Rating: ««« out of ««««

Running Time: 95 minutes

Laika is an animation studio that has produced consistently impressive features over the years, including Kubo and the Two Strings, The Boxtrolls, ParaNorman, and Coraline. Their latest continues with the trend of intersecting family entertainment thrills with darker, supernatural, and monster-related subject matter. Thankfully, Missing Link is another big winner, blending amusing characters, a sweet message and some staggeringly beautiful visuals.

The story begins with Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman), a self-described adventurer seeking to prove the existence of mythical creatures and impress a stuffy club of explorers led by...

Welcome back to another edition featuring highlights arriving on Blu-ray and DVD. As you might have guessed, there are plenty of new releases hitting shelves. So if you can’t make it out to the movies this week, be sure to give one of these titles a try!

Big New Releases!

The Amityville Murders - Believe it or not, there have been about 20 movies inspired by the Amityville Horror story. The latest feature attempts to detail the graphic murders that took place at the locale in 1974, with the plot following a father who begins to hear voices in his head, commanding him to execute his entire family. Reviews weren’t particularly strong for this horror flick. Now curious parties...

A trip through cultures and canyons

In a beautiful new book from Rio Nuevo Publishers in Tucson, comes a full-color adventure, traveling out of the Four Corners in a spiral, covering 150 miles in all directions.  Jim Turner, author of Four Corners USA: Wonders of the American Southwest, explains that the book is organized around the area known as the “Four Corners,” the only quadripoint in the United States where the borders of four distinct territories come together.

Turner and the book’s photographer, Larry Lindahl, are aficionados of the American Southwest. They guide the reader from the quadripoint where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet, and take a...

Rating: ««« out of ««««

Running Time: 132 minutes

Another week, another comic book movie adaptation. This time out, it’s one of the less familiar superheroes, arriving as part of the latest DC line of features. Shazam! comes from the film universe that began in 2013, and includes titles like Batman v Superman and Justice League. This particular title takes a less somber and serious approach, emphasizing humor over tortured superhero souls. The end results aren’t perfect, and the flick takes a bit of time to find its rhythm. Still, it’s a far better and infinitely more entertaining film than any of the other DC features that have been released in the last six years.

As...