The Short History of the Long Road - Special Edition (Blu-ray) by Tyler Foster Nola (Sabrina Carpenter) has never known anything other than life on the road. She and her father Clint (Steven Ogg) live out of their well-worn VW Westfalia, roaming around in search of odd handyman jobs that keep them fed and the vehicle maintained. Nola isn't unhappy, necessarily: she has a decent relationship with her father, even though she doesn't share his restlessness, and she desperately wants to know more about her mother, Cheryl, who left when she was an infant. The day after Clint finally agrees to take Nola to New Orleans, the place she was born and named after, he dies unexpectedly, forcing Nola to fend for herself as she tries to figure out the next destination on her lifelong road trip.A glance at the plot of The Short History of the Long Road might inspire comparisons to Nomadland, Chloe Zhao's film about modern American drifters, now up for several major aw...Read the entire review »

The Last Remake of Beau Geste (Blu-ray) by Oktay Ege Kozak The Movie:Even though Marty Feldman didn't become the household name for absurdist and boundary-pushing spoofs the way Mel Brooks has, partly due to his untimely passing at age 48, his throw the kitchen sink and let's see what sticks approach to comedy certainly deserves a second look. Feldman's of course known primarily for his iconic role as "Eye-gore" in Brooks' classic Young Frankenstein, which helped propel his unique blend of old fashioned slapstick and modern biting satire forward with projects like The Last Remake of Beau Geste, a wild cornucopia of self-aware comedy stylings packaged into a spoof of foreign legionnaire melodramas. Feldman's style can be described as a mix of Brooks and Monty Python, blended with the aura of Buster Keaton. It doesn't always work, but it's a worthy effort.The plot follows the beats of Percival Christopher Wren's novel, Beau Geste, which ...Read the entire review »

Isn't She Great (Blu-ray) by Jesse Skeen The challenge of any movie based on a real-life person is whether an audience will have any interest in them. Released in 2000, Isn't She Great was a rather high-profile bomb. Its subject is author Jacqueline Susann (played by Bette Midler), most famous for writing the 1966 novel "Valley of the Dolls" and a few other melodramatic works before passing in 1974. Valley of the Dolls of course was adapted into a movie in 1967 (which Susann reportedly hated) and is now regarded as a camp classic.At 95 minutes, this movie plays like a rushed Cliff Notes biography. We first see her as a stage actress, and quickly learn that she wants to be "somebody"- in other words famous, a household name. Irving Mansfield (Nathan Lane) ...Read the entire review »