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Arrow Films brings to Blu-ray Japan's adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic story, The Invisible Man in this wonderful double feature set that proves science is neither good nor evil, but can can be used for either purpose.

The first film in the set is The Invisible Man Appears. Shot exactly like the Universal Monsters movies of the 40's and 50's, it uses everything that those were known for -- a crime drama noir with suspense and a small dash of horror. Shot in 1949, The Invisible Man Appears was one of Eiji Tsuburaya's earliest special effects projects. Tsuburaya would become renowned for his work on Godzilla five years later.

In 1980, kids were being prepared for the apocalypse -- which was actually going to be pretty cool and happen in 1994, when a rogue planet would pass between the Earth and the moon, splitting Luna into pieces and leaving devastation in its wake. All we had to do was wait 2000 years for mankind to rise up from the ashes into a world filled with savage creatures, sorcery, and super-science!

Josie and the Pussycats were the quintessential teen rock band of animated cartoons. Spinning out of Archie Comics and travelling the globe to spread their music far and wide, the only way the animated series could top itself was for Dan DeCarlo's little girl to take the show to a whole new level.

Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space didn't get an origin episode to launch this new endeavor. It didn't need one. The show's musical intro ingeniously did this in just a couple of beats, showing how a photo opportunity for a space launch went awry when Alexandra pushed her way to the front of the group, knocking them all into the rocket and accidentally pulling the launch lever. Now they careen throughout space, looking for a way to get back home to Earth.

Arrow Video presents the long lost footage of the creator of the SHOCK ROCK band "THE MENTORS" on Blu-ray.

I've had my misgivings about WONDER WOMAN 1984 ever since seeing the psychedelic poster with the golden angel armor. And while the armor fits nicely into the story, and with a decent reason attached to it (save for how Diana brought it to America, unless she's making back-and-forth trips to Themyscira), it's really there just to set up the nostalgic wink in the post-credits scene of the film.

In 1984, Diana (Gal Gadot) is working as an antiquities expert in a museum while also doing the whole Wonder Woman thing on the side. Apparently the directors almost forgot that Batman himself was unable to uncover any evidence of Diana after her photo taken in World War I, so we see one obligatory "take out the security cameras" scene, albeit surely too little too late. Still, the rest of the film beggars credulity that Diana could have kept herself so far out of the public eye while simultaneously appearing so publicly so often.

Arrow Films brings to Blu-ray the horror anthology film Shogun's Joy of Torture by cult film director Teruo Ishii. Made in 1968 at the height of the Japanese "pinkie" films -- the equivalant of America's Grindhouse 42nd Street sleeze and exploitation films of the time. It was a stylized and shocking movie that Toei Films banked on bringing audiences away from their televison sets and back into the theaters to see the imagery that was "too hot" to be shown on any televison at the time (or today for that matter).

Some may summarize this as an historical violent portrayal of crime and punishment from the time period in which it was set. Others may say it is pure torture-porn trash cinema in the vein of directors such as Jess Franco who just throw sex and violence in your face for no reason other then shock value.

Snowpiercer is a television series based on the movie of the same name, starring Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, and an expanding cast of characters who, mostly, represent the less-than-respectable aspects of humanity.

The Snowpiercer itself is a train, 1000 cars long, that houses the last remaining humans on Earth. With the planet frozen over, one man's vision was to create a train that would keep traveling around the globe, generating heat and being a self-sustaining environment to support everyone until... well, until the world warmed up again, I suppose. As plans go, I'd have probably opted for a space station, or an underground bunker. But, hey, who doesn't love a train? And maybe we'll even get a toy line out of it.

Arrow Films brings to Blu-ray Joint Security Area, a 2000 South Korean mystery thriller film starring Lee Young-ae, Lee Byung-hun and Song Kang-ho. Directed by  Park Chan-wook, JSA is based on the novel DMZ by Park Sang-yeon, and was the highest-grossing film in Korean film history at the time. It won Best Film at the 2000 Blue Dragon Film Awards and the 2001 Grand Bell Awards.

In order to give a SPOILER FREE write-up of this film, I will first need to explain what a JSA is to those of you that may not know the history of the conflict between North and South Korea. The Joint Security Area is the only portion of the Korean Demilitarized Zone where North and South Korean forces stand face-to-face. The JSA is used by the two Koreas for diplomatic engagements and, until March 1991, was also the site of military negotiations between North Korea and the United Nations Command.

The comedic genius of Danny Kaye shines no brighter anywhere than it does in his medieval musical with more castle intrigue than any film that's ever swashed a buckle or buckled a swash. Kaye plays Humbert Hawkins, a former carnival worker who left his job to join up with The Black Fox (Edward Ashley), a Robin Hood figure who rallies folks to help him defend the country against the tyrannical King Roderick I (Cecil Parker), who assumed the throne after he had his men kill the entire royal family.

As a kid, Encyclopedia Brown and The Three Investigators (when they still were partnered with "Alfred Hitchcock and...") were a good chunk of my reading adventures. They were relateable to a young audience, and they caught the bad guys by being smart.

Evan Morgan's The Kid Detective evolves that concept by taking that innocence and charm and running it through the wringer of a few decades of reality. When Abe Applebaum was a kid (Jesse Noah Gruman), he ran a detective agency from his treehouse, solving little mysteries for a quarter with his best-friend assistant, the mayor's daughter Gracie Gulliver (Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato). He even got to solve a few locally high-profile cases and became enough of a name that -- when someone spitefully chopped down his tree -- the town gave him his own office downtown from which to operate.

Scooby-Doo and Mystery Inc. have been an enduring franchise for several reasons, one being that the animation producers have been so open to innovation. One of these innovations early on came with The New Scooby-Doo Movies, a collection of adventures that revolved around Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby crossing paths with famous celebrities (who voiced themselves) or other popular cartoon characters.

With the second season of Doom Patrol, I was hoping to see the team come together in... well, in any fashion. We learned who they were as individuals in the first season, so now it was time to start actually using these abilities and getting the independent members to work as part of a team.

DIE HARD has just been dethroned as the ultimate men's adventure and action Christmas movie. FATMAN is a violent tale filled with dark comedy in which Mel Gibson plays Chris Cringle, a grumpy toymaker who lives in the far north. This is no allusory setup. The filmmaker's play it straight that this really is Santa Claus, existing and operating in a world that, for all other intents and purposes, is completely realistic.

Chris's problem is that he's producing fewer toys each year -- not due to any lack of production capabilities, but for the lack of deserving children. Unfortunately, the subsidy contract he has with the U.S. government pays him based on his production levels, and now he's not pulling in enough to survive.The solution comes to Chris in the form of another government contract -- one for the military. It's not an ideal situation for Chris, but as a temporary stop-gap, he's willing to take it.

A great deal of the Batman animated movies (and the live action ones, for that matter) have focused on the technological advantages Batman has and how he uses them to fight crime: the car, the armor, the gadgetry. "Where does he get those wonderful toy," indeed.

With BATMAN: SOUL OF THE DRAGON, the producers take Batman and make him a character -- and not even the central character -- of an animated grindhouse kung-fu flick.

Things just can't go smoothly for poor Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), the earnest young man who just wants to fall in love with the right person -- someone he can protect from all the evil influences that would do them harm, even if it means killing them.

When I sat to watch this third season of Yellowstone, it was without the benefit of having seen what had come before. I duly brought up the pilot on my Spectrum on-demand screen, and my initial impression was that this was going to be a show to fill the void for those few fans of Dallas that were left, wanting to see business men in cowboy hats and pretend it was a western.

Boy, howdy, was I ever wrong. While it may take a bit for this third season to warm up, the heat keeps getting turned up by degrees until you are simply riveted to this story of feuds, infighting, intrigue, and the pride that comes with land ownership. Especially the ownership of lots and lots of land, such as the Yellowstone Ranch owned by John Dutton (Kevin Costner) and his family -- Kayce (Luke Grimes), Jamie (Wes Bentley) and Beth (Kelly Reilly), scions of an empire that may be seeing its last hurrah.

We've seen movies like LOVE AND MONSTERS before. At least, that's the first impression one gets when first meeting Joel, played by Joel: Dylan O'Brien (Teen Wolf, Bumblebee). He's a bit of a lovable loser living in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by giant monsters created by a bizarre radiation fallout. He lives with a small underground colony of hunters and gatherers, where he serves as the cook because he freezes up when danger threatens. Right then, you know that this is going to be Joel's personality throughout the show, and he's going to luck his way into some kind of victory using his one unique skill that only he could pull off. And you couldn't be more wrong. First off, despite his lack of skill as a fighter, the colony loves him. They all want to protect him and watch out for him.

Christopher Nolan's TENET is nothing if not ambitious in its attempt to reconcile conflicting flows of causality. The concept of two physical objects existing in the same space but inverted in time, such that bullets fly out of walls and into guns, makes for some challenging camera work and a few "ooh" and "ah" moments with the audience.

But after going out of your way to explain how everything operates in the "Looking Glass Land" of the film, we start to pay attention and see that it really only operates that way whenever the director wants to pull off an effect. "Wear a full body SCUBA suit with your own oxygen because your inverted lungs won't be able to process the air -- but put on swimming attire and impersonate yourself on the deck of a boat when necessary." The conflicts simply become too numerous and too blatant, and eventually the audience is pulled from the idea of this being an effect-driven movie and begins to pay attention to the plot -- and finding none.

The last thing Max wants in his life is excitement. The laid back cabbie enjoys his night shifts, telling himself it's only temporary as he saves up to start his own limo service, a dream he's been telling himself for the past twelve years. The last thing he expects is to be hired out as the driver for a high-profile hit man named Vincent.

Jamie Foxx is excellent as the easy-going Max whose Zen-like pattern is interrupted when a body lands on his windshield, courtesy of his current fare, Vincent (Tom Cruise). Suddenly what seemed like easy money from the generous rider who needed him to make several stops throughout the night has turned into a life-or-death mission, with Vincent calling all the shots -- literally.

THE GODFATHER: PART III was one of the earliest examples of when it's time to walk away from a franchise rather than sully it with lesser sequels. Rebranding and re-releasing it the film under a new name (albeit the original name submitted by Francis Ford Coppola) of THE GODFATHER, CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE doesn't make the story any less soporific and plodding -- never mind that the title character, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), does not die in the film (spoiler alert).