Disc Reviews

This Naval Criminal Investigation Service lead by Agent Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon) continue to sift through suspense filled tales of deviance in the military that takes them from all the way from political offices to the streets to battle villains.

I never really meant to have 3D TV in my home theater. But our Sony Blu-ray player was 3D-ready, and the receiver and monitor both needed warranty replacement about the same time. Bingo: All I needed were a couple pairs of glasses ($40 each at Amazon) and some 3D programming. Having seen almost every 3D big-screen release already, I was pretty sure the TV version would be an inferior format. I was wrong. The electronic-shutter glasses beat the heck out of those old red-and-green gimmicky glasses. They work as well as the polarized lenses at the multiplex.

Anyone who has watched enough of the SyFy original movies has a pretty good idea of what they're getting. The network has made a bit of a name for itself with low-budget to no-budget monster movies. Most of the creatures are mutant and large and appear like they escaped from a bad 1950's drive-in theater. The computer generated stuff usually looks like a kid drew it up on their pocket computer, and the cast is going to be made up of unknowns with a few known names to give the whole thing some street cred.

It’s impossible for me to discuss what I feel didn’t work in Touchback without talking about the movie’s big plot twist. I’m not even sure it’s accurate to refer to it as a “twist” since it comes in the first half hour and is an essential component of the film. On the other hand, the movie’s official plot description is intentionally vague — for the record, the film’s trailer is considerably more forthcoming — and seems designed to conceal a major part of the story. Having considered all that, I’m only issuing a Mild Spoiler Alert.

George Romero created the modern zombie movie in 1968 with his low-budget masterpiece The Night Of The Living Dead. While we can debate the direction the genre has gone in the last 40 years, it's hard to argue that Romero defined the rules of the game with that first film and the series that followed. And while zombies have been populating the comic scene since the early days of Creepy and Eerie, it took the likes of Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore to give us a compelling interpretation of the Romero zombie in the form of a comic book series.

Inspectors 81 are back on the tough streets of San Francisco for a fourth season of gritty police work. Remember, these are the same streets Dirty Harry worked during the same decade. There are some memorable moments in this next half season release of “Streets”. In case you don’t know the show, here’s a rundown. Detective  “Iron”  Mike Stone (Karl Malden) is a seasoned veteran of the San Francisco Police Department. He’s an old-fashioned, no-nonsense detective whose life has taken some bitter turns of late.

“We decided to tour round Serbia. We’ll go to villages. It will be interesting to see farmers’ reactions to our sexual provocations. Sexual education for Serbs. Widening the horizons. This is our guerilla mission.”

I like to think I am not a prude. My taste in film runs to the controversial, and I don’t shy away from extreme cinema. I think Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and Caligula are masterpieces; A Serbian Film impressed and affected me, although I have no intention of watching it again

After solar storms ravage the earth causing the soil to overheat and scorch our forests, the few who survive are left in a barren wasteland that stretches across the globe.  The concept is an impressive one to explain the desert world we are first introduced to in the opening moments of Hell, though what’s more impressive is how this low-budget, post-apocalyptic film managed this look with simple camera tricks.  With Roland Emmerich involved as executive producer, you may be expecting big-budget recreations of famous landmarks exploding and wiped away in a giant tidal wave.

It’s not often, if ever that you’ll find me looking forward to a Hallmark Channel movie.  I have nothing against a good romance or sappy family dramas; it’s just that guys for the most part are not the target demographic.  To get to the point, this film is the chick flick guys fear being made to watch after losing the battle at the Red Box when all the other appealing titles are out and the wife or girlfriend is in no mood for action.  But thankfully the film isn’t all bad, and in fact it’s actually decent with the exception of a few clichés along the way.

"This is where society dumps its worst nightmares."

In 1978 John Carpenter created a landmark horror film in Halloween. While it certainly can't be called the first slasher film, it was absolutely the first commercially successful slasher movie and set up the pattern that we're still following today. Carpenter created a new kind of Hollywood monster: the mindless human-shaped killing machine. Michael Myers with his William Shatner rubber mask would eventually give birth to the likes of Jason and Freddy.