GAME OF DEATH (Blu-Ray and DVD)

No, this isn't a remake of the famously unfinished Bruce Lee film. Seems to me that putting a celebrity known for their martial arts skill (yes,  Wesley Snipes is indeed an accredited bad-ass) in a film with such a familiar title is playing dirty pool. But forgetting about that lameness for the moment, THIS film has Snipes playing a CIA agent on the run, confessing the events of his day to a priest ( Ernie Hudson) which involves getting framed by crooked agents who are out to kidnap the criminal that he's been watching by working undercover for him as a bodyguard in order to steal millions. While competently made on the whole, there's not enough new or snazzy here to garner much attention. Snipes is an impressive hand to hand fighter, but the director gets in his own way while filming the sequences with poorly chosen moments to edit in his attempts at a visual style. Most of the action here isn't even hand-to-hand but instead is just two people repeatedly firing at each other from behind cover in the halls of a hospital anyway. Dullsville. I was glad to see Zoë Bell getting a bit of work, but this is certainly no real showcase for her talents either. For the record, if I go to federal prison, will they let me out on press screening days in order to watch movies to review? Or is that just Hollywood celebrities who get that kind of sentencing?

--CLICK HERE TO BUY Game of Death [Blu-ray]

THE LAST LOVECRAFT: RELIC OF CTHULU (DVD)

The odd title of this 2010 horror-comedy refers to the final descendant of famous horror writer  H.P. Lovecraft, an entirely unenthusiastic about anything Jeff (Kyle Davis) who whittles away the days at his dead-end job with his obnoxiously nerdy friend/co-worker  Charlie (Devin McGinn). But his bored complacency comes to an end the day he discovers his heritage and what comes with it: being the last hope of a secret society to guard an ancient artifact from the risen Deep Ones and various other nasties who seek to use its power to awaken ancient Cthulu from his dreaming in sunken R'lyeh so he will rise and take over the world (re: pretty much eating it all). The DVD box itself proclaims the film to be a mix of the "Evil Dead" and "The Hangover", neither of which I would assign as comparative cinema. There's some charm to be found here, competent direction, earnest performances, and even the intermittent joke that is worth a chuckle, but the project faltered early on at the script stage. Despite the admiral (albeit low budgeted) effort that went into this, ultimately neither the jokes or the story are entertaining enough to make this worthy for anyone but the most devoted of Lovecraft geeks.

--CLICK HERE TO BUY The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN (Blu-Ray and DVD)

...and you're going to be waiting a long time if you rented this thinking there was gonna be superheroes in it. Here, it's referring to how we're waiting for someone to come save us, from this tangled and seemingly inextricable web we've gotten caught in that is the American education system. But no one is coming. It sure would be nice if there was some miracle that could boost us up from being one of the lowest ranked developed nations in educational skills without having to put a LOT of work in. But there's not any such miracle. Something has gone so far off the rails in the system as to make the whole thing seem like an satirical bureaucracy like the movie "Brazil". But it's definitely not funny. Director Davis Guggenheim has some hard points to make about whats gone wrong,and a lot of them aren't what you'd think. There are some pointed fingers, to be sure, and accusations against teachers unions and their way of doing business that has caused more than just a few ruffled feathers. In fact, there are a lot of suggestions that, within the framework of the documentary, seem to make a lot of sense, but are also seriously pissing off some organizations that have long profited from the status quo of the situation. Certainly the point of view presented has gotten a lot of attention, largely positive, both from conservative and liberal camps. "Waiting for Superman" doesn't have all the answers but it presents a whole host of new considerations into what should be the most pressing issue in our country right now if any of us doesn't want to grow old in an "Idiocracy". This should be considered essential viewing to anyone who even vaguely gives a crap.

--CLICK HERE TO BUY Waiting for "Superman" [Blu-ray]