The Peacock original series Twisted Metal is pretty much exactly what you should expect from a new streaming TV show based on a 1990s video game about heavily-armed cars that blow the hell out of one another. It’s big, dumb, obnoxious, and sometimes mildly amusing. Depending on your perspective, and your mood at the time… Read More A Milkman’s Job Is Never Done | Twisted Metal Season 1 (2023) on Peacock
Movies are an inherently sensationalized medium, and haunted house movies in particular often rely heavily upon cheap scare tactics to startle viewers into spilling their popcorn and clutching the hand of the date they brought to the theater. Subtlety is not generally a defining trait of the genre. Produced in 1961, director Jack Clayton’s The… Read More A Haunted Mansion and a Turned Screw | The Innocents (1961) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
By this point, I’m sure most people understand that the first Godzilla movie (or Gojira as originally known in Japan) from 1954 was, for all its inherent absurdity and cheese, designed and intended as something a little more thoughtful and introspective than just a schlocky giant monster fright flick. This is hardly a new observation.… Read More The Destroyer of Worlds | Godzilla (1954) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Before he became a brand unto himself with a rabid cult fandom slavering to see his latest three-hour-long, bombastic IMAX spectacle, Christopher Nolan started his filmmaking career with a very modest, small art film called Following that was little seen by anyone until the Criterion Collection picked it up on home video. To be honest… Read More Nolan’s Inception | Following (1999) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
It seems that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade wasn’t Indiana Jones’ last crusade after all. Just shy of two decades after director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford seemingly closed the book on their iconic archaeologist adventurer, producer George Lucas convinced them to pull the old fedora and bullwhip out of storage one more… Read More That Can’t Be Good at All | Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) 4K Ultra HD
Coming up soon on six decades since its inception, the Mission: Impossible franchise is, remarkably, still going strong. Of course, the property has changed quite a bit in that time, as it transitioned from a team-based espionage TV show to a Tom Cruise action blockbuster movie series. In fact, looking back on the pilot episode… Read More All Right Then, From the Beginning… | Mission: Impossible (1966) Series Premiere
The 1991 video game adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the Nintendo Entertainment System was, in a number of ways, a big improvement over the crappy Temple of Doom game that preceded it. I might even go so far as to call this one pretty playable! That’s a huge leap forward. Of… Read More 8-Bit Replay | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1991) for NES
The scariest thing about The Horror of Dolores Roach may well be its Blumhouse production credit, the presence of which could easily frighten away viewers expecting (but not wanting) a Saw or Insidious type of schlock-fest. In fact, the Amazon Prime series is a very enjoyable, darkly comic thriller with a few thoughts about class… Read More Killing Somebody Is Hard Work | The Horror of Dolores Roach (2023) Amazon Prime Limited Series
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade almost was, and in many fans’ estimation probably should have been, the last adventure for the iconic screen hero. After the disappointing (yet still extremely profitable) Temple of Doom, the film was a significant return to form and offered many unmistakable notes of closure to bring this blockbuster trilogy… Read More You Call This Archaeology? | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) 4K Ultra HD
The hat! The whip! The mine carts! Released four years after the movie that inspired it, the NES video game adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom features all those signature elements in 8-bit form plus an adorable chiptune rendition of John Williams’ iconic theme music on its soundtrack. Unfortunately, beyond those very… Read More 8-Bit Replay | Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1988) for NES
The Video File Blog 