Disc Type

It took me a second to get past the title of this documentary. I had a feeling that it had some kind of significance, but without that context, all it was for me was grammatically incorrect. With that to start off, I have no problem admitting that I wasn’t really looking forward to reviewing this documentary. I know shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I was, and something about the title just rubbed me the wrong way. It felt ignorant. Now I must admit that I was actually the ignorant one given my lack of knowledge regarding the cultural significance of that title, the associated poem, as well as the prominent poet it came from, and the legacy of his prominent family. Why Is We Americans tells the story of the Baraka family, a family whose story is carved deep into the civil rights movement. It started with the family’s patriarch, Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones), a poet/playwright/activist, as he shepherded his family through decades of social activism with poetry, music, and art. It’s told from multiple perspectives including Amiri himself along with his wife, Amina Baraka (formerly known as Sylvia Robinson), a prodigious activist herself. Most surprising was the perspective of Ms. Lauryn Hill of the Fugees. Seeing her took me by surprise, because I hadn’t expected anticipated seeing anyone that I would recognize.

Legacy is a key component of the documentary, as Amiri and Amina are far from the only members of their family who serve the community. Their son, Ras Baraka, currently serves as the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and he is also prominently featured through the film to help illustrate his family’s legacy. Speaking of illustration, the film does that quite well through on-camera interviews while also interweaving archival footage of Amiri’s reciting his poetry. The most illuminating portion of the film came in the latter of the documentary with the sharing of the tragic murder of Amiri’s sister, Kimako. However, from my perspective, the part the hit the hardest was the homicide of Shani, Amiri and Amina’s daughter, and one of the first openly gay black activists. These portions are covered in rapidly succession, and it is impossible to be unaffected by both recaps.

This season of the Paramount Plus long-running series did a bit of shaking up. For one, the series said goodbye to a main staple of the series with the departure Delroy Lindo’s Adrian Boseman. This departure came as a surprise, as he’d been with the series from its opening, and it wasn’t as if his character had been relegated in recent years. However, I suppose everything changes with time. Don’t imagine that it will be long before we see Delroy on the small or big screen again, as the actor already has four projects in production, including the MCU’s revamping of Blade (no confirmation on who he will be playing in the film, but my gut tells me Abraham Whistler). Now if the Lindo departure shocked you, brace yourselves, because he isn’t the only cast member who made their exit. Cush Jumbo, who’s played Lucca Quinn, is also saying goodbye. Lindo’s exit surprised me, but Jumbo’s floored me. Jumbo’s Lucca Quinn has been a significant part of the series, and with her gone, the show in a sense is losing the paradigm of the old lions vs the young wolves. Well, if you need a fix of Jumbo’s quiet presence, you can catch her on a Netflix adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel.

With Lindo and Jumbo gone, that means that the series will enter its fifth season with only four of its original cast members remaining. Fortunately, that is more than enough the preserve the wittiness that I’ve come to appreciate from this show. Much of this comes courtesy of Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart and Sarah Steele’s Marissa Gold. In the event that these two choose to leave the show, it will signify the end of the series. Or at least it will as far as I’m concerned. Luckily, there does not appear to be any danger of that, especially with Marissa’s decision to become a lawyer herself, somewhat filling the vacancy that was left by Lucca Quinn. This decision to pursue law herself essentially closes the book on the character’s occupational flightiness. Since the show’s inception, Marissa has worn multiple different hats including personal assistant and in-house private investigator. Long-term, I found this to be a fitting transition, and it puts an end to the conflicts that arose between her and private investigator mentor Jay, especially after last season showed her to have a higher salary than he. It also provides a good avenue and talking point between her and her father, whose long awaited cameo is expected to take place in the already announced Season 6.

Edgar G. Ulmer started his career working for the early German masters of Expressionism like Fritz Lang and F. W. Marnau. He set out on his own doing ethnic films in the Ukraine before coming to America and trying his hand here. His most notable film has to be the 1934 The Black Cat, which brought Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi together for the first time and remains a classic to this very day. Unfortunately for Ulmer, he fell in love with the wife of Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Pictures. He later married Shirley, but the result was he was barred from every major studio in Hollywood. He had a huge box office success in 1934 with Universal, but his affair in 1936 ended any chance he would get to ride that future. He was relegated to the independent studios where he had little money and a hard time getting good actors or distribution.

Now his films are pretty much cult classics and have inspired future big names like Joe Dante and Steven Spielberg. If you've seen any of his films, it’s from late night television edits or bad bootleg VHS copies you bought at horror conventions. Kino Classics has brought three of these films together in one collection of three discs that include many historical audio commentaries and a few nice features on the director. This is going to take you back to a different era in small-budget films. Edgar G. Ulmer knew how to use a small budget, and now you get to discover, or if you're like me, rediscover these classics in HD for the first time.

So, I fully expected this movie to be one of those films that I would have to subject myself to in order to appease my wife. I mean, I was familiar with nearly every member of the cast, but given the film’s plot, I expected to be bored and to find it cheesy. It just seemed like a clash. Like it should be two separate movies: one that deals with the secret daughter of the king, and the other a story about a mermaid. However, it would appear that I’m eating my words, as The King’s Daughter proved to be a far more entertaining tale than initially advertised. Based on the 1997 novel of The Moon and the Sun, the story follows Marie-Josephe (Kaya Scodelario, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), a rebellious, free-spirited young woman who grew up in a convent. Her days are normally spent giving the Abbess a hard time. Unbeknownst to her, she is actually the daughter of the legendary monarch, King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan). See that in itself a full plot with much to explore. You’ve got the initial shock of learning one another’s identity and their relationship; you’ve got all the feelings and emotions that come along with that, and then there is the eventual prospect of the king falling under the young woman’s spell, all while attempting to use her as a political pawn. Now all those elements generally come standard with a film of this type, and they are of course featured here, but with one addition that at least seemed outlandish to me, but actually seemed to bring the whole story together: mermaids.

Yes, I said mermaids, as the film features a subplot involving the capturing of a mermaid for nefarious purposes. Now while the two plots do seem to clash at times, for the most part I’d say that they found a way to coexist without pulling focus. Naturally, Scodelario’s character is featured heavily and integral in both plots. Scodelario gives the character strength which is displayed in every scene, but shines prominently on several occasions, any time her character is challenged; no matter the challenger, whether it be a member of Marseilles court or the King himself. There was no better advocate for the mermaid than Scodelario. Her chemistry with the other members of the cast was also at the highest levels, such as with Benjamin Walker, her eventual love interest. I say eventual, because there was a period of time when I wondered whether their relationship would become romantic or remain platonic. It gave the story a great will-they-won’t-they vibe for a time. Scodelario also managed to save her scenes with Brosnan, as his character felt stifled and wooden at times. Thanks to Scodelario’s energy, these scenes were not unbearable.

"There are some aspects of the life of an Earth savage that are exciting and rewarding; things that are missed by the brains on my planet Arous."

When I was a kid going to the drive-in movies was a pretty big deal. In those days your parents would hide you under a blanket on the back seat floor or even in the trunk just to shave off a buck from the admission price. I don't think the guys running those things really minded. It was kind of an open secret, and after saving a dollar or two, my pop would blow ten times that at the concession stands. He thought he was pulling one over on the management, but I think he was the one getting snookered. Still, it was a good time, and my mom and sisters usually fell asleep before the first of what was always a double feature even started. They were getting a little sleep, but I was getting an education. It was there along with the Friday night Shock Theatre shows on television that I was first introduced to Hammer's horror films, AIP's Poe classics, and countless schlock features from the likes of Roger Corman and William Castle. Someone at Corinth Films must have shared that kind of experience as a kid, because they've done the old double-feature nights one better with the release of Drive-In Retro Classics: Science Fiction Triple Feature. It's three low-budget science fiction gems that predate my years at the drive-in. These films go back to the decade of the birth of low-budget sci-fi: the 1950's. They're all found on a single DVD, so don't expect great picture or audio quality here. But if you're like me, you've been watching these things on fourth-generation bootleg VHS copies for the last 20 years. Corinth goes one better there, too. Each of them only runs 10 minutes or so over an hour, so it's not as cramped on this disc as you might expect. These are films that were curated by Wade Williams back in 2000 and found together for this entertaining release.

"You know, things change. Sometimes not so much ..."

Someone at CBS must have eaten a lot of alphabet soup as a kid. Today the longest running show is NCIS, about to enter it's 20th season along with a couple of sibling shows, one of which is also in double-digit seasons. It also happens to be their highest rated show over many of those 20 years. Before NCIS was crowned champ it, was another assortment of letters that reigned supreme at the eye network. That was CSI. It was the show that never looked like it had a chance. The series substituted lab work montages for car chases and explosions and featured a lot of talking heads that delivered some of televisions deepest techno-babble. Didn't stand a chance. The flagship series lasted 15 years, while three sibling shows tacked on another 15 years before the franchise left the airwaves in 2015 after a television film appeared to wrap up the original series. Now it's seven years later, and television has been swept by a new trend. It's called the revival series. A ton of once popular shows have come back for "limited" runs. It all started with 24, and Fox was the king of the revival series at the start, bringing back The X-Files and Prison Break for the same treatment. And while CBS has made their own trend of remaking older shows like Hawaii Five-O, MacGyver and Magnum P.I. they have only recently entered the revival market. Criminal Minds will be back for at least a limited run of episodes and CSI is returning as a full-fledged series by going back to where it all started in Vegas. The result is the release of CSI:Vegas Season 1 on DVD from CBS Home Entertainment.