Artsploitation Films is a distributor with a taste for offbeat horror as represented in two recent Blu-ray releases, the German Der Samurai and the French (though shot in English) Horsehead, both visually stylized and more interested in metaphor and atmosphere than crude shocks.
The Offence and Equus, two play adaptations from the 1970s, now available in excellent Blu-ray editions, highlight Sidney Lumet’s strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker.
The 19th Century French writer Guy de Maupassant had a spare style and an acute understanding of social class and psychology, both characteristics which lend themselves well to cinematic adaptation. Criterion’s Blu-ray edition of Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country and the older Montparnasse DVD edition of Robert Wise’s Mademoiselle Fifi represent the best of de Maupassant on film.
Criterion has released two excellent Blu-ray editions of Costa-Gavras’ finest films: The Confession and State of Siege examine dramatically political repression and violence on both the Left and Right.
Arrow Video’s spectacular Blu-ray of Rabid is a reminder of just how good and natural a filmmaker David Cronenberg is, while the director’s recent Maps to the Stars seems a less personal work.
Two recent Blu-ray releases highlight very different attitudes to the crime thriller in the ’70s: Robert Culp’s Hickey and Boggs and Douglas Hickox’s Brannigan.
We bring our whole personal history to every movie we see, even ones we’ve seen (many times) before; as we’re in a constant state of change, so the movies we watch seem to change with each viewing.
Some impressions of the eclectic variety of movies I’ve watched in the past couple of months, from the obscure to the classic, from mainstream blockbusters to quirky independents.
Recent viewing includes the big-budget Furious 7 and the smaller but better It Follows, as well as a collection of older genre movies on disk.
Watching Blacula (1972) while reading James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work turns up some surprising depths in the cheap blaxploitation horror movie.