Director Glenn Miller made Zoombies and Aquarium of the Dead and writer Anna Rasmussen wrote Shark Side of the Moon. That means they are the people to create a movie where Santa (John P. Fowler) encounters three little cats — Patches, Mittens and Hairball — who create an allergic reaction that nearly ruins the holiday until the kittens jump in the sleigh and fix things. All because Julia (Nicola Lambo) wouldn’t let her son Tommy (Ezra James Colbert) keep them.
There’s also a story about how obsessed Santa conspiracy believing neighbor Marcus Bramble (Evan Boymel) grew up with Julia but another cat-inspired encounter with Santa caused them to never be friends again. Marcus looks for a video tape to copy over to prove Santa exists and nearly uses his copy of Sharknado. This is because Asylum made this movie.
There’s a moment where one of the kittens is in danger and it kind of upset me. I watch Italian cannibal movies all the time and I worried about the cats in a Christmas movie.
Somehow, The Day of the Locust is one of the few movies where William Atherton isn’t the villain. Well, he’s not the nicest guy, but he’s not the main heel here, not that anyone is the hero.
Tod is a recent Yale graduate Tod Hackett, who has just come to Hollywood to paint backgrounds in movies. He settles in the falling apart San Bernardino Arms, an apartment building that houses those at the start or the close of their Hollywood dreams.
There’s actress Faye Greener (Karen Black), her dying vaudevillian father Harry (Burgess Meredith), Adore Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) whose stage mother (Gloria LeRoy) is pushing to be a movie star, the always angry Abe Kusich (Billy Barty) and his girlfriend Mary (Lelia Goldoni) and accountant Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland). Everyone is in love with Faye but she only wants to settle for a rich man, even if she plays with the hearts of Tod, Homer and stuntmen Earle Shoop (Bo Hopkins) and Miguel (Pepe Serna).
Homer and Faye try to save her father by bringing him to be healed at a church led by Big Sister (Geraldine Page) that is based on the ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson. For a few moments, being in front of the crowd gives him a surge of adrenaline and he’s able to do one of his old routines before dying that night.
Faye moves in with Homer but she tells Tod that it’s a sexless relationship. At a party later, Homer watches helplessly as every man there makes a play for the woman he gives everything to. She screams and calls him a spy and launches a vase at him. Later, Tod catches her making love to Miguel, as does Earle, which leads to a fight.
The film closes as the entire cast is near the premiere of The Buccaneer. Tod tries to speak to Homer who just stares into the void. The only thing that brings him to reality is when Adore throws a rock at his head. He loses his mind and chases the boy through the night, finally catching him and repeatedly stomping him to death as the entire crowd watches. This unleashes a horrific riot that takes over the premiere, thought to be mania over the movie but instead feeling like the end of the world as Tod sees his paintings come to life and chase him into the night. He leaves Hollywood behind and the film closes on his abandoned apartment and Faye crying as she sees the flowers he left inside a crack in the wall.
I didn’t even mention that William Castle is the director of the movie within the movie!
Directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) and written by Waldo Salt (Coming Home) from the book by Nathaniel West, this is one of the most depressing and nihilistic movies that I have ever seen, one that shows that all of these characters are lost, their dreams are meaningless and the moments of connection that they have mean nothing to them other than sheer biological impulses. The only one of them that will be remembered is Homer and that will be as a child murderer.
The Arrow Video blu ray of The Day of the Locust has a brand new 2K remaster by Arrow Films from the original negative. Extras include a new oral history audio commentary conducted by writer and film historian Lee Gambin, featuring assistant directors Leslie Asplund and Charles Ziarko, production associate Michael Childers, actors Grainger Hines and Pepe Serna among others; an appreciation of the film by critic Glenn Kenny; a discussion with film historian Elissa Rose; a visual essay on the film’s themes with Gambin and behind the scenes image galleries. It comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch and has an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Pamela Hutchinson. You can get it from MVD.
Go Nagai created Cutie Honey, Devilman, Mazinger Z, the first erotic manga with Harenchi Gakuen, Getter Robo and Violence Jack. At one point, he was drawing and writing five weekly manga publications at the same time.
He also created the characters and did the designs for this movie, Lion-Girl, which is directed and written by Kurando Mitsutake (Maniac Driver).
Meteors hit the Earth and one out of every thousand people survived. Only Japan wasn’t sunk — an inversion of Submersion of Japan and the parody The World Sinks Except Japan — and as war rages endlessly, the meteors transform humans into demonic hybrids known as Anoroc that kill humans, all while a new Bushido code emerges and samurais rule the lawless lands.
There is a hero and that is Botan (Tori Griffith). Her parents died from being transformed into Anorocs on the day of her birth and she was raised by her Uncle Ken (Damian Toofeek Raven) to defend the weak. She’s also Lion-Girl, the rebel who Shogun Fujinaga (Tomuki Kimura) wants to destroy.
Botan and Ken are asked to deliver Herbert (Matt Standley) and Mayumi (Shelby Lee Parks) to a safe area where Ogi Agan (Stefanie Estes) will protect them. Joined by the cybernetic Marion (Joey Iwanaga), they battle Anorocs under the command of Kaisei Kishi (Derek Mears, who has played Swamp Thing, Jason and a Predator).
I have to confess that I totally loved this movie. I realize that it’s a mess and the CGI is goofy but it feels like reading a whole bunch of manga all at once while you’re on drugs, which I think was the idea, and it just hammers you with ideas, fights, blood, nudity — male, female and trans — and even some moments of humor that made me laugh out loud, such as when Lion-Girl stops the exposition and says, “We’ll get into that some other time.” There are also some definite mentions of the pandemic and Trump, which this was made during.
If they made another of these, I’ll definitely watch it. It’s long but I split it across a few days and ended up looking forward to each section even if the story makes less sense, but sometimes, you just go with it when you have a heroine with a gold lion mask going all scanner — they literally call the battles scanning and reference Buckaroo Banzai’s “Wherever you go, there you are — instead of being hypercritical. Don’t let yourself get in the way of a good time.
The Cleopatra blu ray of this movie has a director’s commentary, an introduction by Go Nagai, a making of and footage from the premiere. You also get an image gallery and a trailer. Get it now from MVD.
Nina (Mimi Rogers) is an art dealer. When she gets her weekly massage, a new masseur shows up, Fitch (Bryan Brown). What follows is a long discussion and a connection as he rubs her body. When asked what it was like to be nude for the entire film, Rogers said it didn’t always feel great. “I thought it would, but nothing I did felt good. I was either straining my neck or laying on a cold metal table. I did that because I thought it was a fascinating script with interesting dialogue. Sort of like My Dinner With Andre with a massage table. Also, it was an opportunity to work with Nicolas Roeg. He waited for me to have my baby so we shot four-and-a-half months after I gave birth. My body was not what it usually is.”
Rogers and Brown are both good in this and if it weren’t for their chemistry and ability to make the dialogue about the meaning of life sound conversational, this would feel like a movie that just wanted to have nudity throughout. Yet it never feels like its exploiting her and instead it feels like you learn so much about both of them. I’d have never watched this Nicholas Roeg movie if it wasn’t for it coming out on blu ray and I’m glad that I did.
The Unearthed Films blu ray of this movie also has a TV edit. You can get it from MVD.
Directed by star Pietro Germi and written by Ennio De Concini based on That Awful Mess on Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda, The Facts of Murder starts with a mystery. How did someone have time to find the valuable jewelry in Commendatore Anzaloni’s apartment and get away so quickly? The police, led by Inspector Ciccio Ingravallo (Germi) start to follow Assuntina (Claudia Cardinale), the maid of next-door neighbor Liliana Banducci (Eleonora Rossi Drago), but soon Liliana’s body is found by her cousin Dr. Valdarena (Franco Fabrizi). He removes a letter before the police arrive and hey, why did Liliana change her will last week?
This appears as part of Radiance’s World Noir, along with Witness In the City and I Am Waiting. It’s intriguing to see noir from a country that usually gives his giallo, so this was a great watch.
The Radiance Films blu ray release of The Facts of Murder has a new 4K restoration of the film by L’Immagine Ritrovata at the Cineteca di Bologna, plus a new interview with Pietro Germi expert Mario Sesti, a documentary about Pietro Germi, and a visual essay by Paul A. J. Lewis on the presence of noir trends in Italian cinema and the evolution of the genre. You can get the film from MVD.
Blackhat made $19.7 million at the box office against a budget of $70 million, which makes it a bomb, but does how many people came to see a movie on initial release mean it’s a bad movie? Nope.
When a nuclear plant in Hong Kong goes into meltdown and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gets hacked, it turns out that Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) of the People’s Liberation Army cyberwarfare unit designed the code behind both systems. He asks that his college roommate, Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), be let out of prison to stop the hacker before they further destabilize several companies and governments. This includes a plan to sabotage a large dam and destroy several major tin mines in Malaysia, with the hacker buying into different futures that will profit from these attacks.
What emerges is a mix between art film and Hollywood action; what’s strange is that no person who spends hours typing on a computer — trust me, I know — looks as good as Hemsworth. But you know, only Michael Mann could direct a scene about hacking a PDF into obtaining a password and making it look that sexy and vibrant. That takes an artistic skill that so few directors lack.
Viola Davis, who plays FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett, and Holt McCallany, who is Deputy United States Marshal Jessup, are both really good in this, but they’re both always the best parts of any film they appear in.
I kind of like how by the end of this movie, it’s basically Hathaway and Dawai’s sister Chen Lien (Tang Wei) against the hackers and the world, having only each other to depend on.
The new release from Arrow also has a director’s cut. The changes were explained on the site Kevrania and they include:
Added scenes:
A brief scene of a cargo ship being denied entry into Rotterdam
An introduction to FBI Agent Carol Barrett and the Chicago exchange IT Director Jeff Robichaud.
Nicholas Hathaway, Mark Jessup and Chen Lien are tailed upon arriving in Hong Kong and subsequently lose the tail.
Removed scenes:
Hathaway is asked by the warden about hacking the prison accounting network. When he refuses to do that, he is put into solitary.
Barrett and Chen realize they should be searching for soy sellers instead of soy buyers.
A nuclear power plant worker explains what is happening to the plant.
Hathaway changing the meet location.
It’s great that Arrow listened to fans and added the director’s cut, which is part of the Arrow Video 4K UHD release of Blackhat. It also has the US and international versions of the film, new audio commentary by critics Bryan Reesman and Max Evry, interviews with cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, behind the scenes features, an image gallery, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Doug John Miller and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andrew Graves. You can get it from MVD. There’s also a blu ray version.
Directed by Yuzo Kawashima and written by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba), this is the story of the Maeda family. They live in a small apartment and are always ready to hide just how much money they have, all so they can continue the plans of their father figure, ex-naval officer Tokizo (Yunosuke Ito).
Tomoko (Yūko Hamada) is sleeping with a rich author, but is always asking for more money, always for the family. Minoru (Manamitsu Kawabata) works at a music talent agency and is stealing money. As for where it all goes, Tokizo is investing in a new Japanese military while Minoru keeps spending it all on Yukie (Ayako Wakao) who is going to figure all of this out because she’s the accountant at the same company. But the joke is on them, because Yukie has been sleeping with more than one man, all so she can have her own hotel.
Now the author can evict them, the family can sell everything they’ve bought and another scam will have to be created. At least this isn’t the same poverty they dealt with at the end of the war. Somehow, this is all within an apartment.
The Radiance Films blu ray release of Elegant Beast has a new 4K restoration, an interview with film critic Toshiaki Sato, an appreciation by filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda, a visual essay by critic Tom Mes on post-war architecture in Japanese cinema and a trailer, all with a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Midori Suiren. You can get this from MVD.
Delight Scottsdale (Kendra Rainey-King, who also wrote this movie; she’s written more than fifty books as well as another movie, Knee Deep) lost her mother while she was being born and has gone through foster homes into a life on her own, struggling every step of the way, seeking a family of her own.
Nearly all of Rainey-King’s books seemingly have a plus sized girl overcoming the odds and becoming a confident big queen by the end. It’s right there in the intro to all of her novels — including The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice which is read by one of the characters in the film, which is wild because it’s product placement for an author’s book in the middle of said author’s auteur project and I have never seen a thing like this in my life — like the sales copy for this story, which says, “Delight isn’t your normal plus size girl. She is a shy girl from Texas who came to college with a dollar and a dream, until she meets the best man possible, Ashton, who opens all of the right doors for her, and her legs.”
Damn, girl.
More than just booty call on Christmas — I mean, do it, Santa is resetting the list — Delight is in love with Ashton (Draper Wynston) who ends up being an African King whose mother doesn’t want anything to do with the new American in his life.
Somehow, it seems simple, but this movie is two hours and twenty-five minutes long, complete with call and response squads of SSBBW dancers, some wearing gold masks. It’s like Crash in that this has a huge cast and intertwining tales and man, it was a movie I couldn’t stop watching even when I paused it and realized there were ninety minutes remaining when I was certain that there couldn’t be anything else.
This movie is very uplifting and also filled with love scenes with songs playing in them with titles like “Cum Here” by Honey Banks, “Picture Yo Body” by 3 Piece, “Roll Me Up” by Fat Pimp and “Touch It” by DSVN. Judging by the credits, this has a cast of thousands in it.
Obviously, I’m ready for everything else that director Lakisha Avery Stewart and Kendra Rainey-King make. This is not a Christmas movie other than one scene, but it was a gift to me.
THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K Ultra HD is available at Best Buy.
The series has made more that $3.34 billion dollars worldwide on a $401 million dollar budget. When these movies came out, there was nothing bigger. I’m not certain we have anything like these any longer that draw a teen and female audience to theaters. A reboot has been talked about but even with the 15th anniversary here, there’s no news.
There is this set which includes all five movies — Twilight, New Moon, Eclipseand Breaking Dawn Part 1and Part 2 — and wow, its packed with gorgeous SteelBook® packaging and so many extras, including a 6-part The Making of The Twilight Saga documentary.
Want some extras from our site?
Here’s the podcast we did years ago on the first movie:
Did you ever know I went to Forks?
“In the state of Washington, under a near constant cover of clouds and rain, there’s a small town named Forks. Population, 3,120 people. This is where I’m moving.” That’s what Bella Swan said when her mother hooked up with a minor league baseball pitcher and she ended up going across the country to live with her dad. As Bella prepared to move in, she felt only despair and a marked lack of joy. I completely understand how she felt and I was only traveling by car and ferry to see the town that the Twilight books and movies were based in.
Here’s something I learned as I was researching my trip — after I took it, mind you. While Twilight and its sequels are set in the town, not a single scene was filmed there. Nope, most of the movies were filmed in Oregon and some parts of Washington. Not in Forks. Zillow.com even called the Forks Chamber of Commerce to verify this and learned that yes, not one scene was shot in the town.
That’s probably because the location is very remote. And Washington state doesn’t make it easy for people to film there, with no tax breaks or incentives, which is why the filmmakers mostly shot in Oregon, Vancouver and Louisiana.
But Sam, tell us about Forks.
You got it.
Forks is located in Clallam County in the Olympic Peninsula and was incorporated on August 28, 1945. It’s a small town — around 3,500 people — and gets its name because it is quite literally near the forks in the Quillayute, Bogachiel, Calawah, and Sol Duc rivers.
Prior to what the internet told me was the town’s boom in tourism — more of that later — most people in the town are employed by the two jails and from sport fishing.
So you may wonder, how did I find myself on a ferry bound for the home of Edward, Bella and Jacob? Well, I love my wife. And I indulge her. And her aunt had suggested this. And soon, we’d be enjoying “27 minutes of our lives that we’d never get back,” to quote Becca.
First off, the Forks High School looks nothing like the place where Edward saved Bella from that car, nor where they were lab partners. No, instead it’s a small school filled with teens that scowl instead of glow. After all, Twilight’s author Stephenie Meyer never visited Forks when writing any of the books.
Across the street, we noticed Leppell’s Flowers & Gifts, which was run by a nice-seeming older couple. As they were working on the concrete in front, we had to head around the back and go through an alley and a hidden door to find the store that some call Twilight Central. That’s when we noticed this tour bus!
We didn’t look into the tour and after spending just a bit of time looking at the scrapbook supplies, we bid the store farewell. Perhaps it’s just as well, as this amazing Yelp review did the store no favors.
We drove through the town some more, saw Bella’s truck (which probably wasn’t the one used in the movie), went in two more Twilight themed gift shops and then headed out of town to Thriftway/Forks Outfitters. For being in the midst of some of the greatest coffee in the world, we had the best coffee drinks of our entire trip at their cafe! And get this — a Twilight menu! That’s how you do business!
They had used Twilight movies and an actual rental store within this general store that seems to answer every need of the folks in Forks. Even better, their deli offers some choices for the discriminating Twilight fan, made of course with high quality Kretschmar deli meats and cheeses:
Why doesn’t Jacob get a panini? Where is Bella’s BLT? I have so many questions and once you’re in Forks, you never get any answers.
At least Becca got this lighter, which will keep her smoking for years after she has planned to quit:
On the way out of town and back to the ferry, an overall three-hour-plus trip, we stopped to get gas and caffeine. That’s when I met Forks, WA local favorite Barry, who had on no shirt and a jacket as he careened around the store, screaming at people that he was about to go to the casino (One Eyed Jacks?) and do some drugs. After that, he followed an employee outside who was about to cry and told her he was sorry about her sister, but some people have it coming. Barry seemed like a real pip.
Goodbye, Forks! Thank you for showing us the place that inspired a movie that no one has really cared about since 2012. I kid — most of the people in town seemed genuinely nice and totally not about to kill us as we wandered their theme stores, ala Captain Spaulding from House of 1000 Corpses.
Want to learn more about Forks? Sure you do! Check out their official site!
Don’t forget to buy THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K Ultra HD at Best Buy.
Bella (Kristen Stewart), who has just given birth, is now a vampire. After Edward (Robert Pattinson) helps her satisfy her initial thirst, she meets their Renesmee. The rest of the Cullens and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) stay nearby and when he acts possessive toward her daughter, Bella argues with him and learns that he has imprinted on her. He goes even further by transforming into a wolf in front of her father (Billy Burke) and telling him that she’s a vampire.
Irina (Maggie Grace) believes that Renesmee is an Immortal child, a vampire that can’t be controlled and who can kill many people. The Volturi have outlawed these beings and are coming to destroy her. We see a brutal fight in which nearly everyone dies but it’s just a vision from Alice (Ashley Greene) to Aro (Michael Sheen), who still wants the battle. Then the Cullens reveal another half-human, half-vampire.
Oh yeah — somehow Bella has learned how to shield her thoughts from Edward because you know, this is totally an X-Men movie. She lets her defenses down and they reveal their love for one another. Both are happy that Renesmee will have Jacob to protect her.
I have reached the end of the Twilight Saga. Can I join the Volturi now?
As part of THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 has extras like a commentary track by Bill Condon, another part of the series-length documentary, extended scenes and a music video for Green Day’s “The Forgotten.” Get this set exclusively from Best Buy.
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