// Category Archive for: Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray Review: Nikkatsu Diamond Guys, Vol. 1

By Jeffery X Martin

The recent Arrow Video compilation, Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 1, highlights the kind of films we don’t often think of when it comes to Japanese cinema. These aren’t cheesy monster movies with guys in rubber suits, nor are they fantastic period dramas about dynastic politics and great wars. These three movies are star vehicles, melodramatic potboilers with handsome leading men and damsels in distress.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Bees

By Jeffery X Martin

Mother Nature always gives us humans a little something to be afraid of. Fire ants, hurricanes, just some little nudge to remind us that the links on the food chain are weak and interchangeable. In the late 1970s, the big scare was killer bees, super-aggressive buggers that migrated from Mexico into the United States. They attacked in swarms and wouldn’t stop, even after their prey was dead.

These bees became the subject for a few nature-run-amok movies. None of them were particularly good (see Irwin Allen’s The Swarm for some high-level bad moviemaking), but none of them were quite as earnest or weird as Alfredo Zacarias’s exploitation movie, The Bees.

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Blu-Ray Review: Creed

By Jeffery X Martin

People forget that Sylvester Stallone wrote and starred in the Best Picture of 1977, Rocky. That’s an Academy Award in the hands of Stallone. Isn’t that odd? We forget about it because Stallone’s output since Rocky has been so spastic. He’s given us fantastic performances, like the half-deaf officer in Cop Land. Then again, he’s also given us three Expendables movies and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

Does he hate us? Does he love us? How can we know?

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Blu-Ray Review: Pieces

By Jeffery X Martin

Horror fans have known for decades that there is no other movie quite as delightfully crazy banana-pants as Pieces. With the infamous tagline, “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre,” Pieces honestly attempts to be a straight-ahead horror film. It’s not.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Mutilator (1984)

By Jeffery X Martin

The Mutilator is an oddity in the slasher genre, less for what it is and more for what it is not. If you’re looking for copious amounts of nudity, look elsewhere. There’s not even a lot of bad language. On that level, The Mutilator is more like a live-action Disney movie from the Sixties. You half expect Dean Jones and Don Knotts to show up.

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In Case You Missed It: February 7 – 13, 2016

By Less Lee Moore

James Spader in Jack’s Back

In Case You Missed It…

Over at Dirge Magazine, they’re celebrating Violentime’s Day all week. What is Violentime’s Day you ask? Here’s an explanation.

Do you like listicles? Yeah, you can admit it. Here are 8 Horror Movie Couples To Make You Question Your Relationship, 8 Sexy Songs For Romancing The Dead, and Love Songs That Aren’t Actually Love Songs, if you’re feeling snarky.

I’m jonesing for James Spader in my review of Scream Factory’s excellent reissue of Jack’s Back. (Seriously. So dreamy!)

On the TV landscape, we’ve got reviews of The X-Files, Lucha Underground, and the new WGN America show Outsiders.

Looking for new music this week? Unicorn Booty’s got you covered.

Speaking of music, have you ever heard of the song “The Boiler” by The Special AKA with Rhonda Dakar? It’s the first pop song about rape and it was released in 1982.

Could Kendrick Lamar beat Michael Jackson at this year’s Grammys? Here’s why that’s a thing that could happen and why it’s worth talking about.

Everyone’s talking about The Satanic Temple lately, especially after they praised Robert Eggers’ new flick The Witch. Here are 6 ways The Satanic Temple has trolled the religious right.

What happened this week on Today In Pop Culture? Sal Mineo, Ziggy Stardust, The Virgin Mary, G.I. Joe, and The Beatles.

Blu-Ray Review: Jack’s Back

By Less Lee Moore

In 1986, I fell in love with James Spader. Sure, I was 15 and he was 25; and he was an actor and I didn’t actually know him; but it was real to me, damn it. I’d seen him on the big screen in Pretty In Pink, but he reminded me too much of the rich, preppy jackasses I knew in real life for me to develop anything but antagonism for him in reel life. (And what was up with his feathered, John Taylor-in-“The Wild Boys”-video hair, anyway?)

Serendipity intervened shortly thereafter: Tuff Turf was on HBO one night when I was at a friend’s house and that’s when it hit me: this James Spader guy was all right. Better than all right, in fact. As Morgan in Tuff Turf, he was perfect (and woe unto all the guys who didn’t measure up). Thus began my lifelong quest of watching every James Spader movie ever. That’s how I found out about Jack’s Back, released in 1988.

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Blu-Ray Review: Convergence

By Tim Murr

In the summer of 1999, Detective Ben Walls (Clayne Crawford) is enjoying time off with his wife and daughter when he is called in to investigate a bombing in downtown Atlanta. Not long after arriving on the scene, Walls is injured by a second blast, set intentionally to harm first responders. He awakens in the hospital, seemingly unharmed, but nothing is as it seems. Worse, the terrorist behind the bombing may be in the hospital with him.

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Blu-Ray Review: The Kid (1921)

By Jeffery X Martin

Charlie Chaplin is one of those filmmakers that gets a lot of lip service. For someone who was once the most popular movie star in the world, Chaplin seems to have become the sole property of film schools and scholars, while the general public, the non-academe, have rarely seen a Chaplin movie.

Perhaps modern audiences don’t care about Chaplin because he’s become such a stereotype. His Little Tramp character, with his tiny mustache, cane and awkward waddle, has been played by others and included in cartoons. People see him as that character, not as an accomplished director or composer.

Although Criterion has released Chaplin movies before, perhaps their release of The Kid will be the one that gets regular film fans talking about Chaplin again as the multi-faceted artist he was.

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Blu-Ray Review: Gilda

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto residents can watch a special theatrical screening of Gilda at The Royal tonight at 7:30 p.m., presented by the Ladies of Burlesque.

Without Gilda, my life would have been very different. As a naïve young English major at UC Santa Barbara, I registered for a Film Noir class to fulfill a requirement for my degree. I wasn’t new to old cinema; the giant poster of James Dean on my bedroom door and my stash of Gary Cooper movies recorded onto VHS were a testament to that. I didn’t know, however, about German Expressionism, Jim Thompson novels, the word “chiaroscuro,” or how important Citizen Kane was to the development of the noir style. I would soon learn.

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