I’ve had a soft spot for the classic horror movies from Jack Arnold ever since I saw them in the late 1980s on German television together with a series with interviews by the director himself. I’ve owned most of them on DVD already but I’m glad that there are excellent better-quality Blu-Rays now even in Germany. Arnold’s first major movie, the science fiction classic It Came From Outer Space, was the one that started it all and the German Blu-Ray with a much improved transfer even has the vintage television interview with the director on it.

Once again, today’s review is based on an older German article about the old DVD, but I re-worked and updated it during the translation. It was a lot of fun to revisit!

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This week’s review was not really planned but when I managed to get a Blu-Ray upgrade of the movie on eBay for a couple of Euro, I couldn’t resist: it’s Forbidden Planet, the original 1950s science-fiction classic that started it all. 70 years later it feels like the first episode of Star Trek, so striking are the similarities. A striking interstellar spaceship, a dashing captain, a strange planet with a mystery – it’s all very familiar now but in 1956 it was all brand new.

As usual I’m very much late with my articles so this Blu-Ray is from 2010 and the review an upgrade of a German original I wrote back in 2007 for the DVD release, but it just fits into the science fiction series.

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Peter Hyams’ and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: The Year We Make Contact is a sequel to the most famous science fiction movies of them all in name only. It continues the story, but is a completely different movie in style and execution and that’s what makes it so good. The early DVD released all had a terrible quality and that hurt the visually stunning movie a lot. A new HD transfer was released on Blu-Ray only in 2009 without much fanfare and sadly without significant extras.

Today’s review is again a translated and updated version of a earlier German one. As this is one of my favourite movies, I couldn’t resist this review even though this is only an older Blu-Ray.

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This week we’re continuing the science fiction theme with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – perhaps my favourite space-themed movie that keeps looking better and better in every incarnation. It’s the fourth home video release I’ve bought and this 2018 Blu-Ray that came out for the 50th anniversary still looks stunning – the only drawback is the ugly German cover.

I haven’t written about the movie in almost 20 years, but this review is based on my old German one from 2007 which I’ve translated, expanded and updated. Next week we’re getting to the sequel!

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This is another very late review, but one I never thought I would be able to write: the classic German science-fiction series Raumpatrouille Orion was finally restored in glorious high-definition! So it was time to dust off my original review of the disappointing DVD release for this new Blu-Ray set. This time, I only wrote it in English even though there are still no English soundtracks or even subtitles available, but hopefully this will still make the series better known outside of Germany.

The original Blu-Ray in the mediabook packaging I bought for too much money back at the end of 2023 is now again out of print, but a replacement edition in a standard keepcase with the same discs is still available.

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Due to several heat waves and a generally terrible summer, it took me a while to get this review ready even though the disc was already released in late August: it’s Project Hail Mary, the movie I really wanted to review next. The second adaptation of an Andy Weir book is enormously fun, exciting and could not have been better, but the Blu-Ray is somewhat of a disappointment. Where are all the extras? I’m glad that we’re at least getting an entertaining audio commentary from the filmmakers and a small handful of deleted scenes, but it’s weak compared to the great extended edition of The Martian from a decade ago. It still looks better than the streaming version, so this disc is recommended nevertheless.

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Remember this site still exists? My promise to write something new before Easter of course failed, but recently I was spurned on by the release of Project Hail Mary – which I loved – to continue writing a review I actually started ten years ago before the world collapsed. It’s, of course, The Martian, which was the last movie I watched together with my mother Angela before she passed away in Spring 2016. I’m glad she was still able to watch the theatrical cut on DVD, but sadly she never got to see the extended version which I got only three years later.

With Project Hail Mary coming out on Blu-Ray later this Month, I thought it was finally time to finish the review of The Martian because it’s not only one of my favourite movies but also one of the best Blu-Ray releases of the last then years. They don’t make them like that anymore!

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I should have posted this before the holidays but I completely forgot that I had this review ready – it’s Joe Dante’s Christmas classic Gremlins on Blu-Ray! I actually re-wrote the whole article from a shorter German version. Is it a horror movie or a comedy? The movie can’t really decide what it wants to be but it’s one of the most fun movies from the Amblin stable in the mid-1980s. A review of the sequel will be up sometime… later. Before Easter. I promise!

This Blu-Ray isn’t exactly new but as usual I bought it in an Amazon sale and it looked amazing on my humble home cinema setup – and it’s great that all the extras of Warner’s early 2000s special edition have been retained!

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Yes, it’s been more than a year since I posted something here and it was entirely due to the fact that the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 were absolutely terrible. Maybe a new start is in order? I can’t promise anything but there is at least enough material to review around and I still had this review lying around in an almost ready state: it’s Michael Crichton’s 1979 railway heist caper The Great Train Robbery!

The Blu-Ray isn’t really new but I discovered it only recently and Koch Media’s German release is still the best one around worldwide. It also has a gorgeous based on the original poster art, something you don’t see much these days. Click through to the review, which is an expanded translation of a German version I wrote many years ago!

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To my great surprise, one of my favourite movies was released on Blu-Ray last year: 1985’s Water, one of the great Handmade Films comedies! It previously came out almost 20 years ago on DVD, which was a big surprise too. The Blu-Ray is “only” sourced from the same old HD master, but that’s good enough for a movie that was previously almost lost in the battle for the Handmade rights.

This review is actually the first of an “offline” disc on the new Cinefacts site – there will be more and I will try to post one roughly every week. Today it’s off to the Carribean with Michael Caine in one of the silliest parodies of the 1980s – click through to the review!

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