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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After two summers full of Futurama, the resurrection of the series by Disney and Hulu comes to a temporary end with Otherwise, an amazing finale written by veteran author Ken Keeler under his Nona di Spargement pseudonym. It’s an emotional, funny and exciting science-fiction adventure picking up on the events of the Comedy Central finale Meanwhile from eleven years ago involving Fry and Leela’s continuing love story. A wonderfully written episode that embodies everything that’s good in Futurama, this is the best season finale you could hope for.

The penultimate episode of this year’s Futurama half-season brings us the traditional Anthology-style episode, a trio of non-canon stories in different styles. This time it’s centered around books and reading and so The Futurama Mystery Liberry is presented by none other than LeVar Burton – not necessarily in his Star Trek persona, but as the long time real-life host of Reading Rainbow, the PBS children’s book show. Written by newcomer Jeanette Lim and Futurama veterans David X. Cohen and Patric Verrone, this is one of the most fun episodes of the season. While two of the parodied book series are largely unknown in Europe, they are still fun to watch and sucessfully combine a nostalgic feeling with a little science-fiction.

Futurama always seemed to have its hits and misses, but the 2024 season has been surprisingly strong and continues with great episodes. Cuteness Overlord marks the return of Kirstin Gore as screenwriter after over 20 years – she wrote the classic Leelas’s Homeworld from Season 4 and now comes back with another family-focused story. But this time it’s not about Leela but a new household that has been introduced recently – the Wong-Krokers with their three children. It’s also the first Amy episode for a long time and has a lot of fun parodying a certain toy collecting craze from a long time ago.

We are now in the final stretch of four episodes of this year’s Futurama season and it’s time for the return of Bureaucrat Grade 35, Hermes Conrad. The story created by veteran series writer Bill Odenkirk, who also wrote Hermes’ first big outing 24 years ago, delves deep into the character’s previously unwritten family history and combines it with the love for coffee that has always been in the background of the Futurama universe. Three Hundred Big Boys once saw Fry drink 100 cups of coffee, but Planet Espresso goes much further than that, telling a story spanning millions of years.

It was time for a Crazy Professor episode and with Attack of the Clothes this year’s Futurama season gets one in the best way possible. It’s funny, crazy and absolutely ludicrous – and one of the best Farnsworth stories yet. Written by Ariel Ladensohn, who actually is more associated with the Solar Opposites competition and was only involved with one previous Futurama episode, the story still hits all the hallmarks of a Futurama classic. Professor Farnsworth’s shenanigans are always welcome and this entry takes things in a direction that is unusual even for Futurama.

The fifth entry in this year’s batch of new Futurama episodes is, once again, an unexpected surprise. It’s Leela’s first own story and while it could almost have been a soap opera, One Is Silicon And The Other Gold turned out to be a brilliant and funny story about the pitfalls of finding friends in the future. Having Leela strike up a friendship with a chatbot is not even that futuristic – instead of heavy science-fiction, the episode cares more about the series’ characters. A return to Leela’s story arc was long overdue and the proper return of everyone’s favourite one-eyed Planet Express employee is very welcome.

Number four of Futurama 2024 will probably be known as “Bender goes Buggalo-Fighting” but thankfully there’s more to the second Bender-centric story of the new season than meets the eye. First, Beauty and the Bug is a return to Mars and that means the return of Amy’s parents Leo and Inez Wong and their Martian empire – and we get to see more about what’s happening on the red planet culturally. This time it’s Bender who gets involved into something new and also falls in love again with a special robot lady.

The third episode of Futurama’s 2024 season manages to come up with the first big surprise of the batch – it’s not a story about Fry, Leela or Bender, but about Frank, The Temp. Wait, who? Exactly! It would be unfair to reveal too much about the episode, so I’ll try to keep it spoiler-free. David A. Goodman, who already wrote two wonderful Futurama episodes besides being a prolific television writer for over 30 years, brilliantly insert a new tale into events from a popular third season story to create an everyday workplace horror à la Twilight Zone – or even better The Scary Door.

Last week’s new Futurama episode brought up a lot of complaints because of its half-baked current affairs satire and this week’s effort already has been unfairly mangled because of its worrying title. Luckily Quids Game only takes the bare concept from the Korean Netflix series and turns it into a surprisingly heartfelt all-ensemble episode that includes some wonderful flashbacks to Fry’s past. Written by Cody Ziglar, whose only other Futurama episode was Rage against the Vaccine from the previous half-season and directed by Crystal Chesney-Thompson, who started to direct for the series in 2010, Quid’s Game is a pleasant surprise after a slightly lukewarm start.