I’ve been revisiting some familiar movies in upgraded editions, with new transfers and extras; some I haven’t seen in years, even decades, They run the gamut from horror to comedy, thrillers to superheroes, zombies and monsters.
A pair of made-in-Germany genre-bending thrillers are well-served by excellent Blu-ray editions: Sam Fuller’s Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1972) from Olive Films and Wolf Gremm’s Kamikaze ’89 (1982) from Film Movement.
While Mario Bava paved the way for Italian horror, directors who followed him pushed the limits of violence, foremost among them Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.
Quentin Tarantino has formidable filmmaking skills, rooted in his deep knowledge of movies famously acquired during his years as a video store clerk. His ability to create images, to build fluid visual progressions and elaborate displays of action, is complemented by a savant’s dazzling knack for exhilaratingly wordy dialogue rich in non-narrative tangents and the […]
It’s 1979 and blithely charming narcissist Rex Romanski (Michael Reed) spots sultry Rita Marie (Ruth Sullivan) across the disco floor. Dancing inevitably leads to hot sex and they meet up at the club again the next night. But Rex’s eye is already roaming and he makes contact with the woman of his dreams, pornstar Amoreena […]
