Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.
The Amityville Horror Trilogy
M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Autumn Sonata
- Excerpt: The tensions between an estranged mother and daughter make for powerful and universally gripping cinema you’ll be glad to return to.
Jamie S. Rich @ Criterion Confessions
- Excerpt: This is Ingrid Bergman’s movie. In essence, the “autumn sonata” is Charlotte’s crucial final-act performance, as the diva improvises for her toughest audience.
A Bay of Blood
M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Black Power Mixtape (1967-1975)
Frank Ochieng @ Yahoo! Voices Movies
- Excerpt: Swedish filmmaker and documentarian Goran Hugo Olsson’s Black Power Mixtape (1967-1975) is a radical and absorbing examination of a cultural experience that has shaped and defined a nation. Bitingly relevant, stylish, poignant and nostalgically intriguing, Olsson delves dutifully into an era of chaos, self-discovery, pulsating pride and resonance.
Cast A Deadly Spell
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Creature represented an attempt to craft a genuine crossbreed of the motifs Universal had exploited so well in its ’30s horror films with a more contemporary edge. Indeed, the specific success of the Alland-Arnold model was in its deeper awareness and embrace of the psychological element of the genre, the notion that, as in the horror genre, the monstrosities seen on screen were essentially signifying something else, something within the psyche.
De Tweeling
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
De Zaak Alzheimer
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
Despicable Me
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: A fun mixture of whacky comedy and sweet sentiment.
The Devil Bat
M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Dracula, Prince of Darkness
Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!
Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection
M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Garden State
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Braff and Portman are hygienic and lovable, bringing an infectious spirit of youth that captures what its like to be lost and hopeful in your twenties. Add a Grammy-winning folk-rock soundtrack, and it’s no surprise that “Garden State” has become minor cult film.
Gigli
Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!
Going Hollywood
- Excerpt: Going Hollywood is almost the perfect Hollywood movie musical cliché. The 1933 vehicle for Bing Crosby and Marion Davies is the ultimate in cinematic wish fulfillment.
Iron Man
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: It brings the superhero genre to a rock star status. Frankly, it needs it. It is a breath of fresh air after the Superman and Batman pictures which have been so vapid and overproduced that they forgot to be fun.
Iron Man 2
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: A curious misfire, given that the original 2008 film pulled the superhero genre out of the cape and cowl doldrums and gave it a rock star status, this one seems less focused, less confident.
A Little Princess (1995)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: One of the very best children’s movies of the past quarter-century.
My Fair Lady
Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: My Fair Lady tiene un reparto brillante y es una película elegante como pocas, logrando un conjunto sumamente encantador.
No Way Out
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
La Notte
- Excerpt: In a more subtle way then, and in the style of Italian 1960s contemporaries, Antonioni charts the decline of marriage, from passion to obscurity and staid inevitability.
The Paper
John Gilpatrick @ John Likes Movies
- Excerpt: Plenty of movies fail in their final act, but none—NONE—as spectacularly as Ron Howard’s The Paper
Prince of Darkness
M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Right Cross (1950)
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Rounders
- Excerpt: The film poker fans discovered didn’t just exploit their sport as a hook for easy atmosphere; it was a movie that felt written from inside those rooms, that knew not just the tricks and the shorthand, but the way it felt to spend hours in that smoke, desperately waiting for the cards to fall your way.
A Royal Scandal
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Slacker
- Excerpt: Here is a young, new talent making a film not quite like any before it. It’s impressive how many stories Linklater can tell and voices he can find without us growing tired of the experience or craving some traditional structure, overarching plot, or character development.
Sólo con tu pareja
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Very much the work of a young filmmaker of obvious talent in need of just a smidgen more discipline, training, and experience.
Some Like It Hot
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Extracting humor from men dressing up like women is so basic it pre-dates slipping on a banana peel. However Some Like It Hot arguably represents the gag at its zenith.
Southland Tales
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Trouble with Harry
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: One of the absolute funniest movies of the 1950s, not least because it is perhaps the most puckish.
UC: Autumn Sonata
Mario Alegre @ Primera Hora [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The Criterion Collection releases on Blu-ray the masterful collaboration between Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman.
Van Gogh
- Excerpt: A biography of the last few months of a great artist’s life, it is little surprise to find that Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh has a painterly eye, vividly brought to life by its new Masters Of Cinema release
