Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

"Origin" is a giant swing from writer/director Ava DuVernay, who hasn't made a screen offering since the financial and creative failure of "A Wrinkle in Time," a production meant to bring the helmer to the big leagues of event moviemaking. DuVernay is back with a much smaller film about an expansive topic, adapting the 2020 best-seller, "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," which takes a hard look at the source of prejudice as people experience it in several parts of the world and different moments in time. It's 496 pages of journalism transformed into a 140-minute-long feature, and DuVernay doesn't always appear to have a game plan for the endeavor. She uses a scattergun approach to "Origin," which wants to say so much about the state of emergency numerous societies are experiencing, but DuVernay is overwhelmed by the task. It's obviously an ambitious picture with important ideas to share, but it doesn't take long to realize that reading "Caste" is likely more rewarding then sitting through this cluttered effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Attempts are always made to turn music stars into movie stars. It's a Hollywood tradition, finding producers luring singers to become actors, hoping their legions of fans will make the leap and create some box office magic, remaining loyal to their favorites. In 1987, Madonna was everything in popular culture, managing to top the charts, sell out concerts, and dominate media attention, with her every move captured and scrutinized. Madonna was big business. And yet, when it came to making pictures, the superstar couldn't pay people to see her films. While her appearance in 1985's "Desperately Seeking Susan" garnered some attention, Madonna's foray into major roles crashed with 1986's "Shanghai Surprise." 1987's "Who's That Girl" also flopped, with the production aiming to bring out Madonna's bubbly best with an homage to classic screwball comedies, allowing her to mix elements of Betty Boop and Judy Holliday in an endeavor that's strictly out to please. The actual entertainment value of the effort isn't quite as strong, but director James Foley (coming off "At Close Range") always keeps "Who's That Girl" on the move. It's a wise choice to stick with speed, while Madonna remains charmingly excitable in the part, offering one of the better performances of her unsteady thespian career. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A longtime cinematographer, Sean Price Williams is best known for his work with Alex Ross Perry, favoring unsteady imagery for indie offerings about emotional breakdowns. He takes on a greater professional challenge with "The Sweet East," accepting directorial duties on the endeavor, working with screenwriter Nick Pinkerton on a picaresque concerning a teenage girl and her quest to escape her everyday life, heading through a series of misadventures with potentially predatory people. "The Sweet East" is a free-flowing viewing experience suited to Williams's artistic interests, and he brings a loose energy to the effort, which attempts to swing through various moods with humor and oddity. It's not a particularly satisfying picture, but it does have appealing moments of strangeness to keep it interesting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writers Blake Novak and Matthew Chapman (who also directs) take an odd journey into the ways of moviemaking with "Strangers Kiss." The screenplay takes a fictional look at the making of "Killer's Kiss," which was the second feature from director Stanley Kubrick, using a pressurized situation to inspire a study of temptation and jealousy, also adding in an overall appreciation of technical effort. Chapman and Novak hunt for heat and tension with the endeavor, but they never quite reach a level of intimacy with this study of obsession. It's the rest of "Strangers Kiss" that's definitely more involving, watching a Kubrick-ian helmer command the actors and oversee the daily grind of creating shots and managing personalities. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Mars Express" is a French production from co-writer/director Jeremie Perin, who brings viewers into a future where the line between robot and human has been blurred. The feature is a low-budget endeavor with big creativity driving it, delivering a sci-fi tale of extinction with neo-noir elements, giving the detective story routine a different spin. Perin is attentive to the needs of his audience, keeping the picture active with futureworld sights and periodic blasts of action. However, there's a human core to the film which is most impressive, as Perin and co-writer Laurent Sarfati aim to generate a deeper understanding of emotional ties with complex characters. Such attention to detail really helps "Mars Express" achieve dramatic satisfaction and land a few surprises along the way, making for a more meaningful sit, though the sleek visuals also have their tremendous appeal as well. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2013, writer/director Zach Clark created "White Reindeer," which was a nicely crafted dark comedy, showing some invention and a sense of humor for a low-budget endeavor. In 2010, Clark delivered "Vacation," which provides a good reason to watch "White Reindeer" again. Attempting to make something loose and bizarre with four characters trying to have some fun in Florida, the helmer aims to get weird and melancholy with the feature, which doesn't have much in the way of a plot or purpose at times. It's meant to be more of an experience with moods and mischief, but it often plays without much energy, offering a meandering understanding of emotional issues and friendships. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The world of virtual reality is explored in 1998's "Game of Pleasure." Well, perhaps the idea of virtual reality is a more accurate understanding of the feature, which doesn't have interest in the technology, only its mysterious possibilities as it relates to softcore entertainment. Going where perhaps many B-movies have gone before, "Game of Pleasure" is a 62-minute-long, shot-on-video picture with roughly 15 minutes of actual storytelling, finding director Dale Frantz on a mission to construct a release almost entirely made up of padding. The endeavor deals with the temptation of computer realms and the oversexed activities of roommates, and while Frantz has designs on turning the effort into a horror experience, he mostly remains on horniness and emptiness, which isn't appealing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The 1973 release of "The Exorcist" took the moviegoing world by surprise. It was a horror film that shook viewers in a way previously unseen, offering a study of religion, terror, and the corruption of youth, and it became a visceral viewing experience for many. The picture was a major hit, and, as always, when there's success, imitators aren't far behind. Perhaps most notable was "Abby," a quickie 1974 endeavor that actually managed to irritate Warner Brothers, who sued to get the obvious rip-off out of theaters. Sneaking into the party is 1975's "Sex Demon," with writer/director J.C. Crickett using the basic idea of "The Exorcist" to inspire a no-budget replication for adult audiences. He does away with mood and character, cranking up the aggression in this peculiar effort, which aims to take the work of the devil somewhat seriously in the middle of obvious goofiness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"The Old Ones" is an adaptation of stories from H.P. Lovecraft, whose dark imagination remains potent in the world of literary horror. However, after watching writer/director Chad Ferrin's take on Lovecraft, you'd think the author was working in comedy. There have been several Lovecraft-inspired films over the decades, and intensity is generally driving these productions, with many of them trying to conjure a fear factor on a limited budget. Ferrin turns his take on monster happenings into something silly, and perhaps not always intentionally. A sequel(?) to 2020's "The Deep Ones," Ferrin returns to Lovecraft Country with a real goofball creation, which often tries to blend the shock of strange encounters with character buffoonery, making for a confusing tone. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1995's "Species" wasn't a massive hit, but its success took the industry by surprise. Director Roger Donaldson labored to turn B-movie material into a horror/sci-fi ride of violence and sexuality, ending up with a feature that developed a significant fan base and gave actress Natasha Henstridge a career. With profitability comes a sequel, and three years later, "Species II" was slapped together. However, Donaldson refused to return, with producers turning to Peter Medak to handle the revival of alien eroticism, hoping to class up the endeavor with a helmer known for his ways with dramatic efforts and the 1980 genre offering, "The Changeling." However, Medak isn't the person for the job, showing immediate signs of distress with this clunky, junky, and weirdly mean-spirited sequel that's a poor imitation of the original picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1987's "RoboCop" is a special film. A boisterous mix of satire and action, the movie is unspeakably violent, slyly scripted, and masterfully crafted by director Paul Verhoeven, who gorged on police procedural pictures and vomited up a hardcore ode to heroism and humanity. For the 2014 remake, there's a chance to return the iconic character to the screen, bewitching old fans and tempting new. Of course, all the CGI, chaotic action, and screaming characters can't even begin to match the assertive steamroller experience of the original feature, and while the remake tries to have an identity of its own, it forgets to include a personality. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1990's "Singapore Sling" offers a trip into madness, sold with a noir-ish approach. It's an endeavor from writer/director Nikos Nikolaidis, and his fondness for the extreme and the surreal is fully on display in the movie, which tracks the efforts of a wounded detective hunting for his girlfriend, encountering pure insanity with two women who love to kill and engage in perverse sexual games. "Singapore Sling" is an experience, and clearly aimed at those willing to ride along with Nikolaidis, who has a specific idea for the feature, but seems to enjoy obscuring what viewers are meant to take away from this picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Immaculate" is written by Andrew Lobel, and it's his first effort in the world of feature-length filmmaking. He doesn't have many fresh concepts for the picture, but he does have blood and various grotesqueries, also trying to have some fun in the world of "nunsploitation," merging Catholic oppression with something macabre brewing over the run time. Director Michael Mohan ("Save the Date," and the most screencapped movie of 2021, "The Voyeurs") has the job to make a sinister premise come alive, but suspense and frights are basically uninvited to this genre party. Instead of a nail-biter with a palpable sense of evil, "Immaculate" is lethargic and unwilling to put in the work to really rile up viewers with its ideas on religious submission and perversion. Star Sydney Sweeney is little help, unable to bring the thunder in a role that requires a special level of panic she's seemingly incapable of summoning. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1985's "Story of a Junkie" welcomes viewers to Hell, or at least a decent replication of it, found in New York City's Lower East Side during the early 1980s. Director Lech Kowalski goes the cinema verite route for the endeavor, which presents the experiences and thoughts of John Spacely, a drug addict working the routine of his life in an especially rough neighborhood. The helmer creates a spare, unflinching look at this daily struggle, but "Story of a Junkie" doesn't seek to help Spacely, simply generating a dramatic space for him to exist in. It's a picture of thoughts and addictions, and while it tends to get a little lost in occasional ramblings, Kowalski captures a time and place with authority, displaying misery for all to see. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The saga of Bob and Harvey Weinstein is one filled with ugliness, with the pair employing strong-arm tactics to help dominate the film industry. For a while in the 1990s and the early 2000s, it worked, with the siblings managing to build their company, Miramax, into a major player during awards season and on weekly box office charts. Part of this corporate approach involved the acquisition and alteration of genre pictures, with Bob's Dimension Films notorious for re-editing features, reducing length and occasionally softening violence, allowing the company to sell PG-13 experiences to young audiences. 2002's "Darkness" is one of many efforts subjected to the Weinstein treatment, with the Spanish production shelved for two years, eventually handed a quickie Christmas release in a version roughly 15 minutes shorter than its original cut. At the time, "Darkness" was awful, finding director Jaume Balaguero's trendy visuals and inability to summon suspense making for a hard sit. Now his initial version is available (including this Blu-ray release), and the offering is…slightly less awful. That's not to suggest the Weinsteins were correct in cutting down Balaguero's endeavor, but the material and execution are deeply flawed, generating a tedious ghost story. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Between 1990 and 1995, filmmaker Larry Wessel toured parts of Los Angeles with a camera. He wasn't hunting for a story, but attempting to capture the experience of the city, away from the glitz and glamour typically associated with Hollywood. "Ultramegalopolis" is a document of this time, offering a wandering, mostly repetitive understanding of the world as it was. Wessel aims to capture experience with the endeavor, and he's successful, but 157 minutes of "Ultramegalopolis" is a lot to ask of viewers, who are treated to a picture that's filled with both interesting and agonizingly dull sequences. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Liam Neeson has been making the same type of movie for quite some time now. While box office returns haven't been strong, someone is making money, because the actor keeps finding work with violent entertainment. Neeson doesn't exactly distance himself from the usual with "In the Land of Saints and Sinners," but the feature is a slight break from the norm, reteaming with his "The Marksman" director, Robert Lorenz, for an Irish tale of revenge and protection. "In the Land of Saints and Sinners" handles with pleasing hostility, and the script by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane creates dimensional characters to follow, making for a deeper inspection of danger. It's a sharp, involving film, and one of the better Neeson endeavors of the last five years. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1989's "Witch Story" brings the ways of Italian genre filmmaking to Florida for a tale of possession and partying. Co-writer/director Alessandro Capone doesn't have much in the way of budgetary power to help the endeavor, and he's not particularly strong with pacing and performance either. "Witch Story" has some bits and pieces of peculiarity to hold attention, but it's not an inspired take on supernatural and satanic happenings. Capone has slasher formula to follow, but suspense isn't invited to the picture, with most of the movie struggling to generate a level of panic the story initially promises. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the great British horror race of the 1960s, Amicus Productions tries their luck with an anthology film, launching 1965's "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors." Director Freddie Francis and screenwriter Milton Subotsky offer five tales of weird happenings involving train passengers getting their first taste of the tarot card experience, launching stories meant to give viewers the chills. An actual fear factor doesn't arrive during "Dr. Terror's House of Horror," but the entertainment value of the endeavor is strong, as Francis oversees a wonderful assortment of actors (including Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Donald Sutherland) who work hard to sell short tales of the unreal and the frightening. And they do so with impressive technical achievements, especially moody cinematography from Alan Hume. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1981's "Blonde Ambition" strives to be something more than the average adult film. Actually, carnal activity is quite limited in the feature, with directors John and Lem Amero more interested in making something of a screwball comedy about show business and a jewelry switcheroo, with most of their attention put into the creation of the picture. The heat of "Blonde Ambition" isn't quite there, but there's a lot to like in this movie, which frequently endeavors to best its low-budget limitations with a lively understanding of entertainment business mishaps and New York City activity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com