New DVD release

23 Nov

The Evolution of Disney Animation Over 100 Years of Art

New DVD release

As Disney has been enthusiastically reminding us all year, 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio by Walt and Roy Disney. Walt was an animator whose previous company, Laugh-o-Gram Studio, which he founded with Ub Iwerks, had just gone bankrupt. Meanwhile Roy was still suffering from tuberculosis. Yet the studio they founded would come to be ranked number 53 on the Fortune 500 list of the biggest companies in the United States in 2022. More impressive still, the company has achieved the ever elusive mystique of being a brand adored and respected around…

Read More

22 Nov

Planes, Trains and Automobiles: How Tricking Steve Martin Changed the Ending

New DVD release

Few filmmakers have had their finger on the pulse of the American zeitgeist better than John Hughes in the 1980s. A former advertising copywriter and the son of a Chicagoan salesman, also named John Hughes, the now legendary screenwriter and film director rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 20th century by recognizing what audiences wanted to see and hear. And sometimes what they needed to feel. It was that gift which allowed him to transition from moonlighting as a joke writer for standups like Rodney Dangerfield to writing proper comedy films outright—and sometimes lacing them with an emotional sentimentality that,…

Read More

21 Nov

The Star Trek Original Series Cast’s Best Non-Star Trek Roles

New DVD release

William Shatner. Leonard Nimoy. Nichelle Nichols. These names belong to some of the most influential actors in television history, but they are almost interchangeable with the names James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Uhura. For better or for worse, these names and faces are inextricably tied to the characters they played.  That said, anyone who only knows the cast of Star Trek’s original series as the command crew of the USS Enterprise is missing out on some pretty fantastic acting work elsewhere. Every member of the cast had credits before the first season in 1966, and they all went on…

Read More

21 Nov

The Classic Disney Movies That Made Wish Possible

New DVD release

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Get your copy here. When it came to creating the animated film that would be released on the 100th anniversary of Disney Studios, Disney Animation’s Chief Creative Officer and co-creator of Frozen, Jennifer Lee, was deeply aware of the massive task that she and everyone at the storied animation studio would be taking on. “I started talking with my fellow Frozen director, Chris Buck, about how Disney would be turning 100 this year,” Lee shared at a press event celebrating their newest animated feature. “We acknowledged what a privilege and responsibility…

Read More

21 Nov

Nicholas Hoult Offers Superman: Legacy a Chance to Finally Get the Modern Lex Luthor Right

New DVD release

Nicholas Hoult has finally landed a role in a major DC Comics superhero franchise… only it is not as the hero. After famously (and narrowly) missing out on the chance to star as Matt Reeves’ Batman and James Gunn’s Superman, the actor whose work is as varied as Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road and Tsar Peter III in The Great has been cast in the part of Lex Luthor, criminal mastermind of the DC Universe. On a certain level, this seems overly familiar. Nearly every Superman film to date has featured Lex Luthor as a major character, and certainly…

Read More

21 Nov

Eli Roth’s Favorite Holiday Slasher Movies That Inspired Thanksgiving

New DVD release

Thanksgiving came early this year for Eli Roth after his new holiday slasher film, Thanksgiving, arrived in cinemas to some of the best reviews of the filmmaker’s career. Well-regarded for groundbreaking 2000s horror films like Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005), Roth has been trying to make Thanksgiving for nearly as long. Originally conceived as a “joke” trailer to be inserted between Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse double feature in 2007, Thanksgiving has been an idea that never left Roth or his childhood friend Jeff Rendell, the latter of whom co-wrote both the Grindhouse trailer and the actual 2023…

Read More

20 Nov

Blue Beetle Nails a Vital Part of DC Comics That Other Movies Didn’t

New DVD release

This Blue Beetle article contains spoilers. At the start of Blue Beetle’s second act, protagonist Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) asks an important question: “Who the hell was Blue Beetle?”  A lot of viewers wondered the same thing when the Warner Bros. movie came to theaters earlier this year and they’ll likely be asking it again now that the movie is streaming on Max. People don’t ask that same question of Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, but not because Blue Beetle is at best a C-lister in the DC Comics bullpen. Rather it’s because the man behind the Blue Beetle mask has…

Read More

20 Nov

Dream Scenario Features One of Nicolas Cage’s Strangest (and Best) Performances

New DVD release

This article contains minor Dream Scenario spoilers. The most remarkable thing about Professor Paul Matthews is how unremarkable he is. The latest addition to Nicolas Cage’s oeuvre of oddballs and nuts is, in fact, impressively forgettable. So what makes him so curiously haunting after you’ve seen Dream Scenario? Cage himself is obviously a major factor. With a frequently perspiring bald cap around the temples, hunched shoulders, and a twitchy gaze that betrays the desperation of a lonely child in a middle-aged body, the veteran thespian has built a darkly amusing portrait of neediness which walks right up to the fine…

Read More

18 Nov

Knives Chau is the Lynchpin of Every Scott Pilgrim Story

New DVD release

This article contains spoilers for Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Scott Pilgrim‘s wild and retro-infused world is populated with sociopathic, cruel, and disloyal people, and that’s not even counting the literal league of evil exes. In a tale about 20-somethings learning to become less terrible, only one angelic character lies within the ensemble, and she’s a few years shy of 20. Call me Alanis Morissette because of how ironic that is.  That person is none other than Knives Chau, the bubbly 17-year-old Chinese-Canadian high schooler obsessed with her 23-year-old boyfriend, Scott Pilgrim, to the extent she fights others to regain…

Read More

18 Nov

Movie Sequels You Forgot Existed: From Rosemary’s Baby Returns to Gone with the Wind 2

New DVD release

Despite what Hollywood wants us to believe, not every movie ever made needs a sequel. This did not stop the studios from trying their hardest to churn them out, leaving movie fans with only one solution: forget the sequel exists. It’s a useful technique, but, ironically, it doesn’t work on the worst films. We can say to each other, for example, that Highlander II: The Quickening never happened all we want. In our broken, battered souls though, we know it exists. And it sucks so much. The memory endures, like a cinematic kidney stone. Trying to forget works best on…

Read More

17 Nov

Madame Web Brings a Divisive Spider-Man Villain to the Movies

New DVD release

Any longtime Spider-Man fans would be forgiven for sighing after watching the first trailer for Madame Web. Not because of its PG-13 horror tones or soap opera vibes (both familiar parts of superhero comics). No, they cringe because of the movie’s big bad, Ezekiel Sims. Throughout the trailer, Dakota Johnson’s Cassandra Webb finds herself hunted by what appears to be a black-suited Spider-Man, whom she eventually recognizes as researcher Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim). For most viewers, the trailer serves as their introduction to Sims. But fans of the Spider-Man comics might recall him from the days long before guys like…

Read More

17 Nov

Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Ending and Changes From the Book Explained

New DVD release

This article contains major The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes spoilers. What ever happened to Lucy Gray? It is a question that haunted Coriolanus Snow at the end of The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, and which is likely to haunt him still when, as an old man with absolute power, he sees Katniss wear a dress that catches fire. We suspect some audiences will wonder too about the fate of Lucy Gray Baird, who is ambiguously played by Rachel Zegler. Of course that is the point. As Peter Dinklage’s self-loathing Dean Casca Highbottom taunts young Corio…

Read More

17 Nov

Wish Review: A Celebration of 100 Years of Disney

New DVD release

This holiday season’s Wish is the 62nd feature film from the fabled Walt Disney Animation Studios,  and the only one to be released during the animation house’s 100th anniversary. You can feel the weight of legacy in nearly every pixel of the film’s exquisitely designed frames.  Ever since Disney made the fateful choice to shut down WDAS’ hand-drawn divisions some 15 years ago, the studio has struggled with a sense of loss; the loss of history, the loss of legacy; and the loss of a little bit of that Disney magic. In the same timeframe, the company also scaled new…

Read More

17 Nov

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: What the Netflix Anime Changes from the Movie

New DVD release

This article contains major spoilers for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. The cult classic movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, adapting the Scott Pilgrim comic book series created by Bryan Lee O’Malley, has been lovingly adapted into the Netflix original anime series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Though boasting the cast from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World reprising their fan-favorite roles and an animation style lovingly recreating O’Malley’s own art style, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off features some significant deviations from both the comic story and cinematic adaptation. With O’Malley himself, joined by co-writer and executive producer BenDavid Grabinski (and movie director Edgar…

Read More

17 Nov

What The Marvels Got Right

New DVD release

This article contains spoilers for The Marvels. There’s been a lot of discourse surrounding The Marvels and its less-than-ideal performance in theaters. With all of the interconnected movies and TV shows that Marvel studios has been releasing over the last few years, it’s not hard to understand why some people are starting to experience “superhero fatigue” and no longer feeling the need to see these projects the instant they release. At the same time, it’s a shame that the movie solely focused on female heroes directed by a Black woman is where a lot of people have decided to draw…

Read More

17 Nov

MonsterVerse Recap: What is Monarch?

New DVD release

This article contains spoilers for Legendary’s “MonsterVerse” films. Apple+‘s newest blockbuster series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, has now arrived to flesh out the larger than life “MonsterVerse.” Legacy Pictures has been building this shared universe filled with infamous kaiju ever since the reboot of Godzilla in 2014, and since, has given us all the classic monsters including Ghidora, Mothra, Rodan and of course, Kong.  Legacy of Monsters helps fill the little gaps in the periphery of the story, fleshing out the humans who choose to find, study, and often protect these massive creatures. At the center of it all has…

Read More

17 Nov

Look No Further, Pedro Pascal Would Be a Perfect Reed Richards for Marvel’s Fantastic Four

New DVD release

Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four stands before the Illuminati, a gathering of the smartest and most influential figures in the Marvel Universe, to make a declaration. “Everything dies,” he states. “You. Me. Everyone on this planet… This is simply how things are. And I accept that.” This scene from New Avengers #1 (2013), written by Jonathan Hickman and penciled by Steve Epting, perfectly captures Reed Richards, one of the most important characters in Marvel history. It shows Richards approaching a catastrophic, multiversal problem with cool reason and intellect. It feels undeniably modern, building up to the universe-shaping events in…

Read More

15 Nov

Marvel Studios Moving Away From The Kang Dynasty Would Be a Good Thing

New DVD release

While the Kang Dynasty has not fallen, we dare say that its glory days are behind it (and when those days include getting whooped by a solo Ant-Man, it’s fair to wonder if they were ever so glorious…). Because as of Wednesday afternoon, the film titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty just lost its director. As per Deadline, which broke the news, Destin Daniel Cretton has moved off directing what is supposed to be the first Avengers film since 2019’s gargantuan Avengers: Endgame. Considering Cretton previously directed the well-received Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, this would be a…

Read More

15 Nov

Napoleon Review: British Filmmaker Makes Laughing Stock of French Emperor

New DVD release

Blood flows plentifully throughout Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. It practically is a title card in the film’s opening sequence, which presages the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, future Emperor of France, with the execution of Marie Antoinette. Her dripping severed head acts as a preview of coming attractions, and how the little man in the big hat would prove to be a matchstick to 19th century Europe’s powder keg of tensions. So yes, there is gore to Scott’s brisk 158-minute SparkNotes summary of the Napoleonic Wars. Battles too, if only in brief vignettes as we bear witness to flashes of the Battle…

Read More

15 Nov

Pop Culture Needs to Ditch ’80s Nostalgia

New DVD release

“It’s the ’80s, do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Regan!” That song may be an all-time classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff from the Gremlins rip-off Hobgoblins, but one might find themselves also singing that ditty more and more often when watching TV and movies.  Stranger Things, Totally Killer, IT, and even parts of Loki’s second season take us back to the 1980s, filling the screen with neon clothes, Dungeons & Dragons references, and so much punk and synth-pop.  It’s easy to see why the ’80s would get attention in the past decade, as kids of that…

Read More