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.
Dolemite (1975)
In the realm of cinema, the 1975 blaxploitation feature “Dolemite” might be the closest thing that the medium has to folk art: its raw form carries strains of both naivety and shrewdness, resulting in a work that is mesmerizing for its utter lack of polished structure.
Kidnap Capital (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
Phoenix, Arizona. A group of kidnap victims are taken in a house like many others. There they are kept captive, beaten, and forced to contact family and friends for their ransom. Part of the group is an expecting couple who are split up as they keep the men and women separately. The father-to-be does everything he can to protect his wife and unborn child.
Realive (2016) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]
Marc Jarvis has made a good life for himself, a successful career, a house by the beach, great friends, and the love of his life by his side. That is until he is diagnosed with an incurable disease. He decides to live to the fullest and die on his own terms, then get cryogenically frozen until a time when his disease can be cured. When this day comes, he is put back together like some kind of futuristic Frankenstein’s Monster and brought back to life.