TV/Streaming
Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: February 21, 2019
The newest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born, and Overlord.
The newest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born, and Overlord.
Over two dozen underrated horror movies for your Halloween marathon planning.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Solo, Leave No Trace, and Three Identical Strangers.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Wonder, Only the Brave, Roman J. Israel, The Ballad of Lefty Brown, and Walking Out.
A guide to the latest and greatest on Blu-ray and DVD, including three Criterion releases, The Wall, and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.
A history of the "Resident Evil" films and video games, how they've influenced each other, and how the two latest entries split.
A look at the latest and greatest on streaming services and Blu-ray, including Orson Welles on Criterion, "The Nice Guys," "The Jungle Book," "Me Before You" and more!
An interview with writer/director Fede Alvarez and actor Stephen Lang about their new film, "Don't Breathe."
A look back at how this summer's best offering, Netflix's "Stranger Things," makes the failure of this season's blockbusters even more difficult to ignore.
The latest and greatest on Netflix, VOD, and Blu-ray, including The End of the Tour, Southpaw, Inside Out, The Gift, Army of Darkness, Kwaidan, and more!
This month's Unloved looks at two films deemed disasters: Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" and Gore Verbinski's "The Lone Ranger"
A daily report from Michael Oleszczyk on the unique double feature of How to Train Your Dragon 2 & Winter Sleep.
Marie writes: When I first learned of "Royal de Luxe" I let out a squeal of pure delight and immediately began building giant puppets inside my head, trying to imagine how it would look to see a whale or dragon moving down the street..."Based in Nantes, France, the street theatre company Royal de Luxe performs around the world, primarily using gigantic, elaborate marionettes to tell stories that take place over several days and wind through entire cities. Puppeteers maneuver the huge marionettes - some as tall as 12 meters (40 ft) - through streets, parks, and waterways, performing their story along the way." - the Atlantic
(Click images to enlarge.)
Marie writes: Intrepid club member Sandy Kahn has found another auction, and this time it's all about Hollywood! Note: the spaceship on the cover is a screen used miniature from "Aliens" (1986). Estimate: $80,000 - $120,000
Go here to download a free copy of the catalog in .PDF
Published with Press Play on Indiewire
With the unparalleled box office success of The Avengers, superheroes are back in the spotlight. Most comic book aficionados are delighted with the recognition. But believe it or not, there are those such as myself who are dismayed at how superhero films, though more popular than ever, seem to be losing their luster.
Sometimes ordinary people becoming evil are more frightening than Dr. Hannibal Lector or Frank Booth. Villains like them are downright scary, but they are basically outsiders with a monstrous nature beyond our common sense. In contrast, the characters in Sam Raimi's crime thriller "A Simple Plan" (1998) are nice, ordinary people we can identify with, at least in the beginning. We can recognize their human wishes, desires, and motives. We can understand why they are driven into the plot while it's getting bloodier and more complicated. As a result, it is frightening to observe them doing horrible things, and one question immediately pops up in our minds - what would I do if I were in their circumstance?
For tax day, the editors at MSN Movies came up with an idea for contributors to write short essays about the most, ahem, "taxing" people in modern movies. Each of us picked a person whose presence, behind or in front of the camera, we find wearisome and debilitating -- as in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of taxing: "onerous, wearing."
You've probably already guessed my choice. I've written quite a bit about why I find Christopher Nolan's post-"Memento" work lackluster, but this exercise gave me an opportunity to condense my reservations about his writing and directing into one relatively concise piece:
Let me say up front that I don't think Nolan is a bad or thoroughly incompetent director, just a successfully pedestrian one. His Comic-Con fan base makes extravagant claims for each new film -- particularly since Nolan began producing his graphic-novel blockbusters with "Batman Begins" in 2005 -- but the movies are hobbled by thesis-statement screenplays that strain for significance and an ungainly directing style that seems incapable of, and uninterested in, illustrating more than one thing at a time: "Look at this. Now look at this. Now look at this. Now here's some dialogue to explain the movie's fictional rules. Now a character will tell you what he represents and what his goals are." And so on ... You won't experience the thrill of discovery while looking around in a Nolan frame. You'll see the one thing he wants you to see, but everything around it is dead space. [...]
