Steve Zahn, Ryan Kwanten, Peter Dinklage, and Summer Glau star in the horror-fantasy comedy set in the Live Action Role Playing world

‘Knights of Badassdom’ – Nerds vs. demons on Amazon Prime

Knights of Badassdom (2013), a modest little horror comedy set in the fantasy gaming LARP (that’s Live Action Role Playing) culture, has a good time sending up its obsessive nerds and cosplay veterans gathered for a weekend championship of stage combat and mock-Shakespearean patter. Then it unleashes a succubus from hell on them. Actually it’s […]

‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ on VOD and Blu-ray/DVD

Who would have predicted that the second revival of the Planet of the Apes series would be so smart, so moving, so… human? Whatever your feelings on the 1969 original, at the time a startlingly unique film built on a warped-mirror fantasy premise, the sequels were exercises in diminishing ambition and the ridiculous 2001 Tim […]

Ethan Hawke stars in the Shakespeare adaptation from filmmaker Michael Almereyda

Ethan Hawke is ‘Hamlet’ on Amazon Prime

This is not your father’s Hamlet (2000). This melancholy Dane is son of the deceased Chairman of Denmark Corporation. His castle is a sleek but alienating New York high rise dotted with omnipresent surveillance cameras, his kingdom city streets lined with paparazzi and tabloid reporters. Ethan Hawke is the youngest actor to tackle the role […]

Wendell Pierce in the HBO series Treme created by David Simon

Revisit ‘Treme’ and ‘When the Levees Broke’ to remember Katrina – Amazon Prime and HBO Now

This weekend marked the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, a natural disaster compounded by insufficient defenses and a disastrous response by the government. Looking for a proper way to mark the occasion? Amazon Prime and HBO subscribers have two very good options. Treme, David Simon’s follow-up to The Wire, is beautifully […]