Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2010 and earlier.
All the President’s Men
Jean-François Vandeuren @ Panorama-cinema.com [French]
Babette’s Feast
Baron Blood
Joshua Brunsting @ CriterionCast
Brazil
Jamie S. Rich @ Criterion Confessions
- Excerpt: Brazil, with all its trials and tribulations, is a vibrant capsulization of cinema history, of Terry Gilliam’s own bid for a star in the hall of fame, and all the heartbreak that comes with dreaming big. Brazil is its own self-fulfilling prophecy, audacious and mesmerizing and as fascinating today as it was nearly 30 years ago.
Dick Tracy
- Excerpt: Perhaps the hope was that both the kids of the day and their parents who grew up on the comic strip could find common ground and enjoy this. But especially now, the film feels too childish for adults and too dark and violent for children.
Django, Kill… If You Live, Shoot!
Gergory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: … one of the first movies to recognize the hallucinogenic properties of the overripe oater.
Francis Ford Coppola: 5-Film Collection
- Excerpt: Getting no participation from outside studios renders this an odd collection, consisting of two masterpieces (Apocalypse Now, The Conversation), an alternate edit (Apocalypse Now Redux), the best regarded of his recent “student films” (Tetro), and the film that ruined the director financially (One from the Heart).
Gypsy
- Excerpt: Gypsy is old-fashioned entertainment, dated by 1962 and now barely resembling a modern film.
Heavyweights
- Excerpt: Heavyweights gives very little indication of the success that awaited Judd Apatow, but it does find him working with past and future collaborators, including Ben Stiller and “Freaks and Geeks” creator and Bridesmaids director Paul Feig.
I Love it from Behind!
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee Coffee and more Coffee
In Another Country
- Excerpt: An arty, though not particularly artful, experiment
The Jerk
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: An epic movie of a once-in-a-lifetime sort.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Marches along with considerably more assurance and smoothness than the desperately crammed Fellowship.
Manufactured Landscapes
- Excerpt: Marvel at the sheer size of human industry (or is that human folly?)
Miami Connection
Joshua Brunsting @ CriterionCast
Purple Noon
David Bax @ Battleship Pretnsion
- Excerpt: Clément’s film – as in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 adaptation – puts its leads’ performances to good use by taking a slightly different approach from the source material. Purple Noon brings the philosophical and moral struggles right to the front of the stage, occasionally becoming a more abstract thing in the service of its subjects’ minds.
The Saint Takes Over
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Sex Hunter: Wet Target
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: But while the sex and nudity are what classify this film as Roman Porno, it’s the political aspects to this story that are loaded and worth examining.
What’s Up, Doc?
Carson Lund @ Are the Hills Going to March Off?
- Excerpt: Plot-wise, the film is never quite as tight or satisfying as the great Hawks, Sturges, and Wilder comedies Bogdanovich is drawing from, but O’Neal, Streisand, Kahn, and the rest of the ensemble are so assured in their roles that they supply a cinematic energy to compensate for the moments when the script lags or feels overly familiar.
