Recommended In 10 Words or LessThe likely end of another Comedy Central sketch successReviewer's Bias*Loves: Sketch comedyLikes: Amy Schumer, dark comedyDislikes: Gender politicsHates: The twisted interpersonal relationships between women, short-run seriesThe Story So Far...Before Amy Schumer became a household name thanks to her film Trainwreck, an assortment of advertising campaigns and her friendship with Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Schumer was a raunchy stand-up comic and the star of Inside Amy Schumer, a brilliant sketch comedy series on Comedy Central that took aim at a variety of social issues, particularly those that women face. But as with many of the network's big…

Recommended .or A Tale of Five Cities: Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, Copenhagen, Toronto and Bogota are the main focus of Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten's cross-continental look at the ever-present problems of humans' desire to get from Point A to Point B as easily and quickly as possible. Having spent the entire 1980s in the city of Davis, CA which is regarded as at least one of the world's bicycle capitals (another city claims that honor here) I've had drilled into my head for a long time the idea that cars are costly, consume too much energy and cause pollution while…

Highly Recommended I've never been to Hawaii, alas, but if I ever did I kind of wish that, somehow, it would resemble the Hawaii of Hawaii Five-O, the 1968-1980 cop series starring Jack Lord. At the time of its cancellation it had been the longest-running police procedural show in TV history. It was innovative, unique, and at its best enormous fun. It had production values and a style that resembled big budget movies of the period, while Lord and his supporting cast, the initial line-up especially, not to mention catch phrases like "Book em, Danno" and those amazing opening titles…

Skip It Director: Chris MajorsStarring: Meredith Majors, Betsy Baker, Anne Leigh CooperYear: 2016You may think you've seen painful acting before, but you have yet to meet Lake Eerie, a film that is as bizarre, awful, and unimaginative as its title. I'm not sure if my words can prepare you for such a film failure, an amateur attempt at something, I don't know what, that could not possibility have resulted in what the filmmakers were aiming for. Because, if this is the movie that they were trying to make, someone needs to take away their cameras and put them under lock…

Rent It In 10 Words or LessPlaying pretend for a livingReviewer's Bias*Loves: DocumentariesLikes: a good tribute showDislikes: Delusional peopleHates: Bad impersonatorsThe MovieConfessions of a Superhero is a fantastic documentary about the people who dress up like caped crusaders in Hollywood in search of fame or money, exploring their lives and all the questions you'd have about those folks. There are moments where Just About Famous approaches those topics, but it's mainly satisfied with keeping its distance from the celebrity impersonators it profiles and acting as a tourist in their world, focusing on the Sunburst Convention, an annual gathering of "tribute…

Recommended Director: Tom GriesStarring: Ron Howard, Cloris Leachman, Sissy SpacekYear: 1974The Migrants is a film that has almost completed its slide away from our memories, becoming something of the past that very few remember and even the internet can't firmly hold captive in time. Made for television in 1974, this movie is an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams story, living in that on-stage feeling that Williams perfected, but also bringing a Steinbeck air to the screen with its focus on the traveling worker and his family's plight. Not much remains of The Migrants except a barely-seen IMDb page, perhaps one…

Highly Recommended The Serial:Movie serials were a staple of movie matinees in the 30's and 40's,but they were incredibly popular in the silent era too.Unfortunately, there are few chapterplays from the 1910's and 20'sthat still exist in complete form. That's why it's so exciting thatSprocket Vault has unearthed, restored, and released a complete 10chapter serial from 1928: The Mysterious Airman. Not only isthe film of interest to historians however, but it's a funcliffhanger in its own right. The tinted picture looks amazing too,especially for a film this old that was presumed lost for decades.Jack Baker (Walter Miller) is the owner…

Rent It The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson DVD Set ReviewThe TonightShow StarringJohnny Carson was a long-running NBCtelevision talk show and variety program which airedfor 30 seasons from 1962-1992. The series was beloved, in part, becauseof itslegendary host. Carson is highly regarded as one of the best televisionhostsin history. Johnny Carson hasoften been hailed as the father of modern late night television withhis use ofstand-up comedy and a format of television variety programming whichhas beenused in large part since. Though late night television has certainlyhad someupdates or tweaks over time, Carson's method of a comedy openingmonologue andintervie...Read the entire review…

Recommended Hee Haw DVD Collection ReviewHee Hawbeganas a variety entertainment series on the CBS network in 1969.  Though the series received impressivetelevision ratings, CBS decided to cancel many programs at thetime-period thatreflected country programming and Hee Hawgot the axe. However, the series continued in syndication and went onto becomeone of the longest running syndicated series in history with 21additionalseasons.There's no plot: theseries revolves solely around entertaining the audience. Hosts BuckOwens andRoy Clark lead an ensemble group of performers each week in a series ofsketchesand musical pe...Read the entire review Source: DVD Talk

Rent It Director: Peer PedersenStarring: Kaitlyn Dever, Catherine Keener, Annie StarkeYear: 2017Anton Yelchin's final role comes in We Don't Belong Here, a film that doesn't feature him enough. Obviously I don't mean they should have known that this would be the end of an exciting career and so given him more screen time; his death was an unimaginable tragedy that caught every film fan with a sucker punch. He should simply have been given more to do in this movie, as he was by far the best thing about it. Director Peer Pedersen also wrote the script, and has no…

Recommended The earliest television Westerns, shows from the late 1940s and early 50s, mostly were adaptations of successful, long-running theatrical B-Westerns, series starring William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, etc. Although many of these shows originated as B-Westerns for general audiences or even specifically adults, by the time television was rolling out their audience consisted primarily of children who adored such shows. In past reviews I've extolled the virtues of TV's earliest adult Westerns, particularly Gunsmoke (premiering in 1955) and Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), but one series predates those, a semi-adult transitional TV…

Rent It The Movie:I really didn't intentionally make Frank Langella a common thread in two of my last three standard definition DVD reviews. But the case handler in The Americans finds himself the unwanted center of attention in Youth in Oregon, a comedy-drama that is copious amounts of one genre and perhaps not enough of the other.Written by Andrew Eisen and directed by Joel David Moore (Spiral), Langella plays Raymond, an 80-year old patriarch who lives with his daughter Kate (Christina Applegate, Bad Moms) and her family, along with his wife Estelle (Mary Kay Place, Sweet Home Alabama). He makes…

Recommended The subject of "troubled youth" in Night Has Settled interested me, as most of my teenage years were rather boring and I now think of both the good and bad points of not having been more adventurous then. A review quoted on the DVD's back cover compares it to the films of Larry Clark (best known for 1995's controversial Kids), which is a somewhat fair comparison though this film from Steve Clark (no relation) doesn't seem intended to shock audiences as much.Our main character is 13 year old Oliver (Spencer List), who first appears innocent and childlike. He lives…

Highly Recommended The Shorts:After a long wait, Warner Brothers, through their direct-to-consumerprogram The Warner Archives, have released the third volume of VitaphoneVarieties. It's been over four years since the second volumewas released, and it's great that they are continuing thecollection. This single disc (the previous installments weremulti-disc collections) contains 16 rare shorts with appearances byperformers who are great, not so great, and just weird. It's a funand entertaining collection that's sure to amuse.Most of these one-reel shorts feature performers that were recruitedfrom the vaudeville circuits. (One performer didn't even bother tochange the patter in his act, and discusses how everyone…