This Review Roundup is a mix of this week’s new home video releases and those from last week I got after their release date. Up first is Yellowjackets Season One. I really liked this one and can’t wait for Season Two. The show time jumps between current day and the mid 1990s when a plane crashed leaving a girl’s soccer team and a couple of boys to survive in the woods. The survivors are now grown adults with jobs, families, political ambition and substance problems. At first you’re not quite sure how weird the show is going to get, but as it develops it jumps right into LOST territory with supernatural stuff. The younger cast is good, but it’s the current timeline actresses who stand out especially Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci. As a 90s kid myself I love the show’s soundtrack and 90s nostalgia. I’m very curious to see where it goes, what secrets it reveals and how quickly more bodies start dropping. If you’ve missed this one, definitely check it out.
The original RoboCop gets the 4K treatment this week. In 2013 the original camera negative got restored and the movie has never looked better. The film is a sci-fi classic that spawned a couple of suspect sequels and remake, but this original film is fantastic. It has great one liners (I’d buy that for a dollar), great action, iconic scenes and set a new standard in believable science fiction. It’s one of the 1980s best films overall to me. This release is the Director’s Cut and comes with a ton of extras like multiple commentaries, deleted scenes and so much more. It’s pretty jam packed with bonus features. Between all the extras and restoration, this is the best release of the film to date.
Seaquest DSV gets a new Complete Series Blu-ray release this week from Mill Creek Entertainment. You really can’t beat Mill Creek’s complete series box sets because you get everything you want in a series at a good price. You get all 3 seasons of the show starring Roy Scheider (first 2 seasons), Jonathan Brandis, Ted Raimi, Marco Sanchez, Peter DeLuise, Michael DeLuise and eventually Michael Ironside for Season 3 replacing Scheider. If you aren’t familiar with the show, think of it as underwater Star Trek. It aired in the 1990s and took place in the then near future (2018 for Season 1). I watched it off and on back in the day, but I know some diehard fans. It has a cult following now especially after the death of Brandis. I think this might be the first time you can get all 3 seasons together in Blu-ray form, but I’m not 100% sure of that. If you were a fan, this is everything you want.
Sticking with Mill Creek, the next group of releases are already out and the best of the bunch is BASEketball starring South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Two down on their luck guys inadvertently create a new game, BASEketball which mixes baseball and basketball. It goes from their driveway to professional league and the two become stars. When the owner of their team dies, it is left to Coop to run, but another owner wants him to change rules and help make more money. With one season to win a championship or lose the team to the dead man’s widow, Coop and Remer must finally win the big one in life. I’ve enjoyed the movie since it came out in the late 1990s. Sure some of it is childish now and dated, but I find it just as funny as Dodgeball and similar movies. It’s another cult favorite among fans and if you don’t own it already, here’s your chance.
If I told you there was a movie with Sam Rockwell, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Dinklage, the underrated Steve Zahn and Paul Giamatti, you’d probably think it was the greatest movie of all-time. Unfortunately you’d be wrong. Safe Men stars all those guys, but feels really dated at this point. Rockwell and Zahn play two singers who get mistaken for professional safe crackers and are forced to crack open safes for a Jewish mobster. Giamatti is the mobster’s #2 and Ruffalo is one of the real safe crackers. It’s kind of all over the map and you kinda know where it will go. I like Ruffalo, but this isn’t his best work. Rockwell is always charming and Zahn is good I just wish the movie was better. I’m sure it has its fans, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again.
Next is The Black Dahlia from Brian De Palma. It’s good, but should be better. From 2006, it’s a noirish telling of the events surrounding the death of Elizabeth Short based on the novel by James Ellroy. De Palma’s style works for the era of the film with the costuming, cars and set design. The cast includes Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, and Mia Kirshner but rewatching it, something feels missing. I think too much time is spent on Hartnett and Eckhart’s backstories and it should have been spent on the crime solving. I understand we still don’t know what happened and this story is Ellroy’s interpretation, but I wanted more. The real story has always fascinated me because Short was from the city next to me. It disappointed at the box office at its release and never turned into the film it was expected to be (LA Confidential).
Last we have a triple feature of MacGruber, Balls of Fury and Your Highness. MacGruber is probably the most known and is a beloved cult flick. Balls of Fury is the funniest to me with Your Highness being a major disappointment. MacGruber is Will Forte’s spoof of MacGuyver from his Saturday Night Live days. Kristen Wiig, Val Kilmer and Ryan Phillippe co-star in the action comedy which I do like. Balls of Fury stars Christopher Walken and Dan Fogler who was a once promising ping pong player who loses and gets his father killed. Years later he has to get back into the game to take down the criminal gang that killed his father. Your Highness is a fantasy stoner flick starring Danny McBride, James Franco and Natalie Portman. There are much better stoner flicks out there (starring most of this cast) and although the fantasy angle brings something new to the stoner genre, the film never worked for me. McBride misses more than hits in this one which is shocking because I like him.
The Nerds Templar 