Brimming with color, noise and slapstick, Zhang Yimou's "A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop" plays the yang to "Blood Simple's" yin. The Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple" (1984) was a dark affair, full of shadows and pinpoint light, its noir imagery seared into memory by key scenes of nightmare-inducing violence. A curious choice of remake material … [Read more...]
Basil Dearden: Up from the ‘Underground’
Quick, name four Basil Dearden movies. Anyone? Congrats if you came up with one -- even if it was "Khartoum." British director Dearden made a swarm of films from 1940 to 1970, almost all forgotten outside his native land. The overdue DVD set Basil Dearden's London Underground shines the Criterion Collection spotlight on a quartet of the … [Read more...]
‘Raging Bull’ back on Blu-ray
Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bill," an underdog in its day and a undisputed classic today, makes another comeback on Blu-ray, via MGM's 30th anniversary edition. "Raging Bull" fans still viewing the Robert De Niro-starrer on DVD should make the upgrade to high definition. This stunning black-and-white release is about as definitive as it's going to … [Read more...]
‘Mad Max,’ prelude to a nightmare
George Miller's exploitation classic “Mad Max” hits the road again via a visually super-charged Blu-ray from MGM. Images are startling in their clarity, especially considering this was a low-budget Australian effort from the days before the Down Under film industry grew up. The audio, while nothing special, does deliver the original … [Read more...]
‘Night of the Hunter’: beauty and the beast
"The Night of the Hunter" director Charles Laughton, born in England, found old weird America a poetic place, one caught between the polarities of love and hate. The hate came from Robert Mitchum's deadly preacher man, one of the great movie villains. The love? It flowed like the river from a shotgun-toting Lillian Gish. Criterion's … [Read more...]
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