I love “Critters,” I should say that first and foremost. I love the movie series, the first two are childhood favorites, and when it comes down to it, I prefer the Crites over the Gremlins. Come at me I don’t care. So when news came that we were getting a limited series based on the eighties movie series, I was excited to say the least. The trailer looked amazing and I was so ready for it. I’m not one to adhere to conspiracy theories, but the only reason I can rationalize the utterly terrible “Critters: A New Binge” is that it was once a movie that was split up in to a “series” for the sake of views.
The Bootleg Files: Disney’s 3 Days in the County Jail
BOOTLEG FILES 677: “3 Days in the County Jail” (1976 nontheatrical short film distributed by Walt Disney Educational Media Company).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On a gray market DVD with other imprisonment-related short nonfiction films.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Never made available for commercial home entertainment release.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Nope.
Back in the mid-1970s, when Walt Disney Pictures was stuffing theaters with such happy nonsense as “The Apple Dumpling Gang” and “Escape to Witch Mountain,’ the company’s nontheatrical subsidiary Walt Disney Educational Media Company was attempting to convince America’s youth that crime didn’t pay. Through a four-part series called “Under the Law,” the sons o’ fun at the mouse factory offered a grim and gritty – at least by Disney standards – view of the mishaps that befell naughty young people who thought they were above and beyond the reach of law enforcement.
Us (2019)
Jordan Peele has managed to become a strong voice of horror for a new generation, not only delivering chills and thrills for fans alike, but he’s also come to offer us cinema that sets itself apart from typical genre fare. After his brilliant debut “Get Out,” Peele proves he’s here to stay with “Us,” a horror film that can be described as a masterpiece. It’s a movie that’ll be discussed for decades and promises to be one of the most widely debated horror movies of the modern era. “Us” is a scathing indictment on modern society, the idea of how trauma can affect us, and how ghosts of the past can rise to the surface, no matter how hard we try to brush them under the rug.
20 Years Later, “Cruel Intentions” is Still One of My Favorite Erotic Dramas
Back in Theaters on March 22nd for One Week Only.
“Cruel Intentions” is what many would describe as camp, but also high camp–which is probably why I love it so much. For a time where just about everything in the nineties was derived from classic literature only re-worked for teens (“Pygmalion,” “Emma,” “Romeo & Juliet” to name a few), I’m surprised anyone thought it would be a great idea to take “Dangerous Liasons” and turn it in to an erotic thriller marketed for younger audiences. While the movie doesn’t feature teenagers, it’s heavily dominated by a cast of young actors entering their early twenties, along with a lot of intimations toward prepubescent sex.
Burning (Beoning) (2018)
There’s so much about Chang-dong Lee’s dramatic mystery that I had a good time picking apart. It’s a long and occasionally trying film, I’ll admit, but director Chang-dong Lee slowly but surely takes every single element of his narrative and places them in their proper order, allowing for a character study about class warfare and paranoia that is quite satisfying. I wasn’t really privy to what “Burning” was about when I first stepped in to it, but I had a difficult time looking away from it as it unfolded, as Chang-dong Lee dissects a lot about the haves and the have nots, the idea of love, and obsession.
Ben is Back (2018)
With America’s opioid crisis, much of the most acclaimed dramas involved stories about family, and two of the most interesting involved drug addiction. While “Ben is Back” completely drifted under the radar, it’s an interesting and often compelling drama about drug abuse, and how often times drug abusers can drag much of their personal demons and past in to the lives of those that they love. I won’t say that I completely loved “Ben is Back,” but I appreciated its inherent tale of a mother racing to help her son, in spite of the odds being stacked against her over and over.
The Kim Novak Enigma
Kim Novak was the last major star created by the Hollywood studio system, but she was also an iconoclastic screen personality who broke out of the blonde bombshell mold to create a distinctive force of personality. Actor and writer Joe Mannetti returns to “The Online Movie Show” to discuss Kim Novak’s remarkable and unpredictable career.