Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD.
Reviews of Classic Films
Blow Up
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] “Blow-Up” remains Antonioni’s most enigmatic, and yet broadly accessible film because it comments on consumerist culture so transparently.
China Seas
Roderick Heath @ This Island Rod
- Excerpt: A shiny nugget of Old Hollywood entertainment, China Seas takes a standard exotic adventure tale and setting and marries it to raw star power and the proud but still pithy craftsmanship of a film industry at its zenith.
The Inglorious Bastards
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] “Bastards” is popcorn entertainment from the days when people used to yell stuff back at the big screen while smoking pot in a dingy cinema on 42nd Street. The film’s combat element functions as an active narrative canvas upon which its clearly drawn alpha-male characters spring into action. It’s all about soaking up the characteristic macho personalities on display.
Kiss Me Deadly
Jamie S. Rich @ Criterion Confessions
Lawrence of Arabia
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] Nothing about the story is predictable. We understand that Lawrence is a masochist from the way he habitually lets matchsticks burn down to his fingers. “The trick is to not mind the pain” he says with pride.
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Rob Gonsalves @ efilmcritic.com
Papillon
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] …a full-throated tale of human endurance by a doomed prisoner who relies on his friendship with France’s most prolific counterfeiter (Louis Dega) as much as Dega relies on him. The escape adventure movie is also a love story between two men.
Pet Sematary
Henry Stewart @ Brooklyn Magazine
Stripes
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s odd how a comedy from 1981 can seem more outdated than say one from 1961.
Recent Home Video Releases
Angst
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: Maybe time has made Gerald Kargl’s only feature film seem less transgressive than it seemed to be back in 1983. Kargl has gone on record as saying that if he had to do it over again, the violence in Angst would not be as graphic.
Angst on blu ray
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is as close as you’re likely to get to a real serial killer and survive.
Places in the Heart
Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit
Riff-Raff (1947)
The Satan Bug
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant provided a commentary track that mostly discusses The Satan Bug in relation to some similar films. What might, for some some, provide a reason to see The Satan Bug is the news that Pauline Kael claimed this was the worse film ever made.
Other Reviews from 2014 and earlier
Alligator X
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
The American Dreamer
Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: The American Dreamer catches Hopper at his most vulnerable, which is to say flushed with success and riding a rocket of fame, and a man may say and do a lot of foolishness on such a high.
Boardwalk
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Head
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It is tempting to describe ‘Head’ as what might happen if a young Jack Nicholson were hired to write a treatment for a bubblegum boy band, then dropped acid and wrote a script that reimagined the boys as psychedelic tricksters wandering through a surreal series of cynical, self-aware scenarios set everywhere from the old West to a dandruff commercial, sprinkling in the most bizarrely eclectic assortment of pop-culture cameos imaginable. Actually, that’s pretty much to the true story of how ‘Head’ came to be…
King of the Hill/The Underneath
Jamie S. Rich @ Criterion Confessions
Mr. Angel
- Excerpt: How refreshing to have a transgender biopic that is so full of hope, honesty and humour.
The Neanderthal Man
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: Cinema Fearité Presents ‘The Neanderthal Man’ – Fifties Sci-Fi Filmmaking At Its Badly Best
So This Is Paris
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: The last of the pictures Lubitsch made for Warner is the charming So This Is Paris (1926), a quintessential example of the Lubitsch touch and one that allows a viewer to really examine what comprises that touch.
Starry Eyes
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: The idea of selling your soul for a starring role isn’t a new or original one, but ‘Starry Eyes’ is effective because it’s made by people who understand the agony and temptation of the quest for stardom from the inside.
Undressing Israel: Gay Men in the Promised Land
- Excerpt: Too happily ever after
