Up first this week is Nocebo starring Eva Green and Mark Strong. Green is a clothing designer who is attacked by a dog during a show. Or maybe it’s in her head. A Filipino woman moves in with Green, Strong and their daughter to help around the house while Green tries to get her head straight. But of course there’s more to this woman than meets the eye. I won’t spoil anything, but it has a timely message. The three leads are good as is the actress playing the daughter. I can see why you may not have heard of this film, but I thought it was solid. It won’t wow too many people, but I’ve always liked mark Strong and Green is good in her role losing her mind. For a movie I definitely wasn’t familiar with, I overall enjoyed it.
Belle and Sebastian: The Adventure Continues brings back the classic pair. This time Sebastian and Belle are trying to find his aunt whose plane crashed. He thinks she’s alive in the mountains and they get a man to use his plane to look. The man has a secret connection to Sebastian as well. It’s not groundbreaking filmmaking or anything, but it’s sweet enough for families to watch together. The dog is beautiful and the location is stunning. You could honestly watch the film for the backdrop alone. I think I watched it with an English dubbing because audio didn’t seem to synch up to mouth movements. If your family is familiar with this pair then they should like the film.
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet Season 9 and 10 hit DVD this week. These DVD sets are fully restored and remastered versions of the classic TV series. Season 9 contains all 33 episodes, some unseen and unavailable for decades. Season 10 has 25 episodes some also unseen and unavailable for decades. That’s what is great about these releases, you are getting everything, rare releases never available on home video previously especially restored. The show is a classic slice of Americana and being able to have the entirety of it is fantastic. Sure it’s not what we are used to in today’s cynical world, but it’s a good reminder of what family programming once was. If you have been collecting these releases, I highly recommend Season 9 & 10 to add to your collection.
The next set of releases come from Mill Creek Entertainment.
Running the Bases is a Christian based film and normally I’m not a huge fan of those. But the lead character finds out he was born with a heart defect after his brother dies. I also learned I was born with a heart defect so I thought that was neat. He was a baseball catcher who had to give up his dream of playing ball because of his defect (preaching to the choir there brother) and turns to coaching to stay with the game he loves. He becomes a winning coach who gets an offer to coach in Texas and make that team into a winner. Along with his son he tries to turn the ragtag group into good players and good young men, but he clashes with some powerful people. He runs the bases during every game and practice while saying a prayer to honor his dead brother. One man doesn’t like his faith and it gets very heavy handed at this point. The non-believers don’t like him when all he wants to do is pray and coach. If you and your family enjoy faith based films you’ll like this. It’s a bit long though. It comes in both Blu-ray or DVD options.
Mill Creek has out a Blu-ray of 4 Epic Showdowns Action Movies. It includes Kull The Conqueror starring Kevin Sorbo. It’s a campy sword & sorcery flick with suspect CGI by today’s standards. I’ve always had a soft spot for it despite it really not being good. I secretly love it though. The Cowboy Way stars Woody Harrelson and Kiefer Sutherland as two cowboys from New Mexico who go to New York City looking for a friend that had gone to get his Cuban daughter. It’s your classic fish-out-of-water story with two cowboys not knowing city lifestyles and wearing cowboy hats and riding horses. It’s a bit cheesy now, but I can see it having fans because of its leads. The Jackal stars Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. Willis plays the Jackal, an assassin worldwide agencies are out to get with help from an IRA agent played by Richard Gere. End of Days stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney, and Kevin Pollak and I’ve always thought it was underrated. It’s Arnold as a former NYPD detective that gets caught up in a religious storyline. It flew under the radar, but I liked it.
Sci-Fi From The Vault 4 Classic Films is full of campy classic sci-fi. I love old school science fiction because I love seeing the old technology or how they predicted things would be like in the future. Creature with the Atom Brain finds a gangster using a former Nazi scientist to resurrect his dead thugs. It is camp personified. It Came from Beneath the Sea features stop motion animation special effects from the legendary Ray Harryhausen. This collection is worth the price just for that alone. A radioactive octopus attacks a submarine and the crew wants to kill it. It attacks San Francisco and must be destroyed. Ray Harryhausen also did the effects for 20 Million Miles to Earth. A US spacecraft crashes in the Mediterranean sea from its voyage to Venus and a creature is released in Italy. If you are familiar with Harryhausen you will recognize the Ymir creature in this one. The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock stars Lou Costello in this spoof of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and other similar films.
Last we have Thrillers from the Vault 8 Classic Films. The Black Room stars Boris Karloff as twin brothers with one out to kill the other and steal his identity. The Man They Could Not Hang stars Karloff again as a scientist who brings the dead back to life who is hung and brought back to life to get revenge on those involved. Before I Hang finds Karloff as a doctor who is sentenced to death for a killing but does experiments before his own death leading to de-aging. The Man with Nine Lives sees Karloff as a scientist who froze himself for 10 years while working on a cure for cancer. He is awakened and seeks answers and revenge on others involved. The Devil Commands has Karloff working on communicating with the dead when his wife dies in an accident. The Boogie Man Will Get You stars Karloff as yet another mad scientist doing experiments in the basement of his inn trying to create superhumans with electricity. The Return of the Vampire stars Bela Lugosi in an unofficial sequel to Dracula as a vampire set during World War I and II. Five involves five survivors, one woman and four men, of an atomic bomb who must band together to figure out how to survive in a world where no one they know survived.
The Nerds Templar 