Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD.
Reviews of Classic Films
American Graffiti
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Wonders in the Dark
- Excerpt: The hot rods, drive-ins, and cruising strip are rendered with such loving detail in the glow of a pleasant California night that George Lucas’ adolescence has become iconic of everyone’s youth, a supposedly more innocent time that tends to meld all of our teen years into “the best years of our lives.”
The Birth of a Nation
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Even without taking on the sorry race portrayals, The Birth of a Nation is a mixture of the crude and the fine. Portions are undoubted displays of great cinematic effect and art, whilst others drag and slouch.
Blow-Up
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Nothing is real when everything is staged. “Blow-Up” remains Antonioni’s most enigmatic, and yet broadly accessible film because it comments on consumerist culture so transparently.
Cat People
Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
The Catered Affair
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
The Great Silence
Rob Gonsalves @ efilmcritic.com
I Walked with a Zombie
Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
In the Heat of the Night
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
The Inglorious Bastards
Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: “The Inglorious Bastards” has a cinematic cultural mission too; it resonates against stylized aspects of “Dirty Dozen” that may have been taken too literally or too seriously relative to its historic authenticity at the time of its release.
Jaws
Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Con “Tiburón” Spielberg encontró su estilo personal: sobresalía preparando momentos, lograba una puesta en escena y una planificación clarísimas, deslumbrantes y muy elegantes, era muy bueno provocando emociones en el espectador, y conseguía grandes actuaciones de su reparto.
The Leopard Man
Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
My Dinner With Andre: The Criterion Collection
Night and the City: The Criterion Collection
On the Waterfront
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
The Year of Living Dangerously
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
Recent Home Video Releases
Agnès Varda in California
Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
The Honey Pot
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: The Honey Pot bears the distinction of being the first theatrical feature Mankiewicz made following the debacle known as Cleopatra, and the last film with his name in the screenplay credit. There isn’t the snap of back to back Oscar winning Letter to Three Wives and All about Eve. Still, there are moments, especially at the end, that it becomes clear just how personal this film is, an acknowledgment by Mankiewicz of his limits as a writer/director.
She Killed In Ecstasy
M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Shocker: Collector’s Edition
M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
Stray Cat Rock Series
Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
Wolf Warrior
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
The Young Lions
Kristen Lopez @ Journeys in Classic Film
Other Reviews from 2014 and earlier
Blindsided
Bride and Prejudice
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Dirty Dancing
- Excerpt: This low-budget independent film permeated the culture, which is pretty impressive since, by most reasonable standards, Dirty Dancing is a terrible movie: a dopey, cliché-ridden, anachronistic, woefully predictable across-the-tracks romance.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Stacia Kissick Jones @ Next Projection
Force Majeure
Enrique Buchichio @ Cartelera.com.uy [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Posee el tipo de complejidad sutil e inteligente de las grandes obras, que por supuesto permanecen en la memoria del espectador. Y es, sin temor a equivocarse, una de las películas imperdibles de este año y probablemente del que viene.
The Forger
Ganja & Hess
Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: It’s tempting to detach Ganja & Hess, with its arty filmmaking, lack of suspense, and overtly symbolic approach to loaded subjects, from horror cinema altogether and regard it as closer in nature to the spacy, interiorised state of mind communicated in many “art” movie works of the period like Zabriskie Point (1970) or The Last Movie (1971). But it fits in with some other horror works of its time with surprising alacrity.
The Harder They Come
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Hunger
The Hunger
Stacia Kissick Jones @ She Blogged By Night
Invitation to Hell
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Excerpt: Cinema Fearité Remembers Wes Craven By Tuning In To ‘Invitation to Hell’
Killer Legends
Lovesick
Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
Miss Julie
Pump Up the Volume
- Excerpt: Volume’ is no quaint time capsule; the details may be period, but in its broad strokes, Moyle’s movie was strikingly prescient about how we — particularly the youngest of us — both consume and create media.
The Road Within
Schizopolis
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: What makes it work… is that tension between continuity and chaos, the seesaw sensation that ‘Schizopolos’ is just about to make sense and reveal its secret agenda, when it’s actually flying off the rails in a wild new direction.
