Blu-ray Review: The Blue Angel (Remastered Standard Edition) (1930)
Often considered one of the great early takies, The Blue Angel will always have a place in history as the film that brought Marlene Dietrich to international stardom. When the film was being made in 1929, it was seen as a starring vehicle for Emil Jannings, a German actor who had won the first Academy […]
Blu-ray Review: Abraham Lincoln (Special Edition)
Perhaps stung by the charges of racism that surrounded the release of The Birth of a Nation in 1916, when D.W. Griffith set out to make his first talkie he hoped to adapt Stephen Vincent Benet’s Civil War inspired prose poem John Brown’s Body. When United Artists balked at the idea, Griffith settled on making […]
DVD Review: The Devil’s Needle and Other Tales of Vice and Redemption
Amidst the debate about the quality of movies today, there’s the loud, wailing lament that because of frenetic action epics (not epics in the traditional sense, but sometimes as big as them) like Battleship and the Transformers franchise, we might as well give up on movies because they’re not going to be the way they […]
DVD Review: Zero Bridge
Shot entirely on digital video, since anything bigger would have caused more than just logistical problems in Kashmir, Zero Bridge makes movie history for being the “first narrative film shot in the Kashmiri language,” according to a review by Brandon Harris that’s included on the DVD. I’ll watch any foreign film, to see lands that […]
DVD Review: The Woodmans
Photographer Francesca Woodman died years ago. It is apparent from how her parents, sculptor Betty, and painter George, speak distantly of her. The pain is still there, but it’s not as acute as it must have been when they found out. The Woodmans are a family of artists. Charlie, Francesca’s older brother, a video artist, […]
Blu-ray Review: Ganja & Hess – Kino Classics Remastered Edition
In 1973, Ganja and Hess from black American playwright, novelist, actor and film director Bill Gunn was chosen as one of ten best American films of the decade at the Cannes Film Festival. However, when the film opened later that year in New York to dismal box office, the film’s distributor, Kelly-Jordan Enterprises, removed the […]
Blu-ray Review: The Romantic Englishwoman
Lewis Fielding (Michael Caine) is a successful novelist. He and his wife Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson) have a young son, a big, beautiful house in the country, and plenty of hired help. They are a couple who appear to have it all, but seem to feel like they have nothing. As the film begins, a bored […]
Blu-ray Review: Marriage Italian Style
A glossy rendition of Eduardo De Filippo’s Neapolitan play Filumena Marturano, Marriage Italian Style is a comedic drama about the highs and lows of a lifelong romance. Starring the perpetually stunning Sophia Loren, and the “man’s man” Marcello Mastroianni, the duo would eventually make a total of 14 films together. A few of the pair’s […]