Blu-ray Review »
The Central Park Five | Blu-ray Review
After years of acclaimed documentary mini-series, Ken Burns returns to the feature film with his daughter Sarah Burns and fellow colleague David McMahon, who produced a number of Burns’ past projects, joining him as
Read More »
Criterion Collection: Monsieur Verdoux | Blu-ray Review
People tend to forget that Charlie Chaplin was more than The Tramp, his iconic mute character of physical peculiarity. Seven years after his baffoonic incarnation of Hitler in The Great Dictator, Chaplin bought the
Read More »
Criterion Collection: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | Blu-ray Review
Before the legendary British filmmaking duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger lensed the classics The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus or A Matter of Life & Death, they raised quite a stir with their
Read More »
Killing Them Softly | Blu-ray Review
Director Andrew Dominik is obviously upset about the current political climate in the US. His latest, Killing Them Softly, unsubtly comments on the empty CSPAN chatter of the 2008 presidential campaign by bluntly displaying
Read More »
Holy Motors | Blu-ray Review
No other film threw convention to the wind while exploring such rich and textured territory like Leos Carax’s exquisite, divisively referential patchwork of cinema history that is Holy Motors. Both a bold deconstruction of
Read More »
Criterion Collection: The Ballad of Narayama | Blu-ray Review
Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1958 classic The Ballad of Narayama gets the Criterion treatment, an experimental film featuring the use of one of Japan’s signature cultural styles, Kabuki Theater, despite its cultural popularity still on the
Read More »
Criterion Collection: The Kid with a Bike | Blu-ray Review
There’s an extraordinary moment in Rosetta, the Dardenne Brothers’ Palme d’Or winning slice of grungy life from 1999. About 22 minutes in, Emilie Dequenne’s sooty faced street urchin turns her ballistics up to eleven,
Read More »
Criterion Collection: Pina | Blu-ray Review
Wim Wenders’ long imagined a Pina Bausch documentary with Bausch herself, a dear friend of the director, personally collaborating on the project. It was originally conceived as a way to solidify the legendary modern
Read More »
Keep the Lights On | Blu-ray Review
With his latest, director Ira Sachs provides further proof of his narrative proficiency while delving into the most personal aspects of his previous long term relationship which crumbled in the hands of indecision and
Read More »
I Am Not A Hipster | Blu-ray Review
Following up his award winning short, Short Term 12, writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton returned to Sundance the following year with another personal reflection, this time on the San Diego indie scene through the eyes
Read More »
Liberal Arts | Blu-ray Review
In Josh Radnor’s charming sophomore feature, Liberal Arts, the actor/director/writer recognizes that many adult males in their mid-thirties glide through their lives half awake, half confused, yearning for the freedom and potential of their
Read More »
Sleepwalk With Me | Blu-ray Review
Marking a potentially monumental pivot point in his already eclectic career, stand-up comedian turned actor/director/producer/screenwriter Mike Birbiglia has taken his personal tale of failed relationships, comedic development, and serious sleep disorders from the stage
Read More »
Criterion Collection: The Qatsi Trilogy | Blu-ray Review
The Qatsi Trilogy is a collection of films made by Godfrey Reggio between 1983 and 2002. Each film offers an extraordinary and unforgettable cinematic experience, and their messages are, astonishingly, even more pertinent and
Read More »
Criterion Collection: Purple Noon | Blu-ray Review
Remade forty years later as The Talented Mr. Ripley, René Clément’s Purple Noon from 1960 was the first attempt to bring amorphic rogue Tom Ripley, the subject of a series of popular crime novels
Read More »
Manufactured Landscapes | Blu-ray Review
Edward Burtynsky has for decades been lensing large scale photographs that document the often devastating visual impact of humans on our environment en masse. The wide angle landscapes he frames are almost always the
Read More »
Criterion Collection: Trilogy of Life Blu-Ray
His life tragically and brutally cut short by a still unknown assassin, Italian auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last completed project, known as the Trilogy of Life, gets the master treatment from Criterion this month,
Read More »
Abraham Lincoln | Blu-ray Review
Capitalizing on the latest biopic of the sixteenth United States President with this month’s release of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Kino releases a mastered HD restoration of D.W. Griffith’s 1930 film, Abraham Lincoln. Serving as
Read More »
Die Nibelungen | Blu-ray Review
This month, one of Fritz Lang’s first epic masterpieces, Die Nibelungen gets a lush Blu-ray treatment from Kino, and it has to be one of the most exciting remasters of the year. Sandwiched in-between
Read More »
Patton | Blu-ray Review
When you are the only General ever feared by the Nazis in World War II you can expect to have an equally epic story to be told about you. The new re-release of George
Read More »
Natural Selection | Blu-ray Review
Natural Selection, Robbie Pickering’s raw exploration of bible belt secrecy, proves to be an impressive debut for the Texas born director. Taking home a quartet of awards from SXSW last year, the film finds
Read More »
Take This Waltz | Blu-ray Review
Despite a reasonably active acting career, Sarah Polley has put together quite an elegant little list of writing/directing credits for her already lengthy resume. Last year, her film Take This Waltz debuted at TIFF
Read More »
Criterion Collection: Rosemary’s Baby | Blu-ray review
Just in time for Halloween, Criterion has remastered what’s long been culturally considered one of the most notable pieces of horror film making in cinematic history, the eerie classic, Rosemary’s Baby. Standing as not
Read More »
Fear and Desire | Blu-ray Review
You will find little to no argument among cinephiles that Stanley Kubrick was one of the best filmmakers there ever was, but before he cemented his place in history with the dual mindfuck of
Read More »
Criterion Collection: The Forgiveness of Blood | Blu-ray Review
Joshua Marston, the director of the 2004 Oscar nominated Maria Full of Grace finally returns with his next feature length narrative, the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Screenplay winning (2011 Berlin International Film Festival)
Read More »
Criterion Collection: Gray’s Anatomy | Blu-ray Review
After a lifetime’s worth of straight stage work, and several decades of fine tuning his own signature craft, Spalding Gray’s final long form monologue to be converted for the big screen was the Steven
Read More »
"Ron and I wanted to make a film that looked at what it means to be an outsider and we wanted to explore what it takes to reach out to someone whose life is very removed from your own."
