Latest DVD Reviews

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Blow Out (1981)

Brian DePalma's 'earwitness' thriller may just be his best film—strong direction, a good script and self-reflexive in clever meta ways that were before its time.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director's Edition (4K) (1979)

The most ambitious of all the Star Trek films—philosophical and metaphysical on a grand scale.
The Delta Force (1986)

A dated and morally dubious propaganda film.
Heat (1995)

A stealth epic, framing an urban jungle and making its own kind of contemporary history by pairing acting giants Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in what has arguably become the preeminent cops-and-robbers movie.
Sniper: Rogue Mission (2022)

A chintzy, corny, cheesy men-with-guns movie peppered with low-wattage humor and a lot of action movie cliches.
Paradise Highway (2022)

Ambition...effort...well-intentioned...some genuinely affecting grace notes on occasion, but it's also shameless.
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Despite its extremely messy story, if looked at as a '50s B-movie matinee, it's not too bad.
The Green Planet (TV) (2022)

Shot in twenty-seven countries over three years using cutting-edge technologies, BBC One's The Green Planet focuses on plants, their livelihood amidst growing climate challenges, and their relationships with other species...
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

A legit comeback for Raimi...He meets the moment with the good ol' Raimi dynamism and winking movie-love savvy.
Buck and the Preacher (1972)

A solid western in its own right and an important film in African American cinema, with a healthy blend of western action, comedy and social commentary drama.
Infinite Storm (2022)

The characters and their interdynamics simply aren't that interesting during the rescue, so somehow it all comes off as dull. But there is Watts (and who wouldn't follow her anywhere?)
Hotel du Nord (1938)

One of the best examples of poetic realism, which was Marcel Carne's stock-in-trade. A satisfying blend of comedy, drama and romantic melodrama.
Memory (2022)

You can pretty much forget about it.
Escape the Field (2022)

Feels longer than six seasons of Lost with only a sliver of that 'Mystery Box' show's cohesiveness. The actors gamely sally forth but they, like us, are getting nowhere.
Hot Seat (2022)

A ludicrous action fantasy full to bursting with lunkheaded macho banter and every cliche in the cat-and-mouse cyber-thriller handbook.
Species (1995)

Typifies middling Hollywood schlock: a pulpy, sleazy sci-fi/horror creature feature destined to cycle endlessly through cable airings and, now, to pad out streaming platforms.
Natural Enemies (1979)

The film's bold and uncompromising treatment of the frustrated modern man seeking—and perhaps finding—his last resort in gun violence has unfortunately only grown in relevance.
The Window (1949)

Ted Tetzlaff’s snappy thriller—adapted from the Cornell Woolrich short story “The Boy Cried Wolf”—straddles the rarely mapped line between Aesop’s Fable and film noir.
Back to the Beach (1987)

An odd duck of a movie with an upbeat energy about it, and an ultra-campy nostalgia-delivery device cobbled together purportedly by 17 screenwriters.
Event Horizon (1997)

If Alien was a slasher movie on a spaceship, this is a haunted house movie on a spaceship. Much more likely to please gorehounds than science-fiction fans.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Cinematic dessert for kids.
Logan Lucky (2017)

Soderbergh’s here to have fun, and his mood is contagious.
Atomic Blonde (2017)

Isn’t about anything more than the spy game and how to make it to the end of the board...Then, too, there is Theron, whose kind of un-performance in repose keeps breaking out into ferocious fighting that suggests a feral Jackie Chan.
The Mummy (2017)

As a story to speak to our hearts and minds, it's an utter failure, and perhaps so too even as a disposable corporate product.
Certain Women (2016)

Reichardt in no way pushes her material, instead giving the viewer the space to live in this space with the characters, observe them and listen to them, and then draw one’s own conclusions about thematic import.
The Space Between Us (2017)

Despite the multiple genres, The Space Between Us feels thin in its plot, and corny in the telling...
A Dog's Purpose (2017)

In this sort of Quantum Leap for dogs, a soulful, gender-confused, repeatedly reincarnated canine goes on a magical journey of Hollywood formula. Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure manipulation.
Woman of the Year (1942)

An effervescent but edgy rom-com about love, career, the insecurities men and women felt (and, sadly, still feel to some extent) around burgeoning feminism.
Rogue One (2016)

Will give die-hard Star Wars fans multiple orgasms...runneth over with Star Wars spectacle.
Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976)

A deeply disturbing study of mass hysteria, a lasting cultural document of "a shameful memory"...and a culturally specific but widely relevant snapshot of that late-'60s moment of student rebellion being met by violent institutional crackdowns.
20th Century Women (2016)

Empathetic and self-searching...a highly witty, deeply humane look at people who may be too conscious for their own good, people who think and feel too much ever to be truly happy.
Sing (2016)

Sing is pleasant enough...but scrutinize it, and you'll find that it's neither very musically accomplished nor very funny. The tone is bright and colorful but still evinces a kind of joyless duty...
Being 17 (2016)

Its emotional beats strike honest notes, well played by the actors in the clutch moments...Téchiné and Sciamma prove that there is, in truth, beauty, as in youth and mountain greenery, as in nature's need and human nature's desire.
Moana (2016)

When it’s cooking, Moana prepares tender, slip-off-the-bone meat on the tried-and-true bones of the Disney formula.
45 Years (2015)

Implications, about the long odds for romance, the deeper psychology of mating, and the devastating possibility that love isn’t an absolute but a willful, occasionally mutual, delusion.
Moonlight (2016)

Filled with extraordinary performances, Moonlight explores the tension between private and public selves for a closeted black individual who feels pressure to conform to traditional but arbitrary standards of masculinity.
Cameraperson (2016)

Smart enough to make implications but let us draw our own conclusions about what these images, individually and collectively—and the art form to which they belong—mean to their photographer, to us, and to human society.
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)

It's easy enough to appreciate The Tree of Wooden Clogs as a painterly near-documentary, shot and edited by a director who got his start in documentary films...or a spacious moral fable about humility and trust in following the righteous path.
Nocturnal Animals (2016)

A moody and deeply unsettling look at a pair of failed relationships, regrets and recriminations, and measures of emotional violence—oh, shall we call it 'lashing out'?—symbolized in physical violence.
Manchester by the Sea (2016)

In its broad strokes, Manchester by the Sea doesn’t explore anything new...[but Lonergan] is the master of telling behavior and conversational nuance.

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