New DVD release

20 Aug

What Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Means for Gohan’s Future

New DVD release

This article contains spoilers for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. Akira Toriyama’s totemic anime series, Dragon Ball, has been delivering heightened battle spectacles for more than 35 years. The celebration that’s surrounded the series’ latest saga, Dragon Ball Super, has pushed the property’s popularity to unprecedented heights. Fans of the anime have patiently been waiting since the release of 2018’s Dragon Ball Super: Broly for the series’ next cinematic spectacle. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero presents a revived villain from the series’ past, but the movie finds new strength by sidelining its standard Saiyan heroes and letting Gohan step into…

Read More

20 Aug

The Nice Guys Ending Is Darker Than You Realize

New DVD release

The world isn’t fair. That’s the message of Shane Black’s happily unkempt The Nice Guys, both onscreen and off. In a better timeline, we’d be on our third or fourth go-round with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as undeservedly smug private eyes. Alas, despite some of us seeing The Nice Guys for the comedic masterpiece that it was in 2016—back when we noted that it’s “so confident it borders on arrogance”—few others did, and the movie crashed and burned at the box office. So return visits to the Nice Guys Detective Agency will never be in the cards. Nonetheless, Black’s…

Read More

19 Aug

Making a Lord of the Rings Gollum Movie Would Be a Bad Idea

New DVD release

Christopher Tolkien, the ever watchful son of his father’s legacy, strongly disliked Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. Notoriously so. As late as 2013, he was still lamenting that “they eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25.” This is arguably too dismissive by half of a younger generation who learned to love the work of his father J.R.R. Tolkien through those movies—and movies that, for whatever concessions were made to blockbuster filmmaking, still had a slavish devotion for Tolkien’s text. As a consequence, Christopher’s disdain became a source of bemusement…

Read More

19 Aug

Jesse Eisenberg Reflects on His “Serious” Lex Luthor Take

New DVD release

Even those who dislike Zack Snyder’s trilogy of DC Universe films have to admit that the director brought an idiosyncratic approach to those movies’ longstanding characters. For better or worse, his version of Superman and Batman stood apart from those found in comics, movies, and television. That is perhaps most true of Lex Luthor, the primary villain of Snyder’s second DCEU movie, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Played by Jesse Eisenberg, this Luthor not only sported a shaggy mane but also bounced off the walls with excitable energy. Where Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey played Luthor as grandstanding misanthropes…

Read More

19 Aug

Is There a Future for Marvel’s Inhumans in the MCU?

New DVD release

This article contains spoilers for Agents of SHIELD, Ms. Marvel, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness The Inhumans are one of the most popular and important groups within the Marvel continuity. It seemed like their presence within the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a surefire thing, considering the Mutants were unavailable to Marvel Studios in the early days. A favorite of head honcho Ike Perlmutter, an Inhumans movie was even announced; one of the few projects that the company would never make.  If you paid attention to the most recent San Diego Comic-Con, it would have been very apparent…

Read More

18 Aug

Xenomorphs and Space Jockeys Aren’t the Only Aliens in the Alien Universe

New DVD release

There is an odd phenomenon with fandom where “our idea of what a thing should be like” frequently obscures our memories, and even currently-happening-viewing-of the media itself. A great example of this is James Kirk, a character remembered as a promiscuous renegade, a cross between Chris Pine’s rebel-without-a-cause, and Zapp Brannigan. This perception exists despite the fact that for three years on NBC, William Shatner played a massive nerd and consummate professional who (despite maybe two serious romances that actually broke his heart) would list his relationship status as “commanding a starship.” The Alien franchise is another example of this…

Read More

17 Aug

Marvel Actor Confirms New Avengers Member for Kang Dynasty

New DVD release

Ever since Avengers: Endgame, the Avengers have indeed been disassembled. With most of the team either dead or retired, the lineup for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes remains in question, even as new characters join the MCU regularly. We’ve seen Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Contessa gathering heroes such as Yelena Belova and USAgent, presumably to join the Thunderbolts. But which Avengers will stand up to Kang the Conqueror? The famously spoiler-prone Mark Ruffalo may have let one new member slip while doing press for the latest MCU series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. The series stars Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, cousin to Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner…

Read More

16 Aug

Event Horizon Director Almost Did an X-Men Movie

New DVD release

It’s hard to understate how much 2000’s X-Men influenced the modern Marvel movie landscape. Today, the black leather costumes and comic-inaccurate casting (why is Wolverine so tall?) seem quaint, but in 2000 the movie successfully helped the viewing public transition from The Matrix to more straightforward comic movies like Spider-Man. In fact, the biggest embarrassment for X-Men is its director Bryan Singer, who has been the subject of many sexual abuse allegations. But Singer wasn’t the first choice of 20th Century Fox. Before Singer, they contacted Paul W.S. Anderson, hot off the hit video game adaptation Mortal Kombat. Speaking with…

Read More

16 Aug

Quentin Tarantino Reveals The Movie He Is Too Scared to Watch

New DVD release

It is not a surprise to learn that Quentin Tarantino is a lifelong admirer of Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974). Filmed as one movie but released in two volumes during the early ‘70s—a concept Tarantino popularized further some decades later with Kill Bill—the Musketeer movie(s) stood among the most popular action and comedy films of their day, and featured the type of swaggering bravado performances from the likes of Oliver Reed and Faye Dunaway that have long appealed to Tarantino’s sensibilities. Nonetheless, it was still a surprise that when discussing those movies on a…

Read More

16 Aug

Event Horizon: Paul W.S. Anderson Doesn’t Need a Director’s Cut

New DVD release

Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon has just arrived on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray commemorating its 25th anniversary. The fresh release of the film (in a nifty little steelbook with great cover art) has also given us a chance to take another look at a movie that is perhaps the very definition of unrealized potential. While the new Blu-ray also ports over all the bonus features from previous home video releases, including Andersen’s commentary, a five-part “making-of” documentary, and a few tantalizing bits of deleted footage, it does not feature the Holy Grail for Event Horizon fans: a long-rumored director’s cut…

Read More

15 Aug

Star Wars Just Revealed the Moment That Set Up Divisive Sequel Trilogy Plotline

New DVD release

Much has already been written about the Sequel Trilogy’s merits and how it concludes the stories of beloved characters who date back to 1977. Meanwhile, the years since the trilogy wrapped with 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker have been fertile ground for Disney to seed a more cohesive saga around those films. After all, when The Force Awakens launched a new era for Star Wars in theaters in 2015, it was with a rebooted timeline, meaning that fans didn’t know very much about what had happened to Luke, Leia, and Han in the 30 years between Return of the Jedi…

Read More

15 Aug

Beast Isn’t Just an “Idris Elba vs. Lion” Monster Movie

New DVD release

The pitch is pretty strong. It’s Idris Elba versus a lion. It’s Jaws on land. And it’s from a director who has well-proven teeth when it comes to the action and disaster movie genres. Icelander Baltasar Kormákur, who made true story-based adventures Everest and The Deep, as well as actioners including 2 Guns and Contraband, has a further connection to the material. When he was little, he wanted to be “a lion scientist.” “I have always been fascinated by animals, but [particularly] lions. So I was like, ‘Okay, this is something I would love to do,’” he tells Den of…

Read More

15 Aug

How Men in Black Changed the Entire Plot in Editing

New DVD release

Last month marked the 25th anniversary of Men in Black, arguably one of the most influential science fiction films in blockbuster history. That release not only added a major genre franchise to the table—one which would continue to have success decades later—but it also showcased that sci-fi and buddy comedies could co-exist as one. It pushed the industry forward in regards to the marriage of visual and practical effects, and helped to boost a rising star in Will Smith. But that first movie could have gone down a very different path, one that might have seen it lose some of…

Read More

14 Aug

Netflix’s Day Shift Wastes the Allure of Vampires

New DVD release

This article contains mild Day Shift spoilers. Netflix’s latest dip into horror-adjacent entertainment, Day Shift, is the directorial debut of veteran stunt coordinator J.J. Perry, best known for his work on John Wick: Chapter 2 and F9: The Fast Saga, and it speeds to the same stylish finish as those high octane films. How could it not? The film is produced by Chad Stahelski, who has directed or co-directed every entry in the John Wick franchise, and never met a subtly suspenseful mystery he couldn’t turn into a full-throttle action-adventure extravaganza. Jamie Foxx, a diverse and accomplished performer in all…

Read More

13 Aug

How A League of Their Own Highlights the Vibrancy of Queer Communities

New DVD release

This article contains spoilers for all eight episodes of A League of Their Own. Prime Video’s A League of Their Own offers a delightful, though rare experience: at times it can be harder to remember who on is straight, rather than who’s gay. One of the strongest aspects of the new show, the queer representation was notably lacking from the original film. It’s a matter of historical fact that there were queer players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (A.A.G.P.B.L.), upon which both the 1992 Penny Marshall movie and the 2022 Amazon Prime Video series are based. Moreover, as…

Read More

13 Aug

Why Arnold Schwarzenegger Never Did a Predator Sequel

New DVD release

Picture the scene: A camera pans over the charred remains of what was once a large section of dense rainforest in the Central American banana republic of Val Verde. Suddenly, the cloaked feet of a Predator come into view. The alien hunter plunges a barely visibly claw down into the ashen ground where flora and fauna once flourished. A second later, the severed arm of a Predator is pulled from the shattered earth. The semi-visible Predator makes a bee-line for his fallen comrade’s wrist-based computer. A read-out appears on its screen, detailing everything that led to this point. The replay…

Read More

12 Aug

DC May Have Found Its Kevin Feige

New DVD release

Let’s face it – it’s been hard to be a DC fan. Despite giving the world some of the first and best superhero movies, such as 1978’s Superman, 1989’s Batman, and the Dark Knight trilogy, DC has languished in popularity behind its rival Marvel. While director Zack Snyder certainly has his fans, his run on the three main films in the DC Extended Universe put off some who don’t care for his idiosyncratic style. The franchise seemed to be settling into a groove by releasing movies only tangentially connected to each other (Shazam!, Birds of Prey) or not connected at…

Read More

12 Aug

Best Movies of 2022 (So Far)

New DVD release

One year after a column in the Paper of Record announced that “we aren’t going back to the movies”… it kind of feels like we are. Yes, the film and exhibition industries remain incredibly volatile and difficult to predict, yet it’s undeniable that in the summer of 2022, audiences began returning to cinemas in droves. And not just to superhero movies. The success of crowdpleasers like Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis acts like a balm for movie lovers, and the sleeper success of truly innovative indies like Everything Everywhere All at Once should leave you downright giddy. Cinephiles really do…

Read More

12 Aug

Which Secret Wars Will MCU Phase 6 Adapt?

New DVD release

This post contains light spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Loki season one. After much speculation, we finally know the name of the next two Avengers movies! Scheduled for release in 2025, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars will cap off Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which begins with Fantastic Four in 2024. We’ve known for some time that Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors, will be the prime villain of the next MCU arc, now titled the Multiverse Saga.  But Secret Wars is something of a surprise, in part because…

Read More

12 Aug

How Studio Interference Almost Changed the Ending of Star Wars

New DVD release

One of this summer’s most surprising television events has been Vice TV’s Icons Unearthed: Star Wars. What makes this program — whose latest episode covering the production of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, airs Aug. 16at 10 p.m. ET — so compelling is how it somehow manages to be a treasure trove of new information about George Lucas’ space saga. Even before the internet made information about the original and prequel trilogy easy to come by, Star Wars was the most dissected franchise in motion picture (and pop culture) history. With every bit of minutiae relating to…

Read More