The Family
Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy l DVD l Streaming
Directed by Luc Besson
Starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, John D’Leo, Dianna Agron, Tommy Lee Jones, and Stan Carp
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Release Date: December 17, 2013

Giovanni Manzoni (Robert DeNiro) was once one of the most feared and respected mob bosses in New York. Times have certainly changed. For some unexplained reason Manzoni turned stoolie for the FBI and was moved into the Witness Relocation Program under the supervision of veteran agent Robert Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones). Now he’s Fred Blake, a nondescript writer living in a small town in Normandy, France with his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), son Warren (John D’Leo), and daughter Bella (Dianna Agron). The family hates being so far removed from their familiar Brooklyn neighborhood and all of their friends and relatives, but they try to make the best of a lousy situation.

Their efforts don’t last though; unable to deal with the dual pressures of maintaining a false identity and the inquisitive, somewhat hostile townspeople, the Blakes soon revert to their old ways of violence and corruption, with Stansfield working desperately to keep them in line so their cover isn’t blown. Fred’s obsession with getting rid of the brown water that runs through the pipes of their quaint French home and Warren’s escalating criminal behavior at school eventually bring down the full wrath of Don Luchese (Stan Carp), the imprisoned rival Mafia boss Fred snitched on. The don dispatches a team of heavily armed assassins to Normandy to make the Blakes a blood-stained memory. Unable to depend on further protection from Stansfield and the other Feds, Fred and his family must show the mob back home that a simple name change doesn’t make the Blakes any less dangerous than before.

I was born a poor white child in the waning winter days of 1979. Never was I able to step foot inside a grindhouse theater, and the only time I ever went to a drive-in theater that wasn’t doubling as a flea market was to see Fletch when I was barely old enough to remember going in the first place. VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and spending a lot of time at the houses of friends and relatives with access to pay cable movie channels helped fill me in on the deranged cinematic greatness I was too young to catch first run in its proper theatrical venue. Being born in the wrong place at the seriously wrong time was no excuse for me to not become a fervent admirer of the finest exploitation movies ever made.

B-movies, C-movies, Z-movies, I’ve seen a lot. If I lived a few extra lifetimes after my first ran out I could never be able to see all of the movies I ever wanted to see. My DVD and Blu-ray collection isn’t massive (getting there though) and yet there are still a few titles I have yet to sit down and watch. Sue me, I stay pretty busy most of the time. Once upon a time there were theaters from the largest metropolises to the smallest one-horse burgs that specialized in playing the kinds of offbeat, occasionally undefinable, made-for-a-quick-buck flicks that were too gonzo to show its grimy celluloid visage in mainstream cinemas that primarily attracted bored suburbanites and their spoiled, hateful children. You could see a lot of these schlocky gems in double or triple feature bills or “dusk ’till dawn” marathons that cost substantially less for a ticket than a IMAX 3D screening, even with inflation taken into account. You definitely got your money’s worth, that could not be denied.

Captain America: The First Avenger
Netflix | Amazon | Redbox | Google Play | iTunes | SEN | Vudu | Xbox | YouTube
DVD | Blu-ray
Directed by Joe Johnston
Starring Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Sebastian Stan, Hugo Weaving, Toby Jones, Dominic Cooper, Jenna Louise-Coleman
Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures
Originally Released: July 19, 2011

What better way for geeks to celebrate this national holiday than to kick back with a few cold ones and watch the personification of the USA in the Marvel Universe: Captain America: The First Avenger.

And honestly, good ol’ Cap is more important in Marvel than you think. Sure, he leads The Avengers; but Marvel’s most popular heroes, such as Spider-Man, Wolverine, Deadpool, and now Iron Man thanks to Robert Downey Jr., tend to eclipse the important responsibility Captain America has played to the evolution of the Marvel Universe.

Captain America is the personification, not of the United States, but instead for which it stands. I’m not talking about liberty or justice or freedom or patriotism. I’m speaking about people – it’s the people that make this nation so special. And Cap personifies that element, that deep down, we all have the potential to be good people; and that it is not our abilities that make us who we are, but the choices we make.

Lincoln
4-Disc Blu-ray l 2-Disc Blu-ray l DVD
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
WRITER: Tony Kushner
STARRING: Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, Bruce McGill, Peter McRobbie, Lee Pace, David Costabile, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Jared Harris, Jackie Earle Haley
DreamWorks
RELEASE DATE: March 26, 2013

“A compass I learnt when I was surveying, it’ll… it’ll point you true north from where your standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what’s the use of knowing true north?”

We’re all familiar with Abraham Lincoln. We know he freed the slaves. We know his distinctive look. He’s even on our money. But how much do we really know? I for one can admit that I did not know much more than the basics, about the same as the average person would know (I fell asleep in history class a lot, what can I say), but as I’ve gotten older my interest in history has grown exponentially, and lessons via documentary or biopic and so on can be just as appealing as the latest popcorn flick.

With movies, however, we’re always wondering in the back of our brain just how historically accurate the story we’re being told really is. And this will happen no less while viewing Lincoln, the latest film from director Steven Spielberg which tells the story of our 16th president and his fight to pass the 13th Amendment, the amendment that aimed to put an end to slavery.

Roger Corman may be known to most as the premiere producer of some of the finest exploitation movies ever made, but to those in the know he is also one of the most important and influential figures in the entertainment industry. Many of Hollywood’s finest talents on both sides of the camera owe their careers in some part to the go-for-broke tutelage they were given by working for Corman, including filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Towne, Peter Bogdanovich, and Ron Howard, and actors like Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, and Robert Englund. Corman is a legend, and that is the undisputed truth.

This summer Corman is bringing a catalog of over 400 films he produced and/or directed to the vast cybernetic landscape of the Internet as he launches Corman’s Drive-In, a YouTube channel that will offer up his films for viewing for a fee still yet to be determined.