Beasts of No Nation: Criterion Collection (Blu-ray) by Justin Remer The Movie: Beasts of No Nation, based on the novel by Uzodinma Iweala and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (True Detective season one, No Time to Die), was an independent film purchased by Netflix and released as their first attempt to enter the prestige cinema market way back in 2015. The film follows a West African boy who is forced to become a child soldier. It is a well-made and intense drama that is by turns gripping and unsettling, though it ultimately falls short of profundity. Recent Criterion Collection releases like The Ascent and

The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie:Made two years after the success of Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation of Robert Crumb's underground comix character Fritz The Cat, Robert Taylor's 1974 sequel, The Nine Lives Of Fritz The Cat, opens with Fritz (once again voiced by Skip Hinnant) on the couch in his rundown New York City apartment. His wife (voiced by Reva Rose) is breastfeeding their baby, Ralphie, and asking Fritz if he's got an update on their welfare situation and hounding him to get a job. Fritz, however, just wants to get laid. When that doesn't happen, he lights up a joint and escapes into a dreamland of his own making.Properly stoned, Fritz meets up with a Puerto Rican named Juan. When he winds up at Juan's place he lights up a joint and gets Juan's sister, Chita, stoned. They have sex but her father walks in on them and shoots Fritz with a shotgun. In the next vignette, F...Read the entire review »