Blu-Ray Vol. 26: Christmas/End of the Year Edition

I hope everybody’s having a great holiday season, unless you’re in retail, then I hope that you merely survived.  As of this writing, it is Christmas Eve.  Next week will be New Year’s leaving 2023 in the dust and ushering in 2024.  2023 was an…odd year for movies.  Stuff got pushed back because of the strikes, but we’ve also seen a large number of big-budget failures.  It’s not that the movies were bad, they were just too expensive.  But the physical media side of things couldn’t have been better.  Despite Best Buy exiting the physical media arena, DVD and Blu-Ray are still doing pretty well.  But you didn’t come here to read me wax poetic about the state of things.  No, you came here to see what I nabbed for the end of the year.  Well, I’m the granter of wishes, so let’s dig into what I’ve got.

The Exorcist: Believer – Universal Studios

The original Exorcist from 1973 is absolute classic of a horror film.  It was shocking and it re-wrote the rules of the horror genre.  The sequels, though, not that great, although Exorcist III was pretty good.  Well, despite all the negative reception that Believer got, I decided to pick this one up.  You know what?  It ain’t that bad of a movie.  I’m not saying it’s going to be a classic or anything.  Hell, I wouldn’t even rate it among the top-tier movies about exorcism, but the movie had some interesting ideas.  For example, the movie postured that exorcism was not the exclusive playground of the Catholic Church.  Nope, you had people of different faiths coming together to help the two girls that were possessed.  The idea that a single demon could possess two or more people is also interesting, I just don’t think these ideas were fleshed out very well.  The acting is amazing, with the girls stealing the show, but everybody else, including Leslie Odom, Jr. were outstanding.  Bringing in Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair felt more like stunt-casting.  You could take those two characters out and the movie wouldn’t be affected.  Yeah, I enjoyed this one.  Again, it doesn’t come close to the original, but it’s rare for legacy sequels to do that.  There’s some pretty decent special features here, so I think it’s worth checking out at least.

P.O.W. The Escape – Scorpion Releasing

The late David Carradine got put on the map with Kung-Fu, where he played a Shaolin monk named Caine.  Ever since then he had been in a number of B-movies, but mostly as a supporting actor.  He wasn’t a bad actor, but he just didn’t really have the charisma and screen presence to carry a movie.  P.O.W. The Escape shows you exactly why.  This is definitely a Cannon Films production, but it still has some merit.  David Carradine plays the hero, and Mako plays a corrupt Vietnamese captain.  We’ve also got Steve James from American Ninja here, so the cast is pretty decent.  It’s a pretty standard Vietnam-era action movie, but it does have some pretty big explosions, so there’s that.

Lone Wolf McQuade – Scorpion Releasing

I had this one on Blu-Ray before, but it wasn’t a particularly a good copy, so…I opted for the newer Scorpion Releasing disc, which includes new interviews with actors like Robert Beltran and the late L.Q. Jones.  This is a movie I grew up with and why I really loved Chuck Norris movies.  So what you will about the guy now, but during the 80s, he was putting out some real bangers, including this one.  One of the biggest highlights of this movie was the fight between Chuck Norris and David Carradine, who plays a fairly nasty villain in this one.  This played to Carradine’s strengths as an actor.  The action is slick and hard-hitting, even for a movie that was rated PG(it came out before the PG-13 rating was invented).  It fires on all cylinders and has an outstanding musical score by Francesco De Masi.  I consider this movie to be one of Chuck Norris’ and David Carradine’s best movies.

Sound of Freedom – Angel Studios

If you can ignore the controversy surrounding Angel Studios’ film about human trafficking, you might actually a pretty decent thriller here.  I’m not going to get into the controversy, as I’ve already made several posts about it, but this movie does have stuff going for it.  First of all, the acting is pretty good.  Jim Caviezel delivers a pretty solid performance as Tim Ballard and Bill Camp as a former Cartel boss turned liberator.  It’s well-shot with some pretty good cinematography and the pacing is pretty decent.  Again, your enjoyment factor could depend on whether or not you’re willing to ignore a large number of inaccuracies that the film throws at you and the issues surrounding the film and Tim Ballard.  It’s worth a look.

Oppenheimer – Universal Studios

Leave it to Christopher Nolan to craft a thrilling biopic about the father of the atomic bomb.  I’m not kidding when I say “thrilling.”  The movie is paced like a tight thriller.  It doesn’t feel like a three hour movie.  Honestly, the movie could’ve ended with the Trinity Test and I would’ve been happy, but nope, there’s more to the story after that, and it’s tragic.  Cillian Murphy inhabits the role like no-one else.  There’s a lot of great performances here, including one from Robert Downey, Jr.  If he doesn’t get an Oscar nomination at least, it would be a crime.  He’s phenomenal.  But there’s a real surprising performance from Josh Hartnett, who dropped off the radar years ago.   He’s great as Ernest Lawrence.  It’s also very clear that Nolan cares about physical media, because this release has over three hours of content aside from the movie.  I think this could be one of the best physical media releases of the year.

The Creator – 20th Century Studios

God, I love good science fiction.  I also like science fiction that takes risks.  The Creator took risks on an 85 million budget, and we got a movie that looks twice that amount.  From a visual standpoint, The Creator is a stunning film.  Narratively, it clearly borrows from other movies, but it works for what it is.  It doesn’t always land with its themes, but the overall film is pretty damn good.  John David Washington delivers one of his best performances and Madeleine Yuna Voyles makes her acting debut with an incredibly powerful performance.  I have issues with child actors, but Madeleine makes the most of it and goes toe-to-toe with the best actors in the genre.  She’s clearly talented and a natural.  She’s going to have a future as an actor, and I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.  The Creator is one of the more interesting science fiction movies to come out in the last few years.

Godzilla 2000 – Toho/Sony

What can I say?  I’m a huge Godzilla fan.  I’ve been watching these Kaiju movies for years.  The big G has been around for nearly 70 years.  Godzilla Minus One hit theaters in the states last month and is one of the best movies of the year, in my opinion.  So, I decided to go back and revisit some of the older films.  Godzilla 2000 is essentially retaliation for the 1998 Roland Emmerich film, which pissed Toho off to no end, and you know what?  It’s a lot of fun, regardless of which version you watch.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Paramount/Disney

Here’s one of those “big-budget failures” that I mentioned.  At over 300 million dollars and waning interest in the franchise, there really was no way that Dial of Destiny was going to be profitable.  People stayed away after Crystal Skull and it’s a shame.  This is a pretty good movie.  The opening 40 minutes are pure Indiana Jones.  The de-aging on Indy works for the most part.  The whole movie is just good old-fashioned fun with a great villain in Mads Mikkelson.  But the movie also brings back John Rhys-Davies as Sallah, as well as introducing new characters like Antonio Banderas as Renaldo.  This was the first Indy movie to not be directed by Steven Spielberg, and I wonder what it could’ve been if he had.  Still, James Mangold managed to deliver a pretty solid final film that I think should’ve done better than it did.  There’s a 5-part documentary detailing the making of the film which is pretty good.  Give the movie a chance, you might like it.

Piranha II: The Spawning – Scream Factory

Even the greatest of film-makers had to start somewhere.  The legendary director of True Lies, The Terminator, The Abyss, Aliens, Titanic, and the Avatar films, James Cameron, made his feature-length directorial debut with a movie about flying piranhas.  Yep.  It’s just as ridiculous as it sounds, but when it comes to the underwater photography, it’s clear that Cameron knew what he was doing, because the underwater stuff is amazing.  The visual and creature effects are actually pretty good.  Lance Henriksen chews the scenery like it’s nobody’s business and it’s goofy fun.

Expend4bles – Lionsgate Studios

Boy, you want to talk about a massive failure on nearly every conceivable level, look no further than the 4th and most likely final entry in the Expendables franchise.  I fully admit that I enjoyed the movie, but this is the worst of the bunch by country mile.  The amount of green-screen on display here is absurd.  Some of the action is pretty good, especially the opening.  But good god, the CGI is fucking awful.  Not only that, Stallone is absent for most of the movie, which is ironic because he’s the guy that was responsible for the entire franchise.  Also when you bring in top-notch martial arts talent like Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais and don’t use them properly, you fucked up.  This movie was a result of one bad decision after another, and creative differences between Stallone and the film-makers.  Yet, I found myself having a blast during my second viewing.  Yeah, stick a fork in this franchise, it’s done.

Saw X – Lionsgate Studios

The Saw franchise is one of my favorites, despite how off the rails it went.  The original movie felt more like a detective thriller than a straight-up horror movie.  The sequels would eventually focus more on the traps and the brutality.  Saw X sees the return of Tobin Bell as Jigsaw and Shawnee Smith as Amanda.  The film takes place between the second and third movies and we get to see more of how and why Jigsaw does what he does.  While some people might scoff at the idea of Tobin Bell’s character being the protagonist, you have to understand the character’s motivations for what he’s doing.  The movie still has the gruesome traps, but it’s all grounded by a pretty strong story that sees Jigsaw evolve into the villain that everybody knows him as.  It’s the best film in the franchise since the original film, hands down.  I love ’em all, but this feels really satisfying.

Monsternado – Uncork’d Entertainment

When Sharknado hit the scene a decade ago, it was unlike anything anybody had seen before.  It was ridiculous and it was made by one of the most notorious “mockbuster” companies in cinema history: The Asylum.  Here’s the thing, though.  It delivered on its premise.  It really did.  Yeah, the CGI was crap, but the concept was just so damn ridiculous people couldn’t help but tune in.  It was popular enough that it got 5 sequels, each one more ridiculous than the last.  But it wouldn’t stop there.  There would be a number of monster-based tornado movies since 2018.  The one that came out THIS year was Monsternado.  I’ve seen some serious shit in my time, but Monsternado takes the cake here.  It’s BAD.  A tornado comes out of the sea with monsters in tow and havoc ensues.  Yet, people don’t seem overly concerned about it.  Uncork’d Entertainment is known for their low-budget B-movies, but this is easily the worst they have ever put out, and not in a “so bad, it’s good” kind of way.  It’s abysmal.  Oddly, Monsternado feels like a Sharknado rip-off.  I want you to consider the irony of that statement.

The El Mariachi Trilogy – Sony Pictures

When people talk about director Robert Rodriguez, most people tend to think about movies like From Dusk Till Dawn and the Spy Kids movies.  But for action movie junkies, it goes back further than to Desperado.  What your average film fan may not realize is that Desperado is a sequel.  The original movie is called El Mariachi.  It was released in 1993 and was a very low-budget indie film.  It was about a traveling musician trying to make a living playing at bars when he inadvertently gets involved with a gang.  It’s pretty good, but it was Desperado that put Rodriguez on the map.  It’s also the movie that made Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek household names.  Desperado is the best of the trilogy, hands down.  It’s slick, it’s stylish, and it’s gloriously violent.  Once Upon a Time in Mexico is…fine, but outside of the incredible cast, it’s almost the same movie as Desperado.  Still, these movies are still worth picking up.

And…that’s going to conclude this edition of Recent Blu-Ray Hauls, I hope you folks might have found something worth checking out.  Not everything I get is good, obviously, but having a physical copy is preferable to going to digital-only.  I hope everybody has a safe and wonderful Christmas.  I might do something for Christmas, but I haven’t made a decision, yet.  In the meantime, y’all take care now, ya hear?