Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD from 2011 and earlier.
Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd
A.J. Hakari @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: …a bowl of slapsticky mush with barely any flavorful lumps…
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
A.J. Hakari @ Classic Movie Guide
- Excerpt: …it’s endearing, has chuckles to spare, and – fortunately, for monster buffs – is mindful of its supernatural menagerie.
Avalon (2001)
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
The Big Circus
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee Coffee and more Coffee
The Boston Strangler
Cleopatra
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast [Greek]
Confession (1937)
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Crazy in Alabama
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: With its sluggish pace and awkward continuity, Crazy in Alabama ended up as one of the most disappointing films of 1999.
The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection:
- Excerpt: Deliberately paced, dramatically scored by Ernest Gold (whose music comes to abrupt stops at times), and strikingly composed, Harrington’s older shorts are trippy and seemingly substantial. At the same time, they are a series of strange, unsettling, logic-defying visions whose meaning is not apparent.
Fantastic Planet
- Excerpt: …a treasure trove of cosmic visuals…
Fear and Desire
A.J. Hakari @ Classic Movie Guide
- Excerpt: Imperfect as it is, “Fear and Desire” is a solid film with signs of the legend Kubrick would become proudly on display.
Forbidden Hollywood: Vol. 7
- Excerpt: Vintage movie junkies and completists will want to swipe this to fill up shelf space in a heartbeat…
The Great Love
Andrew Wyatt @ Gateway Cinephile
- Excerpt: Pierre Étaix’s The Great Love feels truly special, like a hardy hybrid species that blends together the best qualities of its forebears with novel new features.
The Greatest Show on Earth
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: Frankly, I don’t understand the hatred thrown at The Greatest Show on Earth. It should not have won Best Picture, but I found it to be a big, lavish, epic spectacle in the way only Cecil B. DeMille could make big, lavish, epic spectacles.
The Howling
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
The Hunger
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: As good a horror film in the most pure, rarefied sense of “horror” that the ’80s produced in English.
Marketa Lazarova
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: … 165 minutes of primal black and white imagery, poetic filmmaking, and ephemeral storytelling that looks hewn out of the stone and wood and the very earth of the ground beneath.
Medium Cool
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast [Greek]
Monsters, Inc.
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: [A] fixedly sweet bedtime story and exercise in imaginative possibility.
Nick Carter Mysteries Triple Feature
A.J. Hakari @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: None of the flicks it boasts are by any means terrible, but with intricate plotting as scarce as reasons to be invested in our hero, “competent” is the best this trio can hope for.
L’Oevre Au Noir
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Of Human Bondage
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Paris Is Burning
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Phliladelphia
Matthew Lucas @ From the Front Row
- Excerpt: Philadelphia is a much more humanistic film than Silence, an optimistic film that takes a pretty standard courtroom drama structure and makes it into something gripping and ultimately moving.
The Pit
Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: The 97-minute running time seem every bit of 20 minutes longer than the filmmakers were ready for.
Rio Rita (1942)
A.J. Hakari @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: The flick is thin, quick, and easy to watch, but it’s not relentlessly goofy, leaving your face smiling more so than your eyes rolling.
Safety Last
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: Forgotten in the cascade of sight gags set against the danger of the climb is the workplace comedy of the first half.
Safety Last
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Scum
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast [Greek]
Superman: The Movie
Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators.com
- Excerpt: In the wake of Man of Steel, here’s a look at the condescending film that started it all!
Toys in the Attic
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: It seems lazy and obvious to describe ‘Toys in the Attic’ as 50% ‘Toy Story,’ 50% Jan Svankmajer, but that’s exactly the way it plays out.
Upstream
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast [Greek]
Wagon Master
Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast [Greek]
Wild Strawberries
Sean Axmaker @ Turner Classic Movies
- Excerpt: … an often painful drama but one of Bergman’s warmest and most touching films.