Dangerous Babes

If for no other reason, you should pick up this 12-movie set for the sheer pleasure of watching the 1978 ‘classic,’ Sextette, starring Mae West, Timothy Dalton and a host of curious cameo appearances ranging from Tony Curtis as a Russian diplomat to Alice Cooper as a singing bell boy. It’s a musical, of sorts, about Mae trying to make her marriage to her 6th husband work despite the fact that husbands one through five keep interrupting her honeymoon: It’s gloriously bad. The other movies in the set range from the sleazy (French Quarter) to the silly (Yellow Hair & The Fortress of Gold), but all of them are campy enough to rate high on the guilt pleasure meter

Gungrave

Based on the video-game of the same name, this action-packed anime begins with violent scenes of a Frankenstein-like gunfighter battling a horde of giant one-eyed monsters. The story switches gears abruptly in the second episode as we meet the gunslinger when he was a soft-spoken human named Brandon Heat working his way up the ladder of the local mob. The shift in tone is a bit disconcerting, but the stories grow in intensity and complexity as we see what happened to Heat to make him the monster of that first episode. The voice work is strong throughout, as is the use of music to heighten the drama, and underscore the action throughout the series. The artwork is detailed and impressive.

Mick Jagger – The Roaring 20s

Using some archival interview and concert footage, as well as an endless series of talking heads to comment on the action, this unauthorized documentary does a good job of exploring the formative years of one of the greatest front-men ever. Watching Mick develop from a guy too shy to do more than stand still and sing to become the strutting sex symbol we all know today is fascinating. The film does a good job, too, of showing us that although he has a reputation for being a shallow social climber (at least at times), Jagger was and is a passionate advocate of the blues music he heard as a young man.

Young Justice, Season 1, Volume 1

The idea of adding life to a long running comic book series by showing the heroes as they were when they were young has been done before, and not always in a good way. This Warner Brothers Animation series takes a slightly different tact by giving us the young proteges of the established Justice League heroes and infusing them with personalities that aren’t just carbon copies of the older super mentors. Sure, there’s a lot of teenage angst to be explored, but that isn’t the only thing these young heroes have to deal with. There’s plenty of action in each episode, and a surprising amount of humor, too. The art work is impressive as well.

The Clone Returns

A lot of movies come with warning labels, but it’s hard to resist a DVD that has “Warning: Contains Significant Amounts of Philosophy” printed on the back. And it’s not a scam, either, because writer/director Kanji Nakajima gives you a lot to think about in this strange sci-fi story about an astronaut who agrees to have a clone of himself made just in case he doesn’t come back from a dangerous space mission. The ethical issues get complicated when the space man dies and his clone turns out to be a damaged copy of himself. The scientist decide to scrap the first clone and make a second, but the original one has escaped into the world in a desperate attempt to get home

Just William

Set in a quaint English village in the 1950s, this delightful television series follows the adventures of William Brown and his band of merry pranksters as they find ways to pass their idyllic summer days. The stories are well-written and avoid the usual cliches of family programming, but it is the acting that really makes the shows fun to watch. Adrian Dannatt is particularly amusing to watch in the title role, as is Bobbie Langord as his pretty, but vacant sister. The adults who try to control William and keep him out of trouble are well-developed, too, and not just here to yell at William when he breaks the rules.

We Are What We Are

When their father dies, a trio of siblings are forced to take on the responsibility of providing for their family, which in the case of the family in director Jorge Michel Grau’s movie means finding people they can bring home to ritualistically kill and eat. It isn’t too long before the kids discover they’re not really good at the family business and the police are soon on their trail. While Grau certainly has the style to make the bloodier moments of the movie hard to watch, what makes the story work is the way he builds the family drama over the course of the film. The clan could be fighting over the best way to run the family watch repair business and it would still be intense to sit through. The fact that they are cannibals only cranks the tension up to 11.