Tag: Blu-ray Review
Criterion Collection: The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew & Associates | Blu-ray Review
"It's not an exaggeration to say that before Primary, documentary as we know it today - the art of candid observation - didn't exist. Not...
Where To Invade Next | Blu-ray Review
It’s been a relatively quiet six years since Michael Moore unleashed Capitalism: A Love Story back in 2009, but little did anyone know he’s been...
Rage of Honor | Blu-ray Review
Stemming from the wild success of Cannon's B-picture ninja streak with films like the Franco Nero starred Enter The Ninja and its Shô Kosugi starred sequels, Trans World...
Bound For Glory | Blu-ray Review
Biopics are best when focused on segmented portions of emotional turmoil, professional escalation or some perfect combination of the two, rather than trying to collapse entire...
L’inhumaine | Blu-ray Review
Shohei Imamura's brutalist depiction of female resilience in his masterwork of 1963, The Insect Woman, echoes the beloved French filmmaker Marcel L'Herbier's monumental silent avant-garde narrative L'inhumaine, which...
Lost Lost Lost & Walden | Blu-ray Review
Just before the start of reel 5 of Lost Lost Lost, Jonas Mekas' memoiric rumination on the memorial tolls of immigrant exile, he explains in simple terms...
Winter Sleep | Blu-ray Review
Despite director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s lauded history with Cannes, having twice received the festival’s second-place honor, the Grand Prix for 2002’s Distant and 2011’s...
Retaliation | Blu-ray Review
Prior to helming a trio of the Meiko Kaji starred Stray Cat Rock series, the fourth and final film in the Female Convict Scorpion...
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne | Blu-ray Review
Robert Louis Stevenson’s literary horror classic Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in 1886, just a decade before the birth...
Blind Woman’s Curse | Blu-ray Review
Equal parts yakuza revenge picture, sexualized exploitation romp, bakeneko (or ghost cat horror flick), and absurd comedy, Teruo Ishii’s bizarro Blind Woman’s Curse refuses...
Criterion Collection: Hoop Dreams | Blu-ray Review
"This is one of the best films about American life that I have ever seen", Roger Ebert famously stated during the first of many...
The End of Violence | Blu-ray Review
Arriving for the first time on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films is Wim Wenders’ 1997 existentialist take on the definition of violence and its...
Criterion Collection: Fellini Satyricon | Blu-ray Review
Considered amongst the few surviving ancient novels as one of the best depictions of the wild debauchery that seized early Roman society, Petronius’s episodically...
The Drop | Blu-ray Review
Coming off the white hot success of his hard hitting, Oscar nominated debut, Bullhead, Michaël Roskam signed on to helm a Hollywood backed crime...
Inherit The Wind | Blu-ray Review
Having finally found acclaim as a writer/director with critical successes like The Defiant Ones (1958) after a brief period serving as a producer for...
Criterion Collection: Time Bandits | Blu-ray Review
Terry Gilliam’s second solo directorial effort, Time Bandits, remains an oddly hilarious bridge between his work with the Monty Python gang and his subsequent...
When The Wind Blows | Blu-ray Review
Born an American of Japanese decent and soon quarantined to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in northern California after the bombing of Pearl...
Criterion Collection: Les Blank: Always for Pleasure | Blu-ray Review
Many people may know Les Blank most for his association with Werner Herzog, who he filmed while on the brink of creative madness in...
Ornette: Made in America | Blu-ray Review
Shirley Clarke’s final feature film emulates the free form style of its subject, legendary jazz musician Ornette Coleman, playfully editing fragments of live performances,...
Criterion Collection: La Dolce Vita | Blu-ray Review
“The most miserable life is better, believe me, than an existence protected by a society where everything’s organized and planned for and perfect,” says...
Salvador | Blu-ray Review
It’s been a long time since Oliver Stone made anything with as much punchy political grit as Salvador. As the first of two films...
Flesh+Blood | Blu-ray Review
A film easy to admire but equally hard to love, Paul Verhoeven’s 1985 film Flesh+Blood, his last title to make it to DVD about...
Fed Up | Blu-ray Review
It’s no secret that in the last couple decades the number of overweight children in the United States has grown at an alarming rate....
The Buddy Holly Story | Blu-ray Review
It’s been quite a long time since Gary Busey was taken seriously as an actor of considerable talent, but back in 1978 he almost...
Manakamana | Blu-ray Review
Birthed by the brilliant minds at Harvard’s increasingly influential Sensory Ethnography Lab, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’s Manakamana takes in the sights and sounds...
On the Beach | Blu-Ray Review
Within the well intentioned lexicon of Stanley Kramer’s filmography, his 1959 title, On the Beach remains the most prescient, a post-apocalyptic science fiction filmed...
Criterion Collection: Y Tu Mamá También | Blu-ray Review
After a decade floating around the Hollywood back lots trading dignity for cash and technical experience on A Little Princess and Great Expectations, Alfonso...
Radio Days | Blu-ray Review
Nostalgia and the lingering sting of eras lost to the sands of time have cropped up in a number of Woody Allen’s lengthy list...
The Unknown Known | Blu-ray Review
The poster of Errol Morris’s newest interrotron bonanza, The Unknown Known, features former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld sporting his signature squinty eyed, cheese...
Criterion Collection: Hearts and Minds | Blu-ray Review
As a historical cinematic document that depicts the horrors of the Vietnam War with unflinching nerve and political consternation, Peter Davis’s Academy Award winning...
Criterion Collection: A Hard Day’s Night | Blu-ray Review
Let’s be honest, who doesn’t have a deep seeded love for the fab four? How could anyone resist those Liverpool lovelies, with their matching...
The Grand Budapest Hotel | Blu-ray Review
Like Kubrick’s secluded Overlook Hotel, Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest is a thing of decrepit majesty haunted by its former more lavish and illustrious self,...
Cousin Jules | Blu-ray Review
After Cousin Jules took home the Special Prize of the Jury after it’s premiere at the 1973 Locarno Film Festival, Dominique Benicheti’s masterfully constructed...
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison | Blu-ray Review
Completed just a few years after his lovingly revered wartime adventure melodrama The African Queen, John Huston’s second attempt at the deserted odd couple...
Criterion Collection: L’Eclisse | Blu-ray Review
After finally securing 1961’s La Notte as part of the Criterion line-up, we’re treated to a new restoration and Blu-ray transfer of Michelangelo Antonioni’s...
Criterion Collection: All that Heaven Allows | Blu-ray Review
As Laura Mulvey’s essay, “An Articulate Screen” contends, 1955’s All That Heaven Allows was “just another critically unnoticed Hollywood genre product,” the attempt for...
Two Rode Together | Blu-ray Review
Born of the famously turbulent, yet ultimately fruitful collaboration between John Ford and James Stewart, Two Rode Together stands as compromised material. Ford took...
Criterion Collection: Ace in the Hole | Blu-ray Review
A resounding flop upon its release, which saw it recut and rereleased as The Big Carnival without any greater success, Criterion remasters Billy Wilder’s...
Wild at Heart | Blu-ray Review
Midway through David Lynch’s Palme d’Or winning, bizarro road-tripping love story, Lula tells her lover Sailor, ‘This whole world is wild at heart and...
Death Occurred Last Night | Blu-ray Review
Raro Video continues remastering rare and obscure Italian titles with the long unavailable 1970 curio from Duccio Tessari, Death Occurred Last Night. A rare...
Hallucination Strip | Blu-Ray Review
Raro Video restores an odd obscurity with Hallucination Strip, the one and only film to be directed by Lucio Marcaccini. As one easily can...
Philomena | Blu-ray Review
Just when you thought that Stephen Frears’ latest film, Philomena, would be yet another questionable exercise from the once generally revered auteur, (judging from...
Alice | Blu-ray Review
Have you ever seen a poorly stuffed animal? Like, one where the taxidermist flat out fucked up, letting faux tissue rest imbalanced on the...
L’Immortelle | Blu-ray Review
Kino’s Redemption label continues with the resurrection of New Wave provocateur Alain Robbe-Grillet’s 1963 directorial debut, L'Immortelle, (this is the third title in the...
Criterion Collection: The Great Beauty | Blu-ray Review
In Paolo Sorrentino’s lavishly received Italian crime potboiler Il Divo, the stage is set with a world building montage that places us in a...
Mysterious Skin | Blu-ray Review
It’s been a decade since Gregg Araki’s arresting coming-of-age examination of the ramifications of child molestation debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2004...
Criterion Collection: A Brief History of Time | Blu-ray Review
In wake of the massive non-fiction success that was The Thin Blue Line, singular director Errol Morris really could have done any number of...
Muscle Shoals | Blu-ray Review
Director Greg Camalier seems to think there is something in the water, the source being the supposed ‘singing’ Tennessee River which runs through the...
Criterion Collection: King of the Hill | Blu-ray Review
After a pair of edgy indies and a Palme d’Or to boot, Steven Soderbergh was given his first opportunity to bed down with the...
Criterion Collection: Fantastic Mr. Fox | Blu-ray Review
No one was surprised when it was announced in the wake of The Darjeeling Limited that Wes Anderson’s next endeavor would be wholly animated...
