Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

Review by Bob Ignizio

I did not get swept up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mania when it hit the first time. The comics, even in their earlier, edgier incarnation, never interested me. The cartoon series that toned the characters down for a younger audience and broke the characters into the mainstream debuted in 1987, and by that time I was nearing the end of high school and a little older than the target demographic the show was after. I did catch the first film adaptation from 1990 on home video, but it didn't make any lasting impression on me.

So when producer Michael Bay decided to give the franchise a cinematic reboot, I didn't feel much one way or the other aside from my usual trepidation regarding anything Bay puts his name on. And while I wouldn't say 2014's TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES was a great, or even good movie, it wasn't any worse than what I remembered of the original film adaptation. Crap, but moderately entertaining crap.

That pretty much sums up this sequel, too.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Review by Bob Ignizio

Starting life as a small press comic book in 1984, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became a huge phenomenon as an animated kid's show that debuted in 1987. There were a few live action films made in the early nineties alongside the cartoon, and countless merchandising tie-ins were sold before Turtlemania eventually burned out around 1996. Now that those kids who made the show such a success are old enough for nostalgia and to have kids of their own, it's time for a reboot.

Passion Play (now on home video)

[PASSION PLAY is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

After its festival run the magical-realist drama PASSION PLAY went straight to DVD a few months ago, a curious fate for a motion picture with such star power: Mickey Rourke, Bill Murray and Megan Fox toplining, with supporting-cast turns by Kelly Lynch (wife of writer-director Mitch Glazer) and Bill Murray's underrated brother Brian Doyle-Murray. So why'd this skip theaters - yet SUCKER PUNCH struck? Call it the curse of Megan Fox.