Home Sweet Hell Blu-ray Review

Actors: Patrick Wilson, Kevin McKidd, James Belushi, Katherine Heigl, Jordana Brewster

Director: Anthony Burns

Format: Multiple Formats, Blu-ray, Widescreen

Language: English

Subtitles: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Icelandic, Indonesian, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish, French

Dubbed: Spanish, French, Japanese, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Thai

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rated: R

Studio: SONY PICTURES

Release Date: April 7, 2015

Run Time: 98 minutes

        One of the saving graces for Home Sweet Hell may be the similarities the narrative shares with a far worse dark comedy recently released, Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife. If anything, Home Sweet Hell is middle-of-the road, passably entertaining without ever accomplishing anything slightly original or memorable. Dark comedies are meant to shock, but this one feels so derivative that the violence ends up merely feeling predictable.

 

Outcast Blu-ray Review

     Actors: Nicolas Cage, Hayden Christensen

Directors: Nick Powell

Format: Multiple Formats, Blu-ray, NTSC, Surround Sound, Widescreen

Language: English

Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1

Number of discs: 1

Rated: Unrated

Studio: Phase 4 Films

Release Date: March 31, 2015

Run Time: 98 minutes

 

 

        Nicolas Cage has always lived on the border between passable performer and over-acting hack, often making it impossible to believe that he is the same person that starred in Leaving Las Vegas. Many of these performances were just lackluster enough to be unintentionally entertaining, and his ridiculous spending habits that led to massive debt have resulted in an increasingly atrocious series of choices these last few years. Unfortunately, Outcast is just bad enough to be forgettable without reaching the level of awfulness to make it laughably atrocious, and the biggest mistake may be the entire middle section of the film which is missing Cage chewing scenery with a bad British accent. More awful may not have saved the film, but it would have made it a more memorable trainwreck to sit through, and more of Cage would have guaranteed that.

Muck Blu-ray Review

    Actors: Kane Hodder, Lachlan Buchanan, Bryce Draper, Jaclyn Swedberg, Lauren Francesca

Director: Steve Wolsh

Format: Blu-ray, Widescreen

Language: English

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Number of discs: 1

Rated: NR (Not Rated)

Studio: ANCHOR BAY

Release Date: March 17, 2015

Run Time: 98 minutes

 

 

        Every time I think I have seen the worst film I will ever see, some ambitious untalented hack proves me wrong. Leave it to the horror genre to attract the very worst in filmmaking, both in lack of creativity and talent. Some filmmakers treat the genre as a playground for their disturbing delusions and the never-ending exploitation of talentless actresses willing to shed clothing for their fifteen minutes of fame. Steve Wolsh is the worst of these offenders I have seen in years, offering up the second film in a horror trilogy as his directorial debut.  

 

Harlock: Space Pirate DVD Review

    Actors: David Matranga, Emily Neves, Rob Mungle

Director: Shinji Aramaki

Format: Multiple Formats, Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Widescreen, NTSC

Language: English, Japanese

Dubbed: English

Number of discs: 1

Rated: Unrated

Studio: Ketchup

DVD Release Date: March 31, 2015

Run Time: 111 minutes

        Based on a manga comic book series created by Leiji Matusmoto, Harlock was previously adapted to animation in hand-drawn fashion with a 1978 television series. Though much remains the same in the narrative of this 2013 film, an impressive $30 million budget offers the manga cutting edge computer generated graphics in its adaptation. This may not save the film from its flaws, but the spectacle provides an adequate distraction from a narrative that may feel derivative after decades of similar storylines.

 

Gates of Heaven/Vernon, Florida Blu-ray Review

     Actors: Lucille Billingsley, Zella Graham, Cal Harberts, Albert Bitterling, Roscoe Collins

Director: Errol Morris

Format: Blu-ray, Widescreen

Language: English

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Number of discs: 1

Rated: NR (Not Rated)

Studio: Criterion Collection

Release Date: March 24, 2015

 

 

        When Errol Morris was just starting out as a filmmaker, still working his way through film school, he made an infamous bet with German director Werner Herzog over a feature length documentary. Morris became the winner of this bet with the completion of his debut, Gates of Heaven, which resulted in a short film in which Herzog eats his own shoe. This wink-and-a-nod to the famous Charlie Chaplin sequence from The Gold Rush is now a magnificent piece of film history itself, which has only gained significance as Morris continued to make films that solidify his place as one of documentary film’s most prolific directors. The film itself may seem somewhat stylistically dated now, but the human elements of the story remain as relevant today as they were in 1978.