You would think that as technology advances, visual art forms such as film – including home media – would see a definite improvement in quality. But here we are yet again, getting bummed out over how studios have taken cleaning up transfers too far, polishing iconic movies into a “pristine” oblivion. And yes, they may have once more botched another James Cameron 4K Blu-ray. Game over, man!

The latest example comes via the 4K release of James Cameron’s Aliens, which came out on March 12th. As HD Report noted via a side-by-side comparison, even the high-definition transfer released 14 years ago is more respectable than the 4K one out just last week: “When comparing the two, the old Blu-ray is a better representation of celluloid at a time when filmmakers are trying to make images look less digital.” Hell, you can even see how Newt feels about it in the second image!

Look, we won’t necessarily say that these James Cameron 4K Blu-rays look terrible – they don’t and to a lot of people they’ll be great additions to their home video collection, something we’ll forever champion. But considering these releases were some of the most anticipated of the year, they are disappointing in how much they have been scrubbed of their authenticity.

Last week we took a look at Cameron’s True Lies, which, like these other 4K releases, has fallen victim to artificial intelligence being used to digitally “enhance” the video quality. Surely there are good intentions behind this move – and most reviews reflect this – but by doing so, there is an ultimate disregard for just what these films are meant to look like. As The Digital Bits put it in their breakdown of the Aliens disc, the film “looks very good in physical 4K, improving upon the 4K Digital presentation, but it’s been given modern remastering that belies the look of a 38-year-old film.”

There is a right way and a wrong way to do 4K releases and it’s truly unfortunate that, by and large, these James Cameron discs fall in the latter camp. No doubt these have been hot items (some reports say the discs were selling out online) and we wouldn’t want to tell you not to pick up any copy of your favorite movie, but there should be more uproar on how classics are being handled on home video. Also out last Tuesday was the 4K release of James Cameron’s The Abyss.

Have you picked up a 4K copy of James Cameron’s Aliens or do these transfers make you want to just stick with a previous release? Share your thoughts with us below.

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Top of the mornin’ to you on this St. Patrick’s Day! To celebrate, we here at Arrow in the Head decided to mark the occasion by going back over the Leprechaun movies and ranking them from worst to first. The Leprechaun Movies Ranked list can be seen below – check it out and let us know how you would rank the movies!

LEPRECHAUN: ORIGINS (2014)

This is appalling. Director Zach Lipovsky, writer Harris Wilkinson, and WWE Studios were given the chance to make a new Leprechaun movie, they cast a professional wrestler (Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl) as the title character, and then they just churned out a dull monster movie. I don’t know how anyone involved thought this was a good idea (“You know what we should do? Take everything people liked about Leprechaun and remove it!”) or how Leprechaun: Origins made it through production. The story follows Americans backpacking through Ireland and running across a leprechaun, who is just a hideous creature with no personality. It’s not even fun to watch this thing pick people off. There’s nothing interesting to be found in this movie, although there is some curiosity factor in seeing one of the most wrongheaded reboots ever made. Unfortunately, you have to sacrifice some of your time to do so. (Good thing the 90 minute running time is padded out with 12 minutes of end credits.)

LEPRECHAUN IN THE HOOD (2000)

Around 2000, there was a surge of low-budget horror movies set “in the hood”. Full Moon was in on it, and the Leprechaun franchise joined the trend as well. Directed by Rob Spera, who got help from four other writers in crafting the story and script, Leprechaun in the Hood has its charms. You get Ice-T as a record producer who gained success with the help of a flute he stole from the leprechaun. You get the leprechaun smoking weed, rapping, and mesmerizing a trio of “fly girls”. And of course, you get him killing people while trying to get his flute back from the rap group that has stolen it from Ice-T’s character. (Called Mack Daddy O’Nassas because he was a pimp who “owned asses”.) This one ranks lower just because it doesn’t feel as fun as some of the other entries, despite the weed and the rapping.

LEPRECHAUN BACK 2 THA HOOD (2003)

Writer/director Steven Ayromlooi wanted to make a Spring Break Leprechaun movie, but Lionsgate wanted to send the character Back 2 Tha Hood. Well, at least this repetition is more tolerable than going Back 2 Space would be. This sequel has better production value than the previous Hood entry, some cool action moments, and fun elements like bullets laced with clover and a magic battle between the leprechaun and a fortune teller. On the downside, the characters aren’t very interesting, so it bogs down whenever we have to watch them interaction. We get the leprechaun hitting a bong, but he doesn’t give us another rap sequence… which I’m sure was disappointing to fans of the first Hood film. This may be the last time we’ll ever see Warwick Davis starring in a Leprechaun movie, which is a shame. He seemed to have a lot more Lep left in him, but they let the franchise go dormant for too long.

LEPRECHAUN 4 (1996)

Leprechaun 3 director Brian Trenchard-Smith returned to direct Leprechaun 4, which is not on the level of his previous contribution to the series. The fact that it’s set in space isn’t the problem, it’s fitting that the Leprechaun movies helped start one of the most amusing franchise trends. The problem is, it feels like Dennis Pratt just wrote it as a generic Aliens knock-off and then replaced the alien with the leprechaun. He lives on a random planet and is referred to as an alien. At least he’s still obsessed with wealth and power. This movie does get incredibly strange as the leprechaun wipes out a bunch of soldiers and the medical staff on a spaceship, so it has that going for it. This seems to be a love it or hate it entry: it gets too ridiculous for some viewers, while others enjoy that it’s packed with jaw-dropping nonsense.

LEPRECHAUN RETURNS (2018)

The leprechaun is a different character in every Leprechaun movie, they all just happened to be played by Warwick Davis. Until Leprechaun Returns, which brings back the leprechaun from the original. Ironically, the first direct sequel is also the first sequel Davis opted not to come back for. So this returning leprechaun is played by Linden Porco, who does a good job, it’s just difficult for anyone to come close to what Davis did. Directed by Steven Kostanski, Leprechaun Returns is an entertaining sequel with an amusing, clever script by Suzanne Keilly – who recently wrote a fun Slumber Party Massacre movie as well. The story finds the leprechaun accidentally being unleashed by a group of sorority girls and proceeding to kill them and their friends one-by-one. Nice and simple. Mark Holton reprises the role of Ozzie from the original film, and the heroine is the daughter of Jennifer Aniston’s character.

LEPRECHAUN (1993)

Some horror franchises start out dead serious and slide into silliness. That’s not the case with Leprechaun. Future entries would definitely be sillier, but this concept was ridiculous from the start. Written and directed by Mark Jones, Leprechaun is about a single father and his daughter moving into a fixer-upper home in North Dakota… and quickly realizing there was a leprechaun trapped in the basement and a pot of gold the previous owner brought back from Ireland (after stealing it from the leprechaun) stashed nearby. The leprechaun wants his gold back, and is willing to kill people in nasty ways to retrieve it. Jones tries to make moments genuinely unnerving, but while Warwick Davis turns in a hell of a performance and the leprechaun is hideous, he’s still wearing a funny outfit, tossing out one-liners, and getting distracted because he’s compelled to polish shoes. He’s also up against some goofball characters, including a rather annoying heroine played by pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston.

LEPRECHAUN 3 (1995)

The idea behind Leprechaun 3, which was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith from a script by David DuBos, was a really smart one. You have a horror villain who’s obsessed with collecting riches, so what better setting could there be for one of his sequels than Las Vegas? Of course, the movie only had to budget to film in Vegas for one day (the interiors were shot in Los Angeles), but Trenchard-Smith made the most of it. While the leprechaun causes trouble for people who work at a casino, including a terrible magician and a croupier played by genre regular Caroline Williams, we also learn that leprechaunism is an infectious disease when the lead (played by future screenwriter John Gatins) starts to turn into a leprechaun himself. This was one of the better, most well-crafted entries in the franchise. And you get to see what a handful of leprechaun poop looks like.

LEPRECHAUN 2 (1994)

Every one thousand years, a leprechaun can claim a human bride, and in Leprechaun 2 an evil leprechaun has his mind set on a young woman named Bridget (Shevonne Durkin). With the help of his drunken uncle Morty (Sandy Baron), Bridget’s boyfriend Cody (Charlie Heath) desperately tries to save his love from life with a leprechaun. Directed by Rodman Flender and written by Turi Meyer and Al Septién, this sequel is a step up from its predecessor. It’s quick and fun, with a good sense of humor and very entertaining performance from Baron. It also brings a welcome new addition to the Leprechaun mythology, saying a captured leprechaun has to grant its captor three wishes. Of course, those wishes don’t always work out for the person making them. Warwick Davis was given better material to work with, including a great sequence in which he and Morty have a drinking contest. This one also earns points for being set on St. Patrick’s Day.

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THE STORY: A corrupt American cop (Michael Douglas) and his partner (Andy Garcia) wind-up in Japan after a prisoner exchange gone awry. With their former captive cutting a swath through the local Yakuza in an attempt to establish himself as the new Tokyo boss, the cops are forced into an uneasy alliance with a by-the-book local police inspector (Ken Takakura).

THE PLAYERS: Starring: Michael Douglas, Andy García, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw and Yusaku Matsuda. Directed by Ridley Scott. Music by Hans Zimmer.

THE HISTORY: Michael Douglas was riding high in 1989. Following his Oscar-win for Wall Street, and Fatal Attraction’s boffo box office, his was considered one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood. Opting for a rare action role, grittier and more hard-edged than his turns in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, Douglas, with his Fatal Attraction producers Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing (who would soon run Paramount Pictures), hired Ridley Scott, then on a career downswing following Legend and Someone to Watch Over Me, to helm this stylish East-meets-West thriller, which would shoot on-location in Japan.

I remember when Ridley showed us the first cut of the movie it was about two hours and forty minutes, and it was extraordinary… But, this was his first cut, and so we all new that he was going to go in and make the film under two hours. I mean, the texture of the movie, the performances, the visuals, the sound, we were thrilled. Then, Ridley called us back, I dunno, four weeks later and showed us a movie that was an hour and fifty minutes long. We looked at him and asked, “what did you do,” and he said, what do you mean “what did I do?” “You took out all the good stuff, why did you make it this?” He said, “but I had to,” and he DID have to, to make it under two hours he had to take out some of the texture and some of the finest scenes in the movie. So, we said, “just make it the right length, it doesn’t have to be under two hours, just make it the right length.” (note- the final cut runs 125 minutes) – Sherry Lansing (BLACK RAIN DVD).

Despite critical acclaim and Douglas’s star-power, Black Rain was only a modest hit upon its release in the fall of 1989. It grossed $46 million, decent enough numbers for the era, but it wound-up grossing far less than comparable action movies of the time, although worldwide it was a solid hit, grossing an additional $88 million, while it also became a hot rental on the VHS market.

Nowadays, Black Rain remains popular among aficionados of eighties action cinema, with it remaining Michael Douglas’s one real attempt to make an action-movie on par with what Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were doing at the time. Sandwiched between Douglas’s more well-known vehicles, with Basic Instinct another giant hit just a few years later, and coming along at a fallow time in Ridley Scott’s career, it remains a movie rarely discussed in examinations of either’s career.

WHY IT’S GREAT: Black Rain is an eighties gem for many reasons. For one thing, Michael Douglas aces his anti-hero part. While introducing him by staging a motorcycle race is maybe trying a bit too hard to establish him as a sexy rebel, it’s notable that his character, Nick Conklin, is allowed to be sleazy and imperfect. He’s under investigation for being on-the-take, and while, with another actor in the lead, he’d eventually be vindicated, we learn early-on that Nick is in-fact guilty. He’s also shown to be a racist, making derogatory comments about the Japanese, and often screwing up his own investigation with a mixture of ego and fool-headedness, all of which eventually gets his partner, played by the great Andy Garcia, killed.

I remember when the picture first came out, there was a very influential critics who called it a racist film because of how it depicted the Japanese. This really bothered me, so I called him up and asked him, “have you ever been to Japan?” Silence..”no.” “Then what do you think you’re talking about?” Then a few weeks later, it gets nominated for best foreign film in Japan. A very respected critic said, “well, this is the best Japanese film I’ve seen this year,” so it was a real compliment to Ridley. – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)

Lest you think he’s unlikable, Douglas makes Nick three-dimensional, to the point that even if we know he’s not too far removed from the baddies he chases, he’s essentially a good man, and his evolution is convincing. His relationship with Ken Takakura’s more honorable Japanese cop, himself a victim of the rigid class system in Japan, is touching. Douglas initially treats him like a joke, but he comes to realize Takakura (who’s one of the biggest stars in Japanese history – on the level of someone like Chow Yun-Fat in Hong Kong) is truly on his side, and an honorable man.

Meanwhile, Yusaku Matsuda’s bad guy is among the scarier ones of the eighties, sporting a crazed look and sense of sadism. Matsuda was, unbeknownst to the filmmakers and Douglas, terminally ill at the time. He apparently knew it would be his last role, and he put everything he had into it. Likewise, Ridley Scott, who one might assume would phone-in what, to him, might seem like a routine assignment, infuses Black Rain with oodles of style. His vision of Tokyo seems almost as futuristic as the Los Angeles of Black Rain, and his eye, matched with Jan De Bont’s cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s amazing, hard-edged score, makes this one of the most impeccably made action films of the era.

BEST SCENE: In cop movies, the younger, more inexperienced partner is always going to die. Even as a child watching Black Rain, I had seen enough of these movies to know Andy Garcia was doomed. As an action-junkie you almost look forward to the partner dying, because it’ll kick the hero into high gear. But, Garcia is so damn likable and charismatic, singing Ray Charles with Takakura (who apparently loved Garcia off-screen) and busting Douglas’s balls that you want him to pull through. All of this makes his eventual death all the more hard-hitting, with it being, in the annals of action movie murder, one of the most sadistic.

SEE IT: Black Rain is easily available on DVD/Blu-ray (I actually have it on HD-DVD), streaming, iTunes, Amazon and more.

You know, people always ask me in my career, what’s your favorite movie. And I have to say, Black Rain is right up there for the unique qualities of the movie, the execution across the board… – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)

PARTING SHOT: Black Rain is another entry into this column that many of you may remember having seen when it came out. If it’s been awhile, I urge you to check it out again, as it holds up really well. And to those younger readers who may have never heard of it, do you like Ridley Scott and Hans Zimmer? If yes, boy oh boy will you love this.

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Following his New Year’s Day accident last year which left him with broken bones and blunt chest trauma, we weren’t sure just what Jeremy Renner’s condition would be. But we were constantly pulling for him, as we’re his MCU co-stars. Now, as Renner continues getting back to 100%, he has singled out yet another one of his fellow Avengers: Robert Downey Jr.

Speaking with People, Renner said that RDJ was among the Avengers who lent his support throughout his stay in the ICU, joking, “We ended up having really great chats on FaceTime, like we were dating or something.” One piece of advice that Downey Jr. gave Renner was, “‘Dude, the most important thing is you look good. I don’t care how you feel, as long as you look good that’s all that matters.’” Well, Renner is in the entertainment industry. But some of this might have been just a little selfish on the Oppenheimer Oscar winner’s part, as he wanted Renner to get moving on another season of Mayor of Kingstown. As he has been confirming since his accident, Renner is determined to make pretty much anything happen, including a third season of the Paramount+ series.

With such support as his Avengers co-stars have given him, Jeremy Renner is always willing to give it back, too, even going so far as to say he would assemble the team for another superhero outing. But it may just be too late for another Avengers movie and the core reasonings — for Renner to show his loyalty and for the studio to put on a better face — may not necessarily result in a good product.

Regardless of whether or not Jeremy Renner ever suits up as Hawkeye again or if the Avengers even reunite for cameos down the line, stories like these show how much he is loved and how grateful he is to keep in contact with his co-stars. So often relationships are either be limited to the set or fall apart when the promotional circuit is over, but for the Avengers, there are bonds that run much deeper.

What is your favorite moment from Jeremy Renner in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Drop your pick in the comments section below.

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The third week of March was an eclectic one for gaming news. We’re still hyped for Unicorn Overlord, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and the upcoming samurai adventure Rise of the Ronin. But we’re a little less enthusiastic about the new Star Wars remasters. These are the flaming hot takes you need to know for this week.

Read more…

The third week of March was an eclectic one for gaming news. We’re still hyped for Unicorn Overlord, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and the upcoming samurai adventure Rise of the Ronin. But we’re a little less enthusiastic about the new Star Wars remasters. These are the flaming hot takes you need to know for this week.

Read more…

If you build it, he will come. And if you joke about it, he will tweet. Kevin Costner has responded to John Mulaney’s breakdown of Field of Dreams – delivered when presenting Best Sound (a surprise win for The Zone of Interest) at Sunday’s Oscars – in good-hearted fashion, saying it wasn’t a bad summary at all.

In one of the night’s funniest moments, Mulaney took a tangent after delivering some of the most iconic lines in modern movies (oh, and one from Madame Web…). One was, “If you build it, he will come” (sometimes misquoted as, “If you build it, they will come.”) from 1989’s Field of Dreams. From there, he gave a far better plot summary of Phil Alden Robinson’s movie than any VHS box could. “I guess he doesn’t build it, he mows down corn, and then there is a field and he’s like, ‘I’m going to watch ghosts play baseball, and the bank is like, ‘You wanna pay your mortgage?’ And he’s like, ‘Nah, I’m gonna watch ghosts play baseball.’”

Mulaney took under a minute to describe the rest of Field of Dreams: “And then he finds James Earl Jones, who wrote The Boat Rocker, which I thought was a real book deep into my 20s, and he’s like, ‘People will come, Ray’, – he’s the only one with a financial plan. But what’s weird is Timothy Busfield pushes little Gaby Hoffmann off the bleachers and she falls down and she’s unconscious.’” From there, Mulaney wonders just why Burt Lancaster’s character, Moonlight Graham, can’t return to the field after stepping over the first base line. “I guess there’s a rule in ghost baseball that if you leave the field at any point to become an elderly ghost and do the Heimlich maneuver, you can’t return to the field.” Hey, it’s no crazier than the infidel fly rule…

The entire speech was a true highlight of the night, which, paired with his Governors Awards monologue, has prompted many to rightly call for Mulaney to host next year’s Oscars.

Field of Dreams was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score, losing the first two to Driving Miss Daisy and the music category to The Little Mermaid. With baseball season sliding into home in just a couple more weeks, it might be time to rewatch one of the finest sports films ever.

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Who ya gonna call? Well, if you’re one of the next generation of Ghostbusters, you can probably ring up one of the OG crew, as it turns out they’ve been more than receptive to the younger cast of Frozen Empire. Finn Wolfhard and Dan Aykroyd living together? Mass hysteria!

As Wolfhard told The Hollywood Reporter in promotion for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (and some TV show called Stranger Things – the dude is busy!), the original cast has been welcoming to the new blood, saying, “We spent so many days together on set, and we hung out a few times outside of set as well. Dan [Aykroyd], Annie [Potts] and everyone are such open books, and you can ask them anything about their lives and their industry stories. You can ask Dan about SNL in 1975, and he just remembers it all off the top of his head. So it’s really surreal to be in a room with these people, but they make you feel equal, which is really nice. There’s no ego or anything. There’s mutual respect.”

But there are even more ties to SNL on the Frozen Empire set than just Dan Aykroyd for Finn Wolfhard, as he’ll be playing an NBC page in the upcoming SNL 1975. Added to this, SNL 1975 will be written by Frozen Empire co-writers Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, with the project being directed by the latter. That cast has built up quickly, with Aykroyd being played by Dylan O’Brien, Gilda Radner by Ella Hunt, Jane Curtin by Kim Matula, John Belushi by Matt Wood, Chevy Chase by Cory Michael Smith, and Lorne Michaels by Gabriel LaBelle.

Sadly, the Frozen Empire team would never get the chance to speak with Harold Ramis (Egon Spengler) – who did have a touching “cameo” in 2021’s Afterlife – as he died in 2014. They, too, would miss out on stories on the set this time around from Ivan Reitman, who produced Afterlife but passed away in 2022.  His son, Jason, also stepped away from directing duties, to which Wolfhard said, “To direct something where he’d be thinking about him all the time, I am sure that it would have been really emotionally heavy. So I think it was really helpful for Jason to take a step back in more of a producer role.”

Regardless of who remains or gets namechecked (come on, Bill, we know you loved working with those kids!), it’s pretty cool to see the torch being humbly passed by the original cast of Ghostbusters, which is now celebrating its 40th anniversary. Frozen Empire comes out next Friday, March 22nd.

Which Finn Wolfhard project are you most looking forward to: Frozen Empire, SNL 1975 or the final season of Stranger Things?

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For the majority of us, the weekends include at least one designated movie night. Whether we hit the cinema or stay home is our own choice, but according to a new study, a higher percentage of movie lovers will be kicking back on the couch. As per a study conducted by HarrisX, two-thirds of people would rather stay home to stream a movie than go out to the theater.

As the VP of HarrisX told IndieWire, “The competition continues between streaming services and the Hollywood engine. While we still see evidence of loyal movie-goers in recent box office numbers, our study shows that 2 in 3 movie watchers prefer to stream movies at home.”

While these numbers might on the surface point to knee-jerk calls of the end of the movie theater, the box office numbers we’ve seen in the post-Covid years have been fantastic for the rebound, with 2022 and 2023 seeing five $1 billion+ films combined. Those aren’t even close to the numbers we’ve seen before but if a three-hour movie about the atomic bomb is sniffing $1 billion, we have no fear about the future of cinema.

But a more telling stat is buried within the research, which also shows that those who tend to stream movies at home take in more content overall. This makes sense but the numbers show just how much they are streaming. “Despite this causing some upheaval for the industry, it also means that the demand for content is only increasing – nearly half of consumers say they stream movies weekly, more than 7x as frequently as those who do so in theaters.”

One of the key reasons people tend to stay home to stream instead of going out is movie ticket and concession prices. There, too, is the convenience of staying home: you don’t need to find a sitter, you can refill your popcorn without missing a frame and if you don’t like the moron next to you feel free to move your seat! Pretty strong arguments for Team Road House…

Generally speaking, which side are you on? Would you prefer to stay home to stream a movie or head to the cinema for the full experience? What’s the deciding factor? Let us know below!

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