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In 1984, the country was fully caught up in the fever of the first trilogy of STAR WARS films, and television had stepped up to fill that void with programs like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and the simplistically titled and high-minded sci-fi thriller, V.

The "V" stood for "The Visitors," who were aliens who had come to Earth under the pretense of helping mankind. But the show was actually the long-form version of Damon Knight's short-story, "To Serve Man," because the Visitors were actually lizard people wearing human skin disguises, here to plunder our resources and process human beings as a food source.

MORTAL KOMBAT LEGENDS: SCORPION'S REVENGE opens, as one would expect, by presenting itself as the origin of Hanzo Hasashi (voiced by Patrick Seitz), a great warrior who returns to his village to find it completely eradicated, including his wife. His final vision before his death is the brutal murder of his young son.

Hasashi awakens in the Netherrealm, where he is about to be tortured for all eternity by a demon. But Hasashi's will is indomitable, and he manages to fight his way through an army of demons, to the door of Quan Chi (Darin De Paul), who offers Hasashi an opportunity to get his life and family back -- by obtaining the key to unlock Quan Chi's imprisoned master through a competition held between the many realms. The competition comes with an opportunity for revenge against the man who killed Hasashi's family. And so Scorpion is born.

Clint Eastwood's RICHARD JEWELL is a compelling look at the actual events of 1996 and the bombing that took place at the Olympic Games in Atlanta Georgia.

When an AT&T security guard named Richard Jewell spotted a suspicious backpack, he insists police investigate it. This was a pre-9/11 world, where people weren't as hyper-aware of abandoned knapsacks and packages. Inside the pack were three very large pipe bombs, and the evacuation of the area is ordered. When the bomb went off, 111 people were injured, and Alice Hawthorne (44, Albany, Georgia) and Melih Uzunyol (40, Turkey) lost their lives. But the devastation could have been much worse. By all rights, Richard Jewel was a hero.

Until the FBI and the media decided he wasn't, and began profiling him as the person who planted the bomb in order to set himself up to look like a hero.

The second season of TITANS picks up with -- and rapidly resolves -- the first season cliffhanger, which saw Raven's father, Trigon, take over all the Titans and begin his slow-walk of death to the world. With Gar Logan (Ryan Potter) being the only member unaffected he gets through to Raven (Teagan Croft) who in turn reaches out to Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites). One by one Trigon loses his grasp on their souls, as Raven takes out her father with a mighty release of her powers. 

Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a jeweler living the high life at a high cost. He maintains a home with his wife and children, as well as an apartment with his girlfriend, Julia (Julia Fox), but it takes more than selling high-end jewelry to a select clientele. Howard has so many shady irons in the fire that he has to become an expert juggler and proficient liar just to keep his head above water.

The Mark Millar Elseworld's tale gets an animated adaptation as DC Entertainment releases SUPERMAN: RED SON on Blu-ray this week.

The premise of the Elseworld's graphic novels was a genius concept, wherein all the elements of an event in the DC Universe would remain fairly the same save for one change that altered the course. With SUPERMAN: RED SON, that change was a half-day; twelve hours, in which the Earth's rotation made it so that Superman's rocket did not land in a Kansas wheat field, but in a wheat field within Stalin's Russia. This gave Millar the playground to test the ages-old argument of nature versus nurture, as Kal-El is raised to support the State and believe in the ideals of communism, while still having within him the innate desire to help people.

It's not uncommon that a film have a theme. In fact, it's expected. You watch the film, you digest the plot, and you come away with the idea that, "This was a metaphor for this particular idea."

With CHARLIE'S ANGELS (2019), the theme is explicitly stated up front, and then slowly moves on from there to hammer that idea home. And that idea is this: Men are bad.

In this Elizabeth Banks take on the CHARLIE'S ANGELS franchise, the Townsend Agency has been taken international, just as John Bosley (Patrick Stewart) is retiring. As a tribute of sorts, every agency's lieutenant is given the rank of "Bosley," which doesn't get confusing at all. So Elizabeth Banks' character in this film is called Bosley as she directs the activities of her Angels while also directing the actors playing them.

GHOST KILLERS VS. BLOODY MARY is designed to appeal to the fans of cult, independent gross-out gore flicks. If you have a collection of Troma titles and early Peter Jackson works, then this is an edition that will fit nicely onto your shelf.

The basic plot of the story involves a YouTube ghost hunting group that is struggling for clicks as they overact and overemote while faking the ghosts they are seeking to destroy. When a high school student is hospitalized after a purported encounter with an urban legend spook, the principal calls the group in to do their thing and make the local parents feel better. He doesn't believe there really is a ghost, but he's heard of their YouTube channel and he thinks that putting on a good show will help people relax. And the Ghoul Hunters are more than happy to take the money to put on a show.

SWAMP THING was one of a handful of original series created for the DC UNIVERSE streaming service -- and it's first casualty. While it completed it's first season of ten episodes, it became clear near the end that the writing was on the wall and things began to get wrapped up in a huge hurry. But there is still hope that fans may see more of the muck-encrusted mockery of a man, if the post-credits teaser of the final episode is any indication.

In this adaptation of the Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson series, Abigail Arcane (GOTHAM's CRYSTAL REED) is a doctor with the Center for Disease Control, who finds herself assigned to a team to investigate a mysterious disease plaguing the town of Marais, Louisiana. The assignment is particularly troublesome to Abby, because Marais is her former home, and we find that she left it under a cloud years ago.

It's not often that I can start a review of a home video release before actually opening the product, but HANGIN' WITH MR. COOPER, The Complete Third Season, is one of those rare cases. Going by the Amazon listings for previous releases, Warner Brothers is consistent with the trade dress of these covers to tie them together uniformly. However, that's where any thought to design quality stops. The image of leading man Mark Curry is rendered with all the photographic quality of an inkjet printer working with a picture that has been blown up beyond the integrity of its resolution. The image is cloudy, as though soft-light filtered, but lacking any definition. Similarly, the images from the back cover are stills cropped from the show given no pre-printing treatment to clean them up. Even the text has a slightly blurry look to it, as though the entire thing might have been printed clean and sharp for the back of a trading card, and was then printed in an area larger than intended.

More than a few people expected PARASITE, the film from director Bong Joon Ho, to take the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. But far more were taken aback when the film swept out of that niche and into the broader part of the ceremony, nabbing the coveted Best Picture award.

Is it a good movie? It's okay. It's a bit of a slog in places, and for American audiences it is clogged with cultural references that won't strike any chords. Add to that the fact that the entire thing is subtitled throughout, and you end up with a recipe for Decidedly Not a Blockbuster.

There's a perverse appeal to YOU, the nigh un-Google-able creation fo Sera Gamble (SUPERNATURAL) and Greg Berlanti (every CW superhero show we love). The protagonist is a very disturbed individual who does for stalking what DEXTER did for serial killing.

Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley, GOSSIP GIRL) is a reclusive book store manager who specializes in old and rare volumes. When Guinevere Beck (ONCE UPON A TIME's Elizabeth Lail) walks in, he zeroes in on her, immediately interested, and revealing his analysis to the audience through way of his inner dialogue, a narration medium used to great effect throughout the season. He pays attention to the way she moves, the way she dresses. And when she leaves, he turns to social media to fill in the gaps.

So here's the gist of the TERMINATOR franchise: In the future, an artificial intelligence called Skynet decides humanity needs to be purged, and creates killer robots called Terminators. But John Connor would mount a successful resistance, forcing Skynet to invent time travel so it could send a robot into the past to prevent him from growing up. It fails, and only succeeds in ensuring John Connor is born. His mother Sarah Connor then fights Terminators who keep coming back trying to kill him, so that the future would be changed.

Only we see in the beginning of TERMINATOR: DARK FATE that a Terminator arrives and does successfully shoot the young John Connor in the head, leaving a grieving and embittered Sarah Connor behind to mourn.

So Skynet's future is assured, right?

Wrong.

It's WILL SMITH vs WILL SMITH when the classic "nature versus nurture" debate gets tested in the world of highly-skilled assassins.

Smith plays Henry, a superior marksman with a number of kills to his credit all of whom were bad guys looking to do harm to America. Until this last job. When he misses his kill shot by a few inches (still killing the man), he decides it's time to hang it up and retire. After all, an inch in the wrong direction can mean the difference between a righteous kill and an innocent victim.

However, Henry's last target wasn't what Henry was led to believe: he was the loose end in a secret government program called "Gemini." And now the last dangling thread is Henry himself. He manages to fight off an attack of several men, picking up a partner in Agent Dani Zakarweski (BIRDS OF PREY's MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD) by accident. And when the men behind his kill order realize Henry escaped, they send in their best man.

Junior.

Enter to win all three BEVERLY HILLS COP moveis in this newly remastered release from Paramount Home Video.

The heat is on in this fast-paced collection of action-packed comedies starring Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, the street-smart cop from Detroit. Tracking down his best friend's killer in BEVERLY HILLS COP, Axel smashes through the local barriers in a hilarious, high-speed pursuit of justice. In BEVERLY HILLS COP II, he's deep undercover, investigating a gang of international munitions smugglers. The third installment finds Axel at the center of a roller coaster thrill ride at the wonderful amusement park! Watch all three and get hooked for the whole ride.

For your chance to win this Blu-ray collection use the form below and select one or more options of entry. Be sure to check our rules and regulations page first.

I love a good conjecture. Take what we know, add in a pinch of what we don't know, shake it well, and voila: conjecture, the third cousin of "What if" and "Maybe."

That's why I enjoy watching ANCIENT ALIENS -- and with twelve seasons under their belt on The History Channel, I'm apparently not the only one.

The producers of ANCIENT ALIENS never fail to intrigue and provoke, applying new interpretations to ancient lore while simultaneously keeping abreast of the most current events in ufology, and this twelfth season is no exception. From Antarctica to Canada, from early American druids to subterranean lizard people, ANCIENT ALIENS excels at drawing lines between disparate data points to make entertaining connections.

When Grace (SAMARA WEAVING) accepted a marriage proposal from Daniel Le Domas (ADAM BRODY), she expected her life to change. After all, the Le Domas clan was richer than Croesus, and their reputation was global. What she didn't plan for, however, was the wedding night tradition of midnight game play. The Le Domas dynasty had been built on marketing games, and it had been a long-standing tradition that upon any wedding, the new family member would be assigned a random card from a puzzle box, detailing the game to be played. It could be checkers, chess, backgammon...anything at all.

But one game required different rules than all the others: Hide and Seek. That's the game when the family knew their ages-old benefactor demanded a sacrifice be made. So when Grace pulls that card, and goes off to find a hiding place, she is completely unaware that the family is preparing to come looking for her -- armed to the teeth!

I will say this for Tim Janis's BUTTONS: A CHRISTMAS TALE: it's heart is in the right place, and it delivers familiar faces -- and voices -- at every turn. Beginning with narration from KATE WINSLET and ROBERT REDFORD, we waste no time in being introduced to legendary actor DICK VAN DYKE, leaving a note at the doorstep of Mr. & Mrs. Hill (PAUL GREENE, ABIGAIL SPENCER). A child is at the hospital awaiting adoption, and the Hills are too eager to rush there to fill that role.

At that same time, Emily (NOELLE PARKER) is brought to the hospital, brought to Mother Genevieve (ROMA DOWNEY), to the chagrin of the doctor (STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's JOHN De LANCIE). He makes it clear that she can't stay past the night, as this is a private hospital for paying patients.

The events of OFFICIAL SECRETS are true, and that's what makes the film so magnetic. It's not overblown with explosions, high-speed chases, or tense confrontations. It's a sequence of human decisions, facts, denials, and consequences.

Katharine Gun (KIERA KNIGHTLEY) was working as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart to the United States' NSA. Between the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, she was one of several recipients of a confidential email from the NSA, requesting assistance from GCHQ to dig into the backgrounds of several United Nations representatives for the purpose of finding leverage on them that could garner their votes for an invasion. Torn between duty and conscience, Katharine ultimately printed the email and, through a series of back-channels, got it into the hands of reporters at The Guardian.

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT is a coming of age tale set in a small town in Britain. Javed (VIVEIK KAIRA) is a British young man of Pakistani descent. His father and mother (KUVLINDER GHIR, MEERA GANATRA) both emigrated from Pakistan for a better life. But this is the UK of the 1980s, and teens walk the streets wearing swastikas. Pakistani homes are assaulted with grafitti, and Pakistani men are attacked on the street.

Javed is uncertain what path his life will take, but he knows he doesn't want it to be the path his father puts him on. He writes lyrics for his best friend, Matt (DEAN-CHARLES CHAPMAN), who fronts for a rock band, and he dreams of going to London to make it on his own there.