Blu-ray Review: Repo Man (Criterion Collection)
A true loner, writer/director Alex Cox has zealously avoided participating in mainstream Hollywood films throughout his career. One look at Cox’s best known film, 1984’s Repo Man, makes it clear that he is not a filmmaker concerned with being conventional. Repo Man defies categorization. There’s humor. But it’s not comedy in the strictest sense. It’s […]
Blu-ray Review: Naked Lunch (Criterion Collection)
Long thought to be impossible to film, David Cronenberg’s interpretation of the William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is undoubtedly a peculiar movie. However, given Cronenberg’s apparent enjoyment of the grotesque—this is the guy who made The Fly, and Dead Ringers—he was the perfect guy to take on the buglike beings referred to in Naked Lunch. […]
Blu-ray Review: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Criterion Collection)
Colonel Blimp started as a comic strip by David Low in the 1930’s. The strip was a satirical look at the aging military generals of the time; creaky tough old birds who hammered home their traditional English virtues, despite being completely at odds with the country’s contemporary mood. In The Life and Death of Colonel […]
DVD Review: Badlands (Criterion Collection)
“He wanted to die with me, and I dreamed of being lost forever in his arms.” Narrated from the point of view of fifteen-year-old Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek) Terrence Malick’s Badlands can be seen as a kind of modern day Romeo and Juliet, seen through the angst and frustration that existed in mid-20th century America. […]
Blu-ray Review: The Blob (Criterion Collection) (1958)
Shot on a shoestring budget by a group of industrial filmmakers who had never produced a feature film, The Blob, released in 1959, became the most successful monster film of the decade. Filmed in rural Pennsylvania, the director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., was an idealist committed to using film to spread his religious faith. His […]
Blu-ray Review: Sansho the Bailiff (Criterion Collection)
Based on a Japanese short story of the same name, Sansho the Bailiff depicts a world of inexorable cruelty. 11th century Japan is an era when, as the opening credits describe it: “mankind had not yet awakened as human beings.” Aside from a few wealthy landowners, people are treated like chattel, to be worked and […]
Blu-ray Review: Chronicle of a Summer (Criterion Collection)
Given the amount of “reality” television on the air these days, I suppose most of us are a bit numb to it all. Few will argue that the line between reality and fiction has blurred considerably. Even a few reality show producers have admitted that they shoot things to make them seem more dramatic, edit […]
Blu-ray Review: The Kid With A Bike (Criterion Collection)
The Belgium writer/director team of brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have a history of taking on parenting and childhood in a head-on manner. The Kid with a Bike maintains that approach, peeling back the layers on each of the main characters and forcing them to deal with the consequences of their experiences and the rawness […]
Blu-ray Review: Two-Lane Blacktop (Criterion Collection)
An extension of the themes that dominated films of the late 1960’s—youthful alienation and disillusionment—1971’s Two-Lane Blacktop is set against the vast, open spaces of America’s highways. Director Monte Hellman, a veteran of the Roger Corman school of filmmaking (Corman also helped to launch the directing careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard and Peter […]
Blu-ray Review: Purple Noon (Criterion Collection)
Patricia Highsmith had a dream career. Her first book, Strangers on a Train was made into a successful film by Alfred Hitchcock. French critics—who respected Hitchcock more than Americans did at the time—began looking for more material by the woman who had inspired Hitch. One of the results of that search was Rene Clement’s Purple […]