Exotica / Calendar (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Atom Egoyan's Exotica (1994) is a puzzle film of sorts, in some respects similar to Paul Thomas Anderson's later film Magnolia (1999). Both pictures introduce a gaggle of people midstream in their lives. They mostly appear disconnected from one another, and initially it's unclear what we in the audience are supposed to make of them. How these disparate characters eventually converge is part of what makes both films interesting, but that's not really what either is about. Nevertheless, it's best to approach these films cold, with no knowledge of what their stories are about ahead of time. You definitely don't, for instance, want to visit Wikipedia's entry on Exotica beforehand. While its plot synopsis is undeniably accurate, it's from the post-viewing perspective that gives absolutely everything away. Exotica received rave reviews and did good (arthous...Read the entire review »

Rob Zombie's The Munsters (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie: Written and directed by Rob Zombie, the 2022 incarnation of The Munsters was the subject of almost instant internet scorn the moment the trailer was released online a few months back. Now that the movie is out on Blu-ray and on Netflix, making this the first of the director's films to not get a theatrical release, the movie proper can be evaluated, making some wonder... was it really deserving of all the scorn it received when the trailer dropped?Yes and no.The movie, which is essentially a prequel to the TV series that inspired it, is extremely light on plot. What little story there is starts in Transylvania and revolves around how Dr. Henry Augustus Wolfgang (Richard Brake) and his assistant Floop (Jorge Garcia) created Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) who then moved away from his creators and found new life as a rock n roll star. From...Read the entire review »