Excluding television programs, there are 14 films and one holiday special that are considered canon within the Star Wars universe. Each one adds new perspectives to the larger universe, but all of them are connected by a single storyline explored… Read More ›
home video
Civil War story “Union” is a missed opportunity.
The Civil War is a time period that doesn’t get explored in most movies. Sure, we love to see our World War II movies, whether it’s Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk, or Hacksaw Ridge, but the Civil War is full of… Read More ›
Bring the immense theatrical scale of “1917” home now.
Of the films to drop in 2019, none impressed this reviewer more from a technical perspective than Sam Mendes’s 1917. Designed, shot, and edited to create a seamless one-take feel, 1917 became one of the year’s most immersive experiences without… Read More ›
Criterion gives the special treatment to another Spike Lee joint, the 2000 satire “Bamboozled.”
When it comes to provocative storytelling, there really is no one else like writer/director Spike Lee. More than any modern artist, Lee minces no words with his films, cutting straight through the bullshit each and every time. In his 2015… Read More ›
Pick up “Spies in Disguise” on home video and join Team Weird.
When the world seems literally about to fall apart, what we need is to remember that we’re all in this together. That, perhaps, the way we’ve been doing things hasn’t been the right way all along. As humans, we tend… Read More ›
Director Clint Eastwood raises the question of social justice in “Richard Jewell,” now available on home video.
In 1996, during the Summer Olympic games, a bomb went off in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, killing one and hurting many others. Though it was security guard Richard Jewell who found and alerted police to a suspicious package at the… Read More ›
Nothing marks “First Love” like drugs, gangs, and absolute mayhem.
There’s something about first love that can be hard to quantify, even when looking back on it. The simultaneous excitement of being attracted to someone else, the endless internal questions trying to figure out what it means, the unyielding terror… Read More ›
Before “Part II” hits theaters, return to the Abbott farm with the beautiful Mondo X Steelbook special edition of “A Quiet Place.”
In the last decade or so, steelbook variants have become their very own subculture for cinematic home releases. In the beginning, it was the packaging that stood out, the sturdy material being a touch more protective than the typical blue… Read More ›
Travel into the unknown as often as you like with “Frozen II” on home video now.
When the teaser for Frozen II first dropped, if you’d told me that that film would become one of my favorites of 2019, that I’d find myself revisiting it frequently, its songs on repeat willingly and purposefully, I’d have likely… Read More ›
Bring some Lovecraftian horror into your home now with the home release of “Color Out of Space.”
If you’ve ever dabbled in the morbid or macabre, then chances are you’ve come across the works of H.P. Lovecraft. His tales of the strange, the weird, the supernatural, and the horrific have lingered in the cultural zeitgeist with the… Read More ›
Funimation’s live-action manga adaptation “Kingdom” is available on home video now.
Prior to hearing about the 2019 limited theatrical release of director Shinsuke Sato’s (Inuyashiki) Kingdom, I had no awareness of the 2012 anime or the 2006 manga. Coming into the film blind, I only knew that the story involved treachery,… Read More ›
“Doctor Sleep” called in your prescription for Mike Flanagan’s director’s cut. Watch it stat.
There’s something about Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Shining that’s gripped audiences for nearly four decades despite factors which one might presume would detract from its popularity. Kubrick quite famously tortured Shelley Duvall on set to a… Read More ›
Edward Norton’s passion project “Motherless Brooklyn” is now available on home video.
According to actor/writer/director Edward Norton, his relationship with Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel Motherless Brooklyn began before the book hit shelves. As he explains in the featurette “Making-Of: Edward Norton’s Methodical Process,” he was tipped off by a friend about the… Read More ›
“Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” is a family affair and we’re all invited!
1994 low budget comedy Clerks is writer/director Kevin Smith’s first film and the foundation for a 25-year strong series of films, comics, a cartoon, and a cartoon television show that have entertained literal generations of audiences. Dubbed the “View Askewniverse”… Read More ›
Is it real? Or is it just fantasy? Dig into the bonus features of “Joker” on home video to find out.
At the time of this writing, director Todd Phillips’s Joker is the highest grossing R-rated film of all time, has earned two Golden Globe wins for Best Actor in A Drama Motion Picture and Original Score with two individual nominations… Read More ›
The home release of “It Chapter Two” includes a full curtain pullback worth checking out.
“You’ll Float, too.” Three innocuous words infused with horrible terror thanks to Stephen King’s 1986 novel It. Then, in 1990, a television mini-series adapted from the book shifted the way the average person looks at clowns, thanks in large part… Read More ›
Sci-Fi Anthology “5 Galaxies” doesn’t quite break the atmosphere.
Can humanity survive? That’s the biggest and boldest question that 5 Galaxies asks us with giant text in the beginning of the movie. While that theme might be overused as a lot of other sci-fi movies (Blade Runner, Terminator etc.) play around with… Read More ›
Novel adaptation “The Goldfinch” is beautifully constructed and executed, yet feels somehow disconnected.
Published in 2013, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch went on to earn best-selling status, along with the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. It’s a book that — it seems — entranced readers, including future cast member Sarah Paulson (Ocean’s… Read More ›
Ambitious sci-fi thriller “The Fare” is now available on home video.
From director D.C. Hamilton and screenwriter Brinna Kelly, The Fare is a film that almost defies categorization. At times, if feels like a science-fiction mystery, with shocking and striking narrative shifts. At other points, it appears as a romantic dramedy,… Read More ›
Memoir adaptation “Blinded by the Light” puts a Springsteen soundtrack to a journey of self-identity.
When people talk about something being “timeless,” what do they mean? Are they referring to the aesthetic? To the sound? What about the structure? It’s all of these things and none of these things as timelessness refers to the innate… Read More ›