Skip It THE FILM: Screenshots were taken from the included DVD edition and do not represent the quality of the Blu-ray. The first Rio is a colorful, lightweight and not altogether joyless string of pop culture references and celebrity voice talent
Recommended THE MOVIE: Please Note: The stills used here are taken from promotional materials and other sources, not the Blu-ray edition under review. The western framed as a chase picture. A cowboy drama about racial politics.
Recommended I don't review a lot of (relatively) new movies, but was drawn to Devil's Knot (2013) because its director is Atom Egoyan, the Canadian filmmaker behind such excellent and unique films as Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), and Ararat (2002). Devil's Knot , adapted from Mara Leveritt's 2002 book and based on the West Memphis Three murder investigation and subsequent trial …
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 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 …
Recommended The Movies: I love early cinema for a lot of reasons: you can see filmmakerscreating the language of film as time goes on, the movies themselvescan be magnificent, and the creativity is often astounding, just toname a few. One of the main things that draws me to the early days offilm is that it's a window on the past.
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. I wasn't actually familiar with the meaning of “separate tables” before watching this movie. As it turns out, it refers to a perk of a live-in hotel, where the dining room boasts individual tables where guests can eat on their own rather …
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 …
Highly Recommended THE FILMS: Spike Lee is a talented, polarizing director who sometimes lets politics get in the way of his filmmaking. His films of late have been disappointing, but this Spike Lee Joint Collection, Vol.