Tag: Studio Film Blu Ray Review
Cowboy | Blu-ray Review
Director Delmer Daves contributed several exemplary Westerns during the 1950s, including Broken Arrow (1950), Jubal (1956) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957), which was remade...
The Criterion Collection: The Manchurian Candidate | Blu-ray Review
As we go through another round of sensationalized presidential campaigns with various candidates claiming altruism in the name of power, John Frankenheimer's classic political thriller The...
The Sicilian (Director’s Cut) | Blu-Ray Review
Conversations on the intense and onerous auteur Michael Cimino tend to target his earlier career, particularly his iconic sophomore film The Deer Hunter (1978)...
The Boost | Blu-Ray Review
Greed is not so good for the hustling couple at the center of The Boost, Harold Becker’s late 80s portrait of excess, addiction and...
The Red House | Blu-ray Review
Director and screenwriter Delmer Daves is perhaps best remembered today for directing the seminal film noir Dark Passage (1947), which utilized a unique first...
The Big Heat | Blu-ray Review
Twilight Time releases the encore version of the essential film noir masterpiece, The Big Heat. Fritz Lang has a number of notable titles in...
Cop | Blu-ray Review
Producer and director James B. Harris has a limited yet incredibly prolific filmography featuring a number of interesting items. Initially a producer for Stanley...
The Challenge | Blu-ray Review
John Frankenheimer ended a three year hiatus following his 1979 environmental horror/creature feature Prophecy with a commendable martial-arts effort, The Challenge (1982). Starring Scott...
Donovan’s Brain | Blu-ray Review
Both of the Siodmak brothers made indelible contributions to genre filmmaking, particularly Robert Siodmak’s sterling film noir titles. His brother, Curt Siodmak was more...
Class | Blu-ray Review
A prolific screenwriter who emerged from the late 1970s as a promising American film director, Lewis John Carlino wouldn’t get behind the camera following...
Crimson Peak | Blu-ray Review
Unfortunately, Guillermo Del Toro’s original Gothic romance Crimson Peak didn’t translate to box office gold, netting thirty one million at the domestic box office...
Kansas City Confidential | Blu-ray Review
After falling into the public domain, Phil Karlson’s 1952 film noir Kansas City Confidential became unfairly lumped into B-grade bracket, a disservice considering the...
Criterion Collection: Inside Llewyn Davis | Blu-ray Review
Anyone who's ever had their musical ambitions crushed by the ever oppressive forces of real life will find a great sense of empathy within...
The Detective | Blu-ray Review
Director Gordon Douglas is one of many prolific filmmakers who seemed to fall short of auteur recognition despite considerable iconic items lodged within a...
The Captive City | Blu-ray Review
Two obscure Robert Wise titles reach Blu-ray release this month, both direct follow-ups to some of the auteur’s more iconic works. First up is...
The Bat | Blu-Ray Review
The Film Detective Archives refurbishes the forgotten 1959 film version of The Bat, an adaptation of a play by Depression era mystery writer...
Sicario | Blu-ray Review
French Canadian auteur Denis Villeneuve scores another box office hit with critically acclaimed Sicario. The rare genre item to have had a successful premiere as a...
Broken Lance | Blu-ray Review
Director Edward Dmytryk, one of the infamous Hollywood Ten blacklisted by McCarthy and his goons in 1947 Hollywood, debuted the most famous title in...
You Can’t Take it with You | Blu-ray Review
Frank Capra’s 1938 film You Can’t Take it with You utilizes its titular expression as eloquently as Thomas Wolfe would wield his two years...
Love at Large | Blu-ray Review
Writer/director Alan Rudolph is still inextricably linked to Robert Altman, his mentor and eventual producer for several of Rudolph’s own features. Having served as...
Criterion Collection: Downhill Racer | Blu-ray Review
The Hollywood sports drama has long been an indubitable cinematic staple, albeit a genre trapped in its own particular movements and formulaic flourishes. Tendencies...
The Legacy | Blu-Ray Review
You may not directly recall the name of director Richard Marquand, though in many ways he’s a notable director from the 1980s thanks to...
Lisa | Blu-Ray Review
Director Gary Sherman is perhaps best remembered for his cult titles Raw Meat (1972) and Dead & Buried (1981), or maybe for his franchise...
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? | Blu-ray Review
Like many of Stanley Kramer’s once incredibly topical titles, the iconic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? seems incredibly dated by today’s standards, even if...
House of Bamboo | Blu-ray Review
Twilight Time brings Sam Fuller’s exotic 1955 color noir House of Bamboo to Blu-ray, a resplendently colorful film and the first major US production...
Mad Max: Fury Road | Blu-ray Review
Every so often, and in increasingly rare numbers, a big budget Hollywood extravaganza comes along and negates the crushing conditioned cynicism built into our...
The Hunger |Blu-ray Review
Roundly dismissed upon its release by critics in 1983, Tony Scott’s classy, stylish art-house vampire film The Hunger arrives on Blu-ray as a demure...
Nomads | Blu-ray Review
The directorial debut of the once revered action auteur John McTiernan comes to Blu-ray release, a little known cult favorite known as Nomads. Considering...
Criterion Collection: The French Lieutenant’s Woman | Blu-ray Review
In the decades since its premiere, The French Lieutenant’s Woman is now most commonly discussed for its placement in the extensive awards resume of...
Foreign Intrigue | Blu-ray Review
These days, the American movie going public is quite accustomed to seeing major motion picture based on a prior television series, as well as...
The People Under the Stairs | Blu-ray Review
Throughout a very prolific and sometimes uneven career as an incredibly notable genre filmmaker, Wes Craven’s aesthetic often grapples with issues of revenge and...
He Ran All the Way | Blu-ray Review
A prototype of what would come to be familiarly known as the home invasion thriller, 1951's He Ran All the Way is also an important...
Monte Walsh | Blu-ray Review
Despite it being the directorial debut of five times Oscar nominated cinematographer William A. Fraker, 1970’s revisionist Western Monte Walsh isn’t as well remembered...
King of the Gypsies | Blu-ray Review
A forgotten gem of the late 1970s comes to Blu-ray for the first time, Frank Pierson’s adaptation of the novel King of the Gypsies....
Report to the Commissioner | Blu-ray Review
Another forgotten gem from the mid-1970s receiving a new Blu-ray treatment is 1975’s Report to the Commissioner, a textured police procedural examining changing social...
Criterion Collection: The Fisher King | Blu-ray Review
It’s hard to believe something like 1991’s The Fisher King was a studio backed effort. An anomaly both as a mainstream cinematic event and...
Jupiter Ascending | Blu-ray Review
Premiering as the 'secret screening' at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival shortly before its theatrical premiere, the latest sci-fi extravaganza from the Wachowskis opened...
Criterion Collection: Make Way For Tomorrow | Blu-Ray Review
One can’t ignore a certain irony that Leo McCarey, director of one of the most irrefutably sorrowful motion pictures with 1937’s Make Way For...
Inherent Vice | Blu-ray Review
Receiving a mixture of raves, polite applause, and a handful of outright naysayers, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest concoction Inherent Vice comes to Blu-ray for...
The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies | Blu-Ray Review
Hovering just under one billion dollars in worldwide gross, the final installment of Peter Jackson’s prequel trilogy, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies...
Wild Orchid | Blu-ray Review
Well before the mainstream fascination with the soft-core sexual sensibilities of Fifty Shades of Grey, one of the more notable alums of such boundary...
The Night They Raided Minsky’s | Blu-ray Review
Following his directorial debut, the 1967 Sonny and Cher vignette flick Good Times, director William Friedkin struggled through a couple of projects before landing...
The Missouri Breaks | Blu-ray Review
Arthur Penn’s notorious, arguably ‘revisionist’ Western The Missouri Breaks makes it to Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber, with packaging that keeps the film’s initial...
Gone Girl | Blu-ray Review
Arriving on Blu-ray just prior to the Academy announces its nominations, where the film is sure to pick up some nominations despite going home...
Working Girl | Blu-ray Review
Arriving for the first time on Blu-ray is the 1988 classic gender politics rom-com Working Girl. Famous for giving us Melanie Griffith her most...
Inherit The Wind | Blu-ray Review
Having finally found acclaim as a writer/director with critical successes like The Defiant Ones (1958) after a brief period serving as a producer for...
Witness to Murder | Blu-ray Review
Available for the first time on Blu-ray or DVD and remastered in high definition is forgotten film noir Witness to Murder, a 1954 Barbara...
Criterion Collection: It Happened One Night | Blu-ray Review
Winner of five Oscars, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night remains an outstanding entertainment, and a touchstone of Hollywood’s most enduring cinematic genre: the...
Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut | Blu-ray Review
Back in 1990, just prior to its release, 20th Century Fox recut Nightbreed drastically, attempting to shift its somewhat progressive, fantastical subtext into the...
The First Power | Blu-ray Review
Kino Lorber releases 1990 supernatural cop thriller The First Power on Blu-ray this month, though time has been nothing but unkind to the film’s B-movie tropes...
