Ridiculously successful, EMI’s “Now That’s What I Call Music!” compilation series is up to volume 36, with some themed offshoots here and there. The latest of those is “Now That’s What I Call the 1990s” or, as I dub it, “Now That’s What I Call Officially Feeling Old.” Subtitled as “the alternative collection,” hardly any […]
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Sherlock: Season One
It’s tough to get too excited about the year’s best films when you compare them to the year’s best television shows. With rare exception (read: “Inception“), the boob tube kicked the big screen’s arse left and right in terms of quality all year long, with work like “Mad Men,” “Dexter” and “Breaking Bad.” Add “Sherlock” […]
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The Expendables
Your Blu-Ray player can’t get any manlier than when it’s spinning “The Expendables.” Sylvester Stallone’s action extravaganza is the manliest man’s man movie ever made for mankind. Your muscles expand just from watching. It doesn’t have a brain in its well-oiled body, but who needs smarts when your pores are exuding this much fun? When […]
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Between Heaven and Hell
I’m impressed by anyone who spends years to make a feature film and achieves their vision, but more than often, the end result is unsuccessful as a narrative. The Texas-lensed drama “Between Heaven and Hell” is another example “? its heart is in the right place, but the amateurish talent can’t pull it off. As […]
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The Disappearance of Alice Creed
Gemma Arterton delivers such a brave performance in “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” that she deserves to have “Bond girl” stricken from ever appearing before her name again. The Brit thriller marks the feature debut of writer/director J. Blakeson. What he’s cooked up could almost work on the Broadway stage, as it efficiently utilizes three […]
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Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series
For years, friends have cajoled me to watch the BBC’s current reboot of “Doctor Who.” Because I don’t have BBC America on my cable lineup, I had to make do with what they could show me, which amounted to maybe two episodes, but I liked what I saw. The show’s fifth season “? now available […]
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Not of This Earth
<iframe marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" style="width: 120px; height: 240px;" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=oklahgazet-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B003XL6EIA&fc1=000000&IS2=1 You can tell from the start that the 1988 remake of “Not of This Earth” is going to be a blast, because the credits are compiled using scenes from entirely different films, with their only point of commonality being owned by Roger Corman. Full of goopy monsters […]
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Iron Man: Extremis
I didn’t realize “Iron Man: Extremis” was an animated film in the “motion comics” sense, as I find that approach stilted, lazy and uninvolving. This feature-length treatment of Warren Ellis and Adi Granov’s 2006 six-issue series updates the armored Avenger’s origin for our more high-tech times. In half a dozen serialized episodes, the story of […]
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The Terror Within/Dead Space
Leave it to skinflint producer Roger Corman to remake his own films, themselves rip-offs of massive hits. Whereas 1979’s now-classic “Alien” prompted him to follow with 1982’s “Forbidden World,” he couldn’t settle for the small fortune it brought in, and remade “World” as “Dead Space” in 1990, at the height of the VHS rental age. […]
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Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam
As DC Comics’ string of PG-13 animated features go, “Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam” is more fun than any of its predecessors … probably because it isn’t a feature at all. This is a short film, which means action is as tight as the running time, keeping things ticking, clicking and kicking. The piece […]