Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

Summoning the fury of Heaven and Hell to make a movie about the operatic nature of sin and salvation, F.W. Murnau's "Faust" is a stunning example of silent film technique and vision. The 1926 production, an expensive effort in its day, showcases remarkable helming precision, with Murnau leaving blood and sweat on the frame as he creates a specific vision of suffering that demands emotional extremes to help create a level of cinematic beauty. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Gueros" is a collection of little ideas rolled up into a road movie structure, emerging as an impish creation from co-writer/director Alonso Ruizpalacious, who's ultimately creating a feature about Mexico that's aware of Mexican cinema clichés. There's a lot to take in with the picture, which gleefully bounces around various tonalities to preserve surprise for viewers, but as scattershot as the effort is, it miraculously stays together thanks to a great deal of wit, timing, and audio/visual experimentation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Who knew there was such a demand for "Class of Nuke 'Em High" sequels? Troma Entertainment, never a film studio to let anything die a peaceful death, returns to the world of mutant madness with 1994's "Class of Nuke 'Em High 3: The Good, The Bad and the Subhumanoid." Making a final push to make this premise profitable, Troma waters down their traditional serving of pure excess, trying to find a narrative path that welcomes B-movie chaos and dramatic interests, going so far as to use a William Shakespeare play ("The Comedy of Errors") for inspiration. It's an ambitious move, and one that manages to find a sense of stability to the franchise, but nothing in the Troma universe remains still for long. "The Good, The Bad and the Subhumanoid" quickly degenerates into noisy bits of comedy and horror, while a host of storytelling choices render the picture tiring, especially with a run time that's a good 30 minutes longer than it needs to be. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There are unavoidable expectations in place when sitting down to watch a movie titled "Pro-Wrestlers vs. Zombies." Obviously, material like this isn't looking for respectability, but basic functionality is always welcome. Writer/director Cody Knotts looks to summon a mood of horror and sports entertainment with his picture, hiring some well-known wrestlers to appear in a no-budget genre film that's largely shot inside an abandoned prison and in the deep woods. The helmer depends on established personalities to lead the way, along with a healthy dose of gore, keeping the feature regular with bursts of violence and meaty, troubled acting. What "Pro-Wrestlers vs. Zombies" is missing is fun, with Knotts overseeing a depressing vibe of survival and vaguely defined evil, managing to fatigue the effort long before it has a chance to truly kick back and enjoy its ridiculousness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A farce doesn't have to be friendly, but there should be some degree of likability to help encourage viewer engagement. Non-stop mean-spiritedness committed by selfish, bellowing characters isn't exactly a welcome mat for outsiders, with 1990's "Madhouse" a prime example of comic lunacy souring at the moment of impact. Imagined as a wily, mischievous journey with pushy houseguests, the feature marches right towards absurdity, with writer/director Tom Ropelewski mistaking noise for timing. The picture is certainly jam-packed with incident, and performances work up a sweat as they try to communicate the simplest of reactions with flailing body parts and wide eyes. However, laughs are missing from the movie, which is so caught up in maintaining a madcap tone, it doesn't make room for any considered punchlines. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Canadian production "Tu Dors Nicole" presents a journey into the painful early moments of adulthood, tracking the titular character (played by Julianne Cote) as she experiences the slow death of juvenile comfort, pushed out into a world she wants little to do with. Instead of mounting a valentine to ennui, writer/director Stephane Lafleur finds a slightly quirkier edge to "Tu Dors Nicole," paying attention to the comedic possibilities of the material along with its stinging, immensely relatable realities in connection to the last summer of a post-college life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1980's "Demonoid" is about a severed hand that kills. For some, the review ends there, scratching a B-movie sweet spot that promises exquisite horror and camp. The feature isn't completely unleashed, but writer/director Alfredo Zacarias certainly strives to give viewers a sufficiently berserk ride, filling the feature with violence, action, and the central image of a roving hand on the hunt for fresh victims. As bottom-shelf insanity, "Demonoid" is tremendously entertaining and bluntly bizarre, with Zacarias orchestrating a chase picture that touches on marital unrest, spiritual challenges, and Satanic omnipresence, while star Samantha Eggar classes up the joint with a semi-committed performance, selling the oddity of an unstoppable hand and its determination to possess all those who come into contact with it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The plot of "Frightmare" (also known as "The Horror Star") is so delicious, so ripe with potential, it's almost enough to carry the feature on its own. A loving tribute to horror cinema, with all its shadowy encounters and ghoulish events, the effort has its heart in the right place, cooking up a premise that places die-hard fans in the middle of their very own scary movie. It's a long night of survival for a group of dim college students, yet the nightmare never finds a particularly gripping momentum, with writer/director Norman Thaddeus Vane so involved in creating atmosphere, he forgets to sustain tension throughout the feature. "Frightmare" is terrifically shot and the lead performance from screen veteran Ferdy Mayne is appropriately grandiose, but the production needs a little more air in its tires, often found slogging along with genre elements that demand a more animated execution. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Returning to WWII for inspiration, "Home Fires" is the latest ITV series to take advantage of the wartime setting, although this program is about the road to conflict, identifying the tension building in rural England as the area prepares for the inevitable. For this tale, an adaptation of the book "Jambusters" (oh, how I wish that title was kept) by Julie Summers, the focus is on the female, tracking the development of a local Women's Institute and the varied lives of its troubled members. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"The Widower" is a limited ITV series (spread out over three episodes) based on the case of Malcolm Webster, who orchestrated a murder and prolonged embezzlement schemes while living a seemingly average life as a nurse and loving husband/boyfriend to various women. It's true crime without salacious details, electing to charge ahead with a sense of the macabre, capturing prolonged insanity and bizarre turns of crime and punishment with wonderful performances and a sure pace. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Cold War was big business for writer/director Nicholas Meyer in 1991, with one of his biggest hits, "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," managing to rework global tensions to fit a space opera, emerging with a thoughtful, clever sequel, one of the best in the series. Meyer is a little more direct with his political interests in "Company Business," which offers a traditional take on spy games and government hubris. A Euro-scented buddy comedy that isn't all that interested in producing laughs, "Company Business" is jumble of ideas from the normally measured Meyer, who scrambles to arrange a puzzle of motivations and secrets that play into an era-specific dismantling of national muscle. Perhaps the least effective effort from Meyer, the feature certainly isn't lazy, just uninspired, missing secure direction necessary to make this sophisticated mix of attitudes and locations gripping. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With the one-two punch of "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore," Adam Sandler created his own subgenre of dumb guy comedies, filled with absurdities, grotesqueries, and non-acting. Spreading the love, Sandler brought in comedian friends and "Saturday Night Live" co-stars to help populate the productions, even extending star vehicles to a chosen few. 1998's "Dirty Work" was intended to bring big screen glory to star Norm Macdonald, fitting his specialized sense of humor for multiplex distribution, saddling the untamable comic with a plot that demanded a little more than expertly timed wisecracks. Audiences weren't interested in Macdonald or "Dirty Work" during its initial theatrical release; The Sandler Effect didn't come through. However, what's here isn't immediately dismissible, and while the feature contains all sorts of unpleasant material, it's actually quite entertaining and periodically hilarious. It's barely an effort from director Bob Saget, but the movie has its moments if expectations are brought down as low as humanly possible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While Sharon Stone is best known for her seductive work in the 1992 thriller "Basic Instinct," there was a decade of career ups and downs she had to manage before worldwide stardom changed everything. "Scissors" is a 1991 release that I'm positive the actress would rather have scratched off her filmography, but if there's a single picture that epitomizes Stone's wayward professional direction during the lean years, it's this ridiculous chiller. Submitting herself to writer/director Frank De Felitta, Stone is completely lost in "Scissors," left with nothing to do but make horrified faces as the screenplay fumbles around for a tone of mystery that's psychologically stained by sexual dysfunction. It's a bad movie, emerging as unintended camp as performances aim for the rafters and De Felitta struggles to stitch together even a basic sense of coherence as the screenplay plays an extended game of make-em-up to suggest sophistication. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When "Mannequin" debuted in 1987, little was expected of the romantic comedy. Leading with the charms of stars Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall, and riding on the wave of a hit theme song in Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," the feature managed to beat the competition and becoming one of the top-grossing pictures of the year. Of course a sequel was going to happen, but just how could there be a second chapter to the story of a window dresser falling in love with his enchanted mannequin? Well, there isn't one. Instead of expanding the original saga, the producers go the remake route, simply reviving the original plot with a new pair of lovers, only investing in the return of Meshach Taylor as Hollywood Montrose, who revives his flamboyant ways to act as the bridge between the movies. 1991's "Mannequin Two: On the Move" (titled simply "Mannequin: On the Move" during the main titles) is a production that certainly isn't difficult to understand from a financial point of view, but creatively, it's a mess, shamelessly rehashing the original film with a new round of magic, montages, and cartoon villainy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After years of B-movies and supporting roles, Burt Reynolds finally achieved global stardom in the 1970s with beloved efforts such as "Smokey and the Bandit." The 1980s, at least the latter half of the decade, were less kind to the actor. Struggling to sustain his box office dominance, Reynolds elected to replace his mischievous screen presence with a harder, unflinching action hero pose, working through enforcer/authority pictures such as "Heat" and "Stick." 1987's "Malone" is a prime example of the career fatigue that shadowed Reynolds, participating in a formulaic revenge movie that preserves heavy western influences. While initial moments promise a capable but predictable thriller, "Malone" doesn't maintain appeal for very long, quickly dissolving into stupidity as director Harley Cokliss and screenwriter Christopher Frank shave down the source material (The novel "Shotgun," by William P. Wingate) to a series of violent encounters featuring thinly-sketched personalities. It's all about Reynolds here, and if you look close enough, you can see the thin little toothpicks propping his eyes open as he sleepwalks through the adventure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Like thousands of movie maniacs, I came across 1966's "Manos: The Hands of Fate" when it appeared on brilliant television series, "Mystery Science Theater 3000," where writer/director/star Harold P. Warren's tattered vision for an exploitation endeavor provided ideal fodder for comic riffing, instantly making it one of their finest episodes. However, jokes are no longer attached to the new Blu-ray edition of "Manos," which presents the effort in its initial state, trying to reclaim the no-budget charms of the production on its own terms, without ace comedians making the viewing experience passable. It's a dangerous, sobering proposition, but there's something intriguing about the distraction-free picture, revealing Warren's ambition to make junk food cinema through hasty experimentation. This very well may be one of the worst movies ever made, but here, on the Blu-ray, the viewer is now free to study what was originally intended and, in some cases, actually achieved. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In its tireless quest to find a suitable replacement for "Downton Abbey" (now entering its final season), British television comes up with "Indian Summers," which touches on a similar situation of class divide and familial disruption. It's simplistic to dismiss the program for its similarities to the Julian Fellowes juggernaut, but it's hard to ignore how carefully the show walks in established footprints (also mirroring 1984's "The Jewel in the Crown"). Fans of historical dramas will likely find much to love about this ten-episode overview of the waning days of British rule in India, but there's also another, more soap opera-esque side to the program that's not nearly as appealing as the production would like to think. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Doing his part to revive the giant bug subgenre of the 1950s, co-writer/director Gary Jones submits 1995's "Mosquito" for approval, giving nature's most diligent pest its time in the monster movie sun. While armed with a limited budget, Jones generally makes the most of what he's got for the feature, which offers a healthy amount of gore and humor as it details the wrath of mutant insects. The basics are covered here, making for an entertaining sit, though, as with most of these productions, a little goes a long way when it comes to broad characterizations, finding the effort's addiction to padding throttling the celebration of B-movie hysterics Jones is aiming to provide. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Alan Parker enjoyed a tremendous directorial career during his time behind the camera, handling difficult projects such as "Pink Floyd: The Wall," "Evita," and "Fame" with proper verve, while guiding more sensitive movies like "Shoot the Moon" and "The Commitments" with a secure vision. It's a shame that his final film would be 2003's "The Life of David Gale," a bafflingly mishandled take on capital punishment, housed in a dim thriller that nurtures melodramatic performances to communicate its general silliness. The material contains murder, intrigue, and feverish journalism, but Parker doesn't trust subtlety, going full throttle on this bizarre valentine to liberal extremism. Instead of spinning death penalty horrors, "The Life of David Gale" mostly encourages exhaustion with its topsy-turvy take on sacrifice. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In one of his first forays into feature filmmaking, writer/director Peter Hyams ("Outland," "Capricorn One," "2010") takes the hard-charging heroism of the supercop subgenre and dips it in boiling acid for 1974's "Busting." While not the first force of cynicism concerning the futility of police work to emerge from Hollywood, it's one of the most pronounced, containing an almost punishing level of bitterness to accompany an organized crime takedown plot. Hyams keeps the material on edge, managing the roller coaster ride of frustration that informs nearly every scene, creating a few surges in straightforward action to bait the viewer into a feeling of progress before lowering the hammer once again. "Busting" is raw and inventive, but a little of the picture goes a long way, especially with Elliott Gould and Robert Blake in the lead roles, delivering polar opposite performances that often distract from the theme at hand. It's a powerful film, but it only achieves greatness in periodic bursts. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com