Kino Lorber have been offering a wide range of movies in generally fine transfers, from the work of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco to poverty row exploitation classics, ’70s Italian exploitation, foreign and arthouse titles, and recently a number of titles from some of the more obscure byways of the ’70s.
Recent binging on Twilight Time Blu-rays ranges from politics to comedy to science fiction, absurd studio productions and idiosyncratic independents; from the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions to the overthrowing of a future society of privileged immortals to underhanded contemporary business wars, from dinosaurs deep inside the Earth to the destruction of an alien race on the moon.
The first West German film to address the futile waste of young lives in the final days of World War 2, Bernhard Wicki’s The Bridge is given an impressive Blu-ray presentation by the Criterion Collection.
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.
Spectacular action reminiscent of the original Mad Max trilogy can’t quite overcome a disappointing script and weak lead performance in George Miller’s return to the post-apocalyptic world he created more than three decades ago.
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.
Criterion’s Blu-ray of Kihachi Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom (1966) provides a spectacular transfer of this difficult, idiosyncratic samurai film. In the finest performance of his career, the versatile Tatsuya Nakadai provides one of the screen’s great depictions of madness.
The Criterion Collection resurrects Monte Hellman’s two radical, innovative westerns from the mid-’60s, The Shooting and Ride In the Whirlwind, for a stunning Blu-ray double bill supported by a substantial set of special features.
Horror, action, mindless violence and exploitation: summer viewing has involved a lot of switching off my brain and watching undemanding genre movies.
Andrei Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train, although an American production, has a distinctly Russian tone in its mix of action and existential allegory.