New Religion (2022): Miyabi (Kaho Seto) has lost her daughter when she falls from the balcony, which puts her in a dark place, working as an escort in a basement somewhere with two other women. Sure, she has a new guy, but one of her co-workers — Aiwaza (Daiki Nunami) — loses her mind and kills a whole bunch of people with a knife.

One of Aiwaza’s prize clients — Oka (Satoshi Oka) — now needs someone to take care of his needs, so Miyabi takes over. His needs? He takes photos of women, slowly, strangely and in ways that make them feel like they’re being dissected. Yes, that’s strange. But what’s weird is that his house is either always pitch black or blindingly red. Strange enough? What if he had no vocal cords and now spoke through the sound system of his home at body-rattling volume? And what if, with each photo that Oka takes, Miyabi gets closer to seeing her dead daughter?

Also, none of this could be happening. Or all of it.

Directed and written by Keishi Kondo, this is not a movie to go into hoping for a straight-up horror film. But for those willing to journey toward its heart of darkness, there’s something strange and wonderful here.

Neu Mirrors (2025): “Neu Mirrors is a spin-off short film that attempts to answer certain unanswered questions of I and begins just after a scene in the previous film.”

Aizawa wakes up in a strange hotel room as a voice calls him from his earphone. Aizawa notices a man in a white shirt in the room with a photo book at his feet. There are the faces of many strangers and his own face printed on it.

Things don’t get any less weird from there.

This film takes on blue instead of red as its primary color. I love that it can be seen as an expansion or meditation on the past film or entirely on its own. Either way, director and writer Keishi Kondo is a force that creates otherworldly art.

Extras include an interview with the director, behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes, audio commentary on the film, an early concept version of the movie, a crowdfunding teaser, a trailer, an international trailer and a slipcase and reversible sleeves with original artwork for both films. You can buy this from Terra Cotta.

Based on the Richard Matheson novel and directed and written by David Koepp (who wrote I Come In Peace, Toy Soldiers, Jurassic Park and Carlito’s Way and directed Secret Window, Mortdecai and You Should Have Left), Stir of Echoes is about phone lineman Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon), who can see and speak to the dead after being hypnotized by his sister-in-law Lisa (Illena Douglas). Now, he can see Samantha (Jennifer Morrison), a girl who has been missing for six months and who has been killed.

Koepp was afraid to show Mathson the script, as he was such a hero to him. The author said, “I’m sure he’s done a good job of it. I do know what he’s done before, and it’s quite good. He has a very good touch.”

When this came out, I’m sure many passed it off as a clone of The Sixth Sense, despite being written forty years before. Bacon is incredible in this and no one seems to remember just how good he is in it.

A SciFi sequel, Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming, came out in 2007. It has nothing to do with this movie to the point that if you told me that it was never planned to be a sequel and they stuck the name on it, I would believe you.

The Lionsgate release of this film has a 4K UHD disc and a Blu-ray disc. Extras include an audio commentary with writer/director David Koepp, interviews with Koepp, cinematographer Fred Murphy and director David Koepp, actress Kathryn Erbe, production designer Nelson Coates; making of featurettes; scene comparisons; screen tests; deleted scenes; trailers; TV ads and promos; a music video and more. You can order it from Diabolik DVD.

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.