Director Fred Olen Ray has had one of the weirdest movie careers I’ve ever seen from any director. It’s not many filmmakers that can ride the tides of various trends creating softcore porn for basic cable, erotic thriller, cheapy horror movies, and then goofy Hallmark Channel Christmas movies in one career. Fred Olen Ray gets shit done, I guess, and “Sorceress of Suburbia” is one of his many forays in to the porn sub-genre.
Ernest & Célestine: A Trip to Gibberitia (Ernest et Célestine: Le voyage en Charabie) (2022) [Blu-Ray]
Now Available from Shout! Factory and GKIDS.
I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea what “Ernest & Célestine” was or that it had its own series, as well as a feature film. The good thing about “Ernest & Célestine: A Trip to Gibberitia” is that you don’t really have to go back and see the previous material to understand what’s happening. Basically, it’s all so beautifully animated like a moving storybook and is the tale of the love between a big bear and a small female mouse. Named Ernest & Célestine, there is a story of friendship but there’s also an unspoken true love that’s very punctuated in the final scene of the film.
McBain (1991) [Blu-Ray]
Now Available from Synapse Films.
Not enough people discuss the glut of post-Vietnam movies made in the 1980’s and “McBain” is one of the many. There were either the acclaimed prestige pictures like “Deer Hunter” or the more exploitative and cheesy films like “Rambo.” Glickhaus’ “McBain” falls in to the latter category where it watches a lot like a post-Vietnam big film version of “The A Team” or “The Wild Bunch” to where Christopher Walken leads a ragtag bunch of men to avenge their best friend.
Bittertooth (2023)
Bittertooth is available exclusively on Mometu.
A true crime podcasting due with wildly different backgrounds get involved in solving a local serial killer case. As they disagree on the approach, things take a turn for the bloodier.
Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Hare Do (1949)
Hare Do (1949)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Written by Tedd Pierce
Animation by Gerry Chiniquy
Music by Carl W. Stalling
In my head canon, since Bugs, the Coyote and Road Runner are in the same universe, and they all shop from ACME. Their prices depend on whether their devices will work, so while Coyote is buying junk, Elmer Fudd ends up buying high priced machinery to hunt for potential prey. Hence the machine that he’s seen carrying in the opening of the short which can best be explained as some kind of radar for prey that also includes a screen for them. The machine does work, but Bugs ends up catching on way too early for Elmer’s liking. I know, I know, Elmer points to it as “Awmy Surpwuss!” but who’s to say ACME doesn’t have that kind of department for hunters and predators?
The Roundup: No Way Out (2023)
On Blu-ray and 4K UHD April 9, 2024, from Capelight Pictures
Taking place 7 years after the first film, this sequel takes the loved-against-all-odds detective and sets him up with a new band of misfits to investigate a murder.
Ada (2019)
Now Available for Rent or Purchase.
Released in time for International Women’s Month, Steven Kammerer’s “Ada” is a wonderful and beautifully acted tale of one of the world’s unsung heroes. Kammerer uses his short format to tell the tale of Ada Lovelace, a well beyond her time genius who envisioned the plans for the first ever computer program in the 1840’s. Her notes were later discovered by Alan Turing used as inspiration for the very first computer.