Sorry this is a few hours later than normal. I was out of town.
| 12 Monkeys | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Ace Attorney | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Animation Outlaws | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Attack of the Killer Tomatoes | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Bacurau | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Blaine: I’ve never seen this, but it keeps coming up in my social media film buff groups as one of the best of the 21st Century. | ||||||||
| Body Cam | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits (Criterion Collection) | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Includes The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, The Way of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon, and Game of Death. | ||||||||
| Calcutta | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Clueless (25th Anniversary Edition) | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Day of the Warrior | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | An Andy Sidaris film with everything that entails. | ||||||||
| Enter the Fat Dragon | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Fafner | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Mecha Anime TV series. | ||||||||
| Fate / Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya Prisma Phantasm | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Crossover between Prisma Illya and the Type-Moon parody anime series Carnival Phantasm (the latter of which still hasn’t gotten a US release yet). | ||||||||
| Fate / Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya Vow In The Snow | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Appears to be an anime compilation film based on season 3 of Prisma Illya. | ||||||||
| Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Includes Calcutta, An Act of Murder, and Six Bridges to Cross. | ||||||||
| Hiroshima | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Inuyasha | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Includes episodes 1-27 | ||||||||
| Jurassic Shark | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | With a title like this, it’s bound to be brilliant. Right? | ||||||||
| Kiss of the Vampire | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Kiss the Blood off My Hands | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Kochoki | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Anime series about Oda Nobunaga’s teenage years. | ||||||||
| L’Innocente | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Lady Eve (Criterion Collection) | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Legion of Super Heroes | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Madchen in Uniform | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Magicians | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Missing | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Never Give a Sucker an Even Break | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Ones Within | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Death-game anime about live-streamers being trapped in real-world version of the fictional game they normally stream, where they won’t be released until they beat complete the game together, and if they die in the game they die for real. | ||||||||
| Paleface | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | With Bob Hope and Jane Russell | ||||||||
| Pat and Mike | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Reborn | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Return to Savage Beach | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Comments | Another Andy Sedaris film. | ||||||||
| Snapdragon | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Split Second | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Starfish | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Straight Shooting | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Strike Witches | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Swing of Things | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
| Teasing Master Takagi-san (Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san) | |||||||||
| Amazon | |||||||||
Finally, the picks of the week. Alex says, “The Criterion Collection Bruce Lee pack is the best way to get all of Bruce Lee’s films – without getting any Lee-a-likes or Fist of Fear, Touch Of Death in the process. Whatever Bruce Lee collection you’ve gotten in the past, get the Criterion Collection release instead and send the old one to a thrift store.” Blaine says, “I’ve always had a soft spot for Clueless, only reinforced when I met Wallace Shawn at a local convention. I brought him copies of Clueless , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , The Princess Bride , and numerous Pixar titles, and let him choose which one to sign. He chose his personal favourite, Clueless, because it had something to say. We then chatted about how underrated Amy Heckerling is for a while. (Cary Elwes chose to sign Psych when given a similar selection at the same convention.)”
Clueless is so delightfully 90’s. You can’t not love it. Plus Paul Rudd (who looks the same in this as he does now)
He does look exactly the same, which is why I had trouble thinking of him as a kid/young adult.
(The movie is great, though.)
I recently saw Madchen in Uniform. Well-acted, and nothing I would have expected to have been made in 1931: a film about resistance to oppression with up-front queer elements. It was even a hit in some places for awhile, and prints miraculously survived the Nazis (though the writer was murdered by the Gestapo).
I haven’t seen Kiss of the Vampire, but it’s a Hammer Horror, so I know I will when I get the chance.
In another reality, meanwhile, one reviewer identifies Return to Savage Beach as the twelfth film in the series. How is that possible?
I just checked the “Movie Connections” for “Return to Savage Beach” on the IMDB. It follows “Malibu Express”, “Hard Ticket to Hawaii”, “Picasso Trigger”, “Savage Beach”, “Guns”, “Do or Die”, “Hard Hunted”,”Fit to Kill”, “Enemy Gold”, “The Dallas Connection”, and “Day of the Warrior”. The series started in 1985, and this is the last of them, from 1998. All were direct to video releases.
I had never heard of any of them. None of the cast from the first film (which includes Regis and Joy Philbin) are still in the cast of the last film, though it does look like all were written and directed by Andy Sidaris.
Malibu Express probably has the loosest connection to the “series” – it’s basically a whole bunch of shot mostly on the cheap cheesecake action movies shot by Sidaris using on-screen talent he had contacts to from his time directing Monday Night Football and doing photography for Playboy magazine – lots of re-used locations on the Hawaiian islands (I believe he’d moved there at that point), including a helicopter, a few speedboats, and a few nice bars and mansions because he knows people who have those and he can get permission to film there.
Operation Kid Brother has more narrative complexity than most Andy Sideris movies. I mean, one of them is titled “Hard Ticket to Hawaii” – what does that title even mean? I’ve seen the movie and I can’t tell you.
Glad to know. I’ll count that as a movie you watched so the rest of us wouldn’t have to.
Speaking of counts, Kiss of the Vampire is a passable ’63 Hammer vampire film without Dracula. It’s okay as an example of the genre from that time, but there’s little that’s original. The cultish, decadent vampires’ reaction when they learn the exits have been sealed with garlic make them possibly the whiniest vamps in movie history.