From the Big Screen:

Evil Dead Rise

(2023) Moving the action out of the woods and into the city, this next entry in the franchise tells a twisted tale of two estranged sisters, played by Lilly Sutherland and Alyssa Sullivan, whose reunion is cut short by the rise of flesh possessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable. Vitals: Director: Lee Cronin. Stars: Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher. CC, MPAA rating: R, 97 min., Horror, North American box office gross: $55.475 million, worldwide $116.475 million, Warner. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Code, 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo + Digital Code, VOD, Digital. Read more here

Big George Foreman

(2023) Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World is based on the remarkable true story of one of the greatest comebacks of all time and the transformational power of second chances. Fueled by an impoverished childhood, Foreman channeled his anger into becoming an Olympic Gold medalist and World Heavyweight Champion, followed by a near-death experience that took him from the boxing ring to the pulpit. But when he sees his community struggling spiritually and financially, Foreman returns to the ring and makes history by reclaiming his title, becoming the oldest and most improbable World Heavyweight Boxing Champion ever. Vitals: Director: George Tillman Jr. Stars: Khris Davis, Jasmine Mathews, Forest Whitaker, Sonja Sohn, Sullivan Jones, Lawrence Gilliard Jr., John Magaro, George Foreman, Muhammad Ali. CC, MPAA rating: PG-13, 129 min., Sports Drama, North American box office gross: $5.366 million, worldwide $5.953 million, Sony. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray + Digital Code, VOD, Digital. Read more here

This Week’s Highlights:

Remember the shelves of your local video store? Those days aren’t gone! Reject reality and substitute your own with this five-disc set, “Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams [Limited Edition]”. In 1983, entrepreneurial producer and director Charles Band founded Empire International Pictures, which would go on to make some of the most memorable and beloved genre movies of the 1980s. Empire became a mainstay of video stores across the world with their catchy titles, outlandish art and Band’s wholehearted belief in giving audiences a good time. Freshly restored for the digital era with a wealth of new and archival extras, these films have never looked better. No need for a time machine, these golden age video classics will send you back to the 80s: “The Dungeonmaster” (1984), “Dolls” (1986), “Cellar Dweller” (1987), “Arena” (1989) and “Robot Jox” (1989).On Blu-ray from Arrow Video/MVD Entertainment. Read more here … Following the smash success of his first feature, “Clerks,” Kevin Smith returned with “Mallrats” (1995). Spawning a raft of characters and in-jokes that Smith would carry throughout his career, the film continued the one-of-a-kind comedic world known as the View Askewniverse. Simultaneously dumped by their girlfriends, comic book obsessive Brodie (Jason Lee) and best friend TS (Jeremy London) plan to ease the pain of their losses by taking a trip to the local mall. Amongst shoppers, they discover the mall is being used as the venue for a dating show, in which TS’s girlfriend Brandi is the star. Hatching a plan to win back their significant others, Brodie and TS enlist the help of professional delinquents Jay and Silent Bob to hijack the gameshow in a bid to win back Brandi. Meanwhile, Brodie carries out his own mission to make good his relationship with Rene (Shannen Doherty), who has attracted the attentions of his nemesis Shannon (Ben Affleck). Featuring a cast including Joey Lauren Adams, who would go on to be recurring collaborators in Smith’s movies, “Mallrats” can now be rediscovered in this 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray edition boasting a beautiful restoration and hours of bonus content. 4K restoration by Arrow Films of both the Theatrical and Extended cuts of the film, approved by director Kevin Smith and cinematographer David Klein. From Arrow Video/MVD Entertainment. Read more here … The most expensive film ever made at the time of its release, “Waterworld” (1995) has thrilled audiences through the years with its awe-inspiring action scenes, gargantuan maritime sets and ground-breaking special effects. A definitive post-apocalypse blockbuster,” Waterworld” stars Kevin Costner as The Mariner — a mutant trader, adrift in a dystopian future where Earth is submerged under water and humankind struggles to survive on boats and in ramshackle floating cities. The Mariner becomes embroiled with the Smokers, a gang of pirates who, led by villainous leader Deacon (Dennis Hopper), are seeking Enola (Tina Majorino), a girl with a map to the mythical realm of Dryland tattooed on her back. Famous for both its epic scale and the controversy that swirled around its production, “Waterworld” is a key cult film of the 1990s, and an essential entry into the subgenre of ecologically-minded blockbusters. Presented here in an exclusive new restoration of the theatrical cut in 4K Ultra HD, alongside Blu-ray presentations of the TV and Ulysses cuts, and with a wealth of extra material, this high-water mark of high-concept Hollywood can now be enjoyed as never before. In Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD Limited Edition set. From Arrow Video/MVD Entertainment. Read more here … One of the most original and controversial thinkers of the 20th century, Italian polymath Pier Paolo Pasolini embodied a multitude of often seemingly contradictory ideologies and identities — and he expressed them all in his provocative, lyrical, and indelible films. Relentlessly concerned with society’s downtrodden and marginalized, he elevated pimps, hustlers, sex workers, and vagabonds to the realm of saints, while depicting actual saints with a radical earthiness. Traversing the sacred and the profane, the ancient and the modern, the mythic and the personal, the nine uncompromising, often scandal-inciting features he made in the 1960s still stand — on this, the 101st anniversary of his birth — as a monument to his daring vision of cinema as a form of resistance. “Pasolini 101” includes nine feature films on Blu-ray: “Accattone” (1961), “Mamma Roma” (1962), “Love Meetings” (1964), “The Gospel According to Matthew” (1964), “The Hawks and the Sparrows” (1966), “Oedipus Rex” (1967), “Teorema” (1968), “Porcile” (1969), and “Medea” (1969). New 4K digital restorations of seven films and 2K digital restorations of “Teorema” and “Medea,” with uncompressed monaural soundtracks. From The Criterion Collection. Read more here

Turner Classic Movies Dismembered:

In the spring of 2022, media giants WarnerMedia and Discovery came together in a $43 billion merger, one of the biggest deals in media history, forming a super conglomerate, Warner Bros. Discovery. Any corporate merger comes with the promise of consolidation and layoffs to help lessen debt loads and “reduce redundancy,” and this merger began with the gutting of CNN, the original and most famous 24-hour news channel. Last week Warner Bros. Discovery decided to decimate Turner Classic Movies, the premier cable source and library for the 100-year-plus heritage of cinema. The company announced the dismissal of a number of top TCM executives, including longtime general manager Pola Changnon, who worked there for more than 25 years, and Charles Tabesh, senior vice president of programming and content strategy and the person behind the incredibly diverse and eclectic TCM programming (the channel’s staff will be slashed from about 90 to about 20, with those remaining forced to work for other Warner Bros. Discovery “brands” as well as TCM.) A hue and cry arose from within the film industry, with big guns Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson personally calling new Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav to let him know that any cuts in quality at TCM would be unacceptable. Missing in the coverage of this debacle is the future of another Warner Bro. cinema brand, the Warner Archive, which for years now has restored and remastered classic Hollywood films, releasing them on no-frills Blu-rays. Recently WB axed the company’s long-time Warner Archive PR agency, teamclick.com, transferring publicity to Allied Vaughn, which is Warners’ Digital Management and Manufacture-on-Demand service company. Which is like giving publicity duties for McDonalds to the company that manufactures the grilles used to cook their hamburgers. Thankfully, as of now, Warner Archives is still sending out new releases as witnessed by this month’s batch:

“Angel Face” (1953) :Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons star in this film noir thriller about a man trapped in the web of an alluring, deadly, remorseless woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants and who conceals the evil within behind her beautiful Angel Face. Heiress Diane Tremayne (Simmons) arranges for an ambulance driver to whom she’s attracted, Frank Jessup (Mitchum), to be hired as her family’s chauffeur. And Diane lures Frank away from his girlfriend even as she becomes increasingly jealous of her stepmother. When Diane’s parents die in an automobile accident — and the police find evidence of tampering to the car – -Diane and Frank are arrested as prime suspects. After Diane convinces Frank to marry her in jail, the two are both acquitted of murder. Now, as Diane realizes that she may have been able to seduce Frank but cannot make him truly love her, she decides she would rather kill again than lose him.

“Caged!” (1950) Eleanor Parker delivers an Oscar-nominated performance as a girl swept into a petty crime — and a life behind bars — in this dramatic and realistic look at the effect that life inside prison has on a young woman. Marie Allen (Parker) becomes hardened by life inside a corrupt and dehumanizing penitentiary … until she reaches the point that she will do anything to survive the place and the life inside.

“The Damned Don’t Cry”
(1950) Oscar-winner Joan Crawford stars as a woman who uses and abandons men — clawing her way from poverty to wealth and social status. Crawford gives one of her best performances as Ethel Whitehead, an empowered woman who leaves her laborer husband and squalid factory town behind to find a new, better life. She uses a quiet accountant who adores her to meet a rich gangster, learns to carry herself as a socialite and leads a life of wealth and luxury as the kept woman of the mobster. But her ambition doesn’t stop there, and she engineers a rivalry between the city’s two leading underworld kingpins — a rivalry that will lead to the ruin of everything she has fought to gain.

“Dangerous When Wet”
(1953) Esther Williams and Fernando Lamas star in this musical, romantic aquacade — Williams as a girl from Arkansas who has vowed to swim the English Channel to raise the money to save her family farm; and Lamas as the rich man who wins her heart and almost blocks her from reaching her goal. Featuring a delightful original music score written by Johnny Mercer and Arthur Schwartz, the film is best remembered for Esther’s famous swim with M-G-M’s beloved animated characters Tom & Jerry.

“Land of the Pharaohs”
(1955) Director Howard Hawks, who worked brilliantly in virtually every genre, shows his mastery of the large-scale epic with this gigantic production filmed on location in Egypt. Thousands of extras (9,787 in one scene alone!), magnificently detailed sets (including the pyramid’s inner labyrinth, booby-trapped so no one can learn its secrets and live) and vast desert vistas fill the screen and astonish the eye. There are also human-scaled stories. Of the Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins) who orders the pyramid as his tomb, dooming untold numbers to unending toil. Of the architect (James Robertson Justice) designing it to earn his people’s freedom. Of the slaves constructing it of blood and sinew. And a beautiful queen (Joan Collins) whose greed leads to murder — and a stunning revenge.

“The Old Man and the Sea”
(1958) Ernest Hemingway’s choice for the lead in the film version of his “The Old Man and the Sea” was the right one: Spencer Tracy’s performance brought him the sixth of his nine Academy Award nominations, and the film won the National Board of Review’s 1958 Best Picture and Best Actor awards. Alone in a small skiff, an aging Cuban fisherman catches a huge marlin — and must defy the sea, marauding sharks, and his own flagging strength to bring his great catch home. Beautifully filmed in part on sun-drenched Cuban locales by master director John Sturges, and graced by Dimitri Tiomkin’s Oscar-winning score.

Read more about the Warner Discovery travesty at Deadline and The New Republic.

Buzzin’ the ‘B’s:

In “The Tank” (2023 — New Zealand), starring Luciane Buchanan, Matthew Whelan, Zara Nausbaum and Regina Hegemann, after mysteriously inheriting an abandoned coastal property from his mother, Ben and his family accidentally unleash an ancient, long-dormant creature that has terrorized the entire region — including his own ancestors — for generations. On DVD, Blu-ray, from Well Go USA.

All DVDs and Blu-rays are screened on a reference system consisting of an Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player w/SACD & DVD-Audio, a Rotel RSX-972 Surround Sound Receiver, and Phase Technology 1.1 (front), 33.1 (center), and 50 (rear) speakers, and Power 10 subwoofer.