Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.
11 Samurai
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: There is a remarkable shot in Eleven Samurai, one that clearly delineates the difference between classic filmmaking, and the kind of visual laziness that happens too often in contemporary films.
Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection
Phil Villarreal @ OKMagazine.com
The Body Snatcher
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: A strong, well above-average effort in almost every way, there’s no evidence at all that Lewton’s first brush with money and success dulled his instincts.
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Celebrating Halloween with a mate. As the monster demanded.
Broken Blossoms
Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
The Bucks County Massacre
The Captain’s Table
John J. Puccio @ Movie Metropolis
- Excerpt: he viewer will find a few hearty chuckles and a number of smaller giggles involved, the movie creating an amiable atmosphere and general good cheer.
Casino Royale (2006)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Craig became the first of Connery’s successors to stake out a genuinely fresh and engaging and complete version of the character.
Cops and Robbers
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Curse of the Cat People
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: A film that takes the business of childhood completely seriously and aligns itself to a child’s perspective with absolute conviction.
Days of Youth
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Doctor and the Devils
- Excerpt: While watching “The Doctor and the Devils,” you get the feeling that it could’ve gone further, but that’s not to detract from everything else the film accomplishes.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
- Excerpt: Elvira doesn’t have much purpose beyond showing its star’s eagerness to induce puberty in all applicable viewers.
An Evening With Vampyr and Steven Severin
Carson Lund @ Are the Hills Going to March Off?
- Excerpt: Steven Severin’s intense, cathartic live ambient score offers a more innate understanding of Dreyer’s intention, a more complex and fulfilling synergy with the moods of the film, even outlining some of its tonal and thematic progressions through musical shifts that were not as obvious in the original score.
Evil of Dracula
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: Again, as in Yamamoto’s previous vampire film, one might interpret the presence of vampires as symbolic of the ills of contemporary Japan caused by outsiders.
Film Fiber: Midnight Express and the Rosebud Conundrum
Fireworks
Matthew Blevins @ Nextprojection.com
- Excerpt: The gentle macabre voice of Kenneth Anger ushers in one of the most important and defiantly expressive films in the avant-garde canon, the “homosexual” intonation of his voice offering a beacon of light to the hopelessly lost and subversive confrontation to the unsuspecting reactionary heterosexual soul. Anger’s “pyrotechnics of a dream” presented in his most well-known early work, Fireworks (1947), offer glimpses to frontiers unexplored even on the other side of Jean Cocteau’s mirror, as Anger uses his art to scream in futility for consolation for inconsolable pain in cinematic alleyways and masturbatory daydreams, while offering unseen perspectives in humanity’s newest art-form.
The Fog
- Excerpt: Already in 1980 this faith in mood, composition, coherence, and a carefully calibrated sense of unfolding story tethered to a sense of locale and mindset, was starting to look outmoded in genre cinema…
The Horror Show
- Excerpt: The Horror Show is less of a stand-alone thriller than it is a glorifed test reel.
I Flunked, but …
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
I Graduated, but …
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Inferno
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Just because it’s not A-list Argento, that does not mean it cannot be an effective surrealist horror film.
The Invisible Man (1933)
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Celebrating Halloween with some classic Universal Monster horror. It has to be (not) seen to be believed!
Isle of the Dead
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: [Proves] that even at their flimsiest, there’s still no such thing as a worthless Val Lewton horror picture.
La Jetée
Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
JFK
Stephen Carty @ Flix Capacitor
The Maltese Bippy
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
Manhattan Baby
- Excerpt: I hate to throw in the towel on a certain breed of movie because of a few bad examples, but “Manhattan Baby” might be the last time I kick it with Mr. Fulci for a while.
The Phantom Carriage
- Excerpt: ‘The Phantom Carriage’ is an early masterpiece of the medium.
The Phantom Carriage
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: The mood of The Phantom Carriage lingers long after it’s over, and its influence on filmmakers, both in the horror mode and outside it, feels deep.
The Phantom of the Opera (1943)
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: There’ll be music, sweet music, with this look at one of the later Universal horror efforts.
Planes, Trains & Automobiles: 25th Anniversary
John J. Puccio @ Movie Metropolis
- Excerpt: Typically Hughes: funny, zany, silly, a little bit dull and annoying, and, eventually, a whole lot sentimental.
Quantum of Solace
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: The title song to Quantum of Solace is just like the movie: ugly, confused, chaotic, nonsensical, convoluted, clueless, boring, and in short, an absolute mess. It’s fitting that the worst Bond Song is with the worst Bond Film.
Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan
Stephen Carty @ Flix Capacitor
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Stephen Carty @ Flix Capacitor
Sunset Boulevard
- Excerpt: Ahead of its time in its dark content, nonlinear structure, and critical inside view of Hollywood, this is a movie to show anyone resisting black and white fare and anything older than themselves.
The Super Cops
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Suspiria
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Its outlandish, confounding style [does] more than virtually any other film to create the exact sort of unsettled, panicky mood in the viewer that is at the heart of horror.
The Toxic Avenger
- Excerpt: Long story short, “The Toxic Avenger” ain’t my thing.
Trick or Treat (1986)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: It manages to be a sort of dumbly charming.
Wake in Fright
Witchboard
- Excerpt: Queue up “Witchboard” for a mock-a-thon with your closest comrades; just don’t expect your perception of the paranormal to be as shaken as the flick wants it to be.
The Wolf Man (1941)
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Even a man who is pure of heart can enjoy a classic Universal monster movie!
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Indulgent title it may have, but everything else about this fine, tight, tense movie is the very opposite of indulgence.
Youth of the Beast
Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
