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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.
It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen a return to Richard Donner’s original supernatural series. The original “The Omen,” which was a response to the fame of “The Exorcist” has managed to live on as a horror gem in the ilk of “The Exorcist.” It’s ripe with storytelling potential and shockingly, “The First Omen” takes us back in to this world with near perfect success. If you had told me that “The First Omen” would be a weird, creepy, and memorable horror prequel a year ago, I’d have been as skeptical as ever. I doubted that “The Omen” really had anywhere left, especially after the painfully underrated “The Awakening” in 1991.
But Arkasha Stevenson’s debut is a brutally suspenseful unfolding of the origins of not just Damien, but the plot to conceive of the antichrist.
A documentary crew goes on the search to find out what happened to Kim’s Video and its content.
An older gunfighter finds his way to a town where he must make decisions regarding his own mortality and his legacy.
Dave Wilson’s movie feels like one of those comic book movies made in 2003 when studios made comic book movies but were embarrassed to admit it. So they’d make their movies without giving us what the fans wanted hence a “Punisher” movie without his signature skull shirt. With “Bloodshot” what we’re getting a movie based on the somewhat obscure nineties comic, but a lot of the changes are obviously made from Sony and Vin Diesel to side step the fact he’s in a comic book movie. He looks very little like Bloodshot, doesn’t often don his signature red chest spot, and isn’t even referred to as Bloodshot.
But he’s Bloodshot! Don’t worry, all five people that loved the Valiant comics universe*!
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the pitch meeting for “Giantess Attack vs. Mecha-Fembot!” I imagine that it involved hastily written cocktail napkins stapled together as a script, some cheap martinis, a randomizer that picked names of various porn stars out of some huge list Full Moon has stored in a database. For all intents and purposes, they manage to squeeze by barely on an hour long movie that really isn’t a movie. It’s a movie in the traditional sense, but the whole idea of giant women fighting is a framework for a lot of comedy skits.
BOOTLEG FILES 860: “The Lodger,” also known as “The Phantom Fiend” (1932 thriller starring Ivor Novello and Elizabeth Allan).
LAST SEEN: On several online video sites.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On public domain labels.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A lapsed copyright in the United States.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely as a fully restored production.
During the 1920s, the British film industry was a mostly uninspired environment that failed to match the Hollywood film machine or the silver screen output from France, Germany and the Soviet Union in terms of artistry and commercial appeal. That situation shifted somewhat with the 1927 release of “The Lodger,” an adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes’ thriller inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders. Under the direction of the then-unknown Alfred Hitchcock, “The Lodger” was a visually imaginative study in fear and paranoia – and much of its appeal at the time was the against-type casting of matinee idol Ivor Novello as a mysterious figure suspected of being a serial killer.
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