Branded to Kill: Criterion Collection
January 4, 2012
Seijun Suzuki cut his teeth on pop musicals, comedies, action and war films. Over time, he became impatient with his status as a B-movie director while some of his peers were making A movies. Often stuck with substandard screenplays, the frustrated director...
Tokyo Drifter: Criterion Collection
January 3, 2012
Seijun Suzuki made his name in Japan with hard-boiled B-crime films during the 1950’s. By the 1960’s, he took traditional Yakuza stories and juxtaposed them with an extreme Andy Warhol-esque pop art look that gleefully pushed genre conventions. He...
Enter the Ninja
December 8, 2011
Those of us who grew up in the early 1980’s were witness to a mini-renaissance of ninja films spearheaded by Cannon Films – owned, at the time, by those scrappy Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. – with Enter the Ninja (1981). It proved...
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
November 8, 2011
Despite wrapping up the numerous narrative threads in the third Pirates of the Caribbean film (2007), its massive commercial success pretty much assured another installment in this popular franchise. The only question would be who from the last film would...
Captain America
August 29, 2011
Before Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) film demonstrated the artistic and commercial potential of some of their titles, it seemed like Marvel Comics didn’t care how they were adapted to the big screen. And so, we had horrible misfires like Howard the...
BloodRayne: The Third Reich: Unrated Director’s Cut
July 5, 2011
Loosely based on the video game series of the same name, BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2010) is the latest installment in the film franchise about the titular character who is half human and half vampire, hunting and killing bloodsuckers through the 1800’s...
Season of the Witch
June 27, 2011
Season of the Witch (2011) saw Nicolas Cage reunited with director Dominic Sena who he had previous collaborated with on the commercial hit, Gone in 60 Seconds (2000). Both men were hoping lightning would strike twice with this period action fantasy film...
The Superman Motion Picture Anthology (Blu-Ray)
June 17, 2011
With every new format comes the chance to release box-sets of classic movies once again; those movies that, regardless of whether we’ve seen them a thousand times or whether we already own them on numerous formats, they become must have purchases. Indiana...
Drive Angry
May 31, 2011
Continuing his string of paycheck movies, Drive Angry (2011) is actually closer to the gonzo Nicolas Cage of old than the diluted actor we’ve come to expect in films like Next (2007) and Knowing (2009). With Drive Angry, he’s made a full-on, balls-out...
The Mechanic
May 23, 2011
For awhile it seemed like Jason Statham, Vin Diesel and The Rock were going to represent the new generation of action heroes for the new Millennium. Initially, all three men were well on their way until Diesel got mired in the Fast & Furious franchise...




