Highly Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The images used here are promotional and are not taken from the Blu-ray edition under review. Thanks to The Criterion Collection, summer 2012 is, aptly , Bergman season: In concurrence with their release of the Swedish master’s 1953 turning-point film Summer with Monika , they’re also making available an earlier sea-and-sun youthful-romance reverie, his …
Highly Recommended The interesting, anomalous science fiction horror film The Asphyx (1973), a picture unjustly all but forgotten until recently, was the product of several converging trends.
Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The images used here are taken from promotional materials provided by HBO Films, not the Blu-ray edition under review. I have never seen the groundbreaking 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family , but I have long been aware of it; it’s often cited as the first step American TV took toward the televised “reality” that’s proven as enduringly popular as it …
Highly Recommended The Movie: In a straightforward and simple way, the cover of the Pariah Blu-ray case includes the definitions for the word that the film uses as its title. And while the definitions like “outcast” and “rejected member of society” may sound overdramatic at first, one could make the case that such interpretations are not hard to get to, and the film makes a strong case as to why …
Highly Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The screen captures used here are taken from promotional materials provided by Fox Searchlight, not the Blu-ray edition under review. Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene is the kind of film that, in a better world, would be showered with Oscars and have the whole culture (not just the little patch of movie-reviewer land that, for example, yours truly …
Highly Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The screen captures used here are taken from the standard-definition 2005 DVD edition , not the new Blu-ray release under review. Although M has to be my favorite Fritz lang film, period, and I wouldn’t give up Metropolis or Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler for anything, there is a part of me that’s tempted to concur with the critic Dave Kehr’s assertion that …
DVD Talk Collector Series THE MOVIE: Please Note: The stills used here are taken from the film’s promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review. The next time you hear someone grousing about how movies are only supposed to be 90 minutes long and anything over two hours is an affront to their patience, hand them a copy of Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder . After they have sat …
Rent It “Unless.” Dr. Seuss’s prescient, cautionary environmental fable The Lorax (1971) was one of his best children’s books. Despite claims to the contrary on the disc’s single featurette, that “nobody was talking about the environment” at the time except for Seuss, in fact during the late 1960s and early ’70s concerns about the long-term effects of pollution, deforestation, and smog was on …
Recommended THE MOVIE: Please Note: The stills used here are taken from the opera’s promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review.
Highly Recommended In 10 Words or Less Animated adventure with a hint of humor Reviewer’s Bias* Loves: Good animation, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis Likes: Action comedy, Antonio Banderas, the Shreck franchise Dislikes: Wasted talent Hates: Humpty Dumpty The Movie Though your humble reviewer has watched all four Shrek films, and enjoyed them to various degrees, outside of the first one, none …