Women in Trouble is yet another L.A. ensemble movie in which various strangers intersect on one day and all lives are altered in some way. This film is unique in…
DVD review
213 Articles
Ken Shane
2 Min Read
“To live now, as human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” Howard Zinn (1922-2010) In these days of sneering…
Scott Malchus
5 Min Read
With the NBA All Star Game behind us and March Madness just around the bend, two new DVD releases about basketball should keep all you round ball junkies appeased when…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
Solid craftsmanship disguises some rickety timber in The House of the Devil. Writer/director/editor Ti West says in one of the DVD’s two commentary tracks that he had Polanski and Kubrick…
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
Roberto Rossellini’s status as a father of neorealism is eclipsed by his notoriety as the father of Isabella Rossellini. His adulterous affair with Ingrid Bergman in the 50s touched off…
Scott Malchus
1 Min Read
”Everything I thought was one way turns out to be another.” I don’t proclaim myself to be a huge fan of the work of Joel and Ethan Coen, the writer/director/producer…
Scott Malchus
3 Min Read
In the film, Adam¸ we first meet Adam as he watches his father’s casket get buried. For the first time in his life, he is alone. He returns home and…
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
1984 was a great year for foreign-language and independent cinema in the U.S. Off the top of my head I can recall seeing the following at Chicago’s Fine Arts Theater,…
Scott Malchus
3 Min Read
Within the first fifteen minutes of the film The Boys Are Back, sports journalist Joe Warr (Clive Owen) watches his wife, Katy, succumb to cancer in a series of heartbreaking…
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
Giant insects were all the rage in the nuclear-obsessed 50s—the king-sized ants of Them! (1954) led to an all-out assault of creepy-crawlies, with Tarantula (1955), The Black Scorpion (1957), The…
Scott Malchus
2 Min Read
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (available today on DVD) should have been Ferris Bueller, the corrupt college years. Based on the exploits of successful blogger/author/self proclaimed asshole, Tucker…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
You’d think that with all the miracles that CGI is capable of someone in Hollywood would figure out what to do with Bruce Willis’ hair. In Surrogates, out today on…
Ken Shane
2 Min Read
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….
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
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
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…
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…
Ken Shane
1 Min Read
I have to admit to being a little bit torn about this one. Our friends at Shout Factory generally do a great job in bringing us the best of pop…
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…