Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD.
Pre-2020 Film Reviews
The Bonfire (2016)
- Excerpt: “The Bonfire”, despite some minor faults here and there, emerges as an excellent movie, even more so considering it is a debut.
My Murderer (2016)
- Excerpt: “My Murderer” is an interesting film, definitely very entertaining, and Marsan seems to have a lot of good ideas, also including the way he implements small moment of humor in the narrative, in a pulp style that is intriguing to watch from a Yakutian production. Some improvement in the acting and the story could definitely have benefited the film though.
Nickelodeon (1976)
Roderick Heath @ This Island Rod
- Excerpt: Nickelodeon has its own, off-kilter trail to blaze, a movie by an artist who feels ill-at-ease working as a big-time director but also feels compelled to prove his talents at that level, and makes that unease the implicit subject of his efforts.
Rich and Strange (1931)
- Excerpt: Critics have discussed the importance of the “wrong man” trope in Hitchcock’s films, but his work can be defined equally in terms of the “guilty man”, who are countless. This is partly because guilt is a general, transferable, viral quality and partly because Hitchcock has a long streak of nominal heroes who do objectionable things, especially treating women badly.
Roar (1981)
Roderick Heath @ This Island Rod
- Excerpt: It’s entirely possible to watch Roar and be unsure if you’re being gripped by horrified fascination or actually entertained. By the end I realised it was both. It’s certainly a one-of-a-kind experience…
Roar (1994)
Roderick Heath @ This Island Rod
- Excerpt: In The Mouth of Madness sees Carpenter extemporising in typically warped fashion on the brief moment where the cross-currents of end-of-history yearning and millennial anxiety mingled in the popular psyche, perceiving the latent lunacy waiting just below the surface of the seemingly calming, settling new world order. The madman with the axe is ready to smash the windows of the new urban boutique culture, the mind-melting manipulator labours behind highly franchisable media.
Star Wars (1977)
Roderick Heath @ Film Freedonia
- Excerpt: The trick lay partly in the way Lucas made the film, with perfect confidence in the medium, but also in the way he framed it. Those air quotes hover about the entire movie, as Lucas approached the material as if it was an artefact, something designed to seem like it had an identity that existed long before Lucas stumbled upon it…
