Is TMZ helping celebrities or taking advantage of them? I think this time they’re doing the right thing, as Wendy Williams has been confined to a New York City assisted living facility, living like a prisoner, despite her claiming there is nothing wrong with her mental ability.

Harvey Levin, who has known her for decades, even claims she’s herself again. Yet no one is allowed to visit or call her. She can make calls out, which she does in this, with a long-range camera capturing her as she pushes her face against a window. It’s frankly kind of terrifying.

According to TMZ, “Wendy is permanently disabled as a result of Frontotemporal Dementia … problem is, the condition never gets better. Wendy was in bad shape a few years ago when she was drinking heavily, but she’s sober now and her mental state has radically improved … many say back to normal, yet she’s still under an incredibly restrictive guardianship.”

I think this is the absolute highest level of all Tubi TMZ docs, one that has cameramen on the sidewalk shooting up to a window where a manic Wendy Williams rants on the telephone while TMZ people speak to her on the speakerphone, kind of like how my wife and I talk to my mom but you know, this is a documentary that millions of people can watch on Tubi and not my nightly “how are you?” phone call. This is peak junk TV, the equivalent of when the Enquirer had Elvis’s body in the coffin on their cover. Still, under the guise — and maybe TMZ’s heart is in the correct place here — of saving Wendy, just like the title, except that yes, we can all watch her flip out inside an assisted living place and the art for it has her dressed up, full face of makeup, crying in abject despair. So…this is entertainment?

You can watch this on Tubi.

“Conventional wisdom says Diddy’s guilty, but his legal team is mounting a strong defense. TMZ breaks down the case that could get him off the hook.”

Yes, I have watched four of these Diddy docs and this one has someone claiming that the bottles of baby oil were for necromancy.

I had to look that up and learned that TikTok gossip claimed that one of Diddy’s lawyers, Anthony Ricco, quit due to an alleged necromancy charge. Except that it isn’t illegal.

As Diddy is in jail waiting for his trial on three federal charges of transportation for prostitution, sex trafficking and racketeering with conspiracy — charge that he and his team deny — TMZ keeps making these shows and for some reason, my need to watch every Tubi Original means that I will keep watching them.

They even get together a mock jury and try Diddy in this, something that doesn’t seem all that ethical as it could convince people in the real trial.

But anyways, freak offs get mentioned, your favorite TMZ people are snarky and there will be at least ten more of these. Of course, I will be watching and reporting back to you.

You can watch this on Tubi.

It is yet another movie I watched on an airplane, which is the best place to watch as you’re going to be happy you lived through the flight and not concentrating on how you wasted your life watching this. Yes, it’s another M. Night Shyamalan movie. Still, this time, it’s a vanity project because his daughter Saleka Night Shyamalan plays Lady Raven, the Taylor Swift of his universe, a singer beloved by young ladies who draws Riley (Ariel Donoghue) and her father Cooper (Josh Hartnett) to her concert. The problem? Cooper is a serial killer known as The Butcher, and this is all a trap — get it? — to arrest him.

He’s been hunted by Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), an FBI profiler who has enacted her own parent trap — ugh, get it? — to arrest him.

The review from Benjamin Lee in The Guardian sums up so much of how I feel about Shyamalan’s work: “Trap is a thriller that incorrectly thinks it’s fiendishly smart. Maybe if it had been more aware of how stupid it actually is, it might have been a lot more fun.”

Each successive film from him — Old is nearly unwatchable and Knock at the Cabin was infuriating —  is dumber to the point that no human being acts like a real person, as if it was made by an alien who has just come to Earth with the kind of budget that allows him to keep making shitty movies no matter what. The Happening and The Last Airbender would end most careers, but here we are, almost two decades later, and we get a new Shyamalan movie nearly every year. And each time, I walk in saying, “This is it. This is the one.” And again, like burning my hand on the stove and never remembering that open flames can set my hand ablaze and how much it hurts, I watch his movies and wonder why my fingers are singed.

Here’s the pitch: “What if Silence of the Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert?” I hate that today’s movies keep using that superior film as a reference point and can’t come close to it. This was shot on 35mm and had a huge budget, but it had all the ideas of the lowest-budget streamer.

This feels six hours long with multiple end points that just end up being the next part of the movie, the best example of a movie where I look at how much time is left and being shocked that 35 minutes have passed and I am only a third of the way through. By the end, which has a surprise- he is ready to escape again- I was praying this was the movie’s end. It was, but then the post-credits sequence made me worried that this would have even more.

Look, I know I love some terrible filmmakers. Mattei, Franco, you name it. But yet, their movies speak to me, despite their ineptitude at times, because they are made by someone who seems to love making movies while making money. And I guess that M. Night loves movies too, but he should really embrace his inner scumbag. If his films had any edge or felt dangerous or scuzzy, I’d probably be one of his most prominent apologists. Instead, I’m covering my burned hand with creams and salves, wondering how I got into this situation all over again.

During the dizzy spells of COVID-19, I sought something to zone out to. All I needed to know was that this is a sexy all-Italiana Commedia with Joan Collins—already 41 and too old for Hollywood and yet not at her full sex symbol status yet—as a woman tempting a married soccer referee. Could a movie be more ready for me to watch?

Carmelo Lo Cascio (Lando Buzzanca) is based on famous soccer — football, right? — ref Concetto Lo Bello, but here he’s a ref in small town games who has the fantastic opportunity to be in charge of one of the biggest games in the sport. Along the way — and set to a score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, who we know as Oliver Onions, as well as the song “(I’m) Football Crazy” sung by soccer player Giorgio Chinaglia, we see how driven this man is, even putting his marriage to Laura (Gabriella Pallotta) off to the side, giving everything to the game, ruining his heart by taking amphetamines.

But you know, it’s a comedy.

That means that sportswriter Elena Sperani (Collins) is all over him, yet the man tries to remain chaste. A short-haired, super-stylish 1970s Joan Collins? A man is only as pure as his options, you know? What could keep him even carrying about anything other than this creature of carnal perfection?

Also appearing: Elisabeth Turner (Beyond the Door, Cannibals In the Streets), Marisa Solinas and, you knew it, Carla Mancini. Director Luigi Filippo D’Amico also wrote the script.

Thanks to White Slaves of Chinatown for posting this.

Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) is a salesman for The Lucas Clinic, a company that takes infections from celebrities and sells them to their fans. Yes, it’s possible to get sick from your obsessions or even eat meat harvested from their cells.

Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) is the company’s most famous celebrity, and her pathogens remain big sellers as her health falters. When her exclusive procurer, Derek Lessing (Reid Morgan), is fired, Syd takes over. Yet, he’s already in over his head as he’s been using his own body to carry a variety of illnesses, including one that he’s injected from Hannah that causes a series of hallucinations. He intends to sell the sickness to Arvid (Jon Pingue), whose butcher company, Astral Bodies, sells meat from human cells. But when he loses his laptop and Hannah dies from the same illness in his bloodstream, he must find out who has created a new sickness that no one can classify.

Malcolm McDowell is Dr. Abendroth, Hannah’s personal doctor and a man who has grafted her skin onto his body. There’s also the rival company Vole & Tesser, which is fighting The Lucas Clinic to be the leader in celebrity contagion.

While I wasn’t a fan of the young Cronenberg films, I enjoyed this. It has such a great concept and feels like the closest we’ve had to an ancient future movie in some time, such as the ’90s and ’00s weirdness of movies like Freejack and Paycheck, but much better. It’s a world that I wish there were more movies inside, a strange and downbeat yet weirdly hopeful slice of biomechanical celebrity worship.

The Severin release of Antiviral is scanned in 4K from the 35mm protection internegative, supervised by Brandon Cronenberg and cinematographer Karim Hussain, with 3 hours of new and archival special features including commentary by Cronenberg and Hussain; Broken Tulips, a short film by Cronenberg; a making of feature; a discussion of the restoration process; deleted scenes; an interview with production designer Arvinder Greywal; an electronic press kit; the Cannes cut of the film with an introduction by Cronenberg and a thermal camera test. You can get this from Severin. 

The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl has Akiko (Yoriko Doguchi) searching for her hometown love, Yoshioka (Kenso Kato), who has left her behind as he goes to college. But now he’s a mystery, a nobody, a small fish in a much larger pond, and she finds herself in a strange place filled with people too smart for their own good, too sexed up and too strange, such as the professor (Juzo Itami) testing the limits of shame.

According to Japan Society, this was “shelved from a Nikkatsu Roman Porno release for being too bizarre and subsequently re-edited and re-shot.” Directed and cowritten by Kunitoshi Manda and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Sweet Home), this is a sex comedy by way of a New Wave of its own by way of a final-act murder of nearly everyone we’ve met — spoilers, huh? — by a girl with a gun singing a lullaby, as well as a lead whose private parts emit some kind of blinding laser when revealed. This is one strange movie, and I love that it was turned in as if the audience for Nikkatsu’s sleaze would be cool with an art film that ends in fog and blood.

The Third Window Films Blu-ray of Bumpkin Soup has extras that include an interview with actress Yoriko Doguchi, a feature length audio commentary by Jasper Sharp, a video essay by Jerry White, author of The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Master of Fear, a slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju and a Directors Company’ edition featuring an insert by Jasper Sharp that’s limited to 2000 copies. You can learn more on the official site and order it in the U.S. from Terracotta and Diabolik DVD and in the UK from Planet of Entertainment and HMV.

When Keisuke (Jun Etô), a fisherman, stands in the path of progress by land developers, he is killed and his wife, pearl driver Migawa (Mari Shirato) is framed for his murder. Despite being assaulted and sent to an island of brothels, she plans to get bloody revenge on the politicians and criminals who have ruined her life.

Directed by Toshiharu Ikeda (Sekkusu hantâ: Sei kariudo, Evil Dead Trap) and written by Takuya Nishioka, this finds Migawa reborn as a supernatural avenger, a blood-covered heroine carrying a trident, unafraid to kill everyone in her path. Is she dead? Is she alive? What’s the story with her speaking with Buddha or the statue that is buried? You can make this any story that you want, but know that rich, powerful and evil people celebrating their new nuclear power plant will be stabbed and torn apart in the way that only a woman who has lost everything can destroy human beings.

While this has a lot of the female rape and revengeomatic themes of many Japanese pinky violence movies, it has a slower way to get there, only to let loose by the end, as you hope. This is the first time that this movie has been available in the West.

The Third Window Films Blu-ray of Mermaid Legend has extras that include an interview with writer Takuya Nishioka, audio commentary by Jasper Sharp and Tom Mes, a video essay on Toshiyuki Honda by James Balmont, a trailer and a slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju. There’s a Directors Company edition featuring an insert by Jasper Sharp that is limited to 2000 copies. You can learn more on the official site and order it in the U.S. from Terracotta and Diabolik DVD and in the UK from Planet of Entertainment and HMV.

If you owned a Korean film called The Uninvited Guest Of The Star Ferry, it probably wouldn’t sell in the West. But what if you shot new footage of Supreme Ninja having his three greatest warriors — Ninja Masters Tamashi, Baron and Harry MacQueen (Richard Harrison) — celebrate the second decade of his power by assembling the Golden Ninja Warrior and making him impervious from swords, well, then you’d be able to sell that.

Godfrey Ho. Genius or madman? Maybe both?

Two years after the three ninjas took each part of the statue to keep their master from becoming too strong, Karada killed the ninja Tamashi. Baron and Harry were manipulated into battling one another. Will Supreme Ninja take the statue and reign forever?

So yes, that’s the basic plot. What I have not captured- I really don’t know if I can- is how lunatic this movie gets, constantly introducing new characters and ideas and rarely following up on them, like if someone introduced Jack Kirby to manga and then slipped him some amphetamines. I also am writing this under the influence of COVID-19 and the way my brain has been going from lucid to foggy to sleep to pain to being exhausted in a matter of seconds feels exactly like this movie but in a way better way than not being able to breathe and needing to sanitize my hands every ten seconds.

Richard Harrison is a hero. Yes, his career was probably ruined by Godfrey Ho repeatedly re-editing him into movies. I wish there was a way I could send him some cash by Paypal to make up for that because, in this movie, he wears a camouflage ninja suit and talks on a Garfield phone, and honestly, I’ve never seen Robert Deniro do that.

There’s also a scene where one ninja can shoot fire out of his hands and another shoots ice, and you know, that’s no CGI, it’s two dudes putting their lives on the line to entertain you thirty-some years in the digital future. Also, sex scenes that refine the word gratuitous.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Neon Eagle Video release of Ninja Terminator includes two audio commentaries (one by Kenneth Brorsson and Phil Gillon of the Podcast on Fire Network and another by Asian film experts Arne Venema and Mike Leeder ), interviews with Godfrey Ho and Simon Bond, Ninjamania: How Ninjas Invaded the West, an interview with Chris Poggiali, co-author of These Fists Break Bricks, a trailer and a reversible Blu-ray wrap with alternate artwork. Get it from MVD.