Author: Chaz Lipp

The BFG is the swan song of screenwriter Melissa Mathison, best known for her Oscar-nominated screenplay for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Adapting the 1982 Roald Dahl novel was a long process, one that dates back to 1991 (Robin Williams was at one point attached to star as the BFG—aka “Big Friendly Giant”). Numerous screenwriters were involved,...

Who directed the new Beatles documentary Eight Days a Week, George Lucas?? Some of the live performances (iconic stuff like their famous Washington Coliseum performance during their first U.S. visit and also some frequently-seen press conference footage) have been… colorized. Unlike George Lucas’ endless revisionism with his Star Wars series, obviously a work of fiction,...

Loosely inspired by a similar real-life situation, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates came and went largely unnoticed during mid-summer 2016. Though it scared up about $45 million domestically, the bawdy comedy practically screamed “wait for video.” Now that it has arrived on Blu-ray (also 4K UltraHD) via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, it just...

Viewed purely from a technical standpoint, The Revenant is a staggering jaw-dropper. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki each won an Oscar for their work here, as they did for 2014’s Birdman. Though they couldn’t be farther apart in terms of setting and tone, The Revenant and Birdman are unusual cousins. Both films...

It was something of a children’s-oriented broadcast TV event: The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar on the Disney Channel. Of course, the original 1994 The Lion King remains one of the most cherished of all Walt Disney Animated Classics. That blockbuster has spawned a pair of direct-to-video sequels (The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride...

HBO’s series Togetherness debuted in January of 2015, garnering enough of a following to justify a second season. With the second season set to debut on the premium cable network on February 21, HBO has issued Togetherness: The Complete First Season on Blu-ray on February 16. With only eight 29(ish)-minute episodes, it wouldn’t be too...

The only thing that really dates director Hal Ashby’s 1973 character study The Last Detail is the era’s lack of cell phones. Otherwise, the Oscar-nominated Robert Towne screenplay, a portrait of a pair of Navy lifers tasked with escorting a young sailor to military prison, works as perfectly today as it did 40-plus years ago....

Malala Yousafzai is the focus of He Named Me Malala, a documentary currently available on DVD and Digital HD via Fox Home Entertainment. The now-18-year-old Yousafzai, a Pakistan native, became a global representative for female education rights in 2012 when the Taliban shot and nearly killed her. During the years leading up to the assassination...

New to DVD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is the thriller Hidden. Written and directed by Matt and Ross Duffer, Hidden plays like an overextended Twilight Zone episode. And not a particularly clever episode, at that. Granted a very under-the-radar, direct-to-video release by Warner, one gets the feeling that even the distributor knew this was...