An American Tail: Treasure of Manhattan Island (1998)

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

The globe trotting Mousekewitz family find themselves now living in Manhattan again, their new home after New York, and the West apparently didn’t quite work out for them. This new movie is set directly after the short lived animated series on television, so this is kind of a new continuity rather than the one after “Fievel Goes West.” I assume to understand why the Mousekewitz’s are back in New York, you’d have to have seen the series, but the least they could have done was inject a few lines to help the audience catch up.

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An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

“Fievel Goes West” is a childhood favorite and a fitting end to the legacy of Jimmy Stewart. Not only does Stewart play an old dog who was once an old West hero, but Stewart was a man very fond of family friendly entertainment. “Fievel Goes West” is a film just as good as the original where the Mousekewitz family find themselves being exploited by a capitalist cat who wants to enslave the mouse community before eating them. Masquerading as a Southern mouse promising a new start in the old west town of Green River, the Mousekewitzes make another trek in to a new frontier after the crowded slums of New York didn’t quite work out for them.

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An American Tail (1986)

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Like a lot of Don Bluth’s films, “An American Tail” feels like a very personal animated film that tells a universal story about the immigration experience. It’s sad that “An American Tail” has gone somewhat pushed to the corner of the animated world over the years, since it’s such a touching movie and brilliant exploration of family and bonds. Fievel is one of the most likable and human protagonists of all time. He’s not heroic or overly courageous. He’s just a young mouse looking to make his way in the world and explore the vast open land that lies before him.

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Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival (2016)

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

I assume somewhere down the line we had to fill in the holes and explore how the battle between heaven and hell ensued. I’m just not sure we had to spend the majority of the sequel doing so. “Allelulia!” is mostly a misfire of a sequel to the raucous and wonderful “The Devil’s Carnival” that fills in the questions from the first film. In the duration of the follow-up, we get to discover how the war began, how the battle became personal for hell’s minions and heaven’s warriors, and there’s even the origin of one of the Devil’s Carnival’s most infamous minions who we see a great deal of in the original film.

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You’ll Like My Mother (1972) [Blu-Ray]

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Though director Lamont Johnson’s “You’ll Like My Mother” is generally well received, I found it to be a mostly flat thriller with a lot of the attempted suspense lost in translation. “You’ll Like My Mother” is a mix of “Misery” and “Flowers in the Attic,” in where a young woman tries to reconcile with her dead husband’s family and gets much more than she bargained for. The late Patty Duke plays Fran, a very pregnant young woman who ventures in to Minnesota in the dead of winter to visit her husband’s family and perhaps make peace with them.

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Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Emilie Black

“Belladonna of Sadness” is an animation film from 1973 which had not been released in the US until now for multiple reasons, one most likely being due to the nudity and sex. The style of animation is reminiscent of watercolor paintings with a touch of 70s/80s anime. The film is a mix of painted images being panned across and moving parts which makes for mesmerizing visuals. The restoration looks fantastic and the attention to details put into it show the work thousand of hours spent on it brought in terms of colors, visuals, and feelings.

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Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre (2016) [Blu-Ray]

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

The consistent utterance of Dominique Swain’s character to herself of “Crap on a Cracker,” just about sums up Jim Wynorski’s latest turkey that mixes “Con Air” and “Tremor.” No doubt tailor made for airing on late night cable television, “Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre” is a goofy PG-13 crime thriller with a bunch of land roving sharks that apparently make their victims explode upon contact. This is the kind of movie cable television dreams of. It stars a host of gorgeous women, many of who scamper around in conveniently handy bikinis, and whose prison garb are short shorts and clinging tank tops. They also never actually have sex or drop F bombs.

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