Video Vault

For 13 years I anxiously waited to find a copy of and the time to watch 2000’s epic five-part fairytale miniseries The 10th Kingdom. Netflix finally made that happen.

It’s 2013!   A new year of movies and a new year of Video Vaults!  Why don’t we start it off right with a movie that celebrates the movies, 1997’s box office disaster, Cats Don’t Dance!  The only film ever produced by Turner Feature Animation Studio (before being absorbed in the

This week Video Vault plugs in to David Cronenberg‘s eXistenZ (1999).  Despite garnering a slew of film festival nominations and awards, I think I know one other person who has seen this Inception-y romp.  Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ian Holm, and Willem Dafoe star in the reality jumping horror

Who doesn’t love a good bear movie?  I sure don’t.  That’s why this week we are checking out 1996’s family adventure tale, Alaska.  With an estimated $20 million budget, the epic only raked in about $12 million in domestic returns.  The 2 hour commercial for Alaskan eco-touristism was filmed primarily in British

Today Video Vault remembers “Weird Al” Yankovic’s cult classic UHF!  Hot off the heals of one of Orion Pictures’s best test screenings ever, the film was expected to save the studio in the summer of 1989.  As we all know, this didn’t happen.  Mixed reviews and heavy box office competition

The history of maverick filmmaker Ralph Bakshi‘s 1992 return to feature length films, Cool World, is the quintessential example of a studio’s complete disregard for artistic vision, maximization of profits, pandering to the powerful, double dealings, manipulation, and Hollywood nepotism.  The film marked the end of a 9 year movie

This week Video Vault gets moved by the heartwarming tale of 1998’s Simon Birch.  Loosely based on John Irving‘s 1989 novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, the film stars Jurassic Park‘s Joseph Mazzello and first-and-only-time actor, Ian Michael Smith, as best friends growing up in a 1950’s small New England

Future criminals pay attention, this week Video Vault stakes out Woody Allen‘s 2000 crime-comedy Small Time Crooks.  This is a very simple and fun movie that I have always enjoyed, but nobody else seems to have seen.  Allegedly, it is a remake of 1942’s Larceny, Inc., but Allen has never

Get ready explorers!  This week Video Vault “digs” into the doubly (and deceptively) titled Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain.  This 1995 release stars Christina Ricci and My Girls‘s Anna Chlumsky as teenage treasure hunters.  I distinctly remember not liking this movie upon its release, lets see if my opinion

This week on a “very special” installment of Video Vault we will be learning a few lessons from 1996’s character study, The Spitfire Grill.  This was a popular VHS for my high school teachers to throw on when they ran out of things to teach at the end of the

Video Vault celebrates Father’s Day by honoring one of cinema’s most patient and understanding fathers, Ben Healy, of the 1990 comedy classic (well, classic to me!) Problem Child.  Starring John Ritter, Michael Oliver, Amy Yasbeck, Michael Richards, Jack Warden, and Gilbert Gottfried, this flick opened to mostly negative reviews and

Allow me to paint a picture of 1995:  animal conservation is all the rage, ZooNews is one of America’s most popular monthly publications and infomercials, Indiana Jones is still relatively fresh in movie-goers consciences, Communist China’s doors have only recently been open to foreigners, and Free Willy, Andre, and Homeward Bound are already proven hits.  Thus the stage is

Continuing a theme of epic television fantasy miniseries, this week Video Vault celebrates Hallmark Entertainment/NBC Studio’s Merlin.  Originally aired as three 60-minute episodes over consecutive nights in April of 1998, Merlin is the award-winning chronicling of the life and times of literature’s (second?) most famous wizard.  Directed by Steve Barron (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Coneheads), the film stars Sam

Depending on what side of town we were doing errands in, sometimes we would rent movies from the public library instead of Video Vault.  The selection at the video store was always preferred, but there was one thing that the library had that could not be found anywhere else:  The Chronicles of

The last time 1977’s Race for You Life, Charlie Brown received an official release was in 1995, on VHS and laserdisc.  This is an inconceivable crime!  It was a staple of my childhood and is a fondly remembered installment in the Peanuts canon by many fans. Written by Charles Schulz and directed by Bill Melendez, Race for Your Life, Charlie

Children’s entertainment is filled with stories of kids stumbling in to magical and imaginary lands; one of my favorite of those lands is the Kingdom of Wisdom from Norton Jester’s literary masterpiece The Phantom Tollbooth.  While the novel is often essential elementary school reading, legendary Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones’s 1970 musical cinematic adaptation