The comedy Small Apartments and the magical realist comedy-drama Chicken With Plums, out now on DVD, walk the line between narrative coherency and surrealism, even though both are grounded in the real world.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Blu-ray/DVD Reviews
Cyril is an 11-year-old boy who refuses to believe that his father has just up and left him, even going so far as selling his sole possession — the bicycle his father gave him. An active camera darts around, projecting Cyril’s kinetic energy and his unwillingness to be contained, until he’s exactly where he wants to be.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Kill For Me devolves into a series of twists, each more inexplicable and illogical than the last, as Hailey’s true motives become harder to discern as she goes to extreme lengths to blackmail her roommate and lover into helping Hailey seduce and kill her abusive father
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Ivan’s Childhood was Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky’s first feature-length film. A poetic journey through the life of a young child scarred by war, the film has only grown in stature since its 1962 release, with filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieślowski naming it as a prime influences on their work.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
A movie this complicated, this layered, and this far-out absolutely deserves a full-on DVD/Blu-ray package chock full of informative extras that illuminate the themes from the film.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Co-written by and starring Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones, Celeste and Jesse Forever is a romantic comedy that starts out with the premise that most romcoms ends with — and works backwards.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Two 2012 films that should have gotten more attention in their theatrical releases (the cop drama ‘End of Watch’ and Woody Allen’s ‘To Rome With Love’) are out now on Blu-ray.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Universal probably wanted an exciting film filled with fast cars and faster women that would match up with their souped-up tagline for the movie: “Their lives begin at 140 m.p.h.!” What they got was a quiet, existential masterpiece that has turned into a bonafide cult classic.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
‘The Tin Drum’ is a fascinating blend of magical realism and black comedy, all told from the point of view of a super-intelligent three-year old boy in Danzig, Poland who realizes the ridiculousness and futility of adulthood at a young age and refuses to grow older.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The movie isn’t very scary, but it does pile a bunch of really tasteless twists on towards the end that make no sense and it almost becomes a comedy.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
As the musical version of Les Miserables hits the big screen, Eric has a review of the 1998 non-musical movie of Les Miserables starring Liam Neeson, and the latest Resident Evil movie, both new on DVD and Blu-ray now.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Clément presents the devious and seemingly amoral Tom Ripley (a star-making turn from Alain Delon) with a huge amount of ambiguity concerning his motives. Minghella’s movie (with Matt Damon in the title role) went more into the detail and backstory of Highsmith’s book, while Clément makes Ripley seem more quiet, distant, and dangerous.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Two action movies from this summer have found their way to Blu-ray and DVD, and their budgets are in reverse proportion to their quality. Here’s my Blu-ray and DVD reviews.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Besides the similarities in playing with time and structure (see also The Prestige and Inception), in Following, Nolan is already zeroed in on his favorite cinematic theme: obsession.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The movie is shot from a five-year-old’s point of view, so everything has a magical, dream-like quality to it. You’ve seen tales of courage before, but never one told with such an original, focused eye on the person telling it. By the time ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ is over, you may be hypnotized by its strange beauty and individualism, even as you feel the tragic depth of Hushpuppy’s situation.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }