By the film’s own opening-crawl admission, Document is intended as a teaching tool, so its nature is purposely freeform — and how! Narrated by the late Susan Tyrell (until the new sections), the film captures Romero and friends at work on 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, the now-classic sequel to 1968’s classic Night of the […]
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Zorro
Zorro movies always are better in theory than execution, but this is one of the more enjoyable efforts, because for once, the swashbuckling Spanish superhero is interpreted by the Italians. Therefore, the dish has a slight spaghetti-Western flavor. French screen idol Alain Delon (Le Samouraï) gallops into town as Don Diego, only to see his […]
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The Day
The film from director Douglas Aarniokoski (Highlander: Endgame) follows a group of young people wandering the country on foot several years after an event of catastrophic proportions. They include Shawn Ashmore (Frozen), Ashley Bell (The Last Exorcism), Dominic Monaghan (TV’s Lost) and Shannyn Sossamon (One Missed Call), and they spend much of the movie in […]
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Smashed
Opening today exclusively at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, 2501 W. Memorial, the indie drama is reminiscent of 1988’s Clean and Sober, also a sturdy-enough addiction movie that lives and dies on its central performance — in other words, one actor shoulders the entire burden, elevating what is otherwise unremarkable (but not incompetent) material. He […]
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Frankenstein
And, in the early ’90s, he starred as the mad doctor in Frankenstein … for TNT, not Kenneth Branagh. Provided you missed it on during its CableACE Award-nominated broadcast, the better-than-average production is now alive — alive! — on MOD DVD from Warner Archive. Bergin’s Dr. Frankenstein is even more enterprising than in the Mary Shelley […]
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The Outlaw Brothers
Yes, it comes from the Dragon Dynasty line — release No. 57, to be precise — but it’s sillier than the bulk of Dragon Dynasty product, which largely skips this period in favor of old-school Shaw Brothers. But Frankie Chan’s The Outlaw Brothers? It’s as of-the-times as a 1990 flick can be, right down to […]
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Rudyard Kipling’s Mark of the Beast
Not only is the title superimposed over an image from the indie effort, but two clickable options, two URLs and four review blurbs, as if to convince you upfront that you are about to witness brilliance. To further complicate the eyesore, the blurbs are not presented in consistent typeface, color or size. In other words, […]
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The Ghostmaker
A little research reveals it was built by an inventor of torture devices — a man considered “an evil version of Leonardo da Vinci. They called him the Devil’s Craftsman.” The coffin is a “ghost machine” constructed to allow its users to safely experience the sensation of death without actually dying. One goldfish test later, […]
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The Right to Love: An American Family
Oklahoma-born, Christian director Cassie Jaye chronicles one gay couple’s struggle for such acceptance in The Right to Love: An American Family. The documentary follows two years in the life of the Leffew family: two professional parents raising two adopted children they love dearly, and who love them back. That the parents happen to be two […]
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Nitro Circus: The Movie
Sandwiched between a faux-stakes framing device of preparing for its first live show in Las Vegas, ringleader Travis Pasternak and his Nitro Circus crew perform X Games-friendly stunts that must have earned a nod of the helmet from Evel Knievel in heaven. The guys — and lone woman, Jolene Van Vugt — often defy gravity […]