Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.
360
Jordan Richardson @ Canadian Cinephile
- 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)
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
- 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
- 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.
Die Nibelungen
- Excerpt: This blood and thunder myth of warriors and dragons and brotherhood and betrayal, is awesome in its scope, both visual and dramatic.
Dracula’s Daughter
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
eXistenZ
- Excerpt: The inventive self-referential story structure and parade of impressive production design make it both tempting and easy to overlook that the film doesn’t add up to anything too special.
Freeway
- Excerpt: …”Freeway” can be a tough sit, although the chances and directions the plot takes make the effort worthwhile.
God Bless America
Jordan Richardson @ Canadian Cinephile
- Excerpt: God Bless America targets a series of bothers and hopes to be a purgative if not satirical flick. It aims for the guilty pleasure, hoping we’ll feel a little better seeing the bratty girl from “My Super Sweet 16” get her ass handed to her with a few bullets left in the chamber for her enabling parents.
Having a Wild Weekend
- Excerpt: It’s written by playwright Peter Nichols, who brings an edge of social satire and a shadow of existential emptiness to the runaway road movie story.
The Hobbit (1985)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Magnetically off-kilter rather than simply terrible shlock.
The Hunter
Jordan Richardson @ Canadian Cinephile
- Excerpt: At times, the Hunter is a visually appealing film. But for the most part, its lack of narrative punch and consistency keeps it strictly in the travelogue territory.
The Image
Brian Holcomb @ Diaboliquemagazine.com
- Excerpt: The Image is one of the essential works of erotic cinema. That it works on the level of style and substance is a testament to Radley Metzger as a filmmaker.
The Innkeepers
Jordan Richardson @ Canadian Cinephile
- Excerpt: A subtle, well-paced, well-acted tale, the Innkeepers is one of those films that far exceeded my expectations.
The Man in Grey
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: [T]he whole thing is an unreal, stylized piece of work, from the settings to the characters. Mason is especially mesmerizing as the selfish, arrogant Lord…
Oklahoma Crude
- Excerpt: Stanley Kramer’s semi-revisionist cowboy picture Oklahoma Crude marries progressive 1970s politics with good old-fashioned oilfield adventure.
Perry Mason: the Original Warner Bros. Movies Collection
- Excerpt: [T]his Mason is a lawyer right out of the pre-code sensibility: cavalier with professional ethics, obstructing justice to protect a client, flamboyant in the courtroom, where his style is filled with dramatic, showboating tactics.
The Portrait of a Lady
The Private Life of Don Juan
Jamie S. Rich @ Criterion Confessions
- Excerpt: The Private Life of Don Juan isn’t so much a romantic comedy as it is a comedy of romance.
Psycho (1960) & Psycho (1998)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
Rags and Riches: the Mary Pickford Collection
Red Dust
- Excerpt: [A]s sexy, frank, and grown-up as pre-code cinema gets.
Red Sorghum
Christopher Bourne @ Asian In NY
- Excerpt: Winning the Golden Bear at the 1988 Berlin International Film Festival, Red Sorghum was an auspicious debut for both cinematographer-turned-director Zhang Yimou and its young lead actress Gong Li. Zhang would go on to make more accomplished films, and Gong would grow more into the luminous beauty she is today, but Red Sorghum shows that they were beginning from an already elevated level.
The Return of King (1980)
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: A joyless failure which has only the latent strength of Tolkien’s fantastic imaginings to give it any merit whatsoever.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
See the Sea
- Excerpt: …”See the Sea” is well worth a look-see, for how much it leaves you wanting to delve more into its mysteries.
The Shining
Stephen Carty @ Flix Capacitor
The Sorcerers and Villain
Bob Cashill @ Cineaste
- Excerpt: A joint review of the Warner Archive releases the Sorcerers (67) and Villain (71)
Bob Cashill @ Cineaste
- Excerpt: A joint review of the Warner Archive releases the Sorcerers (67) and Villain (71)
The Spirit of the Beehive
Tiago Ramos @ Split Screen [Portuguese]
Subversive Saturday: the Games of Angels
Matthew Blevins @ Nextprojection.com
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Sunset Boulevard
They Live
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: This is a classic example of genre filmmaking with a political punch, albeit in broad, sloganeering terms.
Three Days of the Condor
Jean-François Vandeuren @ Panorama-cinema.com
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: Aldrich was something of a specialist of brawny action films with personalities in collision and volatile situations, but his best action films framed those actions within the contradictions between personal morality and the ruthlessly impersonal imperatives of missions and objectives.
unday Bloody Sunday
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: While Sunday Bloody Sunday doesn’t look all that revolutionary on the surface, its presentation of a loving romantic and sexual relationship between two men in the same naturalistic terms as a heterosexual romance is unprecedented, at least in a mainstream movie.
Weekend (1967)
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It’s a deliciously nasty exercise, and Godard’s unrepentant cruelty in eviscerating those he hates is the thing that’s most appealing about this revenge fantasy wherein capitalist culture eventually eats itself.
The Wicked Lady
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: [James] Mason is all dark charm and theatrical flamboyance as Captain Jerry Jackson, a man who vows to live his rakish life to the fullest before his inevitable end on the gallows, and he plays the larger-than-life anti-hero to that end
