The Parallax View: Criterion Collection (Blu-ray) by Justin Remer The Movie: Even setting aside its potentially inflammatory subject matter, the 1974 political thriller The Parallax View is a truly unusual movie.It opens with a political assassination whose details are intentionally supposed to remind viewers of the infamous killings of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and then it proceeds to dramatize one of the finest "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you" plots ever executed in American film.Director Alan J. Pakula also seems to toss in and toss away genres at unexpected intervals, starting with a baseline of Manchurian Candidate-type intrigue, before shifting gears to the kind...Read the entire review »

In God We Trust - aka In God We Tru$t (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie:Written by, directed by and starring the late, great Marty Feldman, 1980's In God We Trust (or Gimme That Prime Time Religion) (also known as In God We Tru$t), takes place ‘once upon our time' and tells the story of one Brother Ambrose (Feldman) of The Trappist Order Of St. Ambrose The Unlikely. When the monetary runs into money problems and needs to come up with some fast cash to make the upcoming mortgage payment, Ambrose is sent out to figure out how to come up with the scratch. Through a few odd steps, he winds up in Los Angeles where he runs into all manner of colorful characters and becomes… quite worldly.Ambrose gets picked up in school bus that's been converted into a church led by Dr. Sebastian Melmoth (Peter Boyle) and then meets a hooker with a heart of gold named Mary (Louise Lasser), with whom he starts to fall in love with. Befor...Read the entire review »

The Don is Dead (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movieirected by filmmaker Richard Fleischer in 1973 for Universal Pictures and based on the novel of the same name by Marvin H. Albert, The Don Is Dead follows Frank Regalbuto (Robert Forster), a mobster in the employ of a crime family operating out of Las Vegas. When the elder Don of the family dies, Angelo DiMorra (Anthony Quinn) moves in to take his place and Frank is loyal to him, the way a good mafia soldier should be.Things get tricky when the rival mob in the area puts the moves on the DiMorra family's turf, hoping to move in and wipe them out. They're clever enough to get Frank embroiled in all of this too, staging things in such a way that he starts to believe that his girlfriend, Ruby (Angel Tomkins), is sleeping with Angelo, the idea here being that Frank will not be happy with this and take Angelo out for them. Eventually Frank brings in two brot...Read the entire review »