Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Retains some scant measure of Swift’s satiric intent, however distorted.
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- 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.
The Caretaker
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Dark Tower (1943)
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Delicious
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- 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
Andrew Wyatt @ Gateway Cinephile
- 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
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- 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
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- 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
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: The film is chiefly best at creating a bizarre, off-kilter mood.
Fantômas vs. Fantômas
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: A lot better than most franchises this silly can claim to be by their fourth entry.
Hyenas
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
In the Cut & Trapped
- Excerpt: The underperforming thrillers In the Cut and Trapped are probably most familiar to fans of their respective leading ladies, Meg Ryan and Charlize Theron. Off-putting in ways and with as many bad qualities as good ones, each film warrants a single viewing.
Juve vs. Fantômas
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: All the best parts involve criminal plots so outré that delighted disbelief is the only sane response.
Last Summer Won’t Happen
David Bax @ Battleship Pretension
- Excerpt: 50 years ago, the decade may have been called the 1960s but it didn’t mean whatever it’s come to mean to us. Peter Gessner’s 1968 documentary, Last Summer Won’t Happen, just out on DVD for the first time, shows us a specific point, time and subculture late in that storied decade and lets us see that it had more facets than we might imagine and that some of them aren’t groovy.
The Man with the Golden Gun
Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators.com
The Murderous Corpse
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Unfathomably for a century-old movie that has influenced an entire genre, it’s actually a little bit surprising in spots.
A New Kind of Love
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: The bright spot is Joanne Woodward in the first half of the film. As the “designer” of knock-off couture for a New York City department store, Woodward with her short hair, masculine suits, cap and sunglasses rocks the androgynous look so well that Tilda Swinton should watch this movie, and take a few notes.
One Million Years B.C.
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Some of the very finest dopey schlock ever put onscreen.
Physical Evidence & The Anderson Tapes
- Excerpt: The Anderson Tapes and Physical Evidence are worthy of some interest. The former is a fairly well-known entry to the paranoid 1970s thriller boom, while the latter is an okay but forgettable late ’80s Burt Reynolds mystery.
Sea Fury
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Shining
Shoot First, Die Later
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Di Leo is a master of the action scene, two car chases extravagantly choreographed, but there is humor evident as well in a cross cut elevator ‘chase.’ At its core, though, “Shoot First, Die Later” is a densely plotted film with a bleak outlook…
The Strangler
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Three Musketeers: The Queen’s Necklace/The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Although Lester channels elements of the long history of cinematic adventuring in Hollywood and European cinema into his Musketeer films, in many ways, these movies feel closer to Chinese and Japanese historical action cinema, in the conceptual approach to action scenes, the intense, almost otherworldly colours of their period visions, and the carefree blend of comedy and action.
Two Moon Junction
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Put simply: you’re not likely to regard Romeo + Juliet as truly great cinema unless the song “Lovefool” stirs your soul.
