Skip It THE FILM: Please Note: All of the images used here are from the accompanying standard-definition DVD and are not taken from the Blu-ray under review. Director Curtis Hanson’s Emmy-nominated 2011 HBO film, Too Big to Fail , sounded so potentially promising. Sure, Hanson has had a checkered career, but it’s had more than its share of peaks, encompassing such worthy accomplishments as L.A …
DVD Talk Collector Series THE FILM: Please Note: All of the images used here are from promotional materials and are not taken from the Blu-ray under review. Astutely predicting the outcry that would surely erupt from various Charlie Chaplin purists and completists were they to have put out only one Gold Rush or the other, Criterion is now releasing the 1925 classic as what amounts to one Blu-ray …
Recommended THE FILM: Please Note: The images used here are promotional and are not taken from the Blu-ray under review. There’s no getting around the fact that P. David Ebersole’s Hit So Hard , a documentary on Patty Schemel, former drummer for the band Hole, is inherently going to have very different levels of appeal based on factors unrelated to how good and interesting the film is (and this …
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 FILM: Please Note: The images used here are promotional and are not taken from the Blu-ray edition under review. The inbuilt (and not really disprovable) suspicion on the part of young people in love that some latent tragedy always lurks within their overpowering emotions has long been a perpetually renewable resource for storytellers who can convincingly confirm it, with …
Recommended THE MOVIE: Denzel Washington has chosen an odd specialty at this point in his career, a juncture at which he can basically do anything.
Highly Recommended Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s seven-part, 14-hour The War (2007) attempts to document the American perspective of World War II in the same signature style Burns (and sometimes Novick) has brought to other subjects, like Jazz (2001), Baseball (1994/2010) and, most famously, The Civil War (1990). In attempting to distinguish itself from other made-for-television documentaries …
Recommended The Movie: Littlerock is the story of Rintaro (Rintaro Sawamoto) and Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka), siblings from Japan, on their way to San Francisco.
Highly Recommended Directing and writing debuts are rarely as successful as Being John Malkovich (1999), which brought filmmaker Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman into the public eye. Years before, the former cut his teeth on some of the decade’s best music videos , while the latter scribbled behind the scenes of several sketch comedy shows (including Chris Elliott’s underrated Get A …
Highly Recommended Don Juan Demarco Review Iwanted to begin thisreview with a slant on how Don Juan Demarco is that rareexception tothe rule; a genuinely surprising and satisfying romantic comedy. Butit’s tooaffecting and whimsical to merely be referred to alongside the likes ofschlocklike Fool’s Gold (2008), Alex and Emma (2003), and FailuretoLaunch (2006). Okay, so I technically just did …