// Category Archive for: DVD

DVD Review: Rewind This!

By Brad Henderson

VHS is slowly coming back. It won’t be readily available in stores again but there’s still a huge market for it under the table. I’ve been collecting VHS for many years and have quite the collection. I adore VHS for many reasons and I know others have the same feelings about this dead format.

Rewind This! is a documentary that focuses on the VHS boom and the effects it had on the film industry. VHS changed many people’s lives and altered the industry forever. Laserdisc, DVDs, Blu-Ray, and other formats didn’t even come close to doing what VHS did.

(more…)

DVD Review: Vikingdom

By Brad Henderson

The success of films like 300 started a trend that has not stopped since then. I’m not saying 300 was the first to do the historical warrior thing, but it seemed it be the film that kickstarted it all. Recently a film called Vikingdom was released. Just the title alone made wonder what I was getting myself into, but I went ahead and gave it a watch anyway.

(more…)

DVD Review: The Black Water Vampire

By Brad Henderson

It seems that every week a found footage flick is released. This is met with a lot of negativity and people tend to brush them off without even watching them. The style seems to get an automatic eye roll these days, which frustrates me because people just think that if they’ve seen one, they’ve seen them all. We also hear that they are cheap, silly, or just plain boring. Honestly, the same could be said for everything you watch. Found footage is just another way to tell a story and it’s no different from what we consider the norm.

(more…)

DVD Review: We Are What We Are

By Less Lee Moore

Having only recently seen Jorge Michel Grau’s Somos lo que hay, I was excited to see Stake Land director Jim Mickle’s reimagining of the story in his latest feature, We Are What We Are. I was not disappointed. It’s tempting to compare and contrast the two films, but that would be a disservice to both; while the core narrative is similar, each film explores the terrain of family and tradition in different ways, both culturally and tonally.

(more…)

DVD Review: Plus One

By Less Lee Moore

Admittedly, I haven’t been keeping up with teen movies lately, but Plus One is way better than the ones I remember from decades past.

(more…)

DVD Review: ’83 US Festival, Days 1 – 3

By Melissa Bratcher

In the early 1980s, Steve Wozniak had a dream and a whole lot of money. He wanted to marry music, technology, and community, and so created the US Festival. Showcasing new technology and the best acts in current music, the community created itself in the desert (in ungodly hot conditions, because, well, desert) on Labor Day and Memorial Day weekends in both 1982 and 1983. Now, you can relive those sweaty, dusty days of 1983 in the only DVD release sanctioned by Unuson (an acronym for “Unite Us In Song”).

(more…)

DVD Review: Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony

By Brad Henderson

Your average person may not know what a Brony is and neither did I until I stumbled upon this documentary. Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony sought out male fans of the cartoon and followed them to the BronyCon convention.

At first Bronies seems like it might exploit these people and show the “weird” side of them. However, it doesn’t and actually dives into a little of the psychology side of things, going against what most people think of these Bronies. Don’t go into thinking you’re going to go into the house of some weird old dude who dresses up as a pony and prances around.

(more…)

DVD Review: All Hallows’ Eve

By Brad Henderson

A year or so ago I was introduced to a short film called “Terrifier.” It was one of the most horrific shorts I’ve ever seen, about a girl haunted by a terrifying clown. No matter where she goes, he is there. “Terrifier” is the type of nightmare we have as children when we can’t do anything or run anywhere because the nightmare is always there. That was the basic reason why I liked the short so much: it didn’t have a story or anything, but was just pure terror.

All Hallows’ Eve is the feature by the team that brought us “Terrifier” and it is equally terrifying. Don’t go thinking that it will be the scariest film you will ever see, but if you haven’t seen this filmmaker’s work before, you will be in for a treat.

(more…)

DVD Review: Sanguivorous

By Brad Henderson

What would be your definition of an experimental film? I honestly think all definitions are B.S. I say this because of the actual definition of experiment: a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact. I don’t think any of these apply to film.

(more…)

DVD Review: Mischief Night

By Brad Henderson

One of my favorite things in film is the home invasion subgenre. I think it’s one of the scariest real-life events that can take place. Because there have been many great home invasion films, when I saw the trailer for Mischief Night I got a little pumped. I actually turned off the trailer halfway through so it could be a surprise.

Mischief Night has the elements of a great film and does many things right in order to create a suspenseful film. The beginning of the film is a little silly and that’s because they put Charlie O’Connell in it and tried to make him a badass. I’m not sure what they were going for but Charlie doesn’t cut it. Once that dissolves, we are presented with Em, who suffers from psychosomatic blindness and her night alone during a Halloween tradition called Mischief Night.

(more…)