Fans of obscure animated films rejoice! Weird animator Ralph Bakshi’s 1977 post-apocalyptic fantasy movie is coming to Blu-ray for the first time, and since I haven’t seen it since the days of VHS I’m kind of excited for it. I was never into Bakshi’s urban films, but Wizards always caught my eye and led me to watch his animated version of The Lord of the Rings.

Wizards is an interesting mix of fantasy and post-apocalyptic storytelling, and while it may not be the best animated film of all time, it’s unique. I look forward to seeing it again when it comes out on March 13th.

Via Blu-ray.com

I’m a huge Aardman Animations fan. I’ve loved their Wallace and Gromit shorts since I was little, and equally loved all their feature-length movies to date, with the exception of Arthur Christmas. Anyway, I’ve been seeing the trailer for The Pirates! Band of Misfits a lot lately, and I’ve gotten very excited about it. After doing some research I was surprised to see that the title of the original book (as well as the movie in the UK) is The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists.

It seems the powers that be in the Sony Pictures marketing department don’t think having scientists in the title would be a good thing here in the states. So, they’ve completely taken out any mention of the scientists from our trailers, making it confusing when you see Hugh Grant’s Pirate Captain character wearing a lab coat, but whatever, I’m sure they know what’s best for us.

When I first got the email asking if we’d like to review an advanced copy of Chillerama, I grew hesitant when I saw the film’s tagline: “The Ultimate Midnight Movie.” For the last decade or so, there have been a glut of films that are meant to pay homage to old B-movies, but they normally just use this as an excuse to have no budget, crappy special effects, terrible actors, and even worse scripts. They say they’re being tongue-in-cheek, but they very rarely ever succeed at being funny, let alone entertaining in even the “so bad it’s good” way that the B-movies they’re spoofing actually are. But, as I always say, I’ll watch anything once, so I put my expectations in check and told them to send Chillerama posthaste. Much to my surprise, this isn’t your typical half-assed love note to the drive-in.

The Movie

As with most horror anthologies, Chillerama has a bookend story that helps tie the other segments together. In this case, the bookend takes place at a drive-in movie theatre’s final night of business. The popcorn becomes tainted by a mysterious blue ooze, and the next thing you know, everyone has become a zombie. But in keeping with the tone of most of Chillerama, these zombies don’t want to eat your flesh – they want to hump you into oblivion until you’re torn apart in a most gory, ridiculous way.

Chillerama is potty humor taken to the next level. Between Wadzilla, about a mutant sperm that has its way with the Statue of Liberty, to a short segment called Deathication, a non-stop gross-out clip reel that features more peanuts than a Baby Ruth bar, and more splatters than a Jackson Pollock painting, the film is little more than one junior high-level joke after another. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if you know what you’re getting yourself into. The only problem with Chillerama is that, with only a few words of description, I’ve summed up 3/5 of the movie for you. There’s not much more to the three aforementioned segments other than a hook (sex zombies, monster sperm, and poop, respectively). If the movie only had these three segments, I’d give you my grade right now and you could be on your merry way, with your mind made up as to whether Chillerama was worth your time. However, there are those lingering 2/5 that require I add a little more to this review, and might sway you to consider giving it a chance.

The first interesting segment is called, I Was a Teenage Werebear. The humor is still crass, bloody, and pretty offensive, but there’s a kernel of a great idea in here that could easily be used for a more serious film to explore at greater depth.

Ricky is a young high school kid who spends most of his time out on the sunny beaches of California. He has a girlfriend, but for whatever reason, he simply can’t get excited about being physical with her, despite the fact that she throws herself at him. Why? Because anytime Talon, the good-looking leader of a group of ruffians, strolls by, Ricky is drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Then, after Talon bites Ricky on the butt cheek during a gym class wrestling match, Ricky starts to notice his feelings towards Talon are becoming overwhelmingly strong. Ricky fights his love for Talon, until he can fight no more, and he changes into a werebear. He doesn’t turn into a big, furry animal, mind you; he turns into a hairy-chested, leather-wearing gay man in assless chaps (Yes, that kind of bear). By the way, did I mention Werebear is a musical?

A lot of the tropes of the werewolf genre – fighting one’s own instincts, the rush of finally “transforming” for the first time, and being afraid to reveal yourself to society – fit perfectly as a metaphor for a closeted gay person on the brink of coming out. This is an idea that could make for something really special if handled in a longer format and with a more serious tone. In Chillerama, though, it’s presented as over-the-top humor. For example, when a coach tries to molest Ricky, he winds up smashing the coach’s head between his knees, allowing the too-red fake blood to splatter all over his chest in what can only be described as a grey matter money shot. The segment has a lot of potential to be something more, but it falls back on shock value and, ultimately, falls short of greatness. Still, from now on, anytime I watch a werewolf film, I’ll be thinking about it as a gay metaphor, so Werebear is definitely memorable.

The one segment that I can wholeheartedly recommend, though, is The Diary of Anne Frankenstein. This short film seems like it was made for an entirely different movie, as there’s only a little bit of cartoony violence and the sexual humor is a lot more subtle. Instead, Anne Frankenstein relies on absurdist humor to bridge the gap between the ancient Jewish folktale of the Golem and Mary Shelley’s classic novel of the flesh reborn.

The film starts with Anne Frank and her family in hiding. Young Anne discovers her grandfather’s diary, detailing his attempts to resurrect the dead, from a time back before the family shortened their surname out of embarrassment when grandpa’s experiments became public knowledge. Suddenly, Nazi soldiers break through the wall with der Furher in tow, who quickly takes Dr. Frankenstein’s journal in order to create a super soldier that will help him win the war. Back at his secret lab, Hitler successfully creates his monster, but it takes the form of a Hasidic Rabbi with a huge head and Popeye forearms, whom he calls Meshugannah. It’s only later that the creature realizes, “Hey, wait a second. I’m Jewish! And these are Nazis!”, and goes on a murderous rampage, using everything from a menorah, a dreidel, and Hitler’s detached arm to mete out his revenge.

I laughed so hard during Anne Frankenstein that I sometimes had to pause it to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Unfortunately, it’s the type of subtle, clever humor that isn’t funny when described, but is outright hilarious when you see it acted out on screen. From Hitler pinky swearing that he won’t shoot the Franks, to seeing a Nazi soldier thrown into the air, only to cut to a black stuntman that is taking the brunt of the landing, it’s the kind of stuff you have to see to fully appreciate. Perhaps my favorite aspect, though, is the dialog. There’s a making-of featurette on the DVD that tells us that every actor in the film, except Joel David Moore (Avatar), who plays Hitler, can speak German. So everyone else is saying their lines correctly (with subtitles), but Moore spends the entire film spouting nonsense that simply sounds correct when said with an outrageous German accent. If you pay close attention, you’ll catch some really funny bits of dialog from pop culture that he’s thrown in for good measure, like Osh-Kosh B’Gosh, Wienerschnitzel, Salacious Crumb, and, my favorite, “Sclemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer!” from the opening of Laverne & Shirley. I wish I could describe every funny moment in The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, but it really is something you have to see to appreciate; it’s so far above every other segment that it feels like it was added to the film by mistake. It is, by far, the best reason to watch Chillerama.

At first viewing Chillerama is a simple, dirty-minded joke of a movie. But as I ran back through it to refresh my memory for the review, I found I was stopping more than I was fast-forwarding just so I could watch a particularly well done zombie attack or to see a gigantic spermatozoa rampaging through the streets of New York City. The film’s charm is not immediately apparent, but on subsequent viewings, Chillerama has grown on me like a nasty case of jock itch. And I have a feeling the demented minds behind this film wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Extra Features

The extra features on the DVD are nothing spectacular, but it’s nice they’re included at all. There are making-of featurettes for Teenage Werebear and Anne Frankenstein, but they’re pretty standard stuff. A couple of Comic-Con interviews and the director’s commentaries cover a lot of the same ground on the origin of each segment of the film, with bits and pieces from the production thrown in for good measure. You’ll also find trailers for Wadzilla, Werebear, and Chillerama itself, as well as a few deleted scenes that mostly deserved to be cut. The Wadzilla deleted scenes feature animatics for the special effects, but I wish there would have been more in-depth coverage of the sperm effects, because they were done by the infamous Chiodo Brothers of Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Team America fame. Overall, it’s a nice, but fairly standard round-up of special features that you’ll watch once, but probably never revisit.

The Verdict

While it’s not one to watch with the family gathered around the Christmas tree, Chillerama is perfect for those nights when you have some sick-minded friends over for pizza and beer. All of the segments are entertaining, but The Diary of Anne Frankenstein is the real stand-out, and probably the one you’ll rewatch more than any other. For the most part, though, this is lowest common denominator, over-the-top humor. But when you consider that the drive-in films Chillerama is paying a loving homage to were playing to the same crowd, it seems fitting.

I get sent a lot of crazy stuff that people want me to review. Some of it gets on the site and some of it doesn’t. I wasn’t sure what to think about the direct-to-Blu-ray and Walmart-exclusive animated short film LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace until I heard Tim talk about it on the podcast, but I’m glad to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Not only am I growing utterly intolerant of prequel-era Star Wars, but I’d never heard LEGO characters talk despite being super cute in silent, video-game form, so I was leery. Luckily, it turns out that whoever wrote and animated this short film had a lot of creative freedom and decided to pump it full of slapstick, tongue-in-cheek humor, and lots of Star Wars in-jokes. Oh, and George Lucas makes a couple appearances.

George Lucas gives Darth Vader notes

The first thing I noticed when I started watching it with a few of my nieces (who happen to be pretty hardcore Star Wars and LEGO fans) was how great the animation actually looked. I knew it was a Blu-ray and would look decent, but for a short film starring LEGO minifigures I didn’t expect it to look this cool. The models and textures look a lot better than the videogame cutscenes, and the animators found all sorts of cool things to do with the LEGO bricks.

The story revolves around a group of younglings that get stuck under the supervision of Yoda, C3PO, and R2-D2, while various evil-doers ransack the Jedi Temple. Spoiler Alert – If you’ve even so much as seen the packaging of this Blu-ray, this won’t be a spoiler, but along the way the group meets up with a young Han Solo himself. The “H” on this nametag is sidewans and they call him Ian, and apparently he escaped from a nearby orphanage and causes the group to blast off into space in a very cool looking LEGO space school bus.

Wait, would't that be the future?

The younglings get marooned on Tatooine with the droids, and there’s a pretty funny bit at the Cantina that plays off the “Hey we don’t serve your kind here!” bit from A New Hope. Of course things don’t go as planned and they all end up as slaves of Jabba the Hutt, which is probably the outcome of like 80% of events on Tatooine.

Yoda and the always-awesome Commander Cody chase after the villain (Assaj Ventress) with ‘lil Solo stowed away onboard the ship. Further slapstick antics and the meddling of youngins cause Yoda and Solo to crash land on everyone’s favorite ice planet, Hoth. Queu the Tauntaun-guts joke and some droid battles and eventually the group all reunites on Tatooine.

It’s hard to explain this quirky little short film, but it’s definitely worth a watch, and for $13 on Blu-ray (complete with ‘lil Han Solo in LEGO form) it’s a steal for Star Wars fans. I didn’t buy the actual Star Wars Blu-rays, but I bought a copy of this after I gave my review copy to my nieces. I was hoping to turn them into little critics and get some sound bites on video of their reactions, but for the first time ever they decided to be shy.

In short, the 22 minutes of LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace were more entertaining than the majority of the prequels. That must mean George Lucas wasn’t very involved. Good move, LEGO!

Terri looked like the type of movie I was going to really like. It’s a quirky story of an introverted, overweight High School student befriending his assistant principal, played by John C. Reilly. Oh, and Creed Bratton from The Office is in it. Yeah, this looked like my kind of movie.

Well, after seeing the amazing Win Win recently, I can’t help but feel like Terri was just ok, and not great like I was hoping it would be. That’s not to say I didn’t like it or it was a bad film, I just had higher hopes for it.

The Movie

Terri is played by new-comer Jacob Wysocki, and he totally embodies the character, who lives at home with his aging, eccentric, this-is-probably-what-Creed-Bratton-is-like-in-real-life uncle James.. He starts wearing his pajamas to school because they’re comfortable, but his poor attendance force him into some one-on-one time with John C. Reilly’s character, Mr. Fitzgerald.

The movie is a bit predictable if you’ve watched many coming-of-age tales, but the relationship between Terri and Mr. Fitzgerald is interesting and well-played, just not terribly funny or exciting.

I feel like if I had watched Terri before Win Win, I would have enjoyed it a lot more, but after watching both I can’t help but draw comparisons.

The Blu-ray

Terri looks and sounds great on Blu-ray, but the lack of any substantial bonus material makes it hard to recommend as a purchase. You should definitely rent it or add it to your Netflix queu, but I wouldn’t buy it. But hey, if you do, use our link and we’ll get a tiny kickback, which we’ll use to buy cooler things to review or giveaway.

By the way, see Win Win if you haven’t yet.

This is a good week for Batman fans. Like most of you I’ve been playing through Batman Arkham City and loving every minute of it, but this week saw the release of the animated adaption of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One as well.

Has it really been over a year since I reviewed a DC Animated Universe movie? The last DC U animated Blu-ray I reviewed was Batman: Under the Red Hood, and it was surprisingly good. Since then, I’ve seen a few more, but didn’t feel they were worth posting on the site. Green Lantern: Emerald Knights was a decent collection of stories, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse was just kind of interesting, and All-Star Superman was weird because I didn’t know the source material.

Even though I haven’t read Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, I thoroughly enjoyed the animated adaptation and feel like it is an impressive addition to Batman’s already awesome animated film history.

The Movie

Batman: Year One is a very Batman Begins-esque origin story about Bruce Wayne becoming the masked vigilante to combat the crime in Gotham, but to me the real star is James Gordon. Growing up on the classic Batman Animated Series in the 90s made me realize that Gordon was a cool character, despite his shitty portrayal in all the Batman films to that point. Luckily, Christopher Nolan changed that when he cast Gary Oldman to play Gordon, and the character finally got some screen time as the badass he is.

Batman: Year One presents a very flawed, tough version of Gordon, played perfectly by Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston. Maybe it’s Cranston’s hair color and mustache, but I could not stop thinking about how I wanted him to play Gordon in Warner Bros’ inevitable reboot of the post-Nolan Batman film universe. He sounds that good as Gordon.

While Batman is trying to show Gotham he means business, Gordon is doing the same with the Gotham Police force. It is entirely corrupt, and he almost gets killed because of his unwillingness to participate. There are no supervillains to be seen, and this made me wonder what Nolan’s first foray into the Batverse would have been like if he would have chosen not to include Scarecrow and Ra’s al Ghul (a decision I doubt WB would have let him make).

Ultimately, I think it’s a testament to the Batman character that he works so well alongside crazy supervillains as he does just fighting crime.

The Blu-ray

Batman: Year One, like Red Hood before it, feels more cinematic than DC’s other direct-to-Blu-ray titles, and thankfully is presented with care. The video quality is great, as is the presentation and selection of bonus features. You can always count on the DC U Blu-rays to feature interesting interviews, retrospectives, and an assortment of episodes hand-picked by Bruce Timm, which is always a plus.

The DC Showcase short this time around is based on Catwoman, and I didn’t bother watching it yet. I haven’t liked any of the Showcase shorts at all, and from what I read about this one it mainly features Catwoman pole-dancing, so I passed.

Batman: Year One is a solid effort and I’ll definitely watch it again, and if you’re a Batman fan you should check it out. Now we wait and see how The Dark Knight Returns gets treated.

It’s just a teaser—in the grandest sense of the word—but the new trailer for next year’s The Avengers movie has dropped. Perhaps the biggest highlight is the glimpse of this Hulk iteration. It’s too quick to make judgment but it certainly looks promising.

The whole Joss Whedon-directed film has a ton of promise, actually. These are all heroes we’ve come to know on the big screen in recent years. Rather than spending one-third of the film with exposition and origin stories, we can expect fistful after fistful of action.

Who wants to get in line now for the May 4 opening?

(Unintended hilarity for your third or fourth viewing of the trailer: at the 0:50 mark, pretend that’s a Scarlett Johansson fart leading to the explosion.)

When I was growing up there were a few movies that I used to rent all the time from the video store. I (read: my parents) never bought them. They were like old standbys; always there when I needed them, ready for me to take their little dangly cardboard tags off the hooks and up to the counter in exchange for a VHS tape in clear-plastic and a “Be Kind Rewind” sticker.

Captain America was one of those movies for me growing up. I wasn’t crazy about comic books per se, but I loved Superheroes, as most kids do. Obviously, I watched plenty of cartoons, but in a time where live-action Superhero movies were rare you had to take what you could get. Besides, you could only watch the Batman and Superman movies so many times.

Because it went direct to video, seeing the 1990 Captain America movie at the video store for the first time was a surprise. Where did this movie come from? Who is this man dressed as Captain America? Why is the Red Skull Italian? In those days there was only one way to find out, and that was to rent the video.

As nostalgic as I am, I’ll be the first to admit when something from my childhood no longer holds up. I won’t necessarily enjoy a movie just because it’s part of my nostalgia, for the same reasons I won’t go see a horrible Transformers movie directed by Michael Bay. Nostalgia is like the cream inside of a Twinkie. It’s not the main attraction, but it’s a nice bonus.

With that being said, it’s safe to say that if I was still a video store patron, I would not be hunting down copies of Captain America on DVD, especially given it’s shoddy packaging. Ironically, if the producers had wanted to spice up the DVD packaging a little bit they could’ve proclaimed that the horrible VHS quality video was a bonus feature. Relive the nostalgia of VHS!

Anyway, the Movie…

At the very beginning, were introduced to the Red Skull as a child. He’s Italian or something and the Nazis have killed his entire family, which really makes him red in the face. Sorry. There’s a German scientist named Dr. Vaselli who doesn’t like the idea of experimenting on a little boy, and escapes to America where they only experiment on tall, blonde, muscle-men.

In in this version, Cap is not only a smoker, but also the son of JD Salinger. Ok, not really, but that’s kind of a weird bit of trivia. Your Dad writes the great American novel, you star in a bad Superhero movie. To each his own.

There’s not much physical difference between the pre-serum Steve Rogers and the post-serum Captain America. Although, there’s plenty of cheesy commercial grade music, bad acting, and horrible set design. Cap’s costume looks like it’s made out of that weird icing that you see on the FOOD Network on top of fancy cakes, and Red Skull’s head just looks plain gross.

Somehow the Red Skull manages to strap the Cap onto an oddly small rocket, and in the process manages to cut off his own hand. Needless to say, it was at this point that I started to lose interest. Captain America gets shot off into the stratosphere, landing Somewhere in Alaska, and is frozen until 1990. (That’s how these things work). He goes on to meet the President, who as a boy happened to see Cap strapped to that rocket, probably inspiring him to become a hero so that he could someday get frozen for his country too. Together with a bunch of other forgettable characters (Hey, is that Ned Beatty?), the movie drags on for a while and ends in a big castle fight scene that includes my favorite part:

The Verdict

I shouldn’t be giving this movie such a bad rap. I mean, it’s a direct to VHS Superhero movie from the early 90s. You can’t blame MGM for trying to capitalize on of the success of this summer’s Captain America movie, but they could’ve tried a little harder with the DVD release. I’m not talking a fancy two-disc set with a lot of bonus features, but this DVD is literally printed on a DVR.

Regardless, this probably cost them hardly any money to put out and they know it’s going to be for collectors, parents/grandparents who accidentally buy this instead of the new Cap movie, and people who can write 800 words about why this movie is lame but still secretly enjoy watching it. Actually, it makes me wish I had the horrible 90s Fanastic Four movie sitting next to it on my shelf. Until that day, I guess I’ll stick it next to my copy of Catcher in the Rye.

Hey Mr. President…thanks!

If you’re like us, you’re so upset about George Lucas tampering with his classic films that you don’t even want to buy the new Blu-ray set. As much as I’d love to watch the new bonus features, the thought of shelling out $80 and not even getting the versions of the films that I love drives me crazy.

Luckily for my fellow disgruntled Star Wars fans, there are a lot of amazing Blu-rays available to fill that void, some already available and some coming very soon. Here are a few.

Citizen Kane

Whether or not you agree with the masses that Citizen Kane is the best movie ever made or not, you can’t ignore it’s cultural and historical significance (Hey, just like Star Wars!). Admittedly, I’ve only watched it all the way through once, and it was years ago. I’ve had it sitting on my media center for over a year in not-so-glorious SD resolution, and now that I own this impressive Blu-ray set I’m glad I’ve waited to watch it again. The box itself is gorgeous and holds a lot of goodies, and the movie has been upgraded with a 4K scan. There are tons of bonus features, but the best part is the price.

$40 on Amazon

Jurassic Park Trilogy

Jurassic Park is my favorite movie ever. It’s the movie I can watch again and again and never get tired of. Hell, I even love The Lost World. I realize it is a completely different movie than Jurassic Park, but I still love it. Now, Jurassic Park 3? It’s pretty lame, but it’s short and if you watch it as if you’re watching a Jurassic Park TV Show pilot it’s not that bad. In October, all three JP films are getting the Blu-ray treatment in a box set, and I couldn’t be happier. It sounds like they took the time to film some new bonus features, and Spielberg hasn’t gone in and meddled with the special effects like his good buddy George would do, so I’m sold.

$50 on Amazon

TMNT Box Set

Chalk this one up to good timing, but the Blu-ray box set of all four TMNT films is Amazon’s deal of the week. This week you can snag the whole set for $27.99. That includes the first three films plus the 2007 CG movie, all in an awesome-looking pizza-box themed package. Cowabunga!

$27.99 on Amazon

Dumbo and The Lion King

Fans of classic animation and Disney’s 90s animation revival will be excited about these two titles. Dumbo are both classics of different Disney generations, and both deserve the Blu-ray treatment. Disney is first-class when it comes to Blu-ray releases, so you can expect more features than you can shake a stick at. Now, lets get Aladdin a Blu-ray release, ok?

$21.99 (Dumbo) and $24.99 (Lion King) on Amazon

Thor and Captain America

Two completely solid and entertaining Marvel superhero movies in one summer? Awesome. I loved Thor and Captain America, and I’m very glad to see them both get solid Blu-ray releases. The anticipation of next summer’s Avengers movie is building in a huge way, and a lot of people will probably be watching these two films over and over until it comes out. Well, I know I will.

$22.99 (Thor) and $29.99 (Captain America) on Amazon.

I’m sure I left out a lot of great Blu-rays, but these are literally the choices I made to replace the void that was left when I decided not to buy the Star Wars saga. Sound off in the comments and let me know if I left anything out, and if you pulled the trigger on Star Wars or not.

Lets face it; fan films usually suck. With a few exceptions, most fan films are a mediocre mix of bad acting, bad writing, and decent costumes/effects. If you listened to Bubble Pipe Theater: Episode 3, you heard us mention a promising-looking Casey Jones fan film. Well, what once was but a trailer is now a full-fledged short film, and it’s available to stream online.

Oh, and it’s surprisingly decent. The acting, cinematography, and fight choreography are on par with some television level stuff that gets released these days. It’s got an original score by Zain Effendi, which is better than I would have guessed a TMNT fan film would have.

Casey is played by Hilarion Banks, and is a bit more violent than he was in the original TMNT movie. The choreography never crosses over into the kids-playing-in-the-back-yard style that most fan films I’ve seen have, and if you’ve seen the trailer you know that the film doesn’t just feature the masked vigilante.

Rather than put Casey against Raphael like most other incarnations of the story, the filmmakers decided to introduce him to Michelangelo first. This is probably because they were fortunate enough to land Robbie Rist to lend his voice. Robbie played Mikey in all three original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle films, and is the definitive version of the character, to me at least.

The turtle costume suffices in the dark alley setting they filmed in, and definitely looks better than the costumes in Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation.

Overall, the film plays like a nostalgic cross between the orignal film and the ’80s cartoon series. April is there, wearing her signature yellow jumpsuit, but the tone is much darker and more violent. The banter between Casey and Mikey is convincing, as is the whole film, which may be the best compliment a fan film can receive.

Just in case, I’ve got another one. I don’t see how a live-action TMNT movie that involves Michael Bay in any form could ever be better than this Casey Jones fan film.

Check out their website, which is a little annoying and 100% Flash, but maybe someday we’ll get a HD download option. Great work guys!

Via Ninja Pizza