The Film:

No, not this Cimarron Strip:

Cimarron Strip (1967-68) was instead an unusual Western television series starring Stuart Whitman. It was one of just three Western shows with episodes running in 90-minute time slots. The other two, The Virginian (1962-71) and Wagon Train (in its penultimate season only, 1963-64), alternated leads and/or had stories revolving around one-shot guest stars. But Cimarron Strip was unique in that in al...Read the entire review

Broadchurch (2013-present) is a very intelligent British crime drama with an unusual format, one that, for the most part, works very well. Its eight-episode first series/season focuses on the investigation of a single crime, and how that crime and its investigation, along with intense, exploitative media scrutiny, impact the small seaside community in which it is set. Though much of the focus is on the lead detectives, played by David Tennant and Olivia Colman, it's as much a Robert Altman/Alan Rudolph-type tapestry with similarities to the excellent Wallander, and with a dash of 24-type cliffhanger suspense thrown in.

The series became a minor phenomenon in Britain, its ratings improving steadily as it went along, and its critical and commercial success prompted both the commission of a second season as well as an American remake for Fox, Gracepoint, also to star David Te...Read the entire review

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]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/64295 Mon, 31 Mar 2014 21:08:26 UTC Rent It

Director: Sergio Castellito
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Emile Hirsch, Adnan Haskovic
Year: 2012

I've got to say, I wasn't expecting much from a romance starring Penelope Cruz &amp; Emile Hirsch, especially with Cruz running around Bosnia in a flack jacket &amp; Hirsch snapping photographs. Don't get me wrong, I respect both of them as actors, but I had a hard time imagining them as a couple. She was pretty brilliant in Blow and Vanilla Sky, while he did his best work in Into the Wild. But she's a Spanish hottie and he's an American schlub, how were they going to get around that? Turns out they never really did, but the movie worked anyway. Well, it kinda worked; it was an up &amp; down experience, ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/63123 Sat, 29 Mar 2014 23:21:15 UTC Highly Recommended

The Series:

From producer Richard P. Rubinstein who was behind Tales fromthe Darkside comes another horror anthology series: Monsters.Filled with fun stories and the occasional clever twist endingMonsters is a fondly remembered show that aired for three seasonsstarting in 1989. Now the good folks at eOne have collected all72-episodes and released them in a very nice complete seriespackage. While the collection is lacking any extras, it's still amust-buy for fans of TV horror.

This is a horror show, but there are times when it has its tonguefirmly planted in its check, as evidenced by the opening thatstarted the show off each week. Starting high up in the air abovethe clouds, the camera zooms down to a house in a suburbanneighborhood. Moving in through the window a typical family is shown(from the back) watching TV. It turns out they aren't so typicalwhen the mother en...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/63444 Wed, 19 Mar 2014 01:35:05 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Directed by Timo Vuorensola, 2012's Iron Sky is definitely one of the bigger and more successful ‘crowd funded' pictures to have come out over the last few years. While it's true that only a portion of the film's finances came from its campaign and that there was more to it than just the generosity of would-be fans, it's interesting to see something like this come to fruition. Also interesting is the very premise for the movie: the Nazi's didn't go away permanently after the Second World War, they just relocated to the moon.

And that's where the movie starts. See, the current President Of The United States (Stephanie Paul doing a great Sara Palin) is coming up for re-election and a big part of the push behind her campaign is to put a black man on the moon. She's even got posters printed up that read ‘Black on the moon? Yes she can!' To make this happen, she hire...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/63886 Fri, 28 Feb 2014 02:58:26 UTC Recommended

The Movie:
Zombie movies are definitely a mixed bag, and there seems to be a higher proportion of awful material, as opposed to other genres. There's some good stuff out there, though, and although zombie actioner Code Red isn't without flaw, it does rise above the usual dreck.

John (martial artist/stunt man/actor Paul Logan) is an American special forces operative who is sent into Bulgaria to investigate an incident that appears to involve a corpse reanimating. His superiors have information about a gas attack toward the end of World War II that brought a lot of dead German soldiers back to life, and believe that a Bulgarian military warehouse is home to a cache of the nerve agent, long thought destroyed. (The prologue set in WWII is quite impressive, even absent the zombie material.)

John teams up with Anna (Manal El-Feitury), an American doctor at the base (which it seems NATO...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/63696 Thu, 13 Feb 2014 03:17:03 UTC Rent It

Surprisingly tired and rather obvious WWII study of moral and sexual corruption; a reworking of Senso. Cult Epics has released Black Angel (actually known as Senso '45; Black Angel is the overseas video title), the 2002 sex drama directed by Tinto Brass, featuring an evocative score by Ennio Morricone (certainly the most successful element of the movie), and starring Anna Galiena, Gabriel Garko, Franco Branciaroli, Antonio Salines, Simona Borioni, and Loredana Cannata. Based on Camillo Boito's novella, Senso, which Luchino Visconti very loosely adapted for his same-named classic in 1954, Black Angel ditches the original's Risorgimento time frame and moves the story of a wealthy married woman's lust-driven affair with a callow young military officer into the final days of Italy's WWII Fascist government. The results are explicit...and thoroughly fam...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/63036 Mon, 10 Feb 2014 17:42:58 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

Lots of words and film have paid tribute to the late Princess Diana through the years since her tragic death in a 1997 automobile accident, but like many others I would admit to knowing little about her relationships after her divorce from Prince Charles. It is in that area that the film Diana tends to look, and at one interesting era in general.

Based on a book from Kate Snell, Stephen Jeffreys (The Libertine) adapted it into a screenplay which Oliver Hirschbiegel (The Invasion) directed. Focusing on the period from 1995 when she met Khan to shortly before her death, Diana, Princess of Wales is portrayed by Naomi Watts (The Impossible). When the husband of her long-time ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/63022 Thu, 06 Feb 2014 20:49:34 UTC Rent It

Director: Tinto Brass
Starring: Anna Galiena, Gabriel Garko, Franco Branciaroli
Year: 2002

When I selected to watch this film I didn't know who Tinto Brass was. All I saw was a throwback style WWII movie about Nazis, Italians, sex, violence, romance, and ultimately humanity during an inhumane war. I love character movies set during this era, depictions of how individuals dealt with the horrors of war but also with every day problems, relationships, their careers, all during an extremely volatile and pivotal time. So I was intrigued & curious, ready for a dramatic World War love story. Well, like I said, I didn't know who Tinto Brass was, didn't know that he is the master of Italian erotica, that he uses sexuality to tell his...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62647 Tue, 21 Jan 2014 12:38:22 UTC Rent It

THE FILM:

Click an image to view Blu-ray screenshot with 1080p resolution.

In the opening scenes of We Are What We Are, the matriarch of the Parker family rushes to her truck in a downpour, tense and in fear. She soon collapses, striking her head before falling into a ditch, where she meets a watery end. Left without a wife is gruff Frank Parker (Bill Sage), a man of few words and little patience for his teenage daughters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner) and young son Rory (Jack Gore). The Parker family at first seems to embody the stereotype of a ferve...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62848 Tue, 17 Dec 2013 17:56:04 UTC Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

What an incredible thing the Omnibus television series was. 164 episodes ran from 1952-1961, each week offering special programming focusing on the arts, sciences, and human interest. It was hosted by British journalist Alistair Cooke and broadcast live. The elaborate nature of these shows is astounding to behold, and Cooke and his crew pulled it off week after week.

One of the many stand-alone segments from the late 1950s is isolated here, a unique one-off program titled Gene Kelly: Dancing, A Man's Game. The movie star and director has gathered together a gaggle of dancers, musicians, and athletes to illustrate the fundamental components of his chosen art form. Kelly both hosts and demonstrates, allowing his feet to do the talking ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62836 Thu, 12 Dec 2013 01:11:27 UTC Skip It

The Movie:

The brash, fearless aviator Jimmy Doolittle (1896-1993) was, by all accounts, a larger-than-life man. Not only was he a key figure in making planes safer and easier to control (becoming the first to pilot a cross-country flight using only on-board instruments), his courage and derring-do helped shaped the outcome of World War II as the capper for a highly decorated military career. Certainly a life as eventful as his would make for an interesting documentary. The Shelter Island DVD release Wings of a Warrior: The Jimmy Doolittle Story, unfortunately, is not.

Wings of a Warrior: The Jimmy Doolittle Story is directed and hosted by Gardner Doolittle, a former stuntman and a distant relative of Jimmy's. His film came out of the laudable need to tell all of Jimmy's story, not just his well-known World War II accomplishments. Although the film is very dry, straightf...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62164 Sun, 01 Dec 2013 11:37:13 UTC Recommended

This movie's title, along with its tagline "Your Body, Their Experiment" pretty much sums up what it's about. Dave (Trevor Morgan, who you might remember as the kid who needed rescuing in Jurassic Park III) along with his girlfriend Jessica (Tessa Ferrer) are enjoying a trip to Los Angeles, though you can guess with this movie being titled Abducted that their fun isn't going to last very long. Sure enough, they are hanging out up at Griffith Park when they're suddenly both hit by tranquilizer darts. When they wake up, they're locked in a dark room stripped of everything except their underwear. They can see a bit of light creeping in under the door from the hallway outside, and hear people walking and breathing heavily, but they say nothing leaving Dave and Jessica at a total loss as to where they are or what their ...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62077 Mon, 18 Nov 2013 03:23:24 UTC Rent It

THE FILM:

Click an image to view Blu-ray screenshot with 1080p resolution.

Let's get one thing straight: Brian De Palma's latest film, Passion, is trashy and completely unbecoming of the talent involved. Keeping that in mind, I kind of enjoyed watching this purposely pulpy thriller, which uses Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace as pawns in a game of love and deception. McAdams climbs the career ladder as the manipulative Christine Stanford, a female advertising exec in a man's world. Rapace is up-and-coming ad designer Isabelle James, who draws Christine's admiration ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62030 Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:11:20 UTC Skip It

In 10 Words or Less
A supernatural take on Pound Puppies

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Dogs, animation
Likes: Moral-free kids cartoons
Dislikes: Commercials masquerading as cartoons, inconsistent plots
Hates: Poorly dubbed cartoons

The Show
My 7-year-old daughter will watch just about anything with a puppy on or in it. The fact that she actually owns some ...in My Pocket toys, along with the fact that this series is titled Puppy in My Pocket made it a sure thing that she would be interested. Thus, she was pretty excited when we sat down to watch this set, which, thankfully represents the first seven episodes in the show (unlike most kids DVDs, which are best-of collections.) That ...Read the entire review

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A bunch of LARPers square off against a succubus accidentally summoned from the bowls of Hell.