Blood & Chocolate (Sony) Breach (Universal) The Cecil B. DeMille Classics Collection (Passport) Deadwood: The Complete Third Season (HBO) 52 Pick-Up (MGM) Ghost Rider (Sony) The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: Season Two (Universal) Hellboy: Blood & Iron (Anchor Bay) James Stewart: Screen Legend Collection (Universal) Jesse Stone: Night Passage…
Lowest Common Denominator-ism writ large and engraved in stone like the Ten Commandments according to Cecil B. DeMille, the Hollywood blockbuster is often an allegory for itself. Walt Disney, the notoriously litigious studio that successfully changed the nation’s copyright laws to protect its trademark Mickey Mouse but more recently declared,…
The cash-cow flippered ones rise again, this time as yellow-tufted surfer dudes riding the waves of life off the coast of an island that looks like a cross between Hawaii and Venice Beach. If you have to see another penguin blockbuster, you could do worse than this loose-limbed charmer written…
The 60th cannes Film Festival was a generous one — and so was its jury, bestowing the Palme d’Or on the least heralded, most critically acclaimed movie in an unusually strong competition, namely Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Mungiu’s skillfully directed, superbly acted account…
The Coen brothers’ pulpy, ultimately pretentious neo-Western No Country for Old Men screened early in the Cannes Film Festival and by the end had maintained its standing as the most widely approved Yankee feature to bow here since Pulp Fiction (though it didn’t win any awards). Once again, the appeal…
Last weekend, as Jerry Bruckheimer’s pirates were once again storming the international box office, the Cannes Film Festival (May 16-27) bestowed its two top prizes on a gut-wrenching Romanian movie about backroom abortion and a plaintive Japanese drama about a sad old man who wants to dig his own grave…
There is a moment early on in “Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers,” the 14th episode of the brilliant but canceled television series Freaks and Geeks, in which gangly, bespectacled, picked-last-in-gym-class high school freshman Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) arrives home from school, makes himself a grilled cheese sandwich, and sits down…
“I think the public doesn’t care about reviews,” says Eli Roth, writer-director of Hostel Part II, which — surprise! — isn’t being shown to the press before it opens Friday on more than 2,500 screens. Still, the 35-year-old perpetrator of high-grossing “torture porn” does appreciate critical kindness when he sees…
The Sergio Leone Anthology (MGM) Sergio Leone made westerns like Wagner made ditties. This essential box set — four films with four discs of supplemental material, much of it scholarly and insightful — shows the Italian director supplanting the elegiac Monument Valley iconography of John Ford with a darker, ruder,…
The Abyss: Special Edition (Fox) The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Extra Frills Edition (MGM) Bruce Springsteen With the Sessions Band: Live in Dublin (Sony) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: A Re-Imagining of the 1919 Masterpiece of Horror (Image) CHiPs: The Complete First Season (Turner) Coming to America:…
And so Disney’s immense, booty-busting, pro-piracy epic has come to an End. I doubt very much that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is, in fact, the last we’ll be seeing of Capt. Jack Sparrow and, you know, all of those other people. How could it be? Treasure remains…
Hannibal Rising (Weinstein) Pointless beyond belief, Hannibal Rising serves more as a cautionary tale than horror story. Made for $50 mil, the movie pocketed half that during its U.S. run and likely wound up in the red — an appropriate adios for a franchise starring a peripheral character better served…
Above the Law (Genius) The Andy Griffith Show: Complete Series Collection (Paramount) Big Train: Seasons One and Two (BBC Warner) Biography: Legends of the Silver Screen (A&E) Circle of Iron: 2-Disc Special Edition (Blue Underground) The Closer: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Drive Thru (Lionsgate) The Foursome (Universal) Free…
The most volatile, least easily psychoanalyzed of Seventies auteurs in Peter Biskind’s classic New Hollywood tell-all Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, William Friedkin may have mellowed since unleashing The Exorcist, sliding into box-office hell, and marrying a major studio boss. Indeed the recovering bad-boy movie brat — now 71 years old,…
You could make a case that any movie in which Mexicans and rednecks become best of friends is a net positive for society. But to do that you’d have to ignore the severe boredom that sets in about halfway through this comedy — a Three Amigos with fewer laughs —…
Porky’s: The Ultimate Collection (Fox) When writer-director Bob Clark was killed by a drunk driver in April, the obits trumpeted his holiday classic A Christmas Story . . . but were somewhat reluctant to mention that, oh, yeah, he also wrote and directed Porky’s. But there’s no question which is…
Afro Samurai (Funimation) Airwolf: Season Three (Universal) Alone With Her (IFC) Breaking Point (Fox) The Complete Matrix Trilogy (Warner Bros.) Epic Movie (Fox) Escape to Canada (Disinformation) Fay Grim (Magnolia) The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Unrated 2-Disc Double Your Pleasure Edition (Universal) The Good German (Warner Bros.) The John Wayne Collection (Paramount)…
Impossible though it is to watch Adrienne Shelly’s posthumously released comedy without thinking of the actress-writer-director’s gruesome murder last November (the indie stalwart was killed by a construction worker in her New York office), it’s unclear what kind of notice Waitress would have received had she not died such an…
Army of Shadows: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Arthur & the Invisibles (Genius) Bill/Bill on His Own (Brentwood) Bunny Whipped (Think) Caddyshack: 20th Anniversary (Warner Bros.) Chasing Liberty (Warner Bros.) Curse of the Zodiac (Lionsgate) The Dead Girl (First Look) Denzel Washington: Spotlight Collection (Universal) ER: The Complete Seventh Season (Warner…
Pan’s Labyrinth (New Line) Guillermo Del Toro has made a career of mixing slam-bang special effects (Hellboy, Blade II) with creepy atmospheres (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone). But with Pan’s Labyrinth, he’s used his entire palette for what will likely be remembered as his masterpiece. Mixing Franco’s Spain with fairy tales,…
Coming out of Shrek the Third, I asked the two smart preteen girls I had in tow what they had liked about the picture. Projectile vomiting and multiple farts, they said promptly, best Shrek ever. Ordinarily I’m not big on poop and flatulence, but in this instance I sympathized —…
Who knows how many bottles of Francis Ford Coppola’s Directors’ Cut Pinot Noir it would take to forget that the virtuoso who made the Godfather saga was also responsible for the sentimental embarrassment known as Jack, starring Robin Williams at his self-indulgent, man-childish worst? Thankfully, though, Coppola’s days of driving…
