stasey), a lesbian fresh out of a relationship with her Wiccan ex-girlfriend, Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee). Maddy sees this tragic event as a way to become accepted into the ‘clique' that exists, to become one of the popular girls. She tries out and soon enough, she's tagging along with fellow cheerleaders Tracy (Brooke Butler), Martha (Reanin Johannik) and mascot Hanna (Amanda Grace Cooper) and is quickly accep...Read the entire review

You'd look at Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) and see a rapist, an unrepentantly sadistic serial killer, and, hell, maybe even a cannibal. Far as Mick himself is concerned, though, he's an exterminator. These tourists, this...vermin from all corners of the world swoop in and infest Australia. They piss on its proud history, they scar the country's natural beauty, and they sneer at those who call Australia home, all in the name of a good time. To Mick, disemboweling some drunken, hornball, Eurotrash tourist really isn't any different than a common house mouse tearing itself apart on one of those glue traps.

Doesn't even matter that barely-twentysomething-year-old German backpackers Rutger (Philippe Klaus) and Katarina (Shannon Ashlyn) aren't those kind of tourists. They remain...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Lewis Black is getting old

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Stand-up comics
Likes: Lewis Black, political comedy
Dislikes: Nostalgia-based comedy
Hates: Aging

The Story So Far…
Lewis Black has built a solid career as an angry comic through his appearances on The Daily Show and his stand-up act, and is known best for his screaming, profanity-laced rants against stupidity, punctuated with forceful finger-pointing. On home video, he's been especially productive, with four stand-up specials on DVD to date, along with some History Channel specials, and his The Root of All Evil series. DVDTalk has Read the entire review

The Movie:

In writer/director Harrison Smith's Camp Dread, Eric Roberts plays a director named Julian Barrett. In the eighties, Barrett's three Summer Camp films were riding high on the slasher movie craze and racking in money hand over fist. When the craze finally wore out its welcome, however, the downtrend took Barrett's career along for the ride.

When we meet up with him in the modern day, however, Barrett is excited to be bringing back his classic horror trilogy in hopes of finding a new audience for his work. To make this happen he's going to bring it all into the present day by using a reality show to find its contestants and to bring in the funding that he'll need to get it moving. Barrett brings in a cast of hot young talent, all of whom have been sent to participate on the show because they've done one thing or another to annoy their parents, to draw the eyeba...Read the entire review

The Movie:

This DVD release from Image Entertainment collects the nine shorts that the director of Fright Night and Child's Play created as an exclusive web series for FEARnet. Holland is no stranger to anthology horror, having worked on HBO's Tales From The Crypt series back when it was still on the air and this new project sees him collaborate with a few faces bound to be familiar to horror movie devotees.

As the shorts that make up this collection are unrelated, let's cover them in the order in which they appear on the DVD:

Fred And His GPS: The first story follows a man named Fred who murders his wife. When he takes off in his car afterwards, he starts to realize that the woman he just murdered might just be haunting him through his GPS. AJ Bowen from You're Next appears in this one and while it's not particularly scary, it is quirky and w...Read the entire review

It's not often you see bad work done by Michael Caine. He's just too naturally gifted an actor, too strong in his roles. And he's done so many over the years, varied parts that almost always come across the screen and blow audiences away. In his younger days: Zulu, Alfie, The Man Who Would Be King, A Bridge Too Far. More recently: Noises Off, The Cider House Rules, Quills, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight. He just doesn't often make a misstep; choosing his characters with a discerning eye, playing them to perfection, and delivering in top-notch films. That's why it's so surprising to see a weak Michael Caine in...Read the entire review

"There are eight million stories in the naked city..."

...and here are 138 of them.

Naked City (1958-59, 1960-63), the gritty, filmed-in-New York antecedent of shows like Law & Order and NYPD Blue, at long last becomes available as a Complete Series, 29-DVD set. The show had been kicking around on DVD piecemeal for the last ten years or so, first as four-episode DVDs distributed by Image then, two years later, as 10- to 12-episode sets, but that still left more than half the series unreleased. Finally, Naked City: The Complete Series marks the first time that all 138 shows have been made available, particularly those from the less-familiar first season of half-hour episodes featuring different leads.

Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62059 Thu, 14 Nov 2013 19:22:16 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Playing ‘war' was, during this writer's childhood at least, a pretty common past time. On any given Sunday afternoon it wasn't in the least bit uncommon to see many of the neighborhood kids, boys and girls alike, running around in the woods between our suburb and the train tracks blasting away at one another with toy guns and imaginary bullets. It's probably a pretty safe assumption that this happened in many neighborhoods around the continent, if not around the world. It was fun. No one got hurt, unless someone tripped and scraped their knee or ran too fast under a low laying branch, and when it was all over and done with whatever sides were taken quickly dissolved in the name of friendship and the general pursuit of childhood happiness. Written by Jason Lapeyre and co-directed by Lapeyre and Robert Wilson, 2012's I Declare War takes that basic and common childhood pas...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62037 Wed, 13 Nov 2013 05:31:00 UTC Recommended

Having written a few movies including the well-received Juno and not-so-well-received Jennifer's Body, Diablo Cody makes her directorial debut with Paradise. Julianne Hough plays Lamb, who narrates most of the film. She has had a very religious upbringing in a small town, where everyone has a strict code of conduct. Over video footage of her singing a religious song at a church talent show, she tells us "This was considered edgy." She has spent about a year recovering from a plane crash in which she was "barbequed in jet fuel," and ended up with a good cash settlement. (Although she escaped with her face undamaged, she has many other burns which are rendered here by long-time makeup artist Greg Nicotero.) As the movie starts she is just about to make a presentation at her church about the experience- everyone there expects her to tell them how her faith in God was re-affirmed th...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62033 Mon, 11 Nov 2013 04:26:51 UTC Highly Recommended

TheShow:

One of the most popular night-time dramas in the 1960's didn't involvepolice or doctors. It was Combat!an hour-long show focusing on a group of low-ranking soldiers fightingtheir way across France during WWII. While there was plenty of actionin the show, especially at the beginning and end of every installment,the human drama of the ordinary soldiers was what made people tune inweek after week. It lasted for five seasons, making it the longestrunning WWII drama to air on US TV. Previously released in severalvarieties, Image has put the entire five seasons of this excellent showout in a complete series set just in time for the holidays.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61948 Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:07:30 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Based on the novel by Brian Harper and directed by Julian Richards who helmed The Last Horror Movie a decade back, 2012's Shiver begins at a hole in the wall restaurant called Cadillac Jacks where a serial killer known only as The Gryphon (John Jarratt) murders his latest victim. Like a lot of serial killers, he takes a trophy each kill, specifically their heads, and his penchant for cruelty seems to know no bounds. He's got the city of Portland more or less on lockdown and has left a trail of dead young women behind him. He's also quite clever and has been able to remain a few steps ahead of the local authorities, much to the dismay of the man in charge of the case, Detective Sebastian Delgado (Casper van Dien).

As he continues to make his mark on the city he finds his next victim in the form of Wendy Alden (Danielle Harris), a very pretty but fairly reserve...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61949 Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:07:30 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Henry Fonda (who had worked with Sergio Leone a few years prior in the masterpiece that is Once Upon A Time In The West) plays a pistolero named Jack Beauregard who is coming to terms with the fact that, frankly, he's getting too old for the lifestyle he leads. As such, he's making his way to New Orleans where he intends to hang up his belt and enjoy his golden years in a more sedate manner than he has been accustomed to thus far by taking a long boat ride away from it all.

As Jack makes his way to the big easy, a young gunfighter named Nobody (Terrance Hill of My Name Is Trinity and Boot Hill) who sees him as a hero finds out that he's going to be retiring, and so he decides to send his mentor off in style by forcing him to fend for himself in a shootout of epic proportions sure to solidify his legacy in the history books of the old west.

Direct...Read the entire review

]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61861 Sat, 19 Oct 2013 03:23:04 UTC Recommended

I've got a writer crush on Diablo Cody. I'll just say that up front. And not because she's a girl and I am some sweaty dullard critic working far from Hollywood. No, I have a writer crush because I think she's really damn good at what she does and she's sort of everything I wanted to be when I was a kid dreaming of being the kind of writer that makes such an impact that people actually know your name. (There you go Facebook commenter who, in response to my Rush review, opined that I'm a critic because I'm a failure. You were right!)

I say this because I'm seeing how some of my colleagues are rating Cody's directorial debut, Paradise, and I am feeling defensive and confused--not dissimilar to when Y...Read the entire review

]]> Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61858 Fri, 18 Oct 2013 20:10:26 UTC Skip It

After a fiery plane crash leaves Lamb Mannerhelm (Julianne Hough) with permanent burns over 80% of her body, it's no surprise that her belief system starts to tip away from Jesus Christ and more toward the medical science that saves her life. The settlement from the explosion leaves her flush with cash, which her tiny Midwest community fully expects she'll put back into the Church, but she shocks both the congregation and her parents (Holly Hunter and Nick Offerman) by instead renouncing God and revealing she's off to Vegas to experience all the sin and debauchery that she was never allowed to even think about before. Upon arriving, she hooks up with bemused bartender William (Russell Brand) and disillusioned lounge singer Loray (Octavia Spencer), who agree to assist Lamb on her journey of cultural awakening.

Somewhere between her win at the 2008 Academy Awards and 2013, Diablo Cody hit a snag on her...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61807 Sat, 12 Oct 2013 02:19:26 UTC Skip It

As a critic, it's easy to harp on film cliches, but they aren't automatically an issue. Plenty of movies function just fine on a stripped-down formula because they're executed with skill and style. In theory, the direct-to-video market ought to be the perfect place for these kinds of movies: take a simple, easy-to-market story, and spice it up with the kind of creative execution that comes out of budgetary constraints. The fact that many A-listers have found themselves doing DTV to pay the bills only sweetens the deal, providing some recognizable faces for producers to slap on the box, and lowering the need for amateur actors. Sadly, most of what gets made is like The Colony: a double dose of the cliche, without the inventive execution.

In the future, weather modification technology sends the world into a permanent deep freeze. People struggle to get by in underground colonies, living in wha...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61707 Fri, 27 Sep 2013 13:19:42 UTC Recommended

"Space Junk," made for IMAX theatres, presents us with a growing problem that hasn't gotten a lot of attention (although it was the subject of an early song by Devo with the same name but not included here): Just what happens to satellites orbiting the Earth after they've outlived their usefulness? It turns out that many of them just stay there, some for several decades after they've stopped working or become obsolete, forming along with parts of multi-stage rockets and other man-made objects "an orbiting junkyard of cast-off space debris." Astrophysicist Donald Kessler, who provides most of the information in the film, has studied the effects of this for a long time. We get a brief explanation of how there have already been several natural collisions of objects in space and sp...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61623 Wed, 11 Sep 2013 20:00:30 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movies:

It's not too often that a DVD release comes about as the result of a miraculous discovery; Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive qualifies.

The newsworthy 2010 story of preservationists locating a huge stash of fragile silent film nitrate prints, hidden away for decades in New Zealand, served as the impetus for this DVD. In addition to previously lost works from John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Mabel Normand, the unearthed reels included a wealth of forgotten documentary shorts, newsreels, cartoons and other ephemeral stuff. To most of the world it was a pleasant surprise - why New Zealand, of all places? The answer was a matter of practicality. In the silent era, the county was often the last stop for well-traveled films in their distribution journey. After their runs ended, theaters were normally supposed to return the films to the studios w...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61611 Mon, 09 Sep 2013 13:39:14 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

I may not be the only one that does this, but if there is a film that has enough actors in an ensemble that pique my interest and it does not appear on my radar when it comes out cinematically, I have a natural curiosity about it. And if Blood did come to my local cinema, I honestly do not remember it coming and/or going. Nevertheless, there were enough individual actors in it whom I like which inspired me to give the film a go and see what I was missing.

In a cinematic remake of the 2004 BBC miniseries Conviction, Blood is written by British television writer Bill Gallagher and directed by Nick Murphy (Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/61589 Wed, 04 Sep 2013 22:49:56 UTC Skip It

THE FILM:

I can say with some confidence that this isn't the worst science fiction film Roger Christian has ever directed. That would be Battlefield Earth, the John Travolta/Scientology in space disaster that won four Golden Raspberry Awards and lost Warner Brothers a ton of money. No, Stranded isn't even that bad, it's just wholly unoriginal and boring. The film does its best impression of The Thing, with a little Alien thrown in for kicks. Several astronauts, including Christian Slater's Col. Ge...Read the entire review

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