Lucy (Rosanna Arquette) and Monte (David Bowie) work at Dali, a super trendy NYC nightspot. They’re both in debt, underpaid and dealing with all sorts of weirdness in their lives when they make up their minds to join up with lingerie designer Viv (Eszter Balint) and rob their workplace. But they’d have to be good at being criminals to pull that off. They are nowhere near even OK.

Also released as The Incident,  Houdini and Company, The Robbery and Shag-O-Rama, this has some strange folks in it. Even the protagonist, Lucy, wants to be Houdini. Plus, the cast has several intriguing actors like Buck Henry, Marlene Matlin, Vivica Lindfors, Maura Tierney, Andre Gregory, Kathy Kinney and James Avery. Even Iman and Julian Lennon are in this.

There’s nothing really like it, so to get a better version of this after years of assembly cuts and producers’ versions is pretty cool.

Extras include an introduction by director Richard Shepard; commentary with Shepard, actors Rosanna Arquette and Eszter Balint, co-producer Sarah Jackson and co-screenwriter Tamar Brott, moderated by Cereal at Midnight host Heath Holland; commentary by Director Richard Shepard; a making-of; a photo gallery with commentary by Richard Shepard; director and theatrical cuts; a 2024 trailer; the original trailer; a limited edition slipcase and booklet with essays from film historian Graham Rinaldi and director Richard Shepard. You can order this film from MVD.

This movie is Dr. Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill) informing the United States Senate Committee on Space Sciences about an alien invasion, not of creatures, but of a virus. After a satellite crashes in Piedmont, New Mexico, everyone dies. Only two people have survived: 69-year-old alcoholic Peter Jackson (George Mitchell) and six-month-old infant Manuel Rios (Robert Soto).

Directed by Robert Wise and written by Nelson Gidding, this is based on the Michael Crichton book. The Infectious Diseases Society of America magazine, Clinical Infectious Diseases, said that this movie is the “most significant, scientifically accurate, and prototypic of all films” of the killer virus genre.

You may not find that exciting, because it’s so close to the very dense book. I remember my mom telling me about this as a kid, because the ads for it upset me so much that she had to explain to me what it was about or I would have never gone to sleep.

The Arrow Video release of this movie has a 4K restoration from the original camera negative by Arrow Films, audio commentary by critic Bryan Reesman, an appreciation by critic Kim Newman, archive featurettes including a making of and A Portrait of Michael Crichton; highlights from the annotated and illustrated shooting script by Nelson Gidding; a theatrical trailer, TV spots and radio spots; an image gallery; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring writing by Peter Tonguette and select archive material and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Corey Brickley. You can order The Andromeda Strain from MVD.

Wolfgang Petersen made Das Boot and The Perfect Storm, so he was the best person to probably direct the sequel to The Poseidon Adventure. It was filmed on large-scale sets and soundstages and had practical effects and stunts to go with the digitally-enhanced water effects.

Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell) is a NYC firefighter on vacation with his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) and her boyfriend Christian (Mike Vogel). They’re on board the Poseidon with gambler Dylan Jones (Josh Lucas), Maggie James (Jacinda Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), architect Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss), waiter Marco Valentine (Freddy Rodriguez), singer Gloria (people in the place, it’s Fergie),  Captain Michael Bradford (Andre Braugher), Lucky larry (Kevin Dillon) and a girl who snuck on, Elena Morales (Mía Maestro).

What follows is wholesale movie star destruction and no one is safe. Seriously, an air conditioning unit falls smack dab on Turtle’s head. Fergie drowns. A rogue wave kills almost everyone else before that. This movie doesn’t give two shits if you’re famous. In fact, it demands that. People you don’t expect to get nuked? Watch out.

Roger Ebert said, “Wolfgang Petersen’s heart isn’t in it. He is too wise a director to think this is first-rate material and too good a director to turn it into enjoyable trash.”

The 70s were the best time for disaster movies. This is good enough, but as you would figure, the original is better.

Extras on this Arrow Video release include interviews with director of photography John Seale, production designer William Sandell, visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis and make-up effects on-set supervisor Michael Deak; a retrospective on the film by Heath Holland; featurettes on at the film’s production, featuring interviews with cast and crew, the set design and production assistant Malona Voigt. There’s a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page. You can order it from MVD.

Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Zora Matthews (Nia Long) learns from a blood test that the man she thought was her father wasn’t; her mother, Sarah (Whoopi Goldberg), has been lying, as her real father was from a sperm bank. She asked for a smart black guy. She had no idea that Hal Jackson (Ted Danson) was really the father.

Zora and her friend Tea Cake (Will Smith) find out that Hal is a big used car salesman, the kind of guy who’ll fight a bear on TV to sell an automobile. She tells him he’s her father, and he couldn’t care less. But soon, he falls for Sarah and feels like a father to Zora, which is a strange character arc when he comes off as a man who cares about nothing and has a beautiful, much younger girlfriend, Stacy (Jennifer Tilly).

That said, the whole point of this movie is “How could Ted Danson possibly have sex with Whoopi Goldberg?” Then, they started dating in real life, just like pro wrestling love angles that always end up becoming a shoot. Then, after that, Danson was in blackface during a 1993 Friars Club roast. Goldberg wrote some of his jokes and would defend him.

This was directed by Richard Benjamin, so it has that going for it.

Brittany (Lovely Joyce Glenn) accidentally shot a hostage, which means that, like every cop should, she’s going to therapy with a doctor named Stephanie (Sarah Pribis). But her boss, Captain Sommers (an unrecognizable Lorenzo Lamas, the Snake Eater himself), wants her back on the streets to help solve the case of a killer who shoves chess pieces into the mouths of his or her victims. In the middle of her PTSD, she’s also trying to rebuild her relationship with her father, Marcus (Dorien Hill), a former chess grand master and judge.

Directed by Jamal Hill and written by Patrice Escoto, this has a killer going for revenge against the men who she feels set her father up. It also has Brittany running out to stop them when she figures out the real killer — you may in minutes — and her cigar-smoking cop boss says, “No, Brittany. Wait for backup,” with all the urgency of a bus driver announcing the next stop. I like the idea that the killer smashes out teeth to jam chess pieces in the mouths of victims, but after that, this gets slow. A lot of sitting at computers and no one is yelling, “Enhance. Enhance! ENHANCE!” Come on. Don’t we still do that?

Someone took the time to share this quote on IMDB: Captain Sommers: There’s been another murder.

Someone else reviewed it there and said, “I am not sure if I like this movie or not.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Rockey Black (Surprise 2, Surprise 3) and written by Denise Mone’t (Killer Zaddy, Black Santa), this is a home invasion film ala Tubi: the acting and filming may not be up to the standards you expect, but everyone is going for it. Shot in 6 days, Tubi Originals are nearly the last gasp of the direct-to-video movies we all miss and so many people aren’t watching these. I’m here to tell you that you’re missing something.

There are enough twists and turns in this to fill multiple movies, along with a final one that seemingly sets up a sequel, which would make the name The Ultimate Vendetta kind of an oxymoron if the next one is The Ultimate Vendetta 2.

This is a movie made for yelling at the screen during. For going wild and cheering, for just forgetting that we live in a pretty horrible time, but you can always escape to watch people make the dumbest mistakes and trust the wrong people. Tubi Originals forever.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Chris Stokes goes for something different here in his latest Tubi Original, going away from the world of psychosexual crime and sequels to explore the inner city world that fuels boxing.

Sean (Robert Ri’chard), a former boxer, comes back into his sons’ lives to face his most formidable challenge. Fatherhood. With his oldest son, Sean Jr. (Akheem Cheatam), who is starting to compete in professional boxing, the father must step up to guide him not just in the ring, but in life.

Sean and his family’s enemy is Big Phil (Benzino, joining the Stokes acting group), who has had it in for the father for years. His son also wants to be a boxer, and he does everything he can to make him a winner. Of course, the final boxing battle will be between the two of them, with Sean’s mother appearing as a ghost to get him to his feet once he’s knocked out.

The boxing on this feels like either dancing or video games, but who cares? The only question I have is, “Why does this movie have to be 2 hours and 25 minutes long?”I get that Stokes wanted to make a boxing epic, but his films have always been lean. That choice aside, he makes the most of his budget to make the crowd scenes look full and the fights feel exciting. At least Stokes sets up a sequel at the end with the promise of a street fight with a $25,000 buy-in. If he makes it and it’s on Tubi, I’m there.

You can watch this on Tubi.