The Four Seasons (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Of the four feature films directed, written by and starring Alan Alda, The Four Seasons (1981) is by far the best. Like The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), which he wrote and starred in but did not direct, it's almost too ambitious, aiming high but admirably adult throughout and, to its credit, succeeds in most respects. Part of that wave of late-1970s/early-1980s movies that all but vanished during the DVD revolution, The Four Seasons is ripe for rediscovery. It was Alda's biggest commercial and critical success as a feature film writer-director, this despite audiences (including this reviewer) confusing it at the time with the similarly-titled A Change of Seasons (1980), the notorious Bo Derek-Anthony Hopkins hot tub movie. Structure-wise, The Four Seasons is similar to though generally better than Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy ...Read the entire review »

Legendary Weapons of China (Special Edition) (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie:One of the most entertaining kung-fu movies that the world famous Shaw Brothers cranked out in the early eighties is Legendary Weapons Of China, directed by and starring Chia-Liang Liu. The movie revolves around Lei Kung (played by Chia-Liang Liu himself), a member of the Yi Ho Society who has been sent to the province of Yunnan where he winds up disappearing after breaking up his school to protect his students from the dangers of the changing martial arts scene.Master Li Lin-ying isn't happy at all with Lui Kung's disappearance and so he calls in three of his finest fighters, a trio of assassins named Lei Ying (Chia Yung Liu), Tieh Hau (Hsiao Hou) and Ti Tan (Chia Hui Liu, better known on western shores as the instantly Gordon Liu!). These three deadly martial artists see Lei Kung as a traitor and are tasked with finding him and putting him out of busin...Read the entire review »