"A man of your age has no excuse for looking or behaving like a fugitive from a home for alcoholic music hall artistes."

Sound like anyone you know? Johnny Depp is one hell of a talented actor. There are few in the industry than can so completely inhabit a character. He has an uncanny ability to make you forget Johnny Depp the actor and lose yourself in his performance. He is a chameleon physically and expressively. Unfortunately, Johnny has had trouble finding box office gold lately. You see, he's having a lot of fun at our expense. But it's not just we who are footing the bill for his tomfoolery. The studios are handing out hundreds of millions of dollars for box office misses

“Nobody’s innocent. Everyone’s hiding things.”

The citizens of Broadchurch — the fictional seaside town that was rocked by the murder of a young boy in this superlative British crime drama — learned the above lesson the hard way. In fact, I felt pretty strongly that every compelling secret the series had to offer had surfaced during the show’s outstanding first season. So I was pretty dubious when I heard creator/head writer Chris Chibnall had gotten the band back together for an encore. Having now finished season 2, I’m thoroughly delighted to be proven wrong.

It is one of the most anticipated movies of the summer and another subject in the category of can Tom Hardy do no wrong? Mad Max: Fury Road is the reimagining of the iconic film that helped launch Mel Gibson’s career decades earlier. This is not new territory in Hollywood by any stretch of the imagination; remakes have happened so often in recent years that they have practically become their own genre. However, I would like to point out something that will hopefully set this film aside in the eyes of the audience: how often do you see a remake that is overseen by the creator of the original film that you know and love?

Once more I dive into the deep chasm that is filled with contemporary, independent exorcism films. Reading the title, An Irish Exorcism, what can be expected of this film? I was hoping for the film to bring focus to what it means for an exorcism to be “Irish.” Do Irish Catholics perform exorcisms differently than other Catholics? Is there a world-famous exorcist who travels to Ireland in order to succeed in saving a child’s life, where countless priests have failed? Wherever your imagination takes you after reading the title is a step toward a more creative film. The only thing that sets An Irish Exorcism apart from other cookie-cutter exorcism films is that it is set in Ireland. 

“To truly know a man, you must walk in his shoes.”

On the lone special feature of any substance included on this Blu-ray, director/co-writer Thomas McCarthy admits The Cobbler was inspired by the well-known idiom listed above. I’m all for getting as many original ideas on the big screen as possible. But even if you don’t think basing a feature film on a popular saying is a shaky proposition, The Cobbler severely underwhelms because it totally fails to capitalize on its high-concept premise in an intriguing way.

The Drownsman is now out from Anchor Bay. This time I talked with Caroline Palmer. Caroline made her feature film debut with The Drownsman. I had a great time talking with her. Now you can find out what we talked about. Bang it here to listen in on my talk with Caroline Palmer.

If you were around in 1972, television was a very different place. By midnight most stations were shutting down to the tune of the national anthem. After that there was a test pattern and a high-pitched ring that would fill your screen until dawn when programming would resume. Of course, there were also only three networks, and, if you were lucky enough to live in a large market, a handful of local stations. All good people were expected to be safely tucked into their beds long before 1:00 AM. It was a very different world from today when we get 24-hour programming on over 200 stations or more

Lost River is the showy, laborious, mystifying feature filmmaking debut of actor/meme machine Ryan Gosling. Unfortunately, you’re more likely to have heard about the intensely negative reaction the movie received when it premiered at Cannes last year, than you are to have actually seen the film. Lost River now arrives on a bare bones Blu-ray that does little to clear up — or enhance — Gosling’s first foray into directing. So we’re left to assume he simply decided to make a movie out of his dream journal.

Join me in welcoming Dustin P. Anderson to the Upcomingdiscs family. We've been doing some growing at Upcomingdiscs. I think Dustin is going to be a big part of that growth. He's been doing reviews for a while and we're lucky to have him here with us. His first review is up for your enjoyment.

"If you can dream it, we can build it."

That's the motto of Wayde King and Brett Raymer of Acrylic Tank Manufacturing (ATM). They are two guys from Brooklyn who moved to Vegas where they started ATM. Why they couldn't do it in Brooklyn isn't ever mentioned. Must be the high taxes. The duo claim that they are the number one tank aquarium manufacturers in the United States. That likely doesn't include the mass-produce guys like All-Glass. Still, from what I've seen here, there's no question these guys are good.