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
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Daybreak
Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Deathtrap
Eating Raoul
Matthew Sorrento @ Film Threat
- 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
The Hobbit (1977)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: There is something undeniably fun about this kind of crisp, unfussy fantasy storytelling.
In the Realms of the Unreal: the Mystery of Henry Darger
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Werid Movies
- Excerpt: The world Darger invented inside his head, a mixture of the Bible, the American Civil War, and children’s storybooks, populated by saintly little girl warriors in pigtails and frilly dresses bearing bayonets, is so inherently fascinating that the documentarian does best to get out of its way and let it speak for itself.
Lili
- Excerpt: I just wish there was more heat to this thing, and definitely could have stood for a better leading man. Still, if you like Leslie Caron and like musicals, Lili is worth an evening of your time, even if you just end up dreaming of all it could be with a little extra love and ambition.
The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: The lack of a particular rhythm does not do it any favors, and it is certainly not a fast 133 minutes.
Marked for Death
Patrick Bromley @ F This Movie!
Ramrod
The Rise of Catherine the Great
Jamie S. Rich @ Criterion Confessions
South Sea Woman
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Story of a Prostitute
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: A product of the time when he was still part of Nikkatsu and yet also clearly a renegade, Story of a Prostitute is both a lacerating study of historical military and sexual insanity, and a monument to Seijun Suzuki’s own outsider bravado as a filmmaker and a darkly ferocious commentator on his society.
Ten Seconds to Hell
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
That Sinking Feeling
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Last Challenge
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
We Can’t Go Home Again & Don’t Expect Too Much
The Wedding Banquet
Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: In the end, the lies that started the story have been replaced by an even more complicated series of lies, but they’re ones that the characters are just about comfortable living with. It’s a nuanced and satisfying resolution to a deeply compassionate film, one that has sympathy for every single person involved.
Window Water Baby Moving
Matthew Blevins @ Nextprojection.com
- Excerpt: With his washed-out colors and erratic compositions Brakhage offers whispers that hint at the complex and unusual combination of disorientation and euphoria that occur in the hours leading up to birth, and the universe altering singularity event that happens at the moment of birth, spontaneously rewriting the attentive father’s DNA as the colors of the rest of the world fade away and the depth of field allows focus to go no further than the new life that has entered the universe and permanently changed your own.
