Streets of Fire

Shout! Factory, bless them, has issued on Blu-ray Streets of Fire, the 1984 bad movie classic, a self-described “rock and roll fable”. I loved it. It’s a mashup of motorcycles, guns, macho posturing, fights, DA haircuts, 50s cars, over-the-top romantic gestures for a doomed relationship, and retro-flavored music. Diane Lane plays Ellen Aim, local girl made star, who’s returned to her old bad neighborhood for a concert. She’s kidnapped by a hoodlum (Willem Dafoe, first appearing in rubber overalls and […]

Read more

Get Out: Perfect for Our Time

Get Out is the best-reviewed movie of the year, and it’s well-deserved. Writer/director Joran Peele stretches from comedy into horror, using the genre to create a very human portrait of fear of seemingly normal people with horrible secret motivations. I don’t normally watch horror movies, but I loved this, because it had so much relevant to say (and there isn’t anything visually terrible or bloody until the end). It’s more suspenseful — what’s going on? — than full of gross […]

Read more

The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania

Out Tuesday is the latest collaboration between Warner Bros. Animation and WWE Studios. Following in the footsteps of Scooby-Doo! Wrestlemania Mystery, Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon (which gets a one-line callout), and The Flintstones and WWE: Stone Age Smackdown comes The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania. (I’ve previously posted the trailer.) We open at a WWE show in Denver. Big Show comes out bragging about being the next champion by defeating Sheamus, but a massive snowstorm is shutting […]

Read more

Sabrina Down Under

This coming Tuesday, the forgettable TV movie Sabrina Down Under will be available on DVD. (Why? Probably trying to cash in on interest in live-action Archie properties now that Riverdale has launched.) This 1999 film was the second companion to the Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV show, which ran for seven seasons from 1996-2003. Both of the TV movies aired on The Wonderful World of Disney. This one consists of Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart) going to the beach and learning […]

Read more

The Image Revolution: A Documentary on the Publisher’s Spectacular Launch & Subsequent Changes

I’ve never been a fan of the art style popularized by the Image Comics founders, because I’m a story-first reader of comics, but I can’t deny that their actions, self-centered and egotistical as they might have been, changed the comic industry. If you’d like to see a thorough (if congratulatory) summation of the founding of the company, what lead up to it, and what happened after, check out The Image Revolution, an hour-and-20-minute 2013 documentary with participation from all of […]

Read more

Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon

Sccoby-Doo WrestleMania Mystery must have done well, since there’s now another cartoon team-up of the two properties. Only this time, they’re racing! Off-road! In “extreme” vehicles customized to reflect their drivers, kind of like a wrestling-flavored Wacky Racers. ScoobyDoo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon is out this Tuesday, August 9. Los Matadores (El Torito, Diego, and Fernando) drive a truck with a giant bull head, for example, complete with ridiculous horns. Rusev and Lana have the “Moscow Express”, […]

Read more

Comix: Beyond the Comic Book Pages

Comix: Beyond the Comic Book Pages is a documentary on DVD that feels as though it fell through a time warp. From the Comic Sans lettering used on the menu to coverage of topics just about anyone the least bit interested in the medium is already aware of, I was surprised to learn the DVD was released this month, because it feels as though the movie was made at least a decade ago. (Probably both of those statements are true. […]

Read more

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon

Review by KC Carlson Inspired by the 2010 book of the same name (but different subtitle: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made The National Lampoon Insanely Great by Rick Meyerowitz), Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon is a 2015 documentary film starring all those (surviving) writers and artists discussing what made that magazine so special and so iconic for a sliver of time during the 1970s. That film, which I was lucky […]

Read more
1 2 3 4 5 6 12