I’ve talked a lot in the last few years about how I think we are in one of the best eras for movies.

Streaming has opened up a world of new films to me that I never would have watched if a dozen streaming services, each with thousands of available pictures, did not exist. Independent films, foreign films, and just general low-budget outings are so much more prevalent now than they have ever been before. Just because of Shudder alone, I’e watched probably hundreds of inexpensively made flicks that never in a million years years would have seen the light of the inside of a cinemaplex.

But I can’t claim that these services invented the low-budget movie… or even popularized them.

Prior to the modern streaming era, video stores were all of the rage in pop culture. You and your family would turn out most weekends to browse the aisles and pick out your choices for what to watch for a weekend. And, if you went to the right video store, you could find plenty of straight-to-video DVDs or VHS, the kinds of movies that you never saw in theater but were readily available for you there. And some folks considered themselves experts in the field of these pictures.

Enter: Bryan Kristopowitz.

Bryan is one of those aforementioned folks. In an era where I was only watching releases from the cinema that finally made it to home rental distribution, he was scouring the shelves for efforts [sometimes] starring some well-known actors and actresses who were boosting the credibility of movies that didn’t have the funding for huge releases. He was in the foxholes taking bullets of occasional bad movies in an effort to see if he could unearth any hidden gems.

(That’s what people did in foxholes, right? Looked for gems? My analogy may have mutated halfway through there)

And over time, Bryan got so good at finding these treasures that he was able to not only write a book on the subject, but write a book on a very particular subsection of the subject. That’s how we got Not Coming To A Theater Near You: 50 Great Direct-To-Video Action Flicks Of The Early 2000’s (it’s a very long full title, yes, but it tells you exactly what it’s going to do!).

In the Introduction to his book, Bryan is quick to point out that even in the modern era, it’s still entirely possible to find these early 2000’s gems on some form or another of physical media. He shouts out Shout! Factory/Scream Factory, Arrow Video, Vinegar Syndrome, Severin Films, Kino Lorber, and Blue Underground as companies that not only offer DVDs, but they come packed with goodies and extras like documentaries and commentary tracks. Even aside from those, he notes that Barnes & Noble still sells physical media (including records I’ve personally noticed have gotten some huge traction at the bookseller, which–I know it’s a whole retro thing nowadays–kind of blows my mind), as does Goodwill and Amazon.

After the Introduction, Bryan gets right into the material, sorting them by release date as he covers the 50 flicks he found most worthy of sharing the love for. The book starts with 2001’s Shadow Fury and runs its course through 2012’s The Girl From The Naked Eye. Between those entries, the book is stuffed with talk on 48 other films starring the likes of Dolph Lundgren, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Wesley Snipes, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. You’ll even run into the rare movie here or there featuring Tiffani Thiessen or Cuba Gooding Jr, not the first names you expect to see in a title on direct-to-video action movies.

Each movie’s review in the book features an extended plot synopsis that does not give away spoilers or the ending–kind of like what I strive for in my movie reviews here, but far more intensive and in-depth. After that, there are three categories Bryan runs down for each: Doobage, Gratuitous, and Best Lines. Best Lines speaks for itself, but Bryan describes the other two categories as these: Doobage is a nonsense word he uses to describe the best violence and biggest scenes of the film; Gratuitous is where he lists all of the whacky goings-on of the picture. Finally, there is a rating out of 10, and this being a book about so-called “Great” movies, all but one bottom out for Bryan at a 7.0 out of 10.

Having not seen many (any?) of these movies in his book, I can’t attest to whether or not they would clock in quite so high for me. I did review a direct-to-streaming Van Damme movie a ways back that I got as a screener, and it wasn’t the kind of flick I personally loved. I wonder what Bryan would have thought of that movie. We may just have different tastes, and that’s okay! Because what’s important is Bryan’s witty writing style, and his ability to make all of these films sound awesome as hell. Reading his breakdowns of these pictures, I wanted to seek each one of them out and give them a go. His loyalty to and love for them is that infectious as you read Not Coming To A Theater Near You. Seeing him give an 8.5 to an outing where Lundgren plays a history teacher who has to save the kids in his detention makes me feel like I HAVE to see what that score is about.

So Bryan recommends these movies, and I definitely recommend his book on them. You can find his book for sale here or here, among other sites. Dig in, find his love for these forgotten filmmaking efforts, and maybe give the flicks themselves a shot when you can find them.

Until next time… take care!