Highly Recommended The Movie: Widely considered to be the movie that put Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg on the map in the United States, 1981's Scanners begins with a scene where a man, seemingly homeless, sits in a food court.
Highly Recommended THE MOVIE: Please Note: The stills used here are taken from promotional materials and other sources, not the Blu-ray edition under review. Martin Ritt's 1961 jazz-infused drama Paris Blues is one of those films that, once you've seen it, you're kind of shocked that people don't talk about it more
Highly Recommended Like most Americans, my first exposure to Erik Skjoldbjerg's Insomnia (1997) was via Criterion's 1999 DVD ; through no small coincidence, it was around the time Christopher Nolan's 2002 remake hit theaters (but, for the life of me, I can't remember which one I actually saw first). Either way, I'm glad that both exist and, unlike the wide difference in quality between most …
Recommended The Movie: Directed by Gianfranco Parolini (credited as Frank Kramer), a fairly prolific writer and director of Spaghetti Westerns, sword and sandal pictures and action movies in the sixties and seventies, Sabata stars steely eyed Lee Van Cleef as a bounty hunter who saunters into Daugherty City right around the time that a cool one hundred grand is stolen from the local bank. The …
Rent It There's a small but adamant minority out there that positively loathes Frank Capra's otherwise beloved holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). I have one friend, for instance, who hates the film so much he always refers to it as “It's a Wonderful %$#*ing Life.” I happen to like it myself, warts and all, but regardless it would be interesting to know just how many of these Scrooges …
Rent It The Film: On the surface, Duel At Diablo looks like the kind of movie that subconsciously inspired Blazing Saddles , what with its African American costar playing against a popular Caucasian one, set in the West and battling seemingly insurmountable odds.
Highly Recommended NOTE: The images used to accompany this article are taken from online sources and do not represent the quality of the Blu-ray under review. The Movie: While American genre filmmakers tend not to shy away from depicting violence and brutality, their gory imaginations rarely scale the heights of bodily destruction realized onscreen by their colleagues working in Asia.
Recommended THE FILM: The second of six collaborations between director Michael Winner and Charles Bronson, The Mechanic is a tough, slow-burn 1970s thriller often remembered for its dialogue-free opening 15 minutes. Bronson is contract killer Arthur Bishop, who is very good at killing people and getting away with it
Recommended THE FILM: Click an image to view Blu-ray screenshot with 1080p resolution. This British drama about a soldier accused of desertion is quite an ambitious first feature for director Paul Greengrass, best known for shooting The Bourne Supremacy , The Bourne Ultimatum and the recent Captain Phillips . The film is based on a true st..
Highly Recommended THE FILM: Click an image to view Blu-ray screenshot with 1080p resolution. I happened to watch John Frankenheimer's The Train a few days after watching George Clooney's recent The Monuments Men