No matter what age you are, there’s never a bad time to pick up a new skill to help you engage with your emotions or guide someone else’s. By learning to regulate, each of us is more capable of dealing… Read More ›
Films To Watch
Actor Kaniehtiio Horn establishes herself as a fierce writer and director in her debut feature “Seeds.” [TIFF]
Directing and writing your first feature is certainly a daunting task, but to also star in the vehicle, making yourself a triple threat, is certainly a large task. However, Kaniehtiio Horn (Possessor; Alice, Darling) not only decides to grab that… Read More ›
“A League of Their Own” reaffirms that a woman’s place is at home … and first, second, and third in 4K UHD.
For the last 32 years, there’s been one thing that athletes and non-athletes alike understand: there’s no crying in baseball. These five words are uttered by Tom Hanks’s Rockford Peaches manager Jimmy Dugan to Bitty Schram’s Evelyn Gardner, the right… Read More ›
Where other mafia films keep their women in silence, filmmaker Jennifer Esposito’s “Fresh Kills” screams to devastating effect.
In the cinematic world of mob films, the go-to filmmaker for U.S. audiences is likely Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas; Casino). With tales exciting and dramatic, he’s told stories that unengaged audiences will see as uplifting the morally grey areas of the… Read More ›
Eureka Entertainment brings home the messy but entertaining “The Miracle Fighters,” an ‘80s mashup of kung fu, fantasy, and comedy.
Those not used to extreme tonal shifts, a mixture of martial arts, comedy, and fantasy in one may be in for a shock watching Yuen Woo-ping’s cult hit The Miracle Fighters (1982). Within the first 10 minutes, we witness a… Read More ›
Crime drama “The Bikeriders” pulls up with a worthy home release.
The phrase “style over substance” is a common complaint regarding certain films. In these instances, some films can be so aesthetically pleasing that they lose sight of the story. Such films can craft well-drawn characters and a richly detailed sense… Read More ›
Beyond Thunderdome, beyond vengeance, lies “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” on home video.
Filmmaker Dr. George Miller’s been entertaining audiences for nearly 40 years, either with tales of desperation (Mad Max (1979)), tales of greed (The Witches of Eastwick (1987)), or tales of hope (Happy Feet Two (2011)), to name a few. In… Read More ›
GKIDS Films’s “The Boy and the Heron” reveals itself on home video in 4K.
In the months since the winter release of The Boy and the Heron (2023), the following events have clarified the meaning and depth of this inscrutable film in my mind: The Megalopolis (2024) trailer, the Supreme Court’s sweeping theft of… Read More ›
Sony Pictures Classics gives Tom Tykwer’s romantic thriller “Run Lola Run” its own 4K UHD release.
Before American audiences met Franka Potente as Marie, the accidental ally to amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) in 2002, she portrayed a different type of “on-the-run” character: Lola. Absent intrigue of the spy sort, Potente’s Lola is a strong… Read More ›
Director Soi Cheang’s “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” incorporates elements of new school and old school Hong Kong cinema which rattle audiences’ bones and souls in equal measure. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Every community has its stories — tales of victories and defeats, of perilous ends and new beginnings, and of the old guard and the new. Sometimes these take the form of myths and legends born from imagination and other times… Read More ›
Yûgo Sakamoto’s “Nice Days” showcases why you should never underestimate these “Baby Assassins.” [Fantasia International Film Festival]
Over the last few years, writer/director Yûgo Sakamoto’s (A Janitor) created a very specific cinematic world in which low-stakes slacker comedy meets high-stakes wet work via his Baby Assassins series. Returning for a third outing in Baby Assassins Nice Days,… Read More ›
Criterion releases “Farewell My Concubine (霸王別姬)” in its original unedited form in high definition.
Longing for something you can never have is perhaps one of the cruelest forms of emotional torture a person can put themselves through, and it’s an experience all too familiar within queer communities. Every queer person has had the one… Read More ›
With a physical release, fans of Choi Dong-hoon’s “Alienoid” films can delight in the action-packed conclusion, “Return to the Future,” as often as they wish.
August 2022 saw the U.S. release of writer/director Choi Dong-hoon’s cinematic hybrid Alienoid (외계+인 1부) into theaters. A mixture of martial arts, comedy, drama, and science fiction that takes place in 2022 Korea *and* the Goryeo Dynasty, Choi’s work may… Read More ›
Even as a DVD re-release, William Friedkin’s “The Boys in the Band” remains a must-see film.
In 1968, Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band premiered Off-Broadway and shocked audiences with its candid portrayal of homosexual men. The story of getting the play written and on stage is lengthy, including Mart (Fade-In) being hired as actor… Read More ›
Keep your heart on fire with the six-film “Rocky: Ultimate Knockout Collection,” available now.
Around the time of the theatrical release of actor Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut, Creed III (2023), the ninth film in the Rocky franchise, Amazon MGM Studios via Warner Bros. Pictures released a four-film 4K UHD collection of Rocky films… Read More ›
Director Park Jin-pyo’s “Brave Citizen” delivers satisfying vigilante justice in this web comic adaptation. [Fantasia International Film Festival]
“If you do nothing, nothing will happen.” This quote is spoken by the character So Si-Min, portrayed by Shin Hye-sun (See You in My 19th Life), as part of a class on ethics. It’s one of several concepts that particular… Read More ›
David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy” has bonus features that were made for loving you.
In filmmaking, there are original stories and there’re adaptations. While audiences clamor for original stories, the system *needs* adaptations to help fund the originals. Sure, it’s getting hard for some audiences to get excited for Super Cape 58 (not me,… Read More ›
Dramatic thriller “Captain Phillips” gets a limited edition 4K UHD steelbook release from Sony Pictures.
Films based on true events often have a way of dramatizing or exaggerating things for the sake of cinema. It’s a different stage, cinema, with different rules from real life, so storytellers will often utilize this fact for audiences to… Read More ›
“Crumb Catcher” is an excellent honeymoon thriller.
Chris Skotchdopole’s very impressive directorial debut, Crumb Catcher, is a slow descent into absurdist thrills. The rare new entry in the honeymoon horror sub-genre of romantic thriller, home of RedBox classics like A Perfect Getaway (2009), Crumb Catcher trades the… Read More ›
“Challengers,” one of the most culturally relevant films of the year, gets a sleeper of a home release by Amazon MGM.
Life is a lot like tennis; it’s a constant back and forth with the powers that be looking to beat you down. But, also, tennis is like a relationship, and tennis is like sex. Tennis is a lot of damn… Read More ›