Classics & More on DVD (Feb. 29, 2016)

Here are our latest reviews of films on DVD.

Reviews of Classic Films

Andrei Rublev

Hugo Gomes @ Cinematograficamente Falando … [Portuguese]

Annie Hall (1977)

Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan

• Excerpt: Annie Hall is a good film, a bit dated now perhaps, a trifle too intellectual for some I imagine, but on the whole, not a bad time. Maybe it even Seems Like Old Times…

The Bed Sitting Room

Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies

• Excerpt: This absurd anxiety nightmare about the Bomb could only have come out of the Swinging Sixties; it’s one of the weirder relics of an era when filmmakers felt it was their patriotic duty to laugh in the face of the imminent apocalypse.

Braveheart

Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan

• Excerpt: Braveheart is one of these historic films that doesn’t bother itself with historical accuracy if it gets in the way of a good dramatic moment. If however, we focus on Braveheart’s message, then it becomes a rousing spectacle.

Criss Cross

Kristen Lopez @ Journeys in Classic Film

Dragon Inn

James Marsh @ Twitchfilm.com

• Excerpt: Considered by many to be the architect of wuxia cinema, King Hu was to martial arts was John Ford was to the western. Beginning with his 1966 Shaw Brothers adventure Come Drink With Me, Hu took a pulp genre associated with little more than cheap entertainment and period adventures, and fashioned from it some of the industry’s most revered and enduring cinematic offerings. Read more: http://twitchfilm.com/2015/12/learning-from-the-masters-of-cinema-king-hus-dragon-inn.html#ixzz41AHib8vu

Farewell, My Lovely

Henry Stewart @ Brooklyn Magazine

Julius Caesar (1970)

Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan

• Excerpt: Julius Caesar has some impressive cinematic decisions, and one very bizarre performance. I think time has been kinder to this Julius Caesar and that a major reevaluation should be taken.

Ordinary People

Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan

• Excerpt: After seeing Ordinary People, the story itself is I think (is) predictable and something a bit melodramatic, something you’d find in a Lifetime Movie (at least not one involving a ‘woman in peril’).

The Palm Beach Story

Jamie S. Rich @ Criterion Confessions

• Excerpt: There is nothing sillier in love than trying to treat romance as a practical thing, yet that is exactly what the young married couple at the center of Preston Sturges’ 1942 screwball rom-com The Palm Beach Story attempt to do.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Emanuel Levy @ www.EmanuelLevy.com

• Excerpt: Tribute to Harper Lee, author of classic novel made into a classic movie starring Gregory Peck in his Oscar role.

A Touch of Zen

James Marsh @ Twitchfilm.com

• Excerpt: Heralded as possibly the greatest martial arts film ever made, King Hu’s A Touch Of Zen stands apart from most other films in the wuxia genre. For one thing it runs over three hours long, a rarity among its peers and unheard of at the time of its release. Read more: http://twitchfilm.com/2016/02/learning-from-the-masters-of-cinema-king-hus-a-touch-of-zen-1.html#ixzz41AHrYreX

Unforgiven (1992)

Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan

• Excerpt: Unforgiven is a dark, somber film, but one that is brilliant in the exploration of redemption (and lack thereof), of the struggle between justice and revenge, and how what we know of The West is built on myth, a myth perpetuated by those who themselves knew better.

Recent Home Video Releases

Exodus: Gods and Kings

M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com

Gog

Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee

• Excerpt: Lost in Hong Kong can be enjoyed by those who haven’t seen Lost in Journey or Lost in Thailand, the two previous entries in the extremely popular and profitable Chinese series.

The Hoodlum Saint

Kristen Lopez @ Journeys in Classic Film

Inside Llewyn Davis Criterion Collection

Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See

Lost in Hong Kong

Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee

New on DVD for February 16

Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal

• Excerpt: This week’s releases include real life stories that confound and inspire; thrillers with no bite; a classic example of TV decorum; several stories — old and new — that address racism; and selected works of an icon.

New on DVD for February 2

Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal

• Excerpt: This week’s releases include a peculiar affliction; thrilling negotiations; a charming, fast-talking Bill Murray; a detailed account of a forgotten scandal; the original Disney princess; and proof a woman can do a man’s job just as well.

New on DVD for February 9

Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal

• Excerpt: This week’s releases include Daniel Craig’s swan song; a striking example of a grandmother’s unconditional affection; a dramatic depiction of the housing crisis; an amusing war between monsters; and a love stronger than death.

New on DVD for January 26

Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal

• Excerpt: This week’s releases include strong female characters with ambition and talent; a familiar war movie with uncommon participants; a set of older films that will thrill, repel and move audiences; and a trip down memory lane.

New on DVD January 19

Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal

• Excerpt: This week’s releases include a chronicle of a sexual awakening; a battle for the Silk Road; a focused look at a vampiric character; and the worst boss ever.

Other Reviews from 2014 and earlier

Arsenic and Old Lace

Donald Jay Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Black Legion

Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

• Excerpt: A gripping social drama based on the newspaper headlines of the day.

Cartel Land (2015)

Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews

• Excerpt: But while it begins as a glimpse at the vigilante militias forming on both sides of the US/Mexico border to show the troubles citizens face every day as a result of the drug cartels in a way that makes us want to join the fight and help keep illegals out of our country, it ends up presenting a pretty good moral case to let them in with open arms. We can only witness so much uncensored violence and dismemberment before realizing this issue must be looked at on a human level beyond politics and thinly veiled racism.

Evil Dead (2013)

Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews

• Excerpt: This means that the somewhat simple, quick and dirty plot suddenly becomes a convoluted psychological nightmare subverting all the good we had experienced. There are too many half-baked ideas making it seem like the script changed three times too many.

Get Low

Hugo Gomes @ Cinematograficamente Falando …

Nightmares

James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture

• Excerpt: Cinema Fearité Presents ‘Nightmares’ – A Horror Anthology From The Good Old Days

The Oath (2010)

Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews

• Excerpt: The Oath is therefore best when it shows an uncensored account of the fallibility of man. And that works both from Jandal’s perspective of changing and evolving by realizing who he was in his youth was wrong as well as the US government’s perspective of holding suspected terrorists in prison as guilty until proven innocent.

Pretty in Pink

Kristen Lopez @ Awards Circuit

They Came Together

Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews

• Excerpt: We’re given two distinct films as a result–one to appreciate on an intellectual level that rises above the content and another that revels in the content’s juvenility for lowest common denominator gags. Suddenly they begin competing and we choose sides.

Time Lapse

Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery

• Excerpt: The perfect example of why one shouldn’t rely on concept alone to drive a film.

The Unbelievable Truth (1990)

Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews

• Excerpt: It’s about love and capitalist ambition in the youth of America as the self-indulgence of the materialistic 80s transitions into the apathetic 90s with a teenage girl at its center struggling to reconcile her own personal future against a world seemingly at the brink of extinction. Like Blue Velvet there’s an off-putting surrealism, but Hartley goes for comedic romance rather than embrace a horror suspense element.

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews

• Excerpt: Afineevsky censors nothing. And thanks to twenty-first century technology, we’re able to bear witness and realize the price paid for freedom.