Georges Franju’s remake of Feuillade’s silent serial Judex is a mysterious dream of a movie which evokes the silent era through beautiful surfaces and ephemeral moods.
Criterion DVD Review: Judex (1963)
Tag: Criterion
Criterion Blu-ray Review: Master of the House (1925)
Criterion introduces the great Carl Theodor Dreyer to Blue-ray with their release of his remarkable chamber drama Master of the House (1925).
Criterion Blu-ray Review: Riot In Cell Block 11 (1954)
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.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: Stanley Kramer’s struggle to be funny
Wanting to make a comedy to end all comedy, in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, serious-minded Stanley Kramer produced a bloated compendium of comedy styles which stubbornly refused to be funny.
Blu-ray Review: Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925)
Criterion follows up last year’s Safety Last! with a richly produced edition of Harold Lloyd’s biggest hit, The Freshman.
The Apprenticeship of Steven Soderbergh: King of the Hill (1993)
Criterion’s excellent edition of King of the Hill (1993) and The Underneath (1995) throws some interesting light of the development of Steven Soderbergh as a filmmaker.
The Pathology of Power:
Elio Petri’s Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Elio Petri’s 1970 masterpiece Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion provides one of the most incisive dissections of the pathology of power ever committed to film.
Year End 2013
Looking back over 2013, the most significant titles in my disk viewing have been imported from England or released by Criterion.
Haunting Classic: The Uninvited (1944)
The Uninvited (1944) was one of the first American movies to treat the ghost story seriously. Until then, ghosts were either played for comedy, or were deceptions cooked up as part of some criminal scheme, or they were used metaphorically or symbolically. But the idea that the actual spirits of the dead might linger on […]
Rossellini & Bergman: a collision of life and art
When approaching 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman, Criterion’s new 5-disk DVD edition of the first three collaborations between the Italian filmmaker and the Hollywood star, it’s difficult not to feel a certain degree of trepidation. These three films, critical and commercial failures at the time of release, now stand as something like […]
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