I have long since lost count of how many times I’ve watched the 1986 animated The Transformers: The Movie in my life. A pivotal part of my childhood, I know it practically backwards and forwards, and assumed it could hold no further surprises for me. However, the chance to sit with my 8-year-old son as… Read More Such Heroic Nonsense | The Transformers: The Movie (1986) 4K Ultra HD
I have a soft spot for Predator 2, even if the movie may fail pretty badly at its intended purpose as the sequel to a bona fide action masterpiece. Taken on its own, as a schlocky B-movie about a grizzled urban cop fighting a superhuman hunter from outer space, the picture has a lot of… Read More A New Player in Town | Predator 2 (1990) 4K Ultra HD
As these things often go, a new piece of content put me in the mood to watch something older that’s related to it. In this case, all the promotion for this year’s “Weird Al” Yankovic parody bio-pic convinced me to seek out the musician’s one and only feature film starring vehicle, the zany 1989 comedy… Read More Where Did You Get that Lovely Spatula? | UHF (1989)
When a musician who has spent a long and very successful career parodying other people’s famous songs finally gets an official authorized film biography, of course it has to be a parody of other musical bio-pics. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is by far the highest-profile piece of original content yet created for the Roku… Read More Nothing Rhymes with Virgin! | Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)
With Hellraiser under his belt, Clive Barker proved himself to be not just a compelling author, but also a talented filmmaker on the rise. Of course, more film projects went right into development. Unfortunately, his second movie, 1990’s Nightbreed, was both a critical and commercial dud that nearly derailed Barker’s directorial career. In fact, he’d… Read More Commies, Freaks, and Third World Y-Chromosome Mutants | Nightbreed (1990) Director’s Cut Blu-ray
Having subjected myself to one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s very worst movies, the only sensible course of action would be to revisit one of his very best. Although greeted with mixed reviews upon release, Predator was a sizable box office hit in the summer of 1987 and has grown substantially in critical appreciation over the years.… Read More Ol’ Painless Is Waitin’ | Predator (1987) 4K Ultra HD
By this point, 25 years since its debut, I suspect that the only people who would still willingly subject themselves to Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin must fall into one of three categories: 1) Franchise completists who feel compelled to watch every entry no matter what, 2) Bad movie aficionados who revel in its awfulness,… Read More Stone Cold Awful | Batman & Robin (1997) 4K Ultra HD
Reboots of long-running horror franchises so rarely work out that it’s a wonder producers keep trying them. The 2009 Friday the 13th and 2010 A Nightmare on Elm Street were both dead on arrival, and the Halloween series has turned into such a running joke of multiple reboots overwriting one another that no one can… Read More Put a Pin in It | Hellraiser (2022)
Riddle me this: I was enormously popular yet everyone hates me now. I star multiple Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning actors yet every performance is terrible. I feature the so-called “world’s greatest detective” and make him look like an idiot. What am I? Why, of course we’re talking about 1995’s Batman Forever, the first of two… Read More A Riddle Wrapped Inside an Enigma | Batman Forever (1995) 4K Ultra HD
During the 1990s Bat-renaissance, no less than four actors played Batman on cinema screens in the span of five years, though one’s name may not spring to mind as quickly as the others. Nestled between the entries starring Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney was another take on the Dark Knight voiced by Kevin… Read More Batmanimation Appreciation | Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
