Blu-ray Review: Sixteen Candles (Arrow Video)
It’s Samantha Baker’s (Molly Ringwald) 16th birthday. Unfortunately for her, it’s also the day before her older sister’s wedding, causing her entire family to forget about her birthday. To make matters worse, she has a crush on a popular, good looking senior named Jake (Michael Schoeffling) who doesn’t seem to know she exists. Things only […]
Love & Mercy (Blu-ray)
A fascinating and sometimes sad biopic, Love & Mercy is about the life of the musical genius Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Dropping the formulaic rags-to riches style, director Bill Pohlad instead bounces back between two significant points in Wilson’s life and career: in the mid-sixties recording the soundtrack for what would become Pet […]
The Sure Thing (30th Anniversary Edition) (Blu-ray)
The Sure Thing was Rob Reiner’s second feature film, shot just after his dazzling debut, This Is Spinal Tap. At a time when most teen comedies focused on delivering copious amounts of crude humor while sex crazed teenagers desperately tried to get a date with the hottest girl in school, The Sure Thing had a […]
Blu-ray Review: Better Off Dead
In the mid 1980’s—a decade populated by teen-sex-comedies—writer/director Savage Steve Holland made a name for himself by combining animation and video. In his most popular comedies, Holland utilized a quirky style that made his romantic comedies some of the most memorable of the decade. Not the popular kid in school, Lane is just an ordinary […]
Blu-ray Review: Stand By Me
Sony Pictures | 1986 | 88 mins. | R Based on the Stephen King short story “The Body,” the 1986 film Stand By Me is suffused with the magic of childhood. Expertly for the screen by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans, it’s one of the most memorable movies of the 1980’s. The narrative, told […]
Blu-ray Review: Say Anything… (20th Anniversary Edition)
20th Century Fox | 1989 | 100 mins. | Rated PG-13 Was 1989 really twenty years ago? I suddenly feel very old. A year away from graduating high school, I spent many a Friday night at the local Cineplex watching the endless stream of teen movies that were so popular in the late eighties. Some […]