Tag: Studio Film Blu Ray Review
The Circle | Blu-ray Review
Indie darling James Ponsoldt experienced his first major hiccup with a swipe at the mainstream with tech thriller The Circle. Despite starring Harry Potter...
The Hunting Party (1971) | Blu-ray Review
A film as brutal as it is unapologetic in its abject misogyny, one would almost expect 1971’s The Hunting Party to be the work...
Terror in a Texas Town (1958) | Blu-ray Review
Revered as one of the premiere B film directors from the late 1930s to 1950s, Joseph H. Lewis is known to Western and noir...
Déjà vu (1985) | Blu-ray Review
A French maxim denoting a particular experience of already having seen or experienced something, the term Déjà vu reached its pop saturation point long...
Hell and High Water (1954) | Blu-ray Review
Although revered as an independent maverick and celebrated for the pronounced strangeness of his 60s classics like Shock Corridor (1963) and the delightfully perverse...
Night People (1954) | Blu-ray Review
Nunnally Johnson is best remembered as a prominent screenwriter from Hollywood’s Golden Age, having toiled through the studio era from the 1930s through the...
8 Million Ways to Die | Blu-ray Review
The only reality more mind blowing as concerns 8 Million Ways to Die, other than its unenthusiastically rendered characterizations from an sterling cast, is...
One, Two, Three | Blu-ray Review
For as progressive and refreshing as his iconic 1960 Best Picture Winner The Apartment still feels today, Billy Wilder’s 1961 follow-up One, Two, Three...
The Paradine Case | Blu-ray Review
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s neglected masterpieces is his 1947 courtroom psychodrama The Paradine Case, the director’s last contractual obligation under David O. Selznick, which...
Year of the Comet | Blu-ray Review
Revisiting Peter Yates’ 1992 romantic adventure film Year of the Comet is a bit like watching a paunchy prizefighter attempting to reclaim a past...
Criterion Collection: Woman of the Year | Blu-ray Review
“Success is no fun unless you share it with someone,” confirms a composed Fay Bainter in George Stevens’ 1942 comedy classic Woman of...
Lifeboat | Blu-ray Review
The 1940s was a fruitful decade for Alfred Hitchcock, the period in which he scored three of his five Academy Award nominations for Best...
House – Two Stories | Blu-ray
Following the success of 1980’s Friday the 13th, director Sean S. Cunningham inadvertently birthed another, less likely franchise in the mid-1980s, producing horror comedy...
A Game of Death (1945)| Blu-ray Review
Making his move from editor (Citizen Kane, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and The Magnificent Ambersons) to director in the early 1940s, Robert Wise...
Firestarter | Blu-ray Review
If there’s an enduring interest to Firestarter, the 1984 adaptation of Stephen King’s popular horror novel about a child with pyrokinetic capabilities hunted by...
23 Paces to Baker Street | Blu-Ray Review
Director Henry Hathaway is perhaps best remembered for his late period Westerns (namely some iconic John Wayne oaters, like True Grit and The Sons...
Bad Santa 2 | Blu-ray Review
The second time was not the charm for Bad Santa 2, the late staged sequel to the 2003 R-rated cult comedy directed by Terry...
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk | Blu-ray Review
Whether due to its title, subject matter, pronounced formatting, or lackluster marketing campaign, Ang Lee’s latest, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk failed to inspire...
No Highway in the Sky | Review
German import Henry Koster, like many of Hollywood’s studio directors, is not a name many remember despite having been responsible for a quite a...
Comes a Horseman | Blu-ray Review
Of the noted revisionist westerns from the New American Cinema of the 1970s, one of the most neglected is Alan J. Pakula’s 1978 title...
Criterion Collection: His Girl Friday | Blu-ray Review
When it comes to Howard Hawks, it’s easy to forget the prolific American auteur set the gold standard for a number of film genres,...
Creepshow 2 | Blu-ray Review
Fans of Stephen King, George A. Romero, horror anthology cinema and the texture of 1980s genre are familiar with 1982’s Creepshow, a riff on E.C....
Criterion Collection: One Eyed Jacks | Blu-ray Review
For too long, 1961’s One-Eyed Jacks has been a film sulking in the shadows of what could have been. An adaptation of Charles Neider’s...
Don’t Breathe | Blu-ray Review
Sony’s Screen Gems scored a bona fide box office hit with Fede Alvarez’s home invasion thriller, Don’t Breathe. Opening in late August of 2016 following...
Army of One | Blu-ray Review
As an exercise in the wrong way to formulate satire comes Larry Charles with his latest film, Army of One, a reenactment of media...
The Chase (1966) | Blu-ray Review
One of the seminal figures in the New Hollywood movement was Arthur Penn, whose 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde not only made cinematic icons...
The Night of the Grizzly (1966) | Blu-ray Review
A curious hybrid of family-friendly Western homesteader themes mixes uneasily with an animal rampage film in the cheesy oater, The Night of the Grizzly...
Boomerang! (1947) | Blu-ray Review
Elia Kazan remains one of the of the most notable and accomplished of American auteurs, whose post-WWII informed filmography provided the framework for fluctuating...
Criterion Collection: Cat People | Blu-ray Review
The concept of ‘psychological horror’ is a genre notion all but extinct in modern cinematic renderings of thriller narratives, a once lucrative subgenre considered...
Tony Rome & Lady in Cement | Blu-ray Review
Many forget Frank Sinatra, one of the most iconic vocalists to date, had an equally formidable cinematic career, ranging from the late 1940s to...
The Shallows | Blu-ray Review
Columbia’s shark thriller The Shallows, starring a comely Blake Lively perched perilously on a rock jutting out of predator infested waters, was surprisingly well-received...
Raising Cain | Blu-ray Review
Genre films dealing with multiple personality disorder (or now correctly known as dissociative identity disorder) tend to be a bit problematic, usually leaning into...
Money Monster | Blu-ray Review
Despite an incredibly rudimentary handling of themes and material more intelligently and timelessly presented decades ago, Jodie Foster’s latest directorial effort, Money Monster, is...
The Nice Guys | Blu-ray Review
Comedic neo-noir is difficult to achieve, not unlike a recent trend of popular hybrids sporting humor and horror as freely interchangeable elements, resulting in...
Eleni | Blu-ray Review
The 1980s were a bit of a rough transitional period for British import Peter Yates, who maintained a vibrant stride through a filmography jumpstarted...
Rawhide | Blu-ray Review
As the popular idiom goes, ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ which can be used to explain the disenchantment surrounding countless films across multiple periods, wherein there...
The Russia House | Blu-ray Review
Espionage thrillers remain a lucrative cinematic staple, as evidenced by continued adaptations of Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, and the enduring legacy of the iconic...
The Member of the Wedding | Blu-ray Review
Carson McCullers remains one of the greatest unsung talents of American literature, her significant oeuvre dripping with Southern Gothic, and (as is equally the...
The Boss | Blu-ray Review
Although it wasn’t the incredible runaway success of other recent Melissa McCarthy vehicles (it cost a little more and made a little less than...
The Brothers Grimsby | Blu-ray Review
Not even the promise of a highly touted pachyderm gang bang was enough to generate box office appeal for Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest vehicle,...
Rollercoaster | Blu-ray Review
How curious it feels to watch the 1977 dramatic thriller Rollercoaster in today’s contemporary climate of terrorized public places, where mass gatherings have increasingly...
Hail, Caesar! | Blu-ray Review
Premiering stateside just prior to opening the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival,Hail, Caesar! the Coen Bros. parody of studio era Hollywood, took home around...
Manhunter | Blu-ray Review
As far as serial killer iconicity goes, Thomas Harris’ fictional villain Hannibal Lecter has permeated the pop zeitgeist more than his most famous real-life...
I Could Go On Singing | Blu-ray Review
Ronald Neame’s I Could Go On Singing has an un-calculated yet complementary finality to it since it would become the last cinematic venture for...
Triple 9 | Blu-ray Review
Following the relative disappointment of his 2012 Western Lawless, John Hillcoat scored a pulpy comeback with heist thriller Triple 9, even though it only recouped...
Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying All These Terrible Things About Me? | Blu-ray Review
Though he’s still best known for his considerable resume as a director of the stage, Ulu Grosbard formulated a sporadic yet significant filmography in...
Anastasia | Blu-ray Review
Soviet import Anatole Litvak is perhaps best remembered for his significant contributions to cinema throughout the 1930s and 1940s, where he fled Germany and...
Criterion Collection: Barcelona | Blu-ray Review
Criterion resurrects Whit Stillman’s 1994 sophomore film, Barcelona, previously the indie auteur’s most neglected title and heretofore unavailable on DVD. Breaking a fourteen year...
The Holcraft Covenant | Blu-ray Review
Prior to the success of the Jason Bourne franchise, which kicked off with Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity in 2012, (a fifth entry in...
Village of the Damned [Collector’s Edition] | Blu-ray Review
Without a doubt, director John Carpenter has left an ineradicable imprint in our cinematic subconscious, playing a hand in the creation of several major...
