DC and Warner beat Marvel to the punch by comprising a superhero team made up of some of the most popular bit players from the DC television-verse, ending in a pretty mixed result. Season one of “Legends of Tomorrow” is a scattered and pretty crazy series of episodes that finds a rag tag group of DC’s heroes and villains coming together to stop the evil Vandal Savage. Along with the confusing time paradoxes, the writers and producers seem to be scrambling to also keep up with their long list of team members, conflicts, sub-plots and the like resulting in only a mediocre start from out of the gate. What happens when people like The Flash and Arrow are busy with their own enemies?
Let Me Make You a Martyr (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
The official plot for Let Me Make You a Martyr is “[a] cerebral revenge film about two adopted siblings who fall in love and hatch a plan to kill their abusive father.” (IMDB.com) Watching the film, the plot doesn’t seem that simple. Multiple people plot to have another killed while living difficult lives as best they can, some trying to do some good at the same time.
Atmo HorrorX (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival]
This review must start with a warning: Even though this reviewer watched this movie attentively, getting any of it was very, very difficult; if not nary impossible, so external information sources had to be sought, mainly from IMDB and the Fantasia program book. That being said, let’s start with its official summary on IMDB: “Through a surreal chase of spying, Catafuse, a dubiously dressed creature, hunts humans with the help of Molosstrap. But in a world ruled by the pharma industry, reality becomes so complex, that the mastering of insanity might just be the only way out.”
Red Sonja: Queen of Plagues [Blu-Ray/DVD]
Your enjoyment of “Queen of Plagues” will depend on your love for motion comic books. Shout Factory has shown a love for the format of motion comics in the past, and they continue that trend with adapting Gail Simone’s miniseries from Dynamite! Despite the draw back of animating certain panels that just look awkward in motion, “Queen of Plagues” is an engrossing adventure where we meet Sonja once again in battle. After the noble King Dimath raids and conquers a kingdom in a bloody battle, he enters a dungeon and decides to free the two remaining prisoners and let them go without trial. One of them is Sonja.
Brix and the Bitch (2016)
Director and Writer Nico Raineau’s award winning “Brix and the Bitch” is a remarkable drama about the powerful love two women share, and how it can potentially decide their future when one of them is stuck in a terrible situation. Dre Swain is fantastic as Bitch, a martial artist who engages in a near endless string of fights for an illegal gambling circuit. Despite her girlfriend Brix’s insistence that she stop before she’s killed, Bitch engages in bone shattering fights every night.
Red Sonja (1985)
I’m not ashamed to admit that “Red Sonja” is a childhood favorite. As a TV junkie, I spent a lot of my childhood watching movies on network TV and I constantly tuned in to “Red Sonja.” It was such a departure from the normal movies I watched as it sported a female heroine, Ernie Reyes Jr. trying his best to kick ass, and an unusual narrative that feels like a mix of “Barbarella” and “Wizard of Oz.” Of course this being 1985, you can sense Dino DiLaurentiis also trying to build his own movie series a la “Star Wars,” even featuring a battle with an underwater monster in a cave. I never caught on to it before, but this is also one of the rare action movies from the eighties where there is a heavily implied sexual affair between heroine Sonja and villainous Queen Gedren.
Bed of the Dead (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
Two couples in their twenties book a room with a particularly big bed at a sex club, to explore some options for one of the guys’ birthday. Once on the bed, it becomes clear that supernatural forces are at play as they start hallucinating and being picked off one by one. A cop investigating the aftermath discovers more than he expected and is pulled into the situation deeper than he planned.