The latest news, reviews from the home video front
A plain-speaking western hero makes a lonely stand against a gang of outlaws. The clock ticks down. The townsfolk cower. A train steam-bellows down the tracks, its arrival presaging a shootout and near-certain death for the hero. That's "High Noon" all right, one of the most famous American westerns. But it's also "3:10 to Yuma," a lesser-known film that came five years later. "High Noon" seems to have suffered a critical downgrade over the past decade or so, perhaps due to its … [Read more...]
Funny thing about the wrong man: He never, ever did it. This lack of mystery never held back the thriller subgenre, in large part because of Alfred Hitchcock's fondness for tales of the unjustly accused on the run. The German director Fritz Lang also worked cases of mistaken identity, notably in "Fury" (1936) and "Ministry of Fear" (1944). The Criterion Collection has revived "Ministry of Fear" in a no-nonsense Blu-ray/DVD presentation of the Graham Greene adaptation. Lang made several … [Read more...]
The shadow of wicked olde Jack hangs heavy over "Ripper Street." Is this a specter, or a warning of the Ripper's return? The creators of this terrific BBC One series wisely keep Jack the Ripper sidelined, at least in the first season, which just wrapped season 1 on BBC America. Good move. We didn't need another Ripper procedural. Think of it as a U.S. series looking at LAPD after the Nightstalker murders, or New York cops after Son of Sam. Life goes on, but with a clinical case of the … [Read more...]
In retrospect, "Trilogy of Life" seems an odd and ironic title for any work credited to Pier Paolo Pasolini. The director's grisly murder in 1975 still haunts Italians. Pasolini's notorious work "Salò" is a study in death and depravity -- a sick work of art, but an essential work of art nonetheless. His was dubbed "the cinema of despair." In the U.S., Pasolini is most remembered for this darkness, when he is remembered at all. "The idea that death defines a person has seldom been more … [Read more...]
Reports surface now and then that the original "Jaws" is being remade. A modern production, perhaps even directed by Steven Spielberg, would take advantage of the huge advances in film special effects since the mid-1970s. But computer graphics would ruin the fun, the director says on Universal Home Entertainment's Blu-ray edition of "Jaws." Back in 1974, the endlessly problematic mechanical sharks of "Jaws" couldn't be used for most of the filming -- a "blessing in disguise," Spielberg … [Read more...]
The documentary "Marley" opens not in Jamaica, but in Ghana, West Africa. Viewers are confronted with "the door of no return," the infamous portal through which passed generations of slaves, torn from their mother country. For Bob Marley, who sang passionately about slavery, "Africa was always the destination," his wife recalls. In 1980, Marley began his final concert tour in Gabon and Zimbabwe, not knowing what to expect from Africans. He'd struggled to find a black audience outside … [Read more...]
"The Gold Rush" has been delighting audiences for almost 90 years -- it's one of the flat-out funniest films made in the silent era or any other. This is the movie Chaplin wanted to be remembered for. Probably the grandest silent-movie entertainment of them all. Close your eyes and let some of its classic scenes flicker across your mind -- the Little Tramp making a meal of a boot while twirling the shoestrings as pasta … his transformation into a big, juicy chicken … the miner's shack … [Read more...]
"Clueless" looks smarter and smarter as the decades go by. Amy Heckerling's delightfully cynical tale of worldly teens obsessed with designer clothes, sports utility vehicles and cell phones still rings true, down to the last fashionista. The slanguage Heckerling invented for her Beverly Hills High kids survived into the next century, proving every bit as seminal as the pioneering work of Moon Unit Zappa. "Clueless" (1995) was in the personal-makeover business long before reality TV got in … [Read more...]
They're hot, sexy and dead -- and they want to eat your flesh. The apocalypse looms, but fortunately the world has a savior -- a 17-year-old bed-wetter who cowers before his twin sister. The title of the BBC teen horror series "The Fades" refers to ghosts who can't quite cross over the other side. Despairing of the limbo, they start to chomp on the living in order to come back to life. Beyond that, the mythology gets incredibly detailed and messy, just the way geeks like it. The six-part … [Read more...]
A man takes scissors to a surrealistic curtain, cutting an eyeball in half. Another man runs across a terrible angular landscape, stalked by a gigantic bird. A faceless tyrant lets slip a warped wheel as the camera slithers into the void of its center hole. Just another day at the office for Salvador Dali, mad genius and painter of the unreal. The above nightmare, "ordered by telephone" for Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, serves, of course, as the centerpiece of the 1945 psychotherapy thriller … [Read more...]