Comedy is one of the most subjective forms of art. What one viewer finds to be right up their alley might completely turn another viewer off. When a film plays around with a blend of comedy subgenres, it is even… Read More ›
Home Video
Go on a swashbuckling animated macabre adventure in the adaptation of “Petite Vampire.”
There are many things about cinema that The Cine-Men co-host Darryl Mansel laments, but the one that he laments the most is the lack of swashbuckler films. Disney’s recent Jungle Cruise possesses traits of these films, though mostly due to… Read More ›
Shout! Factory’s LAIKA Studios Edition Examination, Part 3: “ParaNorman.”
For the last 15 years, LAIKA Studios has amused, entertained, amazed, and, in some cases, downright terrified audiences with their stop-motion animation tales that continually place children at the center, offering a chance for audiences old and young to see… Read More ›
4K restoration of Frank Perry’s “Mommie Dearest” joins the Paramount Presents label.
Actor Joan Crawford started acting in 1925 with the short The Casting Couch and worked her last job in a guest role on the television series The Sixth Sense in 1972, five years before her passing. In addition to acting,… Read More ›
The HDR in the 4K UHD remaster of “The Shawshank Redemption” will dramatically shift how you react to the film you know.
“Get busy livin’ or get busy dying.” One of the more famous phrases in cinema history and originally uttered by Tim Robbins’s Andy Dufresne, the only innocent man in all of Shawshank Prison, is more often recalled as said by… Read More ›
Arrow Video releases a fourth Yasuzô Masumura remaster, 1969’s “Blind Beast.”
As with previously reviewed films Giants and Toys (1958) and Irezumi (1966), Arrow Video is restoring and offering up to audiences outside of Japan another Yasuzô Masumura film: Blind Beast. Arrow Video provides an opportunity to expand what viewers may… Read More ›
Inherit the dreams of Dreamers with “In the Heights.”
In so many ways, truth is stranger than fiction. According to actor Olga Merediz (The Place Beyond the Pines) in the featurette “That Music in the Air,” playwright/actor Lin-Manuel Miranda told her that he’d begun writing songs that would appear… Read More ›
Come for the cast in novel adaptation “Here Are the Young Men” and little else.
Coming of age stories come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re joyous, ridiculous tales like Weird Science (1985), dramatic like Baby, Don’t Cry (2021), or explorations of addiction and trauma like Trainspotting (1996). The story within writer/director Eoin Macken’s… Read More ›
Shout! Factory’s LAIKA Studios Edition Examination, Part 2: “The Boxtrolls.”
For the last 15 years, LAIKA Studios has amused, entertained, amazed, and, in some cases, downright terrified audiences with their stop-motion animation tales that continually place children at the center, offering a chance for audiences old and young to see… Read More ›
Shout! Factory’s LAIKA Studios Edition Examination, Part 1: “Coraline.”
For the last 15 years, LAIKA Studios has amused, entertained, amazed, and, in some cases, downright terrified audiences with their stop-motion animation tales that continually place children at the center, offering a chance for audiences old and young to see… Read More ›
Relying too much on melodrama results in “Little Q” being a ruff watch.
Following up his martial arts fantasy actioner Iceman (2014), director Law Wing Cheong moves in the opposite direction with the based-on-a-true-story animal drama Little Q. The story follows a dog, named Little Q, from puppyhood to old age as it… Read More ›
Though the home release is bare bones, “Midnight Diner” itself is a robust meal for the soul.
Doesn’t matter the time period or culture, there’s something about food that brings people together. It doesn’t just nourish the body, it possesses the capability of nourishing the soul. The best cinematic iteration of this is the scene in Ratatouille… Read More ›
Action thriller “Those Who Wish Me Dead” is the odd whiff from an otherwise great mixture of talent.
On paper, the adaptation of Michael Koryta’s 2014 novel Those Who Wish Me Dead sounds like an absolute cinematic slam dunk. It has Hell or High Water writer Taylor Sheridan as one of the screenwriters on the adaption, as well… Read More ›
Coming to home video, first-time feature director Enrico Casarosa’s “Luca” is a lovely exploration of friendship all us underdogs can understand.
I don’t think anyone would argue that times are now (March 2020 – now, August 2021) and the foreseeable future are rife with change. To have gone from a lifestyle where one could go as they pleased to having to… Read More ›
Shssssh! “A Quiet Place Part II” continues the Abbott family story on home video.
2018’s horror thriller A Quiet Place is one of the bigger surprises of 2018 not because it was actor John Krasinski’s second time in the director’s chair, but because it used the conventions of horror to tell a compelling and… Read More ›
Crime thriller “HYDRA” may spend more time on dialogue than the fights, but each throwdown is worth the price of admission.
When it comes to a certain kind of film, audiences almost always know what they’re in for based on who’s distributing it. Arthouse drama or fantasy? The mind goes to A24. Family-friendly in live-action or animation? First thought: Walt Disney… Read More ›
Despite mixed success with the action and emotional resonance of the drama, you can still see the promise within “Silat Warriors: Deed of Death.”
Though the highest grossing films in Malaysia mostly come from the international market, one shouldn’t discount the country for its own cinematic successes. There’s docudrama The Big Durian (2003), the first Malaysian film to screen at the Sundance Film Festival,… Read More ›
“The Unholy” is a painful, sacrilegious experience.
Saint Maud is one of my favorite films I’ve seen this year, and I think it’s a damn shame how A24 treated it by hocking it to EPIX, of all streamers, for its tiny release. It represents the best that… Read More ›
#18 of the Paramount Presents line is the Blu-ray debut for adult western “Last Train from Gun Hill.”
For just over a year, the Paramount Presents premiere home video label from Paramount Pictures continues to restore and release films from within their deep well of material. It began with Fatal Attraction (1987), King Creole (1958), and To Catch… Read More ›
By-the-numbers action thriller “Assault on VA-33” surprises in its examination on veteran treatment.
Around Elements of Madness, story is everything. We’re not looking for giant budgets, major studios, or the biggest names; we’re looking for an interesting idea or an engaging twist on something old. Enter the Scott Thomas Reynolds-written (2nd Chance for… Read More ›