Skip It You sort of have to hand it to Sony: against all odds, they managed to turn Starship Troopers — which only earned $120m worldwide against a $100m budget — into a surprisingly valuable franchise. First, there was the seemingly popular animated TV series “Roughnecks,” followed by two live-action direct-to-video sequels. Last year, Sony announced a remake was also in the works, but that …
Highly Recommended My “memories” of Quadrophenia are by association only. I had never seen the movie until this Blu-ray release from The Criterion Collection, but I had been aware of it – perhaps excessively so – thanks to the neo-Mods of my teenage years. This was in the early 1990s, and although it would be easy enough to label these neo-Mods as misguided poseurs (which they most certainly …
Highly Recommended The Movie: Directed by the prolific Wolfgang Reitherman for Disney and released in 1970, The Aristocats has lost none of its charm in the forty-two years that it’s been around. The humor still works, the story still grans you and the music still swings. With the film now released on Blu-ray for the first time, established fans of the picture can enjoy it in the best possible …
Highly Recommended Twentieth Century-Fox completely reinvented itself during 1953-54. Prior to 1953, Fox was famous for classy, first-rate movies like All About Eve , Broken Arrow , The Gunfighter (all 1950), The Day the Earth Stood Still , The House on Telegraph Hill , The Desert Fox (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), Gentleman Prefer Blondes , Titanic , and Pickup on South Street (1953)
Recommended A remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954) and the Frederick Knott play from which it was derived, A Perfect Murder (1998) cannily reconfigures its plot and characters for a much more cynical, modern day audience. Patrick Smith Kelly’s screenplay deviates from its source quite a bit, but the results aren’t terrible
Highly Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The images used here are promotional stills provided by Sony Pictures Classics and are not taken from the Blu-ray edition under review. One of the movie moments that made the deepest impressions on me as a youngster/budding cinephile was the few minutes in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors where Judah (Martin Landau) revisits a scene from his …
Skip It THE FILM: Channing Tatum is in demand these days after stripping for Steven Soderbergh and fighting crime undercover with Jonah Hill. Step Up , released back in 2006, is not up to par with Tatum’s more recent films, and plays like a bland knockoff of the already-middle-of-the-road Save the Last Dance .
Recommended Robert Redford has spent more than 40 years in front of (and behind) the camera, so it’s no surprise that he’s amassed quite a deep filmography.
Highly Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The images used here are taken from promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review. I’ve never been entirely convinced that the kind of stubbornly purist realism propounded and practiced by the late John Cassavetes is as pure and effective as the often great , sometimes crackpot Mr. Cassavetes seemed to believe; it’s touching but na ve, it …
Recommended THE MOVIE: Please Note: The stills used here are taken from the film’s promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review. Jimmy Testagros (Ron Eldard, Super 8 , TV’s ER ) is having a bad day, and before he sees the next sunrise, it’s going to get a whole lot worse