After almost twenty years basically out of print, us “Critters” fans spent the better part of the digital age celebrating our favorite movie series on DVD. And not just any DVD, but a basically cheap transfer DVD that stuffed all four movies on to a few DVDs. Granted you could have done worse, but the movie series deserved so much better. The “Critters” series remains one of the more underrated creature features in horror, and it finally gets the royal treatment on Blu-Ray. With a hard shell casing, all four movies come packed, along with a humongous plethora of bells and whistles. This is the collection I as a hardcore fan, have been waiting for. It’s also a good thing that the “Critters” movies are a lot of good, gory, monstrous fun.
You Have to See This! Pieces of April (2003)
Katie Holmes was always prone to playing more glamorous and squeaky clean roles back in 2003, but for “Pieces of April” she’s the center of what is a unique Thanksgiving set film. Peter Hedges film is all at once a funny, heartbreaking, and thought provoking film. It’s a film about redemption, and ultimately about forgiveness. Can we forgive someone who has hurt us over and over? Can we forgive someone who almost went out of our way to hurt us in the past? Can we forgive ourselves for the heinous things we’ve done in the past to our loved ones, if we work hard at redemption?
Ernie Kovacs: The Centennial Edition (DVD)
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Ernie Kovacs stood out from his comedy peers who approached television with a vaudeville and Borscht Belt vibe. Kovacs’ ingenious use of visual sight sags and off-kilter sound effects created a new school of small-screen comedy, and his gallery of brilliantly warped characters – including the mincing poet Percy Dovetonsils, the hostile Hungarian cook Miklos Molnar and the musically violent derby-hatted simians of The Nairobi Trio – brought a subversive sense of humor to a comedy scene that was often a little too safe for its own good.
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Science Fair (2018)
The digital release is available today on ITunes, Amazon, & Google Play. It will also be back in movie theaters this week. It’s currently playing in Los Angeles (LaEmmle Monica Film Festival), New York (IFC Center, Cinema Village), & San Francisco (LandMark’s Opera plaza). Look for Theater Listings Here.
Cristina Costantini, and Darren Foster’s “Science Fair” is a film that every family should take their children to watch. Not only does the National Geographic documentary explore the joy of learning, but the inarguable proof that education can enrich one’s life. “Science Fair” examines a part of the educational world that we don’t often see, exploring the very important yearly International Science and Engineering Fair that attracts 1,700 of the smartest students from 78 different countries around the world.
Sisters (1972): Criterion Collection [Blu-Ray]
What we see in “Sisters” is the template for what would become the basic mold for most Brian De Palma films. So enamored is he with Hitchcock that he essentially pays tribute to the man’s filmmaking techniques and films consciously and sometimes sub-consciously. “Sisters” is rough around the edges, but an otherwise fascinating thriller about the perversion of voyeurism, and the suppression of sexuality and female independence in an often matriarchal society. De Palma unfolds an interesting murder mystery filled with psycho sexual overtones that almost feel like nods to the Giallos of the decade.
Sleepwalkers (1992): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]
“Cop Kabob!”
Stephen King is a pop culture entity that is guaranteed to stay in the public consciousness for a very long time. Every few years he fades in to the background for a while, and then re-emerges to take pop culture by storm. The last few years have been yet another Stephen King renaissance with the new popularity of classic novels, the smashing popularity of “It” and the re-release of a lot of his famous and infamous cinematic entries. Everything from “Christine” to “Maximum Overdrive” has been given a physical release, and it’s a lot of to see how much King has carved his way in to pop culture, with various hits and stumbles. “Sleepwalkers” is a stumble.
The Meg (2018) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]
John Turtletaub’s adaptation of “The Meg” may not have been everyone’s cup of tea in 2018, but for me it was a damn good time with an eye on being about as novel as possible. While it does pander to the ever important Asian movie going audience, “The Meg” is a weird and wild action movie that feels like an eccentric amalgam of Peter Benchley, Renny Harlin, and Paul WS Anderson. It’s a comedy, a science fiction film, an action movie, a romance, a man vs. nature picture, and a tale of redemption all rolled in to one. It even squeezes in a bang up cast of character actors like Cliff Curtis, Li Bingbing, and Rainn Wilson as an eccentric billionaire thrust in to the extraordinary confrontation with a giant megalodon.