Online Film Critics Society

Excerpt: Retains some scant measure of Swift’s satiric intent, however distorted.

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul

Andrew Wyatt @ Gateway Cinephile

Excerpt: The opening impression is of a cross between a Universal horror and a grindhouse roughie; throw in a bit of Anton LaVey posturing, and that’s a fairly accurate description.

Excerpt: DELICIOUS is a cream puff of a musical from the early talkie era whose notable feature is the first film score by George and Ira Gershwin. It is certain to have been an influence on Vicente Minnelli’s AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, particularly the ballet sequence, which here shows Janet Gaynor roaming the streets of New York to the strains of “New York Rhapsody.”

The Dunwich Horror

Excerpt: The Dunwich Horror’s allure is one of outré fifty-cent spectacle, and while that places it light-years away from Lovercraft’s writings, it’s hard to dismiss any work of horror that is so eager and offbeat in its approach to genre conventions.

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

Excerpt: [The finest] of these formula-driven alien invasion movies… and not only because its flying saucers are pretty much the best ever.

The False Magistrate

Excerpt: Isn’t up to the same level of mad, proto-surrealist invention. [of] anything else in the Fantômas series.

Fantômas – In the Shadow of the Guillotine

Excerpt: The film is chiefly best at creating a bizarre, off-kilter mood.

Fantômas vs. Fantômas

Excerpt: A lot better than most franchises this silly can claim to be by their fourth entry.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: May 13, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

The Devil is a Woman

Kenji Fujishima @ In Review Online

Disorder

Dune

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

High and Low

Marcio Sallem @ Em Cartaz [Portuguese]

Jason And The Argonauts

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Excerpt: The best movie, with the best script, in writer Shane Black’s career.

The Last Command (1928)

The Last Waltz

Les Misérables (1958)

Excerpt: The stand-out, and easily the best reason to see this “Les misérables”… is obviously Jean Gabin.

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: May 6, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Army of Darkness

Excerpt: A loopy work of imagination that never fails to be entertaining.

The Assassin’s Blade

Excerpt: Cutie pie Charlene Choi makes one very unconvincing guy. That never gets in the way of enjoying this often delightful retelling of a classic Chinese love story.

Christopher Columbus, The Enigma

Come and See

Peter Gutierrez @ Twitch

Excerpt: By the end of “Come and See” you’ll be despairing of humanity, not just warfare.

Evil Dead II

Excerpt: The best horror-comedy ever made.

Female Teacher Hunting

Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix

Five Easy Pieces

Funny Girl

Excerpt: Funny Girl possesses an unmistakable interest in its dramatic, comedic, and romantic material, using songs sparingly and never at the expense of its storytelling. I

The Hawks and the Sparrows

The Hoax

Excerpt: The Hoax requires more of a performance from Richard Gere than most of his work, starting with a prosthetic nose, a slight New York accent, and something other than his increasingly salty, otherwise unchanging salt and pepper hairdo.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

John Nesbit @ Old School Reviews

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: April 29, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Abu, Son of Adam

Excerpt: graceful, gentle reminder about basic human goodness

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!

Bananas

Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog

Excerpt: It’s willfully, deliriously daft, but also probably the part of the film that makes the most sense as satire since, at its heart, the scene is about the rabid paranoia of Cold War America, treated as something which is truly deranged and farcical.

Black Sunday

Caravaggio

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

Centurion

Excerpt: Centurion, although fast-paced and structured with elegant simplicity, is also littered with some of the most arresting and well-framed images in recent cinema.

Circle of Danger

Death Race 2000

Excerpt: A movie that has a little bit of everything, and it’s easily the best version of itself that could possibly be put together.

Electric Button

Excerpt: Even though Tanada is a fan of the Farrelly brothers, the banter between Mayama and Tadokoro reminded me more of some Hollywood comedies from an earlier era.

From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: April 22, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

1

Phil Hall @ FilmSnobbery.com

Excerpt: constantly fresh, surprising and amusing… “1″ is baffling, but its surprises are almost always rewarding.

26 Vues du Pic Saint Loup

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

Airport 1975

America, America

Marcio Sallem @ Em Cartaz [Portuguese]

As Long as You’ve Got Your Health

Excerpt: …an anthology picture, featuring a quartet of lengthy skits showcasing the clown’s penchant for visual gags and physical slapstick…As Long as You’re Healthy is presented as pure entertainment, framed only by the conceit that we, as the audience, are watching it in our own theater.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Excerpt: This collaboration between Russ Meyer, who had risen slowly from independent sexploitation productions to signing a three-picture contract with 20th Century Fox, and Roger Ebert, a Midwestern film nerd with a literate intelligence blended with hip, ruthless wit that was later carefully leavened by his later persona as cuddly advocate, could only have happened in 1970.

Brother Bear & Brother Bear 2

Kenji Fujishima @ My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second

Excerpt: Though not widely recognized as it, Brother Bear is one of Disney Animation’s best movies from the early 2000s. It may be derivative, but it’s a plenty entertaining film on its own merits.

Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death

Cromwell

Roderick Heath @ This Island Rod

Excerpt: ‘Cromwell’ is an entertaining and substantial ride through a great epoch, but the great film about that epoch is yet to be made.

The Evil Dead [1981]

Excerpt: A great, genuinely unnerving horror movie.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: April 15, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter

Excerpt: Its stunts are incredible, its moves are fierce, and its combat packs a wallop that time hasn’t weaked one bit.

The Best Years of Our Lives

Excerpt: The term ‘courageous’ is wildly overused in film. However, ‘courageous’ is the only term appropriate for Harold Russell’s performance.

Brewster McCloud

Cloak and Dagger

Comfort and Joy

Deathtrap

Excerpt: A film well-versed in the ways of audience members itching to stay one step ahead…

The Devil and Miss Jones

Excerpt: n efficient, unadorned comedy, The Devil and Miss Jones is a delight from start to finish, inviting viewers to invest in its characters and cheer for their every success. By the climax, I was howling with laughter and reassessing my cynical opinions about my fellow man.

Easter Parade

Excerpt: With at least some forward thinking going on beneath the show tunes and ritzy costumes, it comes off as mildly misguided more than genuinely shallow.

Empire of the Sun

Excerpt: The best mix in his directorial career between typical Spielbergian flourishes of audience-friendly spectacle and seriousness of intent.

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control

Excerpt: Morris’ unique, experimental documentary is thought provoking—and although it’s organic and seems unplanned, it’s not nearly as out-of-control as its title implies.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: April 8, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Alice in Wonderland (1966)

Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films

Excerpt: Jonathan Miller exhumes a Wonderland without magical beings: the White Rabbit is just a stuffed shirt in a waistcoat, the Cheshire Cat is an ordinary house cat, the drowned animals by the pool of tears are a soggy band of Victorian citizens. By unmasking the story’s anthropomorphic animals, he de-cutifies the fairy tale; the result is, unexpectedly, one of the weirdest and most dreamlike “Alice”s ever put on film.

Chicago

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

Chicago (1927)

Excerpt: The first version of the media-manipulating murderess from the Windy City features a knockout performance by Phyllis Haver as a beautiful, blonde waste of space named Roxie Hart who really knew how to play to the camera to get an acquittal.

Chronicle of a Summer

David Bax @ Battleship Pretension

Excerpt: Some of the discussions in Chronicle of a Summer get very serious, even personal. Yet Morin and Rouch never lose a certain sense of loose fun.

Dark Passage

Figures in a Landscape

Finding Buck McHenry

The Game

Roderick Heath @ This Island Rod

Excerpt: For whatever else it is, The Game is a tribute to the art of cinema. It is a romp through motion picture technique, bringing the visceral experience that movies attempt to re-create to its protagonist, establishing its own meta reality, a wheel within a reel.

Hercules vs. Moloch

Excerpt: Whereas the bulk of the film is mild, Ferroni’s direction and the mostly blasé film grammar suddenly gains energy, and the film’s entertainment factor kicks up a notch, whenever Moloch and his bizarre cabal enter the film.

The Hollow Earth

Peter Gutierrez @ Unseen Films

Excerpt: The scene where Peppard manages to lop off one of the “hard carbon” tusks of an ice creature, only to be confronted by a far more jagged and fearsome weapon, is not easily forgotten.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: April 1, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Amelie

Excerpt: … twice as tickly and almost as substantial as the bubbles rising off a glass of Dom Perignon.

Anatahan

Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Dan Jardine @ Cinemania

Excerpt: An even better film than the more lauded No Country For Old Men

Come out and Play

Excerpt: Creepy, troubling idea drains away through a gaping plot hole

The Deathmaker

Carson Lund @ MUBI: The Daily Notebook

Excerpt: Until a brief appearance of two prison guards and a final-act injection of a young victim and a visiting doctor, The Deathmaker distills its ensemble to three members, one of whom never utters a word: Prof. Dr. Ernst Schultze (Jürgen Hentsch), death-row inmate Fritz Haarmann (Götz George), and a passive, unnamed scribe (Pierre Franckh). The film is a series of lengthy dialogues—some taking the form of conversations, others resembling confessionals and ruthless depositions—between Schultze and Haarmann, the infamous child murderer that was first loosely dramatized in Fritz Lang’s M.

From Russia with Love

Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators.com

Goldfinger

Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators.com

Excerpt: Goldfinger is the first film that gives us what we knew of Bond for the first forty-five years.

Guilty

Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit

Excerpt: A visceral thriller that pushes your “injustice” buttons

India: Matri Bhumi

Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Excerpt: …representative of Powell and Pressburger’s disregard for conventional storytelling, structured as a complex flashback with digressive tonal shifts galore. If one can assign any overriding emotion to COLONEL BLIMP it is wistfulness. In this way it reminds me a lot of a deeply flawed picture that’s still very dear to me, Orson Welles’ THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942).

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Sean Axmaker @ Parallax View
Luke Bonanno @ DVDizzy.com

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: March 25, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Badlands

Excerpt: There is definitely potential for the subject matter to render Malick’s debut sensationalistic or distasteful, like a Natural Born Killers only with real murder victims at the foundation. However, any inkling of that reaction fades as you are swept up by the distinct and confident arrival of an important filmmaker.

Being Human

City of Pirates

Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Jamie S. Rich @ DVD Talk

College

Excerpt: Buster Keaton’s College is a note-perfect send-up of university comedies, and in a funny way, an early critique of how motion pictures so regularly hire older adults to play young ones. Old Stone Face as a new high school graduate?

Dirty Sanchez: The Movie

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

Fighting Friends

Sean Axmaker @ Parallax View

Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence

Excerpt: This slice-of-life story on the road is a piece of American populism with a different brand of optimism and pluck than the sentimental Capra-corn of “Meet John Doe.”

I Killed My Mother

Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row

Excerpt: Now, at long last, Dolan’s first film comes to American screens thanks to the folks at Kino Lorber, who snatched up the rights from Regent after languishing for years in their back catalogue.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day

Sean Axmaker @ Parallax View
Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row

Excerpt: Jazz on a Summer’s Day is an extraordinary film, featuring some legendary performances that would make anyone fall in love with this distinctly American art form and see that above all else, good music is something to be enjoyed for its own sake.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Excerpt: Considered by some to be the greatest British film ever made, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp has at long last been given the Blu-ray treatment it deserves by The Criterion Collection.

Nanook of the North

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: March 18, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

5 Broken Cameras

Excerpt: … a mix of citizen journalism and social memoir. Emad Burnat is not just the storyteller. He’s a part of the story, and the very act of documenting the protest is his contribution to it. It puts him in harm’s way time and again (in one instance, his camera takes a bullet that would likely have otherwise killed him) and it informs his perspective.

L’Age d’Or

Badlands

Excerpt: Badlands is, in many ways, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, but filtered through the angst and existentialism of mid-20th Century Americana.

Breaking In

Sean Axmaker @ Parallax View

Brewster’s Millions

Excerpt: … a modestly staged but sprightly executed comedy…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Danny King @ The King Bulletin

Capsule Reviews: Entry #4

The Deer Hunter

Carson Lund @ Are the Hills Going to March Off?

Excerpt: If there’s one thing The Deer Hunter fully understands it’s masculine stubbornness and the absurd lengths to which a man will go to affirm his bravery and self-sufficiency, or, to put it more fittingly in the terms of the film, to prove that he’s not a pussy. The issue with the film, however, is not the degree to which it represents this quality of virility, but the astounding arrogance it takes to conflate this position with national identity.

Diary of a Chambermaid (1946)

Excerpt: Diary of a Chambermaid is far from Jean Renoir’s best, to be sure, but it’s still a Jean Renoir picture and thus still has enough going on to make it worthwhile. Specifically, we get an excellent supporting cast and some fantastic individual scenes that, together, do their best to make us forget Paulette Goddard’s off-note performance and the general tepidness of the plot itself.

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)

Dr. No

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: March 11, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Les Anges Exterminateurs

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

Attenberg

Boris Karloff Triple Feature

Bob Cashill @ Cineaste

Excerpt: Review of Warner Archive DVD-R set with West of Shanghai, The Invisible Menace, and Devil’s Island

The Boys From Fengkuei

Fados

Fairy in a Cage

Excerpt: What makes Fairy in a Cage notable is that it is simultaneously an exploitation movie centered on sadomasochism and bondage, while also functioning as a harsh critic of the excesses Japanese government and the military during World War II.

The Girl by the Lake

The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Excerpt: The worst film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture. I’ve had dry heaves that gave me more pleasure.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame & The Hunchback of Notre Dame II

James Plath @ Movie Metropolis

Excerpt: In the grand scheme of things, Hunchback’s shortcomings are minor, but enough to earn the film “good, not great” classification.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2 Movie Collection

Excerpt: Unlike its lighter, child-friendly direct-to-video sequel, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is a mostly adult movie with plenty of dark and somber moments.

In Search of Memory

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: March 4, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

The Boogie Man Will Get You

Excerpt: The Boogie Man Will Get You is harmless fluff, putting two horror regulars into slim comedic situations in hopes that they’ll manage to make something out of them. Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff are good in this would-be wartime chuckler, but the gags are as dead as the monster Karloff is most famous for playing.

Cavalcade

Excerpt: Intesting as a tapestry of the first generation and a half of the 20th century, but wow it is a dry as bad toast.

Cimarron

Excerpt: EWhat a creaky, dusty old relic this is.

Die, Monster, Die!

Excerpt: Despite Die, Monster, Die!’s significant divergences from its source material in terms of both plot and tone, it quite capably conveys “The Colour Out of Space’s” mingling of secular and Puritan dread.

Dogville

Excerpt: “Justine” acted out on the set of “Our Town.”

Grand Hotel

Excerpt: Were it not for the stories, this would just be an empty portrait of great stars.

It Happened One Night

Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews

Excerpt: The comedy is still potent, the romance not so much.

Little Fugitive

Excerpt: …a charmer from another age.

The Magnificent Seven

Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix

Millennium Actress

Jean-François Vandeuren @ Panorama-cinema.com

My Fair Lady

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: February 25, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Excerpt: The first great film to win the Oscar for Best Picture is still a powerful and often gut-wrenching statement of the brutality and futility of The First World War.

Bergman Island

Bloodsucking Freaks

Excerpt: It’s not my job to tell you not to see it, just to give you fair warning that it’s reputation is not exaggerated: this movie can scar your soul, and you will see things you may wish you could forget.

The Broadway Melody (1929)

Excerpt: The innovation of the first big sound musical has become a victim to the inevitability of time itself. In truth, what is left for us after all these years isn’t much.

Dementia 13

Marcio Sallem @ Em Cartaz [Portuguese]

Detachment

Marcio Sallem @ Em Cartaz [Portuguese]

Dirty Hearts

Marcio Sallem @ Em Cartaz [Portuguese]

Going My Way

Excerpt: Going My Way is shamelessly sentimental, emotionally manipulative, and has a somewhat thin story. However, by the end one simply cannot resist its charm, sweetness, and total sincerity.

Gun Crazy

Excerpt: One of the great, specifically American love stories ever put to film… among the most overtly erotic films of the post-WWII era.

Heavy Traffic

Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Matthew Blevins @ Nextprojection.com

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: February 18, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

10,000 BC

101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure

Excerpt: Not nearly as galling as it should be.

3 Bad Men

Excerpt: John Ford’s 3 Bad Men from 1926 is an undeniably solid work of silent filmmaking that spins a warm, rousing tale of Western gallantry, dotted with rumpled frivolity and bittersweet moments

All The Vermeers in New York

Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row

The Ballad of Narayama

Excerpt: A fascinating find – a moving portrait of aging and loss that uses theatre as a weapon for truth.

Batman: Black and White

A.J. Hakari @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Excerpt: No Joel Schumacher-scale misfire here — “Batman: Black and White” does just right by Bob Kane’s legendary guardian of the night.

Best of Warner Bros. 20 Film Collection: Best Pictures

Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood

Boat People

A.J. Hakari @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Excerpt: This is a film that in 2005 was considered by the Hong Kong Film Association to be the eighth best Chinese language movie in the past one hundred years. At the time of its initial release, this was the film that brought Hui her first awards as a director.

Buster Keaton at MGM Triple Feature

Excerpt: …doesn’t necessarily boast Buster’s best material, but the films contained within hold many a laugh for students of old-school slapstick.

Days of 36

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: February 11, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

18 Year Old Virgin

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

The Ballad of Narayama

Bob Cashill @ Popdose.com

Cabaret

Excerpt: Review of the new Blu-ray of the film classic.

Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood

Excerpt: “Cabaret” showed that musicals don’t have to be light and fluffy, that they can tackle real issues in the world, and that influence is still widely felt today.

The Children Are Watching Us

Sarah D Bunting @ Tomato Nation

Film Fiber: Frenzy brings it all back home (and shouldn’t)

Following

Dusty Somers @ Blogcritics

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Gone With the Wind

Excerpt: Fact, Fiction, Feminism, and The Elephant in the Room

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]

Guns, Girls and Gangsters

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Carson Lund @ Are the Hills Going to March Off?

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: February 4, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Beau Travail

Excerpt: Denis never drives [anything] home, instead letting [feelings] arise slowly from the surface of the film. The result is a remarkably rich viewing experience that is embedded with more sophisticated ideas, evocative images, and mysterious juxtapositions in 90 minutes than many directors accomplish in their entire careers.

The Dust of Time

Face to Face

The Foreigner

Grave of the Fireflies

Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]

The Isle

Excerpt: Evoking the mysterious power of mutually destructive attraction, “The Isle” is a movie that just might get its hooks in you—although hopefully not as literally as it gets its hooks inside its characters.

Les Misérables (1998)

Excerpt: Neeson’s is an outstanding, memorable Jean Valjean who does a mighty job of anchoring this film and keeping its drama earthy and humane.

Lincoln

Excerpt: No, not THAT Lincoln, but the filmmaker and actor born Fred Perna, professionally known as Fred Lincoln, Fred J. Lincoln or F. J. Lincoln. There is, however, a guy with a stovepipe hat, in Serena: An Adult Fairy Tale.

Lonesome Cowboys

Lost Horizon (1937)

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: January 28, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

The Bad & Beautiful

Danny King @ The King Bulletin

Excerpt: Minus the framing device of the flashback, The Bad and the Beautiful is a strong portrait of an ugly business where a good idea trumps such things as morality.

Buster Keaton Collection – 14-Disc Set Blu-Ray Review

Tyler Foster @ DVDTalk

Excerpt: The sheer amount of classic comedy content and a mountain of extras make this no less than an encyclopedia of Keaton’s career.

Capsule Reviews: Entry #1

Capsule Reviews: Entry #2

Danny King @ The King Bulletin

Doughboys

Excerpt: …this military farce gave us a Buster who was visibly more confident marrying his trademark slapstick with the sound era’s demands.

Empire of Passion

Excerpt: By embracing a more typical genre story, Oshima found a nice balance between traditional storytelling and the extreme impulses that made me think some of his other work was a tad adolescent. Here he manages to walk a carefully drawn line, spinning a good yarn while also addressing his usual thematic concerns and even finding room for at least one shocking scene.

The Great Escape

Marcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]

Gypsy Blood

The Haunted Palace

Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films

Excerpt: Its story problems aside, The Haunted Palace is nonetheless an entertaining work of camp horror, chock-a-block with shockingly gorgeous widescreen visuals and a typically lip-smacking (if lesser) performance from Price.

High Art

Excerpt: In her memorable feature debut, director Lisa Cholodenko offers Cholodenko offers a look at lesbians leading lives that contain as much love, dysfunction, ambition, and familial relationships as any other way of life.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: January 21, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

California Split

John J. Puccio @ Movie Metropolis

Driving Miss Daisy

Excerpt: …a sweet, touching, sometimes funny, clearly sentimental motion picture that attempts only what it can reach, but does so with simple ease.

Excalibur

Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder

Excerpt: Arthur and the sword Excalibur are symbolically interchangeable, bridging man’s pagan past with its Christian future.

Godzilla

Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog

Excerpt: Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla is essentially a combination of the monster and disaster movie genres.

A Guy Named Joe

Excerpt: It’s here that director Victor Fleming and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo reveal the underlying idea of the film, the idea that it is imperative that people be willing to sacrifice their personal wants and desires in pursuit of a greater cause, and that the greatest cause of them all is the future.

Happy Together

Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog

Excerpt: A pretty stark and unvarnished look at a deeply dysfunctional relationship between two people who have very different ideas about what they want from it. Coming from someone known for being swooningly romantic, Happy Together is actually a great film about when love goes sour.

The Kartemquin Films Collection: The Early Years Volume 1

The Kartemquin Films Collection: The Early Years Volume 2

King: A Filmed Record…From Montgomery To Memphis

Lisztomania

Excerpt: At times, it’s the biography of Franz Liszt if it were directed by Benny Hill working from a script by Federico Fellini. With Nazi golems, Richard Wagner as a vampire, a climax aboard a heavenly spaceship, and a giant phallic musical number, this phantasmagorical biopic is Ken Russell at his ebullient silliest.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: January 14, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Bad Channels

Excerpt: …the inherent cheapness that’s indicative of anything with the Full Moon logo on it is just as obvious here (though this one doesn’t look as Europe-y as its brothers).

Cargo 200

Death Ship

Eternal Love

Patrick Bromley @ DVD Verdict

Following

Forgotten Garbage: TerrorVision

Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat

Grand Hotel

John J. Puccio @ Movie Metropolis

Excerpt: As helter-skelter as the setup might sound, as the narratives intertwine, one is never conscious of any episodic discontinuity but of a seamless, well-integrated flow of stories.

The Iron Horse

Excerpt: In some respects, Ford’s film function as an American cousin to Battleship Potemkin: a work of Silent Era propaganda that trumpets its ideological message with unabashed enthusiasm, while also serving as an breathtaking showcase for contemporary filmmaking at its grandest.

Lapland Odyssey

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: January 7, 2013

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.

The Big Broadcast of 1938

Excerpt: The Big Broadcast of 1938 is the closest we’ll get to seeing a “Gold Diggers” movie as directed by Tex Avery.

Buddha

Excerpt: Clearly taking cues from Hollywood, this is a big religious epic that wrongheadedly mimics what makes films like The Ten Commandments so questionable regarding matters of faith while being so entertaining in their sincere silliness.

Christmas Eve

Dick Tracy

Ryan McNeil @ The Matinee

Excerpt: Though a bit hokey at times, Dick Tracy is a romp through classic newspaper comics, made to look like the funny papers come to life. Director and star Warren Beatty plays it straight, embracing everything he loves about comic strips and classic pulp, turning the old Chester Gould serial into a visual tour-de-force.

La Dolce Vita

Excerpt: I travel to Italy to close out the 2012 Blindspot List, where a cnematic master gives us a taste of the good life.

Fear and Desire

Excerpt: A similar dynamic and mood to Kubrick’s later war films is clearly present in a blunt and embryonic form, as the struggle seems to stumble far beyond its nominal boundaries and the protagonists attempt to keep their heads and their souls together deep in enemy territory.

Following

Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews

Excerpt: Two years before Memento, this British drama established Christopher Nolan’s flair for creative storytelling with twisty nonlinear narratives as well as his tastes for mystery, suspense, crime, theft, and mistaken identities.

The Great Love (Le Grand Amour)

Excerpt: This was the director’s first film in color and both the French New Wave and the Swinging 60′s show their influence.

Heaven’s Gate

Excerpt: Heaven’s Gate, fittingly, is a movie about an idealist made by an idealist, and both lose control of their situation, ground beneath a machine that is larger than they ever imagined, and yet tragically heroic for doing so.

Killer’s Kiss

Excerpt: Killer’s Kiss sees Kubrick seemingly more at home in the precincts of Manhattan he had spent his teenaged years haunting as a photographer, to the point where the film often feels less like a narrative movie than a photographic record and portfolio showing off the manifold attractions, both glitzy and seamy, of the cityscape.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: December 31, 2012

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.

Blazing the Western Trail

The Core

Excerpt: A magical film: it never runs out of new and delightful ways to be completely inane.

Five

Following

Excerpt: Following is an entertaining crime yarn, and Nolan squeezes every penny out of his meager budget, but were this not a movie by the director of The Dark Knight or The Prestige, there’s a good chance none of us would be talking about it right now.

Lord Jim

Excerpt: It’s probably not the best compliment for Richard Brooks that his adaptation of Lord Jim made me really want to read the Joseph Conrad novel the movie is based on, but I can tell there is a better story beneath the movie’s stutters and stops. Or, if Brooks’ screenplay stays true to the author’s outline, then a better-told version of it.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: December 24, 2012

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.

12 Monkeys

Excerpt: One of the best-looking and smartest sci-fi films of the modern era.

Babes in Toyland

Excerpt: Walt Disney is quoted as saying that he made movies “for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty.” But Babes in Toyland seems like one film that was strictly for the kids.

Beloved Infidel

Excerpt: There is very little reason for anyone to sit through “Beloved Infidel”. If you aren’t a fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, actually, there is probably zero appeal when the film is presented at face value.

Black Line

Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films

City Lights

Excerpt: Among the many genius works of renaissance man Charlie Chaplin, City Lights stands as a singular achievement. City Lights is, as its name suggests, lit from within because of the emotional depth of the connection between The Tramp and The Girl.

The Day After Tomorrow

Excerpt: Trite really isn’t doing justice to the degree to which [the film] has not a single thought, character, or line of dialogue that hadn’t been run into the ground.

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Excerpt: Dr. Strangelove helped to define something about the modern world that has survived even as the Cold War has faded. The apocalyptic anxiety it diagnosed and treated with mockery and gallows humour has hardly vanished, but has rather faded to the background static in our daily lives.

Dust Devil

Excerpt: …we get a crybaby running from a cowboy who needs a shower.

Finding Nemo

Clark Douglas @ DVD Verdict

Excerpt: If this was somehow Pixar’s only film, we would all hold it up as the masterpiece by which all modern animation is measured. Since it is not and instead represents a small, ever-shrinking sliver of the studio’s oeuvre, it is a lot easier and more tempting to point out minor quibbles, like the fact that relatively few of the film’s many characters make a lasting impression on us.

Gypsy

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: December 17, 2012

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.

All the President’s Men

Jean-François Vandeuren @ Panorama-cinema.com [French]

Babette’s Feast

Joshua Brunsting @ CriterionCast

Baron Blood

Brazil

Excerpt: Brazil, with all its trials and tribulations, is a vibrant capsulization of cinema history, of Terry Gilliam’s own bid for a star in the hall of fame, and all the heartbreak that comes with dreaming big. Brazil is its own self-fulfilling prophecy, audacious and mesmerizing and as fascinating today as it was nearly 30 years ago.

Dick Tracy

Gergory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies

Excerpt: Perhaps the hope was that both the kids of the day and their parents who grew up on the comic strip could find common ground and enjoy this. But especially now, the film feels too childish for adults and too dark and violent for children.

Django, Kill… If You Live, Shoot!

Excerpt: … one of the first movies to recognize the hallucinogenic properties of the overripe oater.

Francis Ford Coppola: 5-Film Collection

Excerpt: Getting no participation from outside studios renders this an odd collection, consisting of two masterpieces (Apocalypse Now, The Conversation), an alternate edit (Apocalypse Now Redux), the best regarded of his recent “student films” (Tetro), and the film that ruined the director financially (One from the Heart).

Gypsy

Excerpt: Gypsy is old-fashioned entertainment, dated by 1962 and now barely resembling a modern film.

Heavyweights

Excerpt: Heavyweights gives very little indication of the success that awaited Judd Apatow, but it does find him working with past and future collaborators, including Ben Stiller and “Freaks and Geeks” creator and Bridesmaids director Paul Feig.

I Love it from Behind!

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Jordan Richardson @ Canadian Cinephile

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: December 10, 2012

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.

360

Excerpt: Despite some rather noble performances, 360 is one of those hyper-ambitious projects that comes off tremendously gauche from kick-off.

Abraham Lincoln (1930)

Dusty Somers @ Blogcritics

And the Band Played On

Excerpt: While “And the Band Played On” has its fair share of emotional outbursts and such, it earns them…

Baron Blood

Sean Axmaker @ Parallax View

Excerpt: The story hits some pretty basic genre tropes, and the special effects do tend to show their age, but Bava’s use of scenery, camera movement, and his clever staging of the film’s underlying mysticism all still work quite well.

The Blue Angel

Excerpt: The luscious spray of nets and scrims and artful clutter is on gorgeous display in the nightclub scenes, which are simultaneously cheap and exotic, tawdry, and enticing: A marvelous, messy contrast to the neat regimentation of Rath’s everyday life.

A Cat in Paris

Matthew Blevins @ Nextprojection.com

Catch Me If You Can

Clark Douglas @ DVD Verdict

Excerpt: Catch Me is light but substantial, full of images and emotions that resonate while its considerable 141-minute runtime stays absent of anything that doesn’t work.

Children of Paradise

Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies

Excerpt: I don’t know that there is a comparable film with as many dense, full-developed, lovingly complicated characters, brought to life with such commitment by the performers.

Compliance

Jordan Richardson @ Canadian Cinephile

Excerpt: Zobel’s Compliance is enraging and, to a point, I can understand walking out on it. I can understand the idea of throwing my hands up in the air and wondering how the hell this is happening. the scenario is so ridiculous – and gets more ridiculous by the moment – that it’s preposterous to think that it ever actually worked.

Deathtrap

David Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder

Excerpt: The witty esprit-de-corps between the three actors is perhaps the best reason to recommend the film, a minor Lumet movie with a cult following due to this very reason.

Classics and Other Films on DVD

Patrick Bromley @ DVD Verdict

Categories: Classics and Other Reviews

Comments: No Comments

Published on: December 3, 2012

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.

The Brothers McMullen

Catch Me If You Can

John J. Puccio @ Movie Metropolis

Excerpt: It’s a movie entertainment, after all, and Spielberg doesn’t intend it to project the authenticity of a “Lincoln.”

Criminal Law

Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Daybreak

Deathtrap

Matthew Sorrento @ Film Threat

Eating Raoul

Excerpt: Nicely lays out capitalism on the chopping block. In an obsessively consumptive culture like America’s, the only way for a common couple to strive is through killing, then consuming.

Fever Night AKA Band of Satanic Outsiders

Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Werid Movies

Excerpt: These are the best-groomed Satanic outsiders you’ve ever met, Satanic outsiders you wouldn’t be afraid to bring home to Mom for dinner.

Gimme Shelter

Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Godzilla vs. Biollante

Excerpt: If we were regularly being hit with movies like this, Godzilla vs. Biollante might very well seem insufferable. But taken on its own, without context or overfamiliarity, this late-’80s monster movie isn’t so bad.

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 & 2