"There's a bizarre version of Superman on the loose."

They are the most famous couple in comic book history. Together they are Superman & Lois, and they've joined the ever-expanding Arrowverse for their second season now out on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment. While this is still a young series, the characters and these actors portraying them are not new to the Arrowverse. Tyler Hoechlin as Superman and Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane have been here for a few years. Both have shown up on Supergirl, and both appeared in a couple of the crossover events that have pulled together the various Arrowverse shows in the past. Now the focus is on them. They have their own show, and it's quite a different approach to the characters and their story. There has also been a departure that puts the show no longer in the official Arrowverse. I suspect that move comes on the heels of The Flash now entering its final season and I suspect closing the Arrowverse going forward.

"I think this is just the beginning."

Walker is out on DVD. No, this is not the next spin-off of the zombie Walking Dead franchise. There's a new ranger in town, and his name is Cordell Walker. I know what you're thinking: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." That's where you'd be wrong. They might share the same name and job, but this Walker is nothing like the Chuck Norris version that lasted for over a decade when you include made-for-television movies. This Walker is much younger. He was a Marine who had joined after 9/11. He has a family. His wife was killed a year ago, and now he's trying to raise his son and daughter with the help of his parents, who were no longer living in the Norris series. The episodes are more of an ongoing story arc, which conforms to pretty much most dramas on television today. While there were certainly elements that ran through the original show, it was pretty much a bad-guy-of-the-week setup. If you haven't caught any of the new show, now is your chance. CBS Home Entertainment has released the entire second season on DVD.

"If you've got the money you can do what you like. Buy another man's life? Why not?"

There are few writers in the 20th century who have had the kind of career Graham Greene had. He was recruited by England's secret service MI6 where his sister was also an agent and spent time around the world. These experiences likely helped him write the kinds of international thrillers that made him one o the most successful writers in the 20th century. His final novel went a little against the grain of his reputation. The Tenth Man doesn't take us too far afield, and it's far more of an intimate tale than he was known for. It would also be his final novel before his death in 1991. But he lived to see it filmed, albeit as a Hallmark Television made for TV film in 1988. But The Tenth Man was a little step above most of the films made for TV in that decade. It actually did play in theatres in Europe, mostly England. Now Kino Lorber has dusted off this 1988 gem and given it a chance at a new life, and it's one of the better of the studio’s latest batch of titles.

"There is an old saying that blood is thicker than water."

We've had Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Gene Simmons with his Family Jewels, and even Snoop Dog's Father Hood. It's become a bit of a trend to follow these celebrity families around and watch the drama of their privileged lives unfold on our television screens. You might think it's a relatively recent phenomenon, but would you believe they were doing it back in the infant days of television when we followed around a musician named Ozzie and his wife way back in 1952? No, we're not talking about Ozzie Osbourne and his family. I'm talking about Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. They were television's darling family before we ever heard about Lucy and Desi. The show actually started on radio like many of the fledgling industry’s early hits including the likes of Gunsmoke. Four years after the radio brought us The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, they moved to television. While their two sons were played by actors on the radio, both David and Ricky Nelson joined the television show, and it went on to make television history, breaking records, some still held today. It was the first television series to ever hit 10 seasons. It lasted from 1952 to 1966 with 436 episodes. Until The Simpsons, it was the longest running scripted television comedy and remains still the longest live-action scripted comedy ever on television. And while the stories were, of course, fictional, most aspects of the show were quite real. Their television home was modeled after their real home. Many of the family's life stories found their way to the series. The four family members were quite real, and you just couldn't fake these relationships.

In 1907 in a little town named Kearny, NJ (just a stone's throw from New York City), a worker was cleaning out a sewer gutter. Little did he know he would be soon bit by a eighteen-inch alligator. Stories would crop up around the New York area of alligators coming up from beneath the city every few years or so. It became urban myth, comic books, heck, it ended up a movie named Alligator (which I believe has a 4K as of this year) and a children's book.  It's a popular story idea.  Well,  my family recently decided to go see Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile over the past weekend, which gives us a dancing and singing crocodile, and all I kept thinking was perhaps this movie would have worked better in a sewer.  Hey, it worked for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Let's take a look.

Hector P. Valenti (played by Javier Bardem) is a showman.  He wears a cape, a top hat, and can call up a cloud of blue smoke like nobody's business.  He's also something of a con man, and he will do anything to catch a break.  In our opening scene, he is able to find his way onto the popular show, Show Us What You Got (obvious ripoff of America's Got Talent) again.  This time he has a pigeon act that's sure to wow the audiences.  Except it doesn't, and then he gets kicked out of the show and is told to never come back.

It’s that time of year again, when studios begin to release the award contending films. Considering how lackluster the summer release slate was, when I look at the release schedule, these next couple months are pretty stacked with films for film lovers to get excited about and hopefully give them a reason to return to the cinemas. This week the film I’m talking about is Amsterdam. You look at the star-studded cast, you see the writer and director, David O. Russell (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook, The Fighter) and you wouldn’t be wrong to think that this is going to be a big film. I’ve been a fan of David O. Russell since he did Three Kings, and any time he has a movie come out, it’s something I get excited about. Sadly, this is one of those films that just seem to be too ambitious for their own good. I’ll say this; if it wasn’t for the amount of talent on screen, I don’t think it would be as good as it is.

It’s 1933. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) and Harold Woodman (John David Washington) are best friends ever since serving in WWI together, each saving the other’s life. Berendsen is now a doctor who specializes in treating disfigured vets while concocting his own pain medicines. Woodman has gone on to establish himself as a successful lawyer. The pair have been hired by Liz Meekins (Taylor Swift) to find out if her father, Burt and Harold’s commander in the war, has been murdered.  As it turns out, he has been murdered, and in the process of disclosing this to Meekins she is murdered, and Burt and Harold are fingered for the crime. This kicks off the adventure of these two where they are forced to clear their names and uncover the truth behind their former commander’s murder. If things were kept this simple the movie could have had more promise, but David O. Russell seems to get too clever for his own good, throwing in twists and hijinks that seem to come out of nowhere, overcomplicating the plot to absurdity.

"No one would have believed in the middle of the 20th century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely joined their plans against us. Mars is more than 140 million miles from the sun, and for centuries has been in the last status of exhaustion. At night, temperatures drop far below zero even at its equator. Inhabitants of this dying planet looked across space with instruments and intelligences that which we have scarcely dreamed, searching for another world to which they could migrate." 

War Of The Worlds is perhaps one of the most iconic and often infamous science fiction works in literature history. The book by H.G. Wells was published in 1889 but would not see a feature film version for quite some time. Cecil B. DeMille worked with Paramount to obtain the rights from Wells in the mid 1920's. He appeared to appeal to Wells himself, who was a fan of DeMille's work, and the rights were purchased. But the film fell on hard times. On Halloween in 1938 Orson Welles, no relation, produced his famous radio drama of the story. While there were stories of people killing themselves because they believed it was a real radio broadcast of a Martian invasion, most of those stories are myth. It did cause panic, but only because folks ignored the many times the show announced that it was a radio drama. But interest spiked to do the long-dormant film. DeMille approached Welles to do the film, believing that the hysterics from the radio broadcast would make him a natural for the film. When Welles refused, he turned to Alfred Hitchcock, who also turned down the property. Finally George Pal agreed to do the film in the 1950's but soon ran into trouble. You see, the rights were obtained so long ago that they were exclusively for a silent film. The estate of the author was so pleased with Pal as the choice to produce that they fixed the details, and the film was finally released in 1953. It has become a classic in the decades that followed.

Not crazy about the title. Personally, I think that the title of the novel on which this film is based  would have been better suited given the film’s plot. Based on a 1989 Sara Bird novel by the name of The Boyfriend School, this 1990 comedy tells to story of Gus Kubicek, a depressed and overweight cartoonist who is in love with a woman that won’t seem to give him the time of day. I’ve heard some excuses for getting out of having to go out with someone, but lying and saying you have to have dental surgery; that’s pretty low. Despite seeing numerous movies that utilize the “judging a book by its cover” trope, I still was able to see the appeal of the film, as soon as I was able to put myself into the mindset of the film’s time period. By doing this, I was able to avoid perceptions of it being cliché. This was a necessary measure to take, especially if you would like to be able to enjoy the film in 2022. Even so, I’m still not a big fan of the title.

Steve Guttenburg stars as Gus, who spends his days longing for Jami Gertz’s Emily Pear, a beautiful yet shallow young woman, who in no way sees him as a possible romantic partner. Gus’s caring and nosy sister, Lizzie (played by Shelley Long) endeavors to transform him into someone who would capture Emily’s attention. Using her knowledge as a romance novelist, Lizzie gives Gus a full education in qualities that attract women (i.e. The Boyfriend School). And thus, Lobo Marunga, a leather-clad biker from New Zealand, is born.

I’m lucky; I got to see the premiere of Smile in perhaps the best environment possible to experience a genre film. By this I mean I saw it at its premiere as the opening night film of Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas at The Alamo Drafthouse. It’s important I state this, because it reflects the amount of excitement that I had going into this film, not just for the film but for the festival as well. I’d be seeing this film with about 180 plus film fans who are ravenous for genre films from around the globe who are definitely more than just casual filmgoers. Still I went into this film knowing as little as possible. I believe I had only seen one trailer for the film, which was the night before; it was attached to Barbarian. (Seriously, you need to see Barbarian on the big screen and with a crowd, it was a friggin blast to experience.) What I remember from the trailer was intriguing, and it certainly showed promise, though I feel the marketing tactics they did by placing actors in baseball stadiums to leer at the players with creepy smiles was some of the most brilliant marketing for a film in years. With all that said, is it a good film?

Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is overworked at the hospital she works at, spending most of her time attending to her mentally ill patients, so much so that even when she is told to leave she forces herself to make time for one more patient. As it would turn out, it would be a regrettable decision. Rose meets with the new patient, a PhD student who claims there is something trying to kill her, something only she can see, and its one defining characteristic is that it has a grotesque smile. The patient suddenly changes from her panicked state and has a hideous smile of her own as she begins to mutilate herself in front of Cotter and eventually dies. The sequence is creepy and effective and has the kind of vibes that reminded me of The Ring, The Grudge, and It Follows, so I felt like I was in good hands, expecting a fun story with a few jump scares thrown in for good measure.

In truth, I have never been a "Chuck Norris" type guy.  I can get down with many martial artists as previously explained, from Van Damme to Seagal  to Jeff Speakman and probably many others in between.  Except when it came to the Texas Ranger.  Sure, he was an amazing martial artist, but he never had the ability to draw me in, the charisma that could keep me interested when his punches and kicks could not. (But yet I liked Jeff Speakman; go figure.)  Anyhow, I think after all this time I finally found the film that could change that.  Enter The Octagon.