Trick 'r Treat: Collector's Edition (Blu-ray) <small>by Thomas Spurlin</small><hr /> The Film: <hr nospace> Over the course of a decade since its limited theatrical showings and surge of popularity on home video, Trick 'r Treat has developed a reputation for being a quintessential film to watch over Halloween or Samhain, or All Hallow's Eve; take your pick. It's tough to imagine a film capturing the many facets of the holiday's spirit quite so thoroughly, from the spooked-out observations of kids braving the dangers of the night for their candy to the adults pursuing other kinds of, uh, more mature "treats" while donning their own costumes. Closer in purpose to A Christmas Story than the likes of <A href="https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/61716/halloween-35th-an...Read the entire review »

Eight Hours Don't Make a Day: Criterion Collection (Blu-ray) <small>by Justin Remer</small><hr /> The Series: The five-episode, eight-hour series Eight Hours Don't Make a Day is a fascinating forgotten effort from the insanely prolific Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Fox and His Friends, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant). Originally aired on a monthly basis during the fall of 1972 and the winter of 1973, the series was a commission by left-leaning TV network WDR to create a show around underrepresented working class characters. Dubbed a "family series," with episodes named after each of the show's romanti...Read the entire review »

Community - The Complete Series - DVD <small>by Oktay Ege Kozak</small><hr /> The Show: Over the last five decades or so, there has been no shortage of sitcoms that take place in educational institutions. They're mostly centered on high school, but college also gets its occasional turn in the form of quirky shows about early adults struggling to find their place in life. Community is special amongst them because it's mainly about misfits of various ages who are trying to grasp a second chance at life. That insightful premise is wrapped about a heightened high concept tone that borderlines on a live action cartoon narrative. The formula that creator Dan Harmon puts together satisfies the Matt Groening-style irreverent and borderline absurdist humor mixed with characters we can immediately relate to, no matter how archetypal they might get in service of any given joke or bit. Apart from Season 4, where Harmon stepped out as the showrunner, leaving behi...Read the entire review »

Gone Crazy (Retro Afrika) <small>by Tyler Foster</small><hr /> In the 1970s and 1980s, Apartheid-era Africans had essentially no access to mainstream cinema. The solution? Make their own films, across every genre, including ambitious action movies, sweeping romances, and even striking social commentary films that the African government looked down on. For years, these genuinely independent productions were as unavailable to the world as the world's cinema once was to Africa, but with the help of Gravel Road Entertainment, Indiepix has found nearly 50 of these films and has given them digital restorations so that they can be accessible both via DVD-R releases and digital streaming (even the DVD packages carry the Amazon Prime logo). The movies will be collected in the "Retro Afrika" series, and three of the unearthed pictures have been released on MOD DVD: Umbango, Fishy Stones, and this film, Gone Crazy...which, unfortunately, doesn't ha...Read the entire review »