Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

A period mystery collides with horror and action in 2001's "Brotherhood of the Wolf," which represents co-writer/director Christophe Gans's attempt to change the course of the French film industry, adding a little violent genre excitement for the masses. It's a valiant mission to deliver bigger thrills, and the premise is loaded with strangeness, blending magic, myth, the French Revolution, and some sexual power, with Gans using all he can to summon a bizarre adventure that occasionally packs quite a punch as Hong Kong choreography crashes into a stately European endeavor. It's an excessively long feature, but "Brotherhood of the Wolf" holds attention for most of its run time, finding Gans eager to please with his usual mix of fantasy visuals and charged encounters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1974's "High School Fantasies" was created to cash-in on the unexpected success of 1973's "American Graffiti." The George Lucas masterpiece was the tiny movie that could, offering audiences a way out of the Nixon years with a healthy dose of nostalgia, offering a time machine to the early 1960s, when the future was unwritten. Lucas cleverly recreated the era and filled his feature with lively personalities and relatable emotions. Director James Bryan doesn't get the same kind of mileage out of "High School Fantasies," which also attempts to revive the sights and sounds of 1962, but with an adult film budget. The helmer hopes to create a spirited romp about oversexed teenagers and their strange adventures with heavy petting, but there's also a hardcore aspect the picture that's hastily worked into the flow of the endeavor, with Bryan doing his best to shape something resembling a story, fighting the randomness of the effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1984's "Streetwise," Erin Blackwell was known as "Tiny." A 14-year-old prostitute, the girl struggled with a life spent on the hard streets of Seattle, making fleeting friendships and experiencing something resembling love with a boy named Rat. Erin Blackwell eventually survived her brutal formative years, and 2016's "Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell" offers a reunion with the now 44-year-old mother of 10 children, who continues on her journey to basic functionality, only now she's saddled with a lot more responsibility. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Taking inspiration from a Life Magazine article by Cheryl McCall and photographer Mary Ellen Mark, director Martin Bell ventures into Seattle to better understand life for the street kids who populate the urban areas. The 1984 documentary "Streetwise" aims to explore this existence, where survival is a daily activity, and the community is filled with children who are perhaps better off on their own than with the dangerous families they've managed to escape. It's a no-win situation for the subjects in "Streetwise," with Bell trying to respect the natural rhythm of this world, which is teeming with confused adolescents left with nothing but their own ill-formed instincts. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Baseball movies were all the rage in the early 1990s, especially ones involving children and their love of the game. Joining "The Sandlot," "Rookie of the Year," and "Angels in the Outfield" is 1994's "Little Big League," which had the advantage of a slightly less fantastical premise, exploring the life of a 12-year-old boy who inherits control of the Minnesota Twins. Co-writer/director Andrew Scheinman (co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment and producer of "When Harry Met Sally," "A Few Good Men," and "Misery") makes a valiant attempt to reduce the sitcom-ish aspects of the premise, focusing on the world of baseball and the trials of being an overworked kid. Not everything connects as it should in "Little Big League," which doesn't contain many laughs, but Scheinman finds the spirit of the picture, playing up a remarkable situation with some down-to-earth writing and an enjoyable supporting cast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1979's "The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan" is a television film that's hoping to appeal to a singular demographic, offering romantic conflict, domestic despair, and secret desires. It's also a time travel movie, with writer/director Frank De Felitta adapting a novel by David Williams, trying to do something sincere with the concept of a magical dress that offers a broken woman a chance at a happy life. It's all very silly, but De Felitta manages to make the premise work to a certain degree, replicating the romance novel experience for the screen, providing a satisfactory understanding of character and motivation while trying to whip the material into a sufficient network television lather. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"So Long Billie" (aka "Pompei") appears to pursue a hypnotic viewing experience. Writer/directors Anna Falgueres and John Shank don't have much time for storytelling with their endeavor, making room for lengthy shots of nature, open spaces, sexual connections, and naked actors. There's little in the way of drama in the feature, but a direct assessment of motivation doesn't seem to be the point of the movie, which chooses to exist as a cinematic mist of sorts, hoping to attract viewers interested in art-house hypnotism. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There was a sense of finality to 1974's "Big Bad Mama." And then the feature made some sizable money for producer Roger Corman, inspiring him to attempt a sequel 13 years later, with "Big Bad Mama II" bringing back star Angie Dickinson for another round of Depression-era mayhem. The divide in time between the movies is substantial, which is why Corman orders up more of a remake for "Big Bad Mama II," which tweaks the original plot to handle different dramatic interests for the do-over, though co-writer/director Jim Wynorski is smart to keep his cameras trained on Dickinson for most of the endeavor, who provides another spirited performance as Wilma returns to power, and definitely not as a ghost. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Roger Corman had a thing for movies with "Mama" in the title, and in 1974 he released one of his biggest hits with "Big Bad Mama," not to be confused with "Bloody Mama" or "Crazy Mama." Returning to his love of the gangster genre, Corman offers director Steve Carver a small budget and the star power of Angie Dickinson to make magic happen, with the feature a chaotic offering of violence and combustible character relationships. Carver keeps the picture in a state of unrest for as long as possible, looking to wow viewers with chases and shootouts, but "Big Bad Mama" is really Dickinson's big show, and she delivers a wonderfully enthusiastic performance as the titular criminal. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2018, a Super Bowl advertisement was created hinting a reboot of the 1986 smash hit, "Crocodile Dundee," was coming in some form, with Danny McBride taking command of the role. It was eventually revealed to be an elaborate ad for Australian tourism, but the weird result of the mini-movie was excitement for a new "Crocodile Dundee" feature. Few could've predicted that response, especially original Mick Dundee, Paul Hogan (who cameoed in the commercial). Instead of capitalizing on the success of the ad with a fresh adventure for the once beloved Aussie icon, Hogan decides to do something smaller, blander, and possibly unfinished. With "The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee," the actor plays himself living in a world of fading fame and sequel frenzy, participating in a comedy (scripted by Robert Mond and Dean Murphy, who also directs) that tries to be silly and self- referential, but mostly ends up uncomfortably odd. "The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee" plays like a tax shelter production, with Hogan offering the least amount of effort in a film that has no clear idea what it wants to be. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For their fifth release, Dark Castle Entertainment returns to remake territory with "House of Wax," which takes its inspiration from a 1953 Andre DeToth film, which was a remake of a 1933 picture, "Mystery of the Wax Museum." Looking to capture some 2005 energy, the new "House of Wax" gathers young stars of the day to provide a fresh sense of peril for viewers, while director Jaume Collet-Serra (making his helming debut) invests in the oily, sludgy textures of the titular gunk, attempting to generate a more claustrophobic sense of danger for his take on the material (scripted by Chad and Carey Hayes). "House of Wax" isn't particularly well-acted or tightly edited, but it does have a visual presence that impresses, with Collet- Serra delivering a pleasingly ruthless nightmare that does especially well with creepy visuals and bodily harm, resulting in one of the best Dark Castle Entertainment offerings. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The call of the wild gets incredibly grim in "Hunter Hunter," with writer/director Shawn Linden exploring the savage ways of man and beast in the feature. He doesn't hold back on the hard stuff in the picture, offering a merciless understanding of violence, but not a sustained one. "Hunter Hunter" is slow-burn but effective, with Linden working to understand troubled characters and survival issues while carefully creating a gristly genre film out of the endeavor, and an effective one, sneaking up on viewers with strong writing and a deliberate choice to not take it easy the participants in this suspenseful movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A true bio-pic on the life and times of David Bowie will probably never be made, forcing the producers of "Stardust" to work around legal issues as they attempt to illuminate a transitional year for the future industry icon. It seems futile to even attempt to do a movie about David Bowie that doesn't feature David Bowie music, but here we are, and "Stardust" gets somewhere interesting when it comes to the psychological state of the musician during a time of tremendous insecurity. Sonically, the picture is almost pointless, with co-writer/director Gabriel Range trying to work around the loss of classic tunes, failing to come up with stimulating replacements capable of identifying Bowie's developing brilliance during a year of career redirection. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Emma Seligman makes an impressive filmmaking debut with "Shiva Baby," managing to tap into a mounting sense of panic in a way that rivals seasoned helmers. The writer/director doesn't go big for his first feature, taking viewers into the pressure cooker environment of a funeral gathering, with Jewish families coming together to mourn, but also catch up on gossip and personal achievements, leaving the central character to manage all sorts of judgmental attitudes while dealing with a potentially life-changing reveal of her secretive employment. Offered a house filled with itchy personalities, and Seligman transforms "Shiva Baby" (an adaptation of her 2018 short) into a remarkable suspense picture that's loaded with amazing performances and turns of plot, keeping the endeavor riveting and also darkly comedic. Seligman does a lot with very little here, showcasing a gift for subtle behaviors and broad confrontations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"Baxter" is a 1989 French production adapting the general strangeness of a 1977 book, "Hell Hound." The tale explores the sociopathic interests of a bull terrier who's passed around to different owners during his life, learning to understand how humans act when dealing with various emotional and physical challenges. It's dark material brought to the screen by director Jerome Boivin (who co-scripts with Jacques Audiard), who tries to bring viewers inside the mind of a dangerous yet curious canine, yet avoid horror film formula in the process. "Baxter" is a bizarre endeavor, never quite reaching its thematic goals, but it does have some interesting scenes of mental illness to keep it involving. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman went from industry struggle to Oscar-nominated glory with 1999's "Being John Malkovich." His specialized brand of quirk and surrealism found an audience with the picture, which, against all odds, made money, turning Kaufman into a critical darling and the "it" man of the indie film world. His reputation took a hit with 2001's "Human Nature," which was pushed into production after "Being John Malkovich" proved to be profitable, finding producers eager to ride the Kaufman wave to another specialty cinema sensation, fueled by the writer's obsession with oddity and the peculiarities of human behavior. "Human Nature" isn't nearly as unusual as his previous work, and he finds a less disciplined collaborator in director Michel Gondry, who works ridiculously hard to transform his helming debut into a cinematic playground of tricks and fantasy, which doesn't always mesh with Kaufman's self-conscious probing of damaged people. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1979's "The Lady in Red" has something to work with, using a screenplay written by John Sayles, who clearly wants to make his mark with a gritty, pitiless gangster story told from the perspective of a woman involved in the fringes of the violent culture. Sayles aims to create characters and threats, aiming to deal honestly and epically with the lead character's descent into hell. Unfortunately, "The Lady in Red" is a Roger Corman production, which means down-and-dirty filmmaking and a general muting of Sayles's ambition for the project, though elements of his vision remain intact in a feature that gradually loses its initial spark. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After making a strong impression with his quickie work on 1974's "Caged Heat," director Jonathan Demme stuck with producer Roger Corman for 1975's "Crazy Mama." A tale of a dire financial straits temporary alleviated by old-fashioned robbery, "Crazy Mama" is a wild burst of screen energy, dealing with criminal interests, family business, and road trip activity, with Demme aiming to ride the picture as hard as possible before the production eventually tries to find a resolution. It's a chaotic endeavor, but this Demme's happy place, working to generate as much commotion as possible before viewers catch on to the thinness of the material. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Prolific director Rene Cardona Jr. elects to claim part of the jungle adventure gold rush of the early 1980s with "Treasure of the Amazon," one of three movies he made in 1985. Cardona Jr. is not one to offer hospital corners on his pictures, and this messiness extends to "Treasure of the Amazon," which attempts to create three distinct plotlines about outsiders in the deep jungle hunting for gold and diamonds, tracking separate games of survival as the teams are hit from all sides by danger. The feature isn't a good example of multi-character storytelling, but it does remain on the move, with Cardona Jr. interested in exploitation elements to hold attention, working to give his jungle event some cheap thrills. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For his second film of 1978, director Rene Cardona Jr. gets away from the unsatisfying mysteries of "The Bermuda Triangle," and tries to latch on to the disaster movie trend with "Cyclone." Of course, he's a little past the peak of the subgenre's popularity during the 1970s, but Cardona Jr. comes armed with a small-scale overview of human suffering, taking a second bite of the Andes Mountain Disaster after overseeing 1976's "Survive!" Instead of revisiting high-altitude danger, "Cyclone" visits the vastness of the ocean, tracking the physical exhaustion and thinning patience of characters lost at sea. Cardona Jr. doesn't have enough cash for the Irwin Allen treatment, but he creates passable misery with the picture, which has some fine moments of agitation contained within a bizarrely long run time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com