Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.
Billy Rose’s Jumbo
James Plath @ Family Home Theater
- Excerpt: Call it the wholesome, light and fluffy alternative to the dark and brooding Water for Elephants.
Body Double
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: Brian De Palma makes movies about the movie experience. He takes great pleasure in playing with the artificiality of movies, with audience expectations and the way we identify with characters, with the idea of playing parts and giving performances.
A Boy and His Dog
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: It’s been almost forty years since A Boy and his Dog debuted and it is still the most faithful screen adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s work.
Brink! (1998)
Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Excerpt: Brink! plays upon the viewers’ patience for blandly photographed skating sequences.
Carrie (1976)
- Excerpt: It’s a cautionary tale that suggests that fear of the unusual justifies any action to displace the potential danger; destroy everything strange and every stranger before we’re corrupted, too. My, how times have changed.
The Desperados
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Die Another Day
Dustin Freeley @ MoviesAboutGladiators.com
- Excerpt: Pierce Brosnan’s run as Bond ends with a messy convulsion.
The Driver
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: [Walter] Hill has always had a penchant for dropping pulp fiction ideals of gangster code and loyalty under fire in a gritty existence, shaped and stylized into a rarified, at times insular world where the rest of the population is either backdrop to their story or simply absent from the frame.
Enter Laughing
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary
Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood
- Excerpt: If you think any movie is scarier than “The Exorcist” you’re wrong, sorry.
Fernando Di Leo Collection Vol. 2
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: This three-disc set boxes up Shoot First, Die Later (1974), a ruthless crime drama starring Luc Merenda as a corrupt cop on a mission of righteous vengeance (previously released as a stand-alone disc), with two disc debuts: Naked Violence (1969), a juvenile delinquent cop drama by way of social commentary, and Kidnap Syndicate (1975), a revenge thriller with Merenda, this time playing an innocent bystander roused to take justice into his own hands.
The Hypnotic Eye
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Les Maudits
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Missing
- Excerpt: Review of Costa-Gavras’ 1982 classic, which launched the 1st Human Rights Film Festival in Ottawa
Orgasmo (a.k.a. Paranoia)
Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
- Excerpt: One can’t go into the film expecting true, classic giallo without being disappointed, but when approached as a campy 60s throwback, Orgasmo can be a whole lot of fun.
Le Sauvage
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Slaughter Hotel
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee Coffee and more Coffee
Understanding Bliss
- Excerpt: William D. MacGillivray’s 1990 Newfoundland-set video drama is an intriguing tale of our relationship with culture and technology.
Uwasa no onna
- Excerpt: ‘The finale echoes a lot of Mizoguchi’s work at this point, as he concludes that all men are terrible shits who deserve to be punished by being exorcised from the narrative. In this, and other cases, he happens to be entirely right, but the wrapper around the message has certainly been better’
