Director Johnny To (The Heroic Trio) has created two different tales of criminal masterminds going up against the Hong Kong Police Force, led by Inspector Ho Sheung-sang (Lau Ching-wan).

The Arrow blu ray set comes with both Running Out of Time and its sequel, Running Out of Time 2. Both films appear with high-definition blu ray presentations that have been scanned and restored in 2K. As always, the packaging is incredible from Arrow, with original and newly commissioned artwork by Lucas Peverill plus an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the films by David West.

Running Out of Time has new commentary by Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, as well as a second commentary by writers Laurent Cortiaud and Julien Carbon, moderated by Hong Kong film expert Stefan Hammond. There are also interviews with Carbon and Courtiaud, Johnnie To, Lau Ching-wan and Raymond Wong. Plus, there’s a feature entitled The Directors’ Overview of Carbon and Courtiaud, the trailer and an image gallery.

Running Out of Time 2 also has commentary by Djeng, a making-of, Hong Kong Stories, a documentary by director Yves Montmayeur about Hong Kong cinema mythology via Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud’s experience as writers in the HK film industry, the trailer and an image gallery.

You can get this set from MVD.

Running Out of Time (1999): Cheung Wah (Andy Lau) has been diagnosed with cancer and given four weeks to live. One night, as he eats at a diner, he takes notice of the way that Inspector Ho Sheung-sang handles a bank robbery. Impressed, he decides to play a game against the cop, giving him 72 hours to catch him for a series of increasingly daring crimes. Cheung will admit defeat if Ho can take him to the police station before three days are over.

Generally, Hong Kong cop movies are so deadly serious. This has some moments of that, as the disease killing Cheung is no joking matter. But by the end of the film, the two men have somehow earned each other’s respect, even if Cheung keeps outsmarting his police adversary the whole way to the very end.

Lau is an incredibly popular actor but rarely gets any respect. He’s a populist favorite, but this is the movie that finally won him Best Actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards. From stealing diamonds to repeatedly faking his demise, he’s the heart of this film.

Running Out of Time 2 (2001): Co-directed by Johnnie To and Law Wing-cheung, this sequel finds Inspector Ho Sheung-sang returning to match wits with another criminal mastermind, the unnamed man played by Ekin Cheng.

The man introduces himself by faking his suicide by jumping from a roof. He then announces that he has stolen several priceless Chinese treasures and will tell the press, ruining the insurance company that has been hired to protect them. Where Cheung in the first film relied on his brains, this mysterious magician can tightrope walk and seemingly disappear into thin air.

There’s an amazing scene where a chase between the two rivals is paused for water and ice cream. The unnamed man also uses bald eagles to help him steal from people and if that joke means what I think it does, well done.

The follow-up is much funnier than the first film, but it keeps so much of what made me love that movie. It’s definitely worth your attention.

Somehow, someway, Iraqi commandos once broke into a secret American government lab and released the genetically modified rattlesnakes which go under the ground and wait ten years before they emerged in a small town and start biting everyone, which creates a pandemic and man, did I want to watch a pandemic movie when I thought I was watching a snake movie to forget about the pandemic? No, I sure did not.

Santa Mira again gets used in a Fred Old Ray movie and man, this town gets really decimated here and nearly nuked off the face of the Earth so that the government spooks can keep their disease snakes a secret. I can totally see that happening.

Treat Williams and Mary Page Keller play the doctors struggling to stop the disease, all while Marc McClure and Andrew Stevens get cameos.

Give Fred Olen Ray credit. It was once science fiction that the government would totally screw up its response to a pandemic and now it’s science fact.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Colonel John Sykes and his men were sent to save hostages, but when everyone is dead, they go wild and massacre an entire village. They return home to be court-martialed but refuse to go quietly when General Harlan Prescott (Alex Cord, Airwolf) throws the literal book at them. Sykes and his men respond by taking a flight with Prescott hostage.

Who can save them? Matt Marshall (Ice-T) for one. And air hostess Kelly Young (Kimberly Oja). But when Matt gets hurt, anything can happen.

Like you know, Gil Gerard showing up.

Imagine if Executive Decision was made with stock footage.

Imagine a movie where Ice-T shows up nearly forty minutes in and is presumed dead at least twice if not ten times.

Imagine a poster that is so close to Turbulence that I might be watching Turbulence.

Imagine watching this on Tubi.

Also known as Poison and Midnight Vendetta, this Jim Wynorski film puts together a yin and a yang of enticing female stars with Kari Wuhrer and Barbara Crampton as Ann Stewart and Nicole Garrett.

Ann’s husband Chris will do anything to get ahead, even hot wife her for his clients. Yet when he’s fired — he soon commits suicide — and replaced by Nicole’s husband Scott (Jeff Trachta), you may say that she loses her mind. She starts by blowing up the CEO who fired her husband real good with his entire family collateral damage.

Nicole and Scott barely get along. They’re both too busy with work. Their daughter Darla (Melissa Stone) is coming of age — and doing even more on a washing machine with her boyfriend  — while their current housekeeper Karina (Peggy Trentini) is so close to making Scott renounce his marital promises.

That’s when Ann comes on in, kills Karina in the shower, gets hired as the new au pair and starts taking over as wife and mother. Also, she pours raw sugar into diabetic Nicole’s food, which is in no way how you kill a diabetic. You just make them very tired that way. I mean, I guess eventually you could murder someone that way but it feels so ineffective.

Barbara Crampton looks younger than her teen daughter.

Every shot seems to be edited in a way that makes each shot after a closer close-up until scenes cut and paste on top of each other, edits ending before dialogue does, a hamfisted attempt at assembling what one can only imagine are the only takes of each scene with all the coverage of the Little Match Girl on a cold winter’s night.

Then again, Kari Wuhrer and Barbara Crampton go to war.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Remember when Leelee Sobieski read that 9/11 poem on The Tonight Show? Well, this movie has also been claimed as a victim of that attack, as its box office wasn’t what was expected, so everyone instantly used that date as a scapegoat — not just Mariah Carey, who for years has used it to defend the bombing of Glitter.

Ruby Baker (Sobieski) and her brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan) have become orphans and placed in the care of their former neighbors, Dr. Erin Glass (Diane Lane) and Terry Glass (Stellan Skarsgård). For Rhett, it works out pretty well, because he can play video games all night. But for Ruby, it means watching Dr. Glass shoot up and Mr. Glass continually insinuate that they’re all alone if you know what I mean.

The estate and trust fund lawyer Alvin Begleiter (Bruce Dern) is called in, but even a social worker is fooled. Meanwhile, Terry is paying off loan sharks with the kids’ inheritance instead of putting them through private school. And for some reason, Ruby is still dumb enough to allow him to write one of her papers, which he plagiarizes because she has no idea what gaslighting or being a junior quasi-giallo heroine entails.

Things get worse — Dr. Glass fatally overdoses, the loan sharks come to get their money or kill everyone, Chris Noth shows up — and Rita Wilson refused to even be credited for being in it. Director Daniel Sackheim produced and directed four episodes of the third season of True Detective, as well as plenty of other TV shows, so he’s recovered nicely. Writer Wesley Strick also wrote Wolf, The Saint, Doom, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Final Analysis, yet people allowed him to keep writing movies. Maybe it’s because he also wrote Arachnophobia and Cape Fear, right?

Perhaps most importantly, the sequel — Glass House: The Good Mother — has none of the actors or characters from this movie or even the house.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In the near future — 20XX? — every girl between the ages of 14 and 16 years old begins to experience NDH — Near Death Happiness — a period of immense joy before dying and becoming a Stacy, or a zombie, which must be chopped into pieces in a process called Repeat-Kill by the garbage truck driving Romero Repeat-Kill Troops, so you know exactly where this film’s tongue is at.

Loved ones are also the only people legally allowed to Repeat-KIll a Stacy and they’re being marketed to by companies who make a chainsaw that fits right on your hand, the Blues Campbell’s Right Hand 2.

This movie has way more heart than I thought it would. It also has barrels full of body parts.

Director Naoyuki Tomomatsu also made Kyûketsu Shôjo tai Shôjo Furanken (Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl) and Kimi Wa Zonbi Ni Koishiteru (Bite Me If You Love Me), as well as Scissorpenis and Future Century Amazons, which I just watched and umm…yeah. It’s something.

Directed by Jim Wynorski, produced by Roger Corman and starring Eric Roberts and Corbin Bernsen, all based around the footage from the Carnosaur movies and new reaction shots? Man, if a movie has been made for the purpose of ending up on this site, it’s Raptor, which may as well be Carnosaur 4.

Sheriff Jim Tanner (Roberts, who has made a Faustian bargain with us where we must watch all of his movies if we want to keep our souls and blu ray collections) and his assistant Barbara investigate a series of mutilations which leads them to ex-military scientist Dr. Hyde (Bernsen) who is cloning dinosaurs.

I kind of love that film stock changes, lighting changes, dinosaurs change and everything looks completely put together with chewing gum and some masking tape. Yet the end fight — again ripping off Aliens — has Eric Roberts in a forklift battling a giant rubbery dinosaur and you know, these are the kind of moments where life ever so fleetingly makes sense.

You can watch this on Tubi.