Magnolia Pictures Offering Free Gift for New Subscribers

Magnolia Pictures, the independent film distributor that was a pioneer in day-and-date VOD releases, has a new streaming channel (yes, another one). This is in addition to their Magnolia Selects app. The new service is called Warriors & Gangsters, and features highlights from Magnolia's genre films. Selections include the Ong-Bak trilogy, 13 Assassins and Centurion.

As a holiday promotion for the martial arts and action aficionado in your life, new subscribers will receive a Blu-ray bundle of The Wave and The Quake, the Norwegian disaster films that got strong reviews and delivered pulse-pounding action. An annual subscription is just $29.99, a fraction of most of the bigger streaming players. That's a mere $2.50 a month. Whether you gift the discs to a friend or keep them for yourself is up to you.

Warriors & Gangsters is available now via Sling TV, Roku, as a Prime Video Channel and on iOS and Android devices.

About Kip Mooney

Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.