I am old enough to remember when a VHS box set of Ed Wood’s films wrapped in Angora (like Wood’s preferred sweaters) was considered a big deal in the realm of cult cinema. Now in late May of 2020, in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years, Severin Films has given viewers a…
Blu-ray Review – Hot Dog the Movie (Synapse Films)
When people would ask me what titles I wanted on Blu-ray over the last decade, I would in all seriousness mention Hot Dog – The Movie, alongside other such wanted titles as Fassbinder’s In a Year of 13 Moons. It appears I am not the only one who wanted this 1980’s sex comedy classic on…
Blu-ray Review – Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is an odd-duck of a film. It is a sequel to a film that by all objective reasoning could be considered a critical failure, and while it probably made enough money back to justify a sequel/spin-off’s existence, it didn’t scream out for one to…
Aladdin (1992) Diamond Edition (Disney) Blu-ray Review
Disney’s The Little Mermaid was released in 1989, and began a second “Golden” era for the famed animation house. The prior 15 or so years had proven to not be the best in terms of quality for Disney, and the decade between 1989-1999 proved to be one of the studio’s finest filmmaking decades in their…
Adventure Time: The Complete Fifth Season (Cartoon Network) Blu-ray Review
When my daughter first found Adventure Time while watching Cartoon Network many moons ago, I found myself immediately drawn to the show. I immediately recognized the show as satirizing the RPG/Fantasy universe’s that I grew up playing games in and reading about. Over the years the creators of Adventure Time have proven that the show…
Adventure Time: The Complete Fourth Season (Cartoon Network) Blu-ray Review
I go through phases with Cartoon Network programming, when they kicked off in the early 90’s they seemed more like a repository for the Hanna Barbera library of cartoons before creating extremely memorably original content like the Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Laboratory and more. They seemed to lull for a few years before hitting…
Akira (25th Anniversary Edition) (Funimation) Blu-ray Review
Akira was certainly not the first Japanese anime to become popular on the world stage. From episodic cartoons in the 60’s and 70’s like Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Gatchaman (aka Battle of the Planets) to the 80’s Robotech, Japanese animation had begun to make it’s way slowly into the international consciousness. However, it should…
Astron 6 (Troma) DVD Review
When Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up in 2007 for their exploitation extravaganza Grindhouse the results were decidedly mixed: although the double feature homage overflowing with hot babes, cool cars, and glorious gore made a lot of the viewers who didn’t leave the theater after the first feature confused very happy and impressed most…
Asylum (I Want To Be a Gangster) (Synapse) DVD Review
Much like Henry Hill before him, all young Jack (Julien Courbey) ever wanted to be was a gangster, just like the ones he used to admire in the movies. But the work he’s getting as a low-level street thug while running a back room Russian roulette game with his partner (Abel Jafri) on the side…
Ash is Purest White (Cohen) Blu-ray Review
During the early 2000s a bit of a gang war starts to brew. One leading member named Bin (Liao Fan) gets attacked and nearly killed before his girlfriend Qiao (Zhao Tao) steps in with a gun. When the police arrive Qiao is thrown into prison for five years for possession of an illegal firearm. When…