But they, too, can participate in the nation’s annual orgy of mass consumerism by heading to their local indie record store Friday for extremely exclusive musical goodies that will probably go for three times as much on eBay the next day. An offshoot of the popular Record Store Day event, this Black Friday addendum includes […]
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Weird-Noir
In true B-programmer form, let’s run through each with sterling efficiency: Girl on the Run (1953) This may be the only noir set at a carnival with a burlesque show featuring a tummy-rifiic dancer in a Catwoman mask. In fact, I’m counting on it. Cops are there searching for Bill Martin (Richard Coogan, TV’s Captain […]
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Bait 3D
Bait 3D marks the third new shark movie I have screened for review within little more than a week’s time, right behind Jersey Shore Shark Attack and Shark Week. The bar may be set low, but Bait was better than either of them. A Deep Blue Sea from Down Under, Bait strings viewers along for […]
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Full Metal Jacket: 25th Anniversary Blu-ray Book
Time has a way of restoring balance, however. Platoon’s reputation has decreased along with that of its irascible director, and when’s the last time you heard anyone talk about The Last Emperor? If ever? Meanwhile, love for Full Metal Jacket continues to pile up, and the war epic currently stands tall at No. 81 on […]
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Dexter: The Sixth Season
As season six opens, he worries whether his dark traits will take root in his toddler, but the arc of these dozen hours is tracking down the so-called “Doomsday Killer” — actually, killers plural: two end-times zealots (Edward James Olmos and a clench-jawed Colin Hanks) who believe God wants them to bring about the end […]
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Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Co-directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) have chronicled the so-called “West Memphis Three” almost as long as the three young men at the story’s center were affixed with that unfortunate label for being accused of and convicted of killing a trio of boys in small-town Arkansas in 1993. The first […]
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The Bourne Legacy
Director Tony Gilroy, who penned the previous Bourne films and wrote this one with his brother Dan, jump-starts the series by beginning — sorta — where 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum left off. The events of that film have prompted U.S. intelligence honchos to scrap a super-clandestine spy program by way of killing off a small […]
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It’s a TV-on-DVD summer spectacular!
Breaking Bad: The Complete Fourth Season If Breaking Bad‘s current fifth and final season goes south (not bloody likely), at least season four delivers a climax that could have serves as a satisfying serious closer, were it not renewed. But it was, and no wonder: Bryan Cranston may have the tube’s richest character arc, as […]
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Above Suspicion: Set 1
Emetophobes may wish to shield their eyes in the opening scenes of the pilot, as rookie Detective Constable Anna Travis (the magnetic Kelly Reilly, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) has trouble getting used to the job’s sights and smells when it comes to corpses. She eventually proves useful elsewhere, when her superior, the brusque […]
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Dark Crimes
Among the 50 titles here — yes, 50 — are some genuine classics, such as 1950’s D.O.A., Edward G. Robinson in 1947’s The Red House and Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss, but I don’t recommend picking up this massive set for those three, as much better prints can be found from, respectively, Image Entertainment, Film Chest […]