Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche (Blu-ray) by Justin Remer The Movie: Marianne Elliott-Said, better known as her public persona Poly Styrene, was the leader of the English punk band X-Ray Spex. The group's brief but brilliant career included the release of the anthemic anti-authoritarian single "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!" and the beloved album Germfree Adolescents. As a young woman of color with braces on her teeth and her own iconoclastic sense of fashion, she became an instant outsider icon.The new biographical documentary, Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, is almost as unexpected as its subject. Directed by Paul Sng (Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain) and Poly Styrene's daughter Celeste Bell, I Am a Cliché is not your standard-issue punk rock doc.Framed through Bell's complicate...Read the entire review »

Breakout (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV It was one of those strange ripples in movie history. Think of it: Robert Duvall, fresh off the set of Godfather, Part II, joins Randy Quaid, he having recently finished The Last Detail, and John Huston, who had both just directed The Man Who Would Be King and co-starred in Chinatown - all get together to make a Charles Bronson movie. The film was Breakout (1975), produced during Bronson's brief fling as an A-list Hollywood star. He had, of course, been enormously popular in Europe and Japan for nearly ten years but, like contemporary Telly Savalas, Bronson was more familiar than popular back in the states. But his European films developed a loyal following in American grind houses, and when Death Wish (1974) earned a sur...Read the entire review »