Cinemaniac Mark

  Lightyear Entertainment brings to DVD the slice of life coming of age drama EDGE OF EVERYTHING (2023), starring Sierra McCormick as a wayward teen veering off the straight and narrow, leaving her "good kid" friends behind for a walk on the wilder side. Get your copy now from Amazon at: https://amzn.to/4cu87xE (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) Full review here:

  Blue Underground brings to 4K+Blu-ray Bob Clark's petrifying PTSD parable DEATHDREAM (aka DEAD OF NIGHT, 1974) in a new transfer with archival and new extras. A sinister slow-burn tale of a soldier who returns home from Vietnam...changed. Disturbing, and a subject under the surface as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. Get your copy now from Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3VMfVVN (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) Full review here:

  Still in theaters, though doing strangely not so great, is George Miller's MAD MAX: FURY ROAD prequel FURIOSA, and it's a blast. See it big and loud! Get your copy now from Amazon at:  https://amzn.to/3yOwk2R (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) Full review here:

  Film Masters does it again with their first collaboration with Something Weird Video , a hicksploitation double feature of two films featuring young wives with older husbands, and the exploitationy melodramatic complications that ensue. The stories of how these films came to be in their final forms are as entertaining as the films themselves, conveyed via commentaries featuring TCM Underground's Millie DeChirico, a solid "That's Hicksploitation" documentary with C Courtney Joyner , and illumination (and myth-busting) liner notes by Something's Weird's Lisa Petrucci (which I wish I'd read before recording this review, as I mistakenly repeated an inaccurate casting aspersion). Transfer looks razor-sharp on both titles, presented in crisp black and white (so sharp that it helps suss out the two shooting sessions for COMMON LAW more clearly than ever). A must for fans of Something Weird Video and rural melodrama shockers! Get your copy now from Amazon at:

  I've long been curious about the films one-and-done James Bond actor George Lazenby did in Hong Kong in the early-mid 1970s, so I was thrilled to get the new Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray of A QUEEN'S RANSOM (1976), his final film made in that country. More a heist/thriller than a martial arts film, it features Lazenby as an IRA agent assembling a gang of criminals and assassins to take out Queen Elizabeth (and not on a date) during a royal visit to Hong Kong. More in line with BLACK SUNDAY than ENTER THE DRAGON, though it does co-star Angela Mao and Bolo Yeung from that Bruce Lee classic, along with Jimmy Wang Yu and, unbeknownst to her, Queen Elizabeth II! Gorgeous transfer and some fun extras make it worth a pick-up, even if it's less wall-to-wall action and more plotting than you might expect. Get your copy now from Amazon at: https://amzn.to/4aSTP8q (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) Full review here:

  What happens when a remote snowbound research facility brings a scientist in from the cold, only to find they've....changed? And fellow residents of the ice-encrusted bunker start turning up dead? Vernon Wells (THE ROAD WARRIOR, COMMANDO) leads a group trying to find out the cause of this terminal outbreak of cabin fever in BLOOD AND SNOW (2023), available on DVD and Blu-ray from Cleopatra Entertainment. Get your copy now from Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3VegaHM (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) Full review here:

  I know some people are digging this one, but boy golly, did it bore me to oblivion. IN A VIOLENT NATURE, an arthouse slasher film from IFC Films and Shudder takes the approach of, "What if FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2" just focused on the killer and showed you what he did leading up to, during, and between kills, including a tremendous amount of walking through the woods, looking at his back?" Some creative and well-done practical FX in the kills (some decently shot, some blandly), but other than that, a whole lotta nothing going on. Full review here:

  An at times humorously deadpan spoof of private schools and new age/fad diets, at others a dark depiction of adult manipulation of youth and cults, Jessica Hausner's CLUB ZERO is an interestingly shot and designed look at how a new teacher (Mia Wasikowski) slowly gains control over a small, vulnerable group of students and leads them down a very dark path. Solid film that could and should have been an arthouse hit, now available on Blu-ray from Film Movement, with a Jessica Hausner masterclass from the Munich Film Festival that runs almost 80 minutes. Get your copy now from Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3yPun6q (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) Full review here: