Three fascinating rediscovered movies suggest once again that the demise of DVD and Blu-ray isn’t happening anytime soon, even if the major distributors are shying away from the format; passionate smaller boutique companies are keeping it alive for those of us who who still care.
A mixed bag of recently viewed disks, from an obscure, poetic black-an-white drama to a garishly perverse piece of Greek exploitation, with some gialli and Japanese sci-fi animation thrown in.
Kids and monsters, kids in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and a couple of cousins from Israel who tried to take over Hollywood in the ’80s: all help to take one’s mind off the tedious last days of winter.
Criterion make available Edward Yang’s legendary, little-seen masterpiece of the New Taiwanese Cinema, A Bright Summer Day, in a superb 2-disk extras-rich Blu-ray edition.
Britain’s Network are releasing a lot of previously hard to find movies on disk. Two new Blu-rays, Peter Yates’ Robbery and Val Guest’s 80,000 Suspects, resurrect a couple of interesting titles from the ’60s.
A new Blu-ray makes Philip Ridley’s elusive feature The Reflecting Skin available in a beautifully restored edition which includes several excellent supplements, including an illuminating commentary, a lengthy making-of documentary, and both if Ridley’s early short films.
Criterion releases a superb Blu-ray edition of Jan Troell’s 2-part epic about poor Swedish farmers looking for a new life in the US in the mid-19th Century.
Twilight Time revive Gordon Douglas’ The Detective starring Frank Sinatra and Michael Winner’s Scorpio starring Burt Lancaster, a couple of largely forgotten movies from the late ’60s and early ’70s in editions which highlight their interest as time capsules of attitudes and filmmaking styles which have since all but disappeared; and revisit Mysterious Island, one of Ray Harryhausen’s better movies, with a new edition featuring some interesting supplements.
Despite facing a seemingly unending barrage of derision, M. Night Shyamalan continues to put out fine, underrated movies: The Visit is one of his best.
Giuseppe De Santis’ Bitter Rice (1949) expands the possibilities of neo-realism by incorporating elements of melodrama and film noir into the lives of women working in the rice fields of northern Italy.