Impressively prolific studio Lions Gate brings us another set of terrific titles to make up the multi-review this week, and the block this week is made up of three they’ve sent out for us: Mob Rules, From Prada To Nada, and KJB.

Mob Rules gives us a dose of dramatic action, as we go out to London. A pair of felons with a penchant for Shakespeare find themselves out for revenge in a bid to get back the money they should have received from a job gone wrong years prior. And said felons have a plan to get it all back that’s going to take them from London to America and points beyond.

While there is both plenty of action and drama in Mob Rules, there’s an interesting sense of humor running throughout that crops up at unexpected points and gives a distinct note of surprise that’s very welcome. Think of this like a slightly gritty, slightly urban, slightly downsized, and very, very English version of Ocean’s 11. The end result is still very watchable, and brings together a lot of interesting and largely dissimilar (but surprisingly interrelated) plot points that make this one unexpectedly deep.

From Prada To Nada, meanwhile, takes us out to California, where a couple of Beverly Hills princesses have been living it up on Daddy’s fortune. But when Daddy’s fortune goes the way of the dodo, the duo finds themselves staying with their aunt. And in the process, they get exposed to a whole new side of life. Will the experience make them better people? Or will it break them just as much as it broke Daddy?

If this one is giving off a Simple Life with Paris and Nicole kind of vibe to you, then rest assured, you’re not alone. However, considering that this is actually a strange kind of Latino version of Sense and Sensibility (complete with mariachi band at a man’s funeral), it’s going to be a little deeper than you might think. Okay, it’s going to be a lot deeper than you might think. It’s actually a reasonable facsimile, though it’s been a while since I last read Sense and Sensibility. Fair warning, though: it will spend a good chunk of time being a total downer, but then, so did pretty much everything Jane Austen ever wrote. Still though, it’s surprisingly engrossing stuff, and you’ll likely get a kick out of it, especially if you have a literary bent.

Lastly we’ve got KJB, which here is an acronym for the King James Bible. And this is the story of how it came to be. For those of you not familiar, the story of the King James Bible is actually a deep and complex tale that’s jammed to the gills with intrigue and just a little suspense to round out the whole package. See, a lot of people had a vested interest in keeping the King James Bible out of a lot of people’s hands, and this is going to give you at least some of the story behind that.

I say some, of course, because this is actually a Dove Family Film selection. That basically means that you’re not going to get the whole story out of this, but you’ll get quite a bit of it, anyway. And considering the kind of performances put up here, you should be reasonably happy with the final outcome. Want a shot of history that doesn’t come from the History Channel for a change? Like religious history? Then you’ll be in excellent company with this one.

So there you go, another three fine Lions Gate titles; each have their ups and downs, and each one will cater toward a specific interest, but each will be worthwhile in its own way. You’ve got plenty of great options out there, and keep it right here for plenty more to come!

It may surprise some of you to know that there’s another Tyler Perry show on the market called Meet The Browns. And the folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Meet The Browns Season One for us to tackle for you. The question of course will be whether or not this particular batch of Tyler Perry will be any better than his previous incarnations, which have largely been disastrous.

Meet The Browns takes us out to Brown Meadows, a retirement home made from what used to be a private residence, but was converted into a retirement home on the strength of a promise a man named Leroy Brown made his deceased father. But what Mr. Brown is going to discover is that running a retirement home is going to be a whole lot more complex than he first imagined. But since his son is a doctor, and his son’s wife is a nurse, he’s got the beginnings of a big undertaking. But can he survive it all with his sanity–and his house–intact?

I don’t believe I’m about to type this, but seriously, folks…Meet The Browns is unquestionably the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen from Tyler Perry. Ever. EV-ER. I laughed. This alone should tell you something, considering I’ve referred to Perry’s previous work as everything from “godawful” “piles of melodrama” to “(a) putrefacted carcass“. But clearly, this is where all the funny that Tyler Perry could muster has gone. This is his entire stock of funny, all thrown into one package. All the jokes that should have been in For Colored Girls or anything Madea-related or that spectacular exercise in masochism known as House of Payne have all migrated to Meet The Browns.

And while everyone in the story is doing a fine job of keeping up, the clear winner of Meet The Browns has to be Mr. Brown himself, David Mann. This guy is one of the best comic actors I’ve seen in the longest time. He does a terrific job intermingling physical humor with a kind of raw idiocy intermingled with a gentle, goodhearted nature that blends so beautifully that makes this a hilarious piece of work.

I can’t believe I’m saying half this stuff about anything that came out of Tyler Perry’s endless maw of horror and misery, but Meet The Browns Season One is an untrammeled delight that proves that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the endless laugh riot that is Meet The Browns Season One an eight out of ten. It’s packed to the gills with laughs, and I”m amazed to realize this is as good as it is. Bravo, Tyler Perry…you managed to get one right. For a change.

This week’s multi-review comes our way from the folks out at Lions Gate, who sent out a variety of impressive titles for us to tackle, and we’ll be looking at a real mixed bag of them today with Blood Out, Pros And Ex-Cons, and Rabbit Hole.

We kick things off with Rabbit Hole, a movie that introduces us to Becca and Howie, a young couple who kicked off life together in the grandest of fashions, together, along with their young son only eight months prior. But fast forward to eight months later and we see how much life can change in even the shortest of times. But will the loss that Becca and Howie find themselves forced to endure break their life apart again and provide them with a whole new loss, each other?

Considering that this is based on a stage play, you probably have a pretty good idea of what we’re in for here, a downer on an absolutely epic scale that some people will take the opportunity to call “powerful” or “moving” but for the most part just means is the opportunity to feel really, really depressed for ninety minutes or so. And, just as a bonus, it will feel much, much longer. That’s not to say the whole thing is bad, of course–it’s got some really nice moments in here that should make you smile–but for the most part we’re watching a movie about a couple whose kid has recently died and they’re moving apart as a result. It hangs over everything, and though this is, for the most part, the point, it still doesn’t exactly make for light-hearted entertaining fare.  Good, but not good if you’re looking for a happy, fun experience.

Next up is Pros And Ex-Cons, and now we join a pair of the titular ex-cons who’ve joined up with a crime boss who has a mysterious project in mind for them. They finish the job nicely, but discover that the job didn’t go as smoothly as they’d thought when they took it on. Now they’ve got to undertake a much more dangerous project in order to correct the first before it’s too late. And moreover, they’re going to be in the middle of a whole lot of other affairs as well.

I know I’m being a little bit cryptic about this one, and with good reason. If I go too far into it and tell you about the projects in question, I’ll actually give away large parts of the movie. And on the surface, you might think this sounds like one of those great English crime dramas like Layer Cake, Snatch, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Indeed, that’s just what’s going on here. It’s actually quite fun in a few parts, very much Ocean’s 11 style as done by complete incompetents.  If you like your crime dramas with a little bit of comedy involved, then you’ll be very happy with Pros And Ex-Cons.

Lastly, we’ve got Blood Out, a movie that gives us a man who loses his brother to gang violence far too soon in life. And now, a small town sheriff is the only thing that can get justice for the murder when the big city police refuse to step in and do the job. But the further in the sheriff gets, the more he discovers that things were never really as they seemed.

Admittedly, the biggest red flag in this one is the appearance of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, which has never exactly been a bell-ringer as far as quality filmmaking goes. But still, the end result isn’t too bad. It’s very much an action title, but without the comic edge that we got from Pros And Ex-Cons. Straightforward and predictable were the watchwords for this one, but still, it’s reasonably likeable. It’s got something of the Walking Tall vibe in it, though without the fun that one put up thanks to the unusual styling that The Rock brought along in the role of county sheriff. Blood Out takes itself substantially more seriously than it probably should, and this is to its detriment, but the end result is still of fairly good quality.

And there you have it, another three choice titles from Lions Gate to make up our weekly multi-review. Some better than others, of course, but no matter what your taste there was likely something in here for you today.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent out a copy of the Bratz 3-Movie Collection, for some reason, and I consider it a point of professional integrity to tackle whatever’s sent my way. And as such, I tuck into this very, very niche product with predictable results. The Bratz 3-Movie Collection is comprised of three movies–much as the title suggests–and we’ll be tackling each in this week’s multi-review.

First we kick off with the first such Bratz movie ever–Bratz: Starrin & Stylin. More about that title in a minute. This one follows a group of girls who have been best friends for a long time. And just before their prom, they’ve been hit with an unexpected assignment on the topic of self expression, and with their prom coming up, this assignment promises to make their lives very difficult, at least until they discover that their primary mode of self-expression also fits into prom clothes, which is handy to say the least.

Never mind that the characters aren’t just in the Uncanny Valley, they’re sufficiently in it to own a time share. It’s the plot of this one that gets me. It’s reasonably acceptable–nothing particularly wrong with it–but it’s a pretty weak plot all the same. I mean, we’re talking about four girls who are trying to complete an assignment in high school. What’s the sequel, they go to the grocery store to buy a chocolate bar? Oh, no, wait! In the next one they mow the lawn! Actually, the next one in the series will make up for the first’s frightening lack of vision, but will replace a lack of vision with a lack of plausibility.

Bratz: Rock Angels brings us back to Bratz turf, where now they’ve started a fashion magazine. And with that, they set out to get backstage at a rock concert and deliver the first post-concert report, thus drawing much-needed attention to their fledgling publication. But when the concert proves impossible to get into, the Bratz are going to have to carry out a little inventiveness to save the day.

This one is actually worse in terms of plot. See, I’m supposed to actually believe that a bunch of teenage girls started a fashion magazine? Really? Where did they get that kind of cash? And while this is a startup magazine–outlandish enough in its own right–now we’re supposed to believe that that their twenty minute old magazine is sufficient to get them backstage at what is said to be a fairly major rock show? And then, when they find out that they can’t get backstage (and not because no one takes a magazine started by four teenage girls yesterday seriously, either), they start a band on the spot just to pull it off. There are more holes in this movie’s plot than a block of Swiss cheese at a shooting range.

Lastly, we have Bratz: Genie Magic, which this time takes us out to meet a new friend of the Bratz girls, Katia. Katia’s got some reality-warping powers, though she’s been using them with a faux-government agency under her father’s supervision. But straining at the bit, what with being the only teenage girl in an environment full of scientists and secret evil geniuses causes her to snap and run off. Now with reality being warped in a whole different direction, the Bratz girls will have to work, once again, together in a bid to ensure the survival of the very earth.

And now we top off the sheer bizarre with this one, the one that requires us to accept magic. Well, it’s bizarre, sure enough, but at least this one lacks the plot holes thanks to the ever popular “a wizard did it” excuse, though it’ll actually be a genie involved. When you introduce magic into the plot, you’re pretty much wide open to do whatever the hell you want vis-a-vis the narrative, logic be quite thoroughly damned. After all, who is anyone, even me, to say, hey, wait a minute–wizards / genies / goblins / whatever can’t do that! You can’t. No one can. It’s the best cheat ever, and because they used it, it lowers them a notch in my book, if such a thing were even possible.

And there you have it…three preposterous titles that I wouldn’t let within a country mile of my house if not for professional reasons. Granted, if you’re a twelve year old girl, you’ll probably get a kick out it. Maybe you’ll even find them inspirational. But for anyone else? They’re just not going to fly. The series gets progressively worse the farther in it goes, and considering how low the whole thing started out at, well, there’s nothing quite like watching a movie series not only find the bottom of the barrel, but promptly decide to exercise its substantial “girl power” to start digging.

Folks, I’ve been working my way through this one for the last several days since it actually showed up on my doorstep, because this one is a doozy. The folks out at Lions Gate sent over Little House on the Prairie. All of it. Yes, that’s right, the full nine seasons of it, a monster fifty five disc box set of frontier living and good family television to last most anyone several hours. And how did it turn out? Better than you might expect.

Little House on the Prairie The Complete Nine Season Set takes us out to the frontier, as the Ingalls family makes its westward progression, setting out to settle the wild and vast frontier before them. Setting up camp on a parcel of land near Plum Creek, not too far from the tiny town of Walnut Grove, Minnesota, the Ingalls family builds a house, a farm, and a life on the harsh, unforgiving territory. They’ll have a lot of adventures, deal with a whole lot of different things, see their family grow and change, and eventually it will all come to an end.

Personally, I enjoy Little House on the Prairie. It’s a deceptively relaxing show; the combination of the realistic portrayal of the frontier lifestyle coupled with the excellent performances of the cast is one that seldom fails to mellow me out. And considering how extensive this collection was, chances are you’re going to find at least a couple episodes you’ll really enjoy. Of course, by like token, you’ll also find a few you absolutely can’t stand.

Special note here: if you were really fond of the books, and expect the series to behave like a big adaptation, don’t. Just stop right now. The best you’re going to do is get something based loosely on the books, and very loosely at that. Still though, Little House on the Prairie is a surprisingly relaxing show, almost disturbingly so, really, but it does do a wonderful job there. Plus, it’s excellent family viewing. You’ll find next to nothing objectionable in here; this was regarded as family fare back in the seventies when it first emerged, and it’s a safe bet that people haven’t gotten more sensitive now in terms of objectionable content, so you have a reasonably safe bet that this will be good for family viewing now.

Simple plotlines, a nigh-total lack of objectionable content and solid performances make the Little House series one you’ll absolutely want to watch. And the Screenhead Ten Scale responds accordingly by giving Little House on the Prairie The Complete Nine Season Set an eight out of ten. It’s not going to be for everyone–many will be bored here–but for those who like it a little on the calmer side, this is going to be a great trip into the wild.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent out another three choice titles for us to review, and as such, we’re going to catch up with a set of three from them: Life Is Beautiful, 40 Days and 40 Nights, and The Conversation.

Life Is Beautiful sets out as anything but, with a Jewish waiter in Italy named Guido, whose imaginative nature lets him pursue and win the heart of a local school teacher. The two marry and have a son, but that doesn’t last long. See, they got married somewhere around 1937. History buffs will know what happens next. But Guido’s imagination is about to make something of a difference, even while father and son alike are in the middle of a concentration camp.

See, the thing about Life Is Beautiful is that it’s actually super duper depressing. Some will find a stark beauty here, much in the same way that a field of snow does, but the beauty is cold and sorrowful at best. And considering that most regular people watch movies to be entertained, this one’s not going to be for most people. The question here is whether or not you’ll have sufficient tolerance for the sheer depressing nature of a waiter and his son living in the same concentration camp to see the up side of it, such as it is.

40 Days and 40 Nights, our next title, follows a young man who’s just had a major breakup with his former girlfriend just ahead of the pre-Easter time known as Lent. In the midst of Lent, some people give things up for the interval, and in our young man’s case, he’s given up sex. All sex. But when he meets someone who seems pretty special in the interval, his forty days and nights are about to seem a whole lot longer than he expected, maybe a bit too long.

This is your typical romantic comedy right here, with a few good laughs tossed into an unlikely storyline for variety. Basically, if you’re not into romantic comedies, there’s not going to really be anything here that’s going to change your mind. But the up shot here is that, should you decide to carry on with this one, you’ll likely be happy here as it sticks to most of the conventions and won’t do anything terribly tragic to throw you off.

Lastly, we’ve got The Conversation, a Francis Ford Coppola thriller that sends a security professional out on what should be a basic wiretapping job. But his surveillance quickly picks up something it shouldn’t have, and the implications of his find are going to be downright profound. So profound, in fact, that his acquisition of said unexpected surveillance is going to put him right in the middle of a conspiracy much bigger than any he’d imagined previously.

This one is some pretty good stuff, actually. Slower in some spots than others, but with a certain menace that’s downright hard to shake. It’s pretty good stuff, especially if you watched the last two and want something to shake the boredom and depression out.

So there you have it, another sweet slate of pieces thanks to the folks at Lions Gate!

Man, but the folks at Lions Gate have been putting out a lot of terrific titles of late, and though there’s a fair chance you’ve already seen a couple of these, with Halloween coming out, it’s a great time to cover some of the stuff that makes for a great party. And the crew out at Lions Gate sent over copies of Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3, and The Crow for us to cover.

Scary Movie 2 rejoins the crew from the original Scary Movie, and this time they’re off to college. And while they’re there, they’ve enrolled in a study geared toward studying sleep patterns. But the study turns out to be of something entirely different, and this is going to put the crew in some reasonably deep trouble at the hands of a sociopathic professor and his belligerently-abled disabled assistant.

If you have a tolerance for–or enjoyment of–movie parodies laden with dick and fart jokes, then you may rest assured that you will be very, very well taken care of here. In fact, it’s safe to say that your enjoyment of Scary Movie 2 will largely hinge on your tolerance for or enjoyment of dick and fart jokes because that’s primarily what’s in here. Of course, horror buffs should have a pleasant time spotting all the in-jokes and subreferences–the bit with Ray and the clown doll is a riot–but there’s going to be plenty in the crass and juvenile department for anyone.

Scary Movie 3 follows the events of Scary Movie 2, sufficiently so to put them in the working world. And while some of the cast has found jobs and is out to set up their lives, larger events in the world threaten to take them away before they can actually begin. There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye, and by the time we find out what’s going on, we find out, in the grandest Scary Movie tradition, how little of it makes sense.

The thing about Scary Movie 3 is that it’s probably the biggest of the series so far, even beating out Scary Movie 4. Any time you bring in Leslie Nielsen to a comedy title, well, you know you’re going for full on over the top. However, in their rush to take refuge in sheer audacity, they lost a lot of what was good about the previous two, notably the depth of parody (this one seemed lighter), and the jokes (lighter here too, it seemed). Still, it’s not without its laughs, just not near so many as you might expect.

Lastly, The Crow takes us out to a world that seems significantly Darker and Edgier than our own–thank you TV Tropes for coining that wonder of a concept–and nudges a bit toward the Crapsack. As a rock star and his fiancee were killed by a gang of thugs, the rock star returns from the dead, aided and abetted by a crow who keeps his spirit tethered to the mortal plane. Kill the crow, and by extension, you kill The Crow. And while The Crow is up and operating, there’s going to be plenty of killing to go around.

If you were around when this movie first came out, you know a whole lot of disaffected high-school loners went totally bughouse nuts over this movie, and as a history lesson (or if you just want to remember what all the fuss was about), you’ll be able to get it in full digital remastering. And yes, this is indeed Brandon Lee’s last film, as he was killed in an on-set accident involving a prop handgun. The end result is rather gritty and stylized, but the story itself is actually pretty well done if you don’t mind a colossal downer in the middle of your day.

So there you go, a fresh set of three titles that ought to put a little extra jump in your Halloween viewing.

We’ve gotten a few requests from the readership for hitting up more movies faster, and as such, we’ve set up a gigantic sort of multi-review, in which we hit up a block of three titles, a little older stuff, to give you a fast look at some of the stuff you may have missed out there. This week’s big old multi-review is brought to you entirely by Lions Gate, who shipped out copies of Dead Alive, Mimic and The Others for us to review.

Dead Alive offers up the story of a terminal momma’s boy who’s about to get a serious shot of growing up when he meets an attractive young woman and fends off a horde of zombies caused by a Sumatran rat monkey infected with some kind of crazy zombie germ.

Basically, Dead Alive is terrific stuff. Not only does it present a lot of bombastic zombie killing action (the part with the lawn mower blows me away every time), but also plenty of laughs. This is excellent stuff for most any crazy party, especially given that we’ve got Halloween coming up on us in rapid fashion.

The Others, meanwhile, managed to give us twisty ending right around the same time M. Night Shyamalan was actually doing it well, by bringing us Nicole Kidman as a prim British matriarch with two children with a wicked light allergy. She’s hired on a new staff of domestics to help out while her husband is away, but they’ve arrived in the midst of some strange things. And once we find out just what’s going on in the house, well, it’s going to really catch you off guard.

The Others, frankly, still stands as one of the great examples of paranormal suspense filmmaking there is out there today. With an ending that may not be conclusive but is a huge surprise, and plenty of good shocks throughout the movie, this is one that will really put a spark in a long, cold fall night.

Lastly, we have Mimic, a movie that will make sure you never look at roaches the same way again. Some genetic engineers, in a bid to defeat a horrible disease, have created something that just may cure it. But they may have traded one doom for another, as their creation takes on a life of its own.

Mimic is a strange sort of title, with an odd sort of light dystopia running through it. It’s interesting enough, to watch one kind of doom get traded for another, and the end result is a little confused but otherwise pretty nicely done.

So there you go, a block of three pretty sweet horror titles that will do a nice job of perking up one of those cold dark nights we’ve got coming up here. Obviously some are better than others, but still, the whole will prove to be solidly done.

When a new television series announces that it’s “from the team behind Arrested Development”, I get skeptical. After all, Arrested Development was easily one of my favorite shows, and anything trying to capitalize on that is a low blow. But then, when you get a former actor from Arrested Development, Will Arnett, otherwise known as Gob Bluth, to play the lead, well, now I don’t know whether to be amazed or skeptical. But that was what I was going to find out with Running Wilde: Season One, a copy of which the folks at Lions Gate sent out for review. And thankfully, my skepticism was wholly unwarranted, because this is some terrifically funny stuff.

Running Wilde follows Steve Wilde, self-centered rich dullard, who’s decided to try and recover his childhood sweetheart’s affection. Trouble is, said childhood sweetheart is a dirt-poor econaut out to save the world who’s sufficiently econaut to name her daughter Puddle. Oh, and did I mention old Steve’s family made their fortune in oil? That’s going to be quite the comic mismatch, or so the series hopes.

The thing about Running Wilde is that it only lasted thirteen episodes, and on Fox, the network that was dumb enough to shut down Arrested Development in the first place. And frankly, Running Wilde will be every inch as hilarious as Arrested Development, largely because of the Arrested Development alums involved here. It’s not just Will Arnett, but also David Cross (the former never-nude Dr. Tobias Funke) shows up. The sheer amount of great comedy here, in the grandest Arrested Development tradition, is enough to get anybody interested. Frankly, I laughed on a variety of occasions, and when a DVD makes me laugh, I know it’s going to be a big deal indeed.

It’s a shame it didn’t last longer, and I can only hope that this will one day get the Futurama treatment and be brought back elsewhere. It’s probably the closest thing you’re going to get to new episodes of Arrested Development. There are more than enough wild situations here that revolve around Steve’s relative naivete and his massive ego despite same to make most anyone laugh. David Cross and Will Arnett’s interactions are also terrific fun.

The Screenhead Ten Scale can hardly believe it’s doing this, but for the second time this week, Running Wilde gets a full ten out of ten. It’s simply too funny to pass up.

You know, I love it when the folks out at Lions Gate ship over stuff that got its start on SyFy. They’ve made some pretty peachy monster movies so far, and while none of them will ever be mistaken for a really good movie, there’s nothing like a good monster movie to get the heart pumping and the popcorn munching. Get some friends together and some daquiris and you’ve got a Friday! And that’s just what we’ll get with Goblin, a SyFy Channel Original Movie that’s getting the video release treatment.

Goblin takes us out to Hollow Glen, where a group of villagers just celebrated Halloween by tossing a baby into a fire. Of course, the problem comes in when the baby’s mother, who turns out to be a witch, puts a heavy-duty death curse on the town, summoning up the titular goblin from the fire that her baby was chucked into. The goblin’s purpose? To slaughter every infant in the immediate vicinity. Fast forward just shy of a couple hundred years to the present era, where the goblin’s curse isn’t  as defunct as some might have thought.

This is some incredible cliche, right down to the crazy old man who gives away the entire plot in the first ten minutes. And yet, at the same time, it’s this incredible devotion to the cliche that makes this one a seriously entertaining popcorn muncher. And for all the cliches, there are still some pretty good scares in here. We’re talking about a monster that essentially flies around and is pretty much impervious to small arms fire and the like but for one whole day. It eats babies and kills whatever gets between it and a baby. The thing is not exactly a sympathetic character. If anything it’s a low-rent version of The Creeper from the Jeepers Creepers franchise except it doesn’t make things out of corpses. It just makes a lot of corpses.

The means to kill the Goblin is pure on horror movie logic, that is to say, there is none, but it doesn’t particularly matter because you’re too busy enjoying the various fight scenes. Scenery chewing, irrational behavior…it really doesn’t matter. You knew going in this wasn’t going to be a good movie, but in this case, when it gives up on good, it instead becomes fun. And fun is good enough for most anyone.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Goblin a seven out of ten for sacrificing good on the altar of fun, and the end result is a surprisingly watchable if mind-bogglingly stupid affair.