Love and Monsters
Seven years after the Monsterpocalypse, Joel Dawson (Dylan O’Brien), along with the rest of humanity, has been living underground ever since giant creatures took control of the land. After reconnecting over radio with his high school girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick), who is now 80 miles away at a coastal colony, Joel begins to fall for her again. As Joel realizes that there’s nothing left for him underground, he decides against all logic to venture out to Aimee, despite all the dangerous monsters that stand in his way.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“While it might be legally accurate to say that Love and Monsters isn’t based on pre-existing material, it couldn’t be more obvious that it was conceived by someone who saw Zombieland on TV one night and thought to themselves: ‘I could do it better. And with bugs.’ Lucky for us, they were right — or at least right enough that it’s a blast to watch them try.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire
“Love and Monsters proves itself a pretty well-rounded adventure for both its target audience and those older looking for a bit of escape that’s still firmly rooted in reality. Joel is an unlikely hero whose success shows humanity isn’t dead yet.” – Jared Mobarak, The Film Stage
“Ultimately, Love and Monsters is a film about picking yourself up, taking your destiny into your own hands, and not being afraid of living, even though you’re likely to make some mistakes along the way. And it’s a damn fun adventure to boot.” – Charles Barfield, The Playlist
Available Formats [1/5]:
Blu-ray | DVD
12 Hour Shift
Nurse Mandy (Angela Bettis) is desperate to make it through her double shift without incident. This is particularly hard to do when you’re an addict and are also involved in a black market organ-trading scheme. When her hapless but dangerous cousin Regina (Chloe Farnworth) messes up a kidney delivery, chaos descends on the Arkansas hospital as Mandy and Regina frantically try to secure a replacement organ through any means necessary. Things grow increasingly complicated when injured convict Jefferson (David Arquette) is brought in, and events spiral even further out of control.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Entertaining from start to finish and wonderfully played by a largely female cast… Grant’s film beautifully upends the sexist notion that women are naturally inclined to nurture. It surprises, too, as a tribute to the fortitude of working-class women.” – Martyn Conterio, Cinevue
“The material is edgy and at times outrageously gory and chaotic, but Bettis gives Mandy an exhausted, fed-up quality that keeps the movie on track, even (or maybe especially) when she’s pissed off about having to do everything herself.” – Katie Rife, A.V. Club
“Grant’s screenplay builds a Rube Goldbergian narrative of escalating, piled-up crises, from which she also engineers a just-credible-enough exit strategy.” – Dennis Harvey, Variety
Available Formats [1/5]:
Blu-ray | DVD
Jungleland
Stan (Charlie Hunnam) and Lion (Jack O’Connell) are two brothers struggling to stay relevant in the underground world of bare-knuckle boxing. When Stan fails to pay back a dangerous crime boss (Jonathon Majors), they’re forced to deliver an unexpected traveler as they journey across the country for a high-stakes fighting tournament. While Stan trains Lion for the fight of his life, a series of events threaten to tear the brothers apart but their love for one another and belief in a better life keep them going.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“This dire and dreamy road movie is impressive work from director and co-writer Winkler (he co-wrote with Theodore Bressman and David Branson Smith).” – Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times
“This very American fable has been blessed with three remarkable performances.” – Mark Kennedy, Associated Press
“Strong performances across the board and a propulsive sense of mounting desperation makes for a compelling piece of storytelling.” – Wendy Ide, Screen Daily
Available Formats [1/12]:
DVD
Spell
While flying to his father’s funeral in rural Appalachia, an intense storm causes Marquis (Omari Hardwick) to lose control of the plane carrying him and his family. He awakens wounded, alone and trapped in Ms. Eloise’s (Loretta Devine) attic, who claims she can nurse him back to health with the Boogity, a Hoodoo figure she has made from his blood and skin. Unable to call for help, Marquis desperately tries to outwit and break free from her dark magic and save his family from a sinister ritual before the rise of the blood moon.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“This is a decently stylish thriller with occult elements that should satisfy viewers’ genre requirements…” – Dennis Harvey, Variety
“Tonderai creates a rustic, moody atmosphere, but more importantly, he never lets his underlying message slip away.” – Adam Graham, Detroit News
“Omari Hardwick’s and Loretta Devine’s performances elevate this horror/suspense/thriller in ways the script may never have imagined. Devine, especially, steals scenes and makes her venomously evil character devilish beyond redemption.” – Dwight Brown, National Newspaper Publishers Association
Available Formats [1/12]:
Blu-ray / DVD Combo Pack
The Twilight Zone: Season 2
The second season of the Jordan Peele reboot of The Twilight Zone includes Jenna Elfman, Sky Ferreira, Topher Grace, Gillian Jacobs, Thomas Lennon, Joel McHale, Gretchen Mol, Billy Porter, and Damon Wayans Jr.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“Despite different writers and directors… these episodes feel much more consistent, united by more than just the occasional appearance from Peele.” – Liz Shannon Miller, Collider
“A majority of the episodes remain unseen, so I can’t accurately judge how well the season will turn out as a whole. These episodes certainly feel more strongly written than Season 1, and if the editing tightens up like it did before, these new entries could be amazing.” – Kristen Lopez, IndieWire
“The new Zone is still rather a mixed bag, though one brimming with imaginative pleasures and smart casting.” – Matt Roush, TV Guide
Available Formats [1/12]:
DVD
American Dream
Academy Award-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Saving Private Ryan) directs this intense thriller about the brutal struggle for success. Desperate for cash, entrepreneurs Scott (Luke Bracey) and Nicky (Michiel Huisman) turn to Russian mobster Yuri (Nick Stahl). After they refuse the funding he offers, Yuri gets revenge by trying to take over their construction project. The partners are terrified until Nicky’s tough Russian girlfriend Ana decides to take action herself.
Description provided by Metacritic.
Available Formats [1/12]:
DVD
The Kid Detective
A once-celebrated kid detective, now 31, continues to solve the same trivial mysteries between hangovers and bouts of self-pity. Until a naive client brings him his first ‘adult’ case, to find out who brutally murdered her boyfriend.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“I thoroughly enjoyed Kid Detective. It’s not the kind of picture that wins awards, which is too bad because nestled within a traditional tale of a detective in need of redemption, is a story surprisingly unique and humane.” – Thom Ernst, Original Cin
“Writer-director Evan Morgan’s deft screenplay balances a taut crime story against a textured character study.” – Wendy Ide, The Observer
“It’s a thrill to watch a film that so cogently, shrewdly renders its ideas. It’s a case of high concept, adeptly cracked.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
Available Formats [1/19]:
DVD
Dreamland
Eugene Evans (Finn Cole) dreams of escaping his small Texas town when he discovers a wounded, fugitive bank robber Allison Wells (Margot Robbie) hiding closer than he could ever imagine. Torn between claiming the bounty for her capture and his growing attraction to the seductive criminal, nothing is as it seems, and Eugene must make a decision that will forever affect the lives of everyone he’s ever loved.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“The film makes the most of its sparseness, using the strong performances of its ensemble cast (including a reliably excellent Margot Robbie) to question the accepted boundaries between right and wrong, citizen and outlaw.” – Roxana Hadadi, The A.V. Club
“A drama with dazzling visuals, subtle performances and deft nods to classics like Days of Heaven and Bonnie and Clyde… While Dreamland doesn’t entirely overcome its familiar trajectory, the film is so stunning in every other way that its narrative shortcoming hardly matters.” – Caryn James, Hollywood Reporter
“The important thing is that Dreamland accomplishes its main intention, which is to make us invest in this strange love story.” – Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
Available Formats [1/19]:
DVD
Hearts and Bones
War photographer Daniel Fisher (Hugo Weaving) has returned home to the news of his wife’s pregnancy. Determined not to let fatherhood alter his way of life, he begins preparations for an upcoming exhibition and his next overseas assignment. However, as the birth of his child draws near he struggles to keep his rising anxiety hidden. Meanwhile, South Sudanese refugee Sebastian Aman (Andrew Luri) has created a safe life in Australia with his wife and child. His peaceful life is disturbed when Daniel’s exhibition threatens to display photographs of a massacre that occurred in Sebastian’s home village 15 years earlier. When Sebastian approaches Daniel with an appeal to not display any images of the massacre, an unlikely friendship develops between the two men that challenges Daniel’s creative control and unearths disturbing details surrounding Sebastian’s past.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“An intimate film tackling an expansive subject — the treatment of refugees around the globe, and the way the world processes the traumas that lead to such urgent, widespread immigration — this is a poignant and morally complex drama.” – Sarah Ward, Screen Daily
“The intuitive selection of the four leads, and their complex, perceptive playing of the material, is a credit to Lawrence’s deft direction of both veteran and non-professional talent.” – Eddie Cockrell, Variety
“While the film has some heartfelt exchanges of kinship and empathy, however, it is also punctuated by moments of abject despair. This is crucial to a core message that moves beyond the healing power of art towards the entitlement those who make it possess and those who serve as their subjects don’t.” – Jared Mobarak, The Film Stage
Available Formats [1/19]:
DVD
The Cleansing Hour
Max and Drew run a popular webcast that streams “live exorcisms” watched by millions across the globe. In reality, the exorcisms are just elaborately staged hoaxes performed by paid actors. But their fortunes take a turn when one of the actors becomes possessed by an actual demon and takes the crew hostage. In front of a rapidly growing audience, the demon subjects the crew to a series of violent challenges, threatening to expose the dark secrets they’ve been hiding from each other unless they come clean and reveal they’re impostors before the show is over.
Description provided by Metacritic.
“Most horror fans have seen more than enough possession stories by now, so it’s a good thing this quick and creative chiller has a few new wrinkles to throw our way.” – Scott Weinberg, Thrillist
“The Cleansing Hour exorcises an overdone horror subgenre of its staleness in an exceptionally entertaining spectacle of profiteering prophets and merciless hoofed tormentors.” – Matt Donato, What to Watch
“It’s a surprising, extraordinary possession film in a sea of overdone, hackneyed, boring possession films that have been made relentlessly since after The Exorcist.” – Lorry Kitka, Film Threat
Available Formats [1/19]:
DVD
The Village in the Woods
Deep in the forgotten woods, lies a village, at the center of which stands the old Harbour Inn. This rotten pub is the target of an inheritance fraud by young couple Jason and Nicky. Tempted by promises of easy money, Nicky pretends to be the Inn’s sole heiress. On arrival, they find the villagers welcoming and friendly… perhaps a little too much so. Always there. Always smiling. Always watching. The couple do their best to continue the scam but things start to go very wrong. Their paranoia slowly builds to terror as unsettling and grim events unfold. The Village in the Woods is not all it seems.
Description provided by Rotten Tomatoes.
“Every village has a secret, but so does every person. When these two facts collide in the forest, one young couple will never be the same. Darkly unsettling with Cimmerian atmospherics, The Village in the Woods is perfectly suited to October viewing.” – Jeannie Blue, Cryptic Rock
“The Village in the Woods is a purposeful, slow-burn love letter to seventies cinema. A movie that identifies as a thriller/mystery yet holds a tone of horror analogous to Wicker Man and other such classics. Beautiful cinematography sets the stage for a village whose residents’ eccentric behaviour intensifies a rising tension that climaxes in a dark, twisted ending.” – Wormwood, Nevermore Horror
“[A] horror that does rely on the atmosphere, which is almost a character by itself, and keeps us feeling uneasy…” – Darren Lucas, Ready Steady Cut
Available Formats [1/19]:
DVD
Come Play
Oliver (Azhy Robertson) is a lonely young boy who feels different from everyone else. Desperate for a friend, he seeks solace and refuge in his ever-present cell phone and tablet. When a mysterious creature uses Oliver’s devices against him to break into our world, Oliver’s parents (Gillian Jacobs and John Gallagher Jr.) must fight to save their son from the monster beyond the screen.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“There’s a terrifically entertaining sequence late in the film that plays like an homage to a certain element of the original Poltergeist, and a thrilling and nerve-wracking extended final sequence that will put you on the edge of the proverbial seat.” – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
“The director doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares or trick editing. Instead, he builds and sustains suspense throughout the well-paced thriller with controlled camera movement, malevolent lighting, unsettling music and jagged, staticky sound.” – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
“The story is deceptively simple. However, built around a universal quandary of our tech-obsessed modern world, underpinned with a folkloric tale that appeals to our most primal child selves — yearning for acceptance and connection — it has a heavy metaphorical resonance.” – Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times
Available Formats [1/26]:
DVD
Synchronic
When New Orleans paramedics and longtime best friends Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are called to a series of bizarre, gruesome accidents, they chalk it up to the mysterious new party drug found at the scene. But after Dennis’s oldest daughter suddenly disappears, Steve stumbles upon a terrifying truth about the supposed psychedelic that will challenge everything he knows about reality—and the flow of time itself.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“The kind of brainy, absorbing, all-out thrilling cinema that’s in dangerously short supply these days.” – Jason Bailey, The Playlist
“Moorhead and Benson don’t overlook the more amusing aspects of the scenario… And the duo deliver shocks, scares and a resonant payoff.” – Glenn Kenny, New York Times
“While it offers some gripping and/or darkly beautiful images, it’s ultimately more about ideas than spectacle, proving (like every previous film by this team) that you don’t need a gigantic amount of money to create an engrossing work of science fiction and/or fantasy.” – Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com
Available Formats [1/26]:
DVD
Fatman
To save his declining business, Chris Cringle (Mel Gibson), also known as Santa Claus, is forced into a partnership with the U.S. military. Making matters worse, Chris gets locked into a deadly battle of wits against a highly skilled assassin (Walton Goggins), hired by a precocious 12-year-old after receiving a lump of coal in his stocking.
Description and score provided by Metacritic.
“The end product is a hugely satisfying and wholly original Christmas pic that will no doubt become required viewing on an annual basis for those who prefer their holiday favorites to be a little less traditional.” – Scott Campbell, We Got This Covered
“In the humor department, Fatman’s is a scattershot but often clever affair thanks to the film’s director brothers, Ian and Eshom Nelms. Their last feature, the eccentric desert noir Small Town Crime, worked positive human connections into a dark, violent framework, so that seems to be a theme dear to the Tulare County-raised siblings.” – Bob Strauss, San Francisco Chronicle
“As far as revisionist takes on the Santa story go, Fatman is a long way from the whimsical charm of last year’s Oscar-nominated Klaus. Yet for all its bizarre Spaghetti Western nihilism, sporadically going full Franco Nero Django bloodfest, Fatman has an oddly warm heart under its brutal exterior.” – Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle