England’s Arrow Video, while still largely focusing on genre titles, is rapidly becoming the equal of the BFI and Criterion in the quality of their releases, including extensive, informative supplements on many disks.
The consequences of one man’s decision in Steven Knight’s Locke outweigh the fate of the world in Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow.
Warners, once in the forefront of quality disk supplements, now more often releases bare bones titles even when the movies cry out for commentaries and documentaries to illuminate their importance.
Twilight Time has become one of the most notable boutique labels over the past couple of years; with each title limited to 3000 units, collectors feel a sense of urgency with every new release. Available only through the Screen Archives Entertainment website which specializes in movie soundtracks, Twilight Time’s initial focus was on the music, […]
Criterion offers a strong presentation of Don Siegel’s breakout movie, Riot In Cell Block 11 (1954), a powerful docudrama which avoids all prison movie cliches.
Continuing a review of the past month’s disk viewing; contemporary and classic thrillers, Czech animation, British cult TV, and a French dream of New York.
The mid-’60s television series Combat! remains an impressively serious treatment of “men in war”, owing a great deal to such late WW2 features as A Walk in the Sun, They Were Expendable, and Battleground. An excellent cast, supported by notable guest stars, and some major writers and directors made this one of the best shows of its era.
A lot of my movie viewing is genre based. My appreciation of familiar forms and variations goes back to childhood, when fantasy, horror and science fiction first appealed to me. Mysteries and thrillers came a bit later, for some reason – maybe because they’re at least to some degree rooted more in reality than imagination. […]
While Death Hunt is an enjoyable outdoor adventure, it plays fast & loose with history, transforming northern Canada into a facsimile of the American west
I’ve been a fan of Shintaro Katsu’s series of films about Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, since I came across Home Vision Entertainment’s DVD editions of the first two, The Tale of Zatoichi and The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (both 1962) many years ago in the video department of Winnipeg’s long-gone A&B Sound. I was grabbed […]