Originally released in 2007, the BBC’s Planet Earth set the bar for the Blu-ray format. Almost anyone who wanted to see the best of what high definition could do picked up Earth; people who never gave a second thought to…
The 1960’s was the decade of the epic (Lawrence of Arabia, The Great Escape, Doctor Zhivago). While David Lean was gaining acclaim and winning awards for his big movies, fellow Briton J. Lee Thompson was having a quieter, though no…
Bernard Rose’s (Candyman, Immortal Beloved) Mr. Nice is a biopic of the infamous Welsh hashish smuggler Dennis Howard Marks. Oxford educated, Marks didn’t set out to be a drug kingpin, but he didn’t fall into a life of crime by…
For his 1958 debut, Le beau Serge, Claude Chabrol told the story of a man returning to his provincial hometown after many years away. In the follow up, Les cousins, Chabrol flipped things around, even switching the types of roles…
Every mother wants to believe her child is an angel, no matter how badly behaved they are. Such is the premise of The Bad Seed, a pseudo-camp horror classic that went a long way in convincing that cute, little blonde…
The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has been incredibly lucrative. The latest installment, On Stranger Tides, the fourth in the series, grossed $1,039,571,802 in worldwide box office. Regardless, the film seems lazy, as if this is a franchise in which…
Hot on the heels of Citizen Kane and Ben-Hur, on October 18th Warner Brothers will release Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s book…
Tim Burton’s feature film directorial debut, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure features the title character, created and portrayed by Paul Reubens Initially developed as a stage act, Pee-Wee’s popularity quickly led to an HBO special in 1981. As the stage performance gained…
Disney’s 32nd animated feature, 1994’s The Lion King was its darkest since 1985’s The Black Cauldron, and, in many ways, a departure from the light-heartedness of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. There are moments of fun…
Kinetic, funny and a near perfect action experience, Fast Five is the best installment in the the Fast And Furious franchise, which has quickly become the archetypal wiggle-flex-metal movie among teenage boys and short-attention-spanned denizens. With Justin Lin once again…