Back in April, at the beginning of a particularly sleepy 12-hour shift manning the box office of the downtown Durham theatre in which I work, I opened A.M. Shine’s The Watchers on my Kindle, having impulsively downloaded it via the… Read More ›
New Line Cinema
The new 4K UHD release of the comedic thriller “Game Night” is worth adding to your tabletop game collection.
Before co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein had us roll for initiative (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), they showed us that there’s another way to interpret the call for somewhat structured social play in the comedic thriller Game… Read More ›
You won’t regret getting your hands on this 4K release of “The Guyver.”
There are so many ridiculous movies out there that have been unseen and undiscovered until a boutique label comes and rights those wrongs. Thankfully, the folks at Unearthed Classics are giving the genre-bending monster mash of a movie, The Guyver… Read More ›
“Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny” rocks out on Blu-ray release from Shout! Studios.
Earlier this winter I embarked on a project of finishing all of the excessively thorough special features on my David Fincher movies, The Social Network (2010), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Gone Girl (2014), etc.. Hearing artists of… Read More ›
Summoning a Kandarian demon gets you a great horror experience despite absent special features in “Evil Dead Rise.”
A controversial take to start off the review: I prefer the newer Evil Dead films to the older ones. This isn’t because I think they’re significantly better in quality, Sam Raimi’s trilogy is a masterclass in camp filmmaking that has… Read More ›
Welcome the whole Shazamily home with “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” available on home video.
Photosensitivity warning: The climatic fight involves a great deal of lightning which may trigger issues within viewers who suffer from migraines or other ocular issues. One of the bigger surprises of 2019 was director David F. Sandberg’s Shazam!. After so… Read More ›
The arrival of “Black Adam” at home is a bittersweet experience.
The state of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) is hard to pin down because every few months something else shifts. Each release thus far has its supporters and its detractors, but the one consistent thing is that the fans are… Read More ›
Looking back on sci-fi noir “Dark City.” [Poprika Reviews Noir November Project]
A protagonist who doesn’t know who he really is. A mysterious individual who promises answers. Antagonists lurking the shadows, dressing in black, and reshaping reality as they see fit. A world whose reality is masked in a collection of eras…. Read More ›
James Wan’s “Malignant” is the rollercoaster horror ride you didn’t know you wanted.
In September 2021, Warner Bros. dropped Malignant rather unceremoniously into theaters and on its streaming service HBO Max. I say “unceremoniously” because its story is co-developed by director James Wan who’s the co-writer of Saw (2004), who crafted the story… 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 ›
“Those Who Wish Me Dead” Blu-ray Giveaway
Director Taylor Sheridan’s adaptation of Michael Koryta’s novel starring Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Hoult, Jon Bernthal, Aiden Gillen, Medina Seonghore, Tyler Perry, and Jake Weber hit theaters and HBO Max on May 14th, but now the only way to see it… Read More ›
The prophecy complete and the tournament on the horizon, it must mean 2021’s “Mortal Kombat” is out on home video.
29 years after the debut of the Ed Boon and John Tobias’s arcade cabinet classic Mortal Kombat, director Simon McQuoid and writers Greg Russo and David Callaham (Godzilla vs. Kong) unleash the third live-action adaption of the beloved martial arts… Read More ›
Simon McQuoid’s “Mortal Kombat” is not a flawless victory.
Debuting in 1992, Ed Boon and John Tobias’s arcade game Mortal Kombat shook the foundation of popular kulture almost immediately. It wasn’t just the karacter design (digitized versions of real people known as “sprites”) or the in-game mythos, but the… 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 ›
Now available on home video, Andrea Berloff’s adaptation of DC Vertigo limited series “The Kitchen.”
In November 2014, the first issue of DC Vertigo’s The Kitchen ran. Created by Ollie Masters and drawn by Ming Doyle, the story followed three women trying to survive in 1970’s mobland New York. With the desire for stories from… Read More ›
Feeling brave? You can welcome “Annabelle Comes Home” into your own now.
When you hit the seventh installment of a series, you’re either scraping the bottom of the barrel or hitting your stride. What began with co-writers Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes and director James Wan in 2013’s The Conjuring is… Read More ›
The special features make “Shaft” (2019) worth picking up on home video.
A social and cultural shift took place shortly after Shaft hit theaters in 1971. Inspired by Ernest Tidyman’s novel and with influence from director Gordon Parks and actor Richard Roundtree as the titular character, Shaft became more than a household… Read More ›
“It: Chapter Two” ends where It begins.
No matter how much we want it to, the past rarely stays behind. A song, a story, a face, anything which might elicit the slightly remembrance, and we’re right back in that moment like it’s yesterday. Of the many themes… Read More ›
“The Kitchen” lays bare all of the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes with mob life in this DC Vertigo adaptation.
Ask virtually anyone and they’ll tell you that the only thing in the theaters these days are reboots, remakes, and superhero films. To a degree, that’s pretty spot on. Studios make more of what audiences pay to see and nostalgia… Read More ›
On home video now, WB’S “Shazam!” is fun for the whole damn Shazamily.
If you’d said that a DC Comics live-action film would make it onto anyone’s Best Of list, I’d have been one of the first to act surprised. Granted, Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman remains an outstanding outing for the warrior princess… Read More ›