In 1978, a band I was working with was recording an album at A & R Studios in New York City. In the studio was the keyboard called a Mellotron….
DVD Reviews
310 Articles
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
By the early 80s Robert Altman was at an impasse in Hollywood. The success of MASH (1970) and Nashville (1975) was mitigated by numerous critical and/or financial flops, including Quintet…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
Some stage plays and musicals are adapted into films. Others are simply filmed. That would seem to be the easier gig—but if you’ve suffered through one where the camera never…
Dw. Dunphy
1 Min Read
How close is close enough? That was the question that kept coming to my mind after checking out Universal/Focus’ DVD release for their early fall film, 9. While the press…
Dw. Dunphy
1 Min Read
Spoiler Alert: Some key jokes of this release will be discussed. If you intend to view this DVD, you might want to consider avoiding the rest of this review. A…
Dw. Dunphy
1 Min Read
Flint Lockwood is a good inventor with poor judgment. He can make spray-on shoes and a monkey-English translator, but why? Even when he hits upon a useful invention, it all…
Dw. Dunphy
1 Min Read
Cinematic Titanic is the banner name for comedy writers Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl and J. Elvis Weinstein, all formerly of the cult television series Mystery…
Ken Shane
3 Min Read
In June of 1967, the Zombies entered EMI’s Abbey Road studios to record their masterpiece, Odessey & Oracle. Earlier that year, the Beatles had recorded their own masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper,…
Bob Cashill
5 Min Read
“The best seasonal film of all time. I wish I had kids. I’d make them watch it every year and if they didn’t like it, they’d be punished.” –John Waters…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
The received wisdom was that the even-numbered entries in the pre-reboot Star Trek series were better than the odd-numbered ones. That held up, too, until the 10th and final one…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
I reviewed The Hangover when it was a big hit in June, then watched as it snowballed into a phenomenon. It’s the fourth top-grossing movie of 2009 to date and…
Ken Shane
2 Min Read
It should come as no surprise that the members of Roxy Music spent time in art school. The band’s interests went far beyond creating the seminal music for which they…
Bob Cashill
8 Min Read
The ”Golden Age of Television” is roughly defined as that period from the early 50s to the very early 60s when productions broadcast live captivated millions of viewers. As the…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Someone at Columbia Pictures has it in for us. Besides the demolition derby of 2012 the studio also recently released the end-of-the-Earth horror comedy Zombieland and Angels & Demons, whose…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
The Criterion Collection has an agreement with IFC Films to put some of its more noteworthy acquisitions on DVD, and so we have Matteo Garrone’s outstanding Gomorrah. I reviewed the…
Ken Shane
1 Min Read
Let’s begin with the facts. Motown: The DVD contains 18 vintage clips of Motown artists performing some of their best known songs. Only five of the 18 are actually live…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
After a more than a decade in Hollywood 33-year-old Robert Redford broke through as a major star in 1969’s smash hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But he had…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
The extras-rich Criterion Collection version of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987) is perfectly timed to seize the moment. The subject of the film is dividing lines—between fallible humans and…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Quick—what won Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards? If you recalled Departures, from Japan, take a bow. Like most foreign film winners, the movie was pretty much forgotten…
Ken Shane
1 Min Read
Can you remember 1992? I certainly can, and what I remember is that trash TV — and to some extent, even the mainstream media — was filled with stories about…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Movie ballyhoo is in good shape this Halloween season. The made-for-$10,000 Paranormal Activity has become a runaway hit, thanks to clever Internet marketing. ”Chaos reigns” T-shirts are being hawked (or…
Scott Malchus
1 Min Read
There seem to be two camps of people when it comes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: those who feel that rock and roll deserves a permanent place…
Scott Malchus
1 Min Read
The Brothers Bloom is the second feature film from writer/director Rian Johnson. His first, the high school film noir cult classic, Brick, revealed a promising filmmaker with a fluent style…
Jack Feerick
1 Min Read
Braving untold depths of epic spiritual misery, Jack Feerick has ventured into the fetid hole that is Dragonball: Evolution. Dear God, how bad can it be?
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Michelle Pfeiffer was an Academy Award nominee for Stephen FrearsÁ¢€â„¢ Dangerous Liaisons (1988), for which screenwriter Christopher Hampton took home a statuette. But I donÁ¢€â„¢t expect literary adaptation lightning to…
Scott Malchus
1 Min Read
An Audience of One (2009, Indiepix) Purchase this DVD from Amazon or from Indiepix At age 40, Richard Gozawsky, a San Francisco Pentecostal pastor at one of those houses of…
Scott Malchus
1 Min Read
The Proposal (2009, Touchstone) purchase from Amazon: Deluxe DVD Edition | Blu-ray Sandra Bullock is at the top of her game and Ryan Reynolds gives one of his best performances…
Scott Malchus
1 Min Read
I can understand why fans of the character Wolverine and his band of misunderstood mutants, the X-Men, were disappointed with this film. Sure, the movie has some kick-ass action sequences,…
Jeff Giles
1 Min Read
It’s the most-watched film in history, and unless you’re an extremely unusual person, you’ve seen it more times than you can count — but The Wizard of Oz still somehow…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Writer/director David Mamet and co-star William H. Macy have a good time reminiscing on the commentary track that accompanies the Criterion Collection edition of Homicide (1991). This Á¢€Å“cop movie that…