Highly Recommended One of the great things about DVD and now the Blu-ray format is how, occasionally, heretofore long-unseen movies turn out to be a lot better than their terrible reputations would suggest, diamonds in the rough, as it were. This proved true, for instance, when in 2006 Fox released to DVD their Laurel & Hardy movies from the 1940s, pictures long regarded as unfunny, painful …
Recommended The Movie: One of a seemingly endless barrage of adaptations of the Marquis de Sade’s Justine , Chris Boger’s 1977 film, also known as Cruel Passion (which is the title that appears on the print used for this Blu-ray release), takes a mature and almost subdued approach to this well known tale of perversions and sexual excess. The film follows two sisters, Justine (Koo Stark) and …
Highly Recommended Dateline! 1969. In this corner: a ragtag bunch of vets fresh off a particularly brutal tour of duty in Vietnam.
DVD Talk Collector Series There have been far too many “reboots,” “reimaginings,” and “reimagineerings” lately. And, anyway, aren’t those terms merely euphemisms for “Sure, we’ve made truckloads of money, but we can generate even more dough starting from scratch over and marketing an ‘event,’ rather than a mere sequel”?
Highly Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The screen captures used here are taken from promotional materials and the 2009 DVD release , not the Blu-ray edition under review.
Rent It THE FILM: Whitney Houston’s first acting role was a good fit: She played international music and film superstar Rachel Marron, a vulnerable diva whose life was threatened by a crazed fan, alongside Kevin Costner as her tireless protector in Director Mick Jackson’s The Bodyguard . Critics were not kind to the film, but it raked in over $400 million in worldwide receipts and its soundtrack …
DVD Talk Collector Series 2011 was, unquestionably, a fantastic year for fans of classic cinema.
Skip It THE MOVIE: Please Note: The screengrabs used here are taken from the standard-definition DVD included in the set, not the Blu-ray edition under review.
Highly Recommended The Movies: Written and directed by comic book impresario Joann Sfar in 2010 (making this his directorial debut feature), Gainsbourg – a Heroic Life (or, if you prefer the original language title, Gainsbourg -Vie Heroique ) takes on the fairly unfilmable life of the late, great French musician, singer, songwriter and ladies man Serge Gainsbourg. The film begins during the …
Highly Recommended THE MOVIE: Melancholia opens with a series of painterly images, accompanied by Wagner and presented in agonizingly slow motion. That presentation gives the otherwise befuddling tableaus a weight and significance that we don’t fully grasp–except for the final one, which encompasses nothing less than the end of the world