The history of Sam Peckinpah's "Major Dundee" remains every bit as messy as the film itself. Sony's "Extended Version" of the renegade director's 1965 cavalry western aims to make things as right as they can be, but it's clear that whatever Peckinpah had in mind will never be seen. The restored "Dundee" -- which had a brief pre-DVD theatrical … [Read more...]
‘No Direction Home: Bob Dylan’
"Don't look back," the baseball sage Satchel Paige advised. "Something might be gaining on you." For Bob Dylan in the 1960s, the hellhounds in the rearview were the crush of celebrity and the weight of ridiculous expectations. Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" starts off in Ken Burns territory, using a rich and exquisite mix of … [Read more...]
‘Buster Keaton Collection’ stars ‘The Cameraman’
Comedy and tragedy get equal billing in the "Buster Keaton Collection," an unspooling of three films the silent-era comic made under the thumb of MGM at the dawn of the sound age. The two-disc Warner/TCM Archives set (retail $39.92) is billed as "a celebration of Keaton's art," but the party is best saved for his earlier works as an independent … [Read more...]
‘The Yakuza Papers’: Gangsters high and low
They have sniveling down to a fine art in Kinji Fukasaku's "The Yakuza Papers." Sniveling, weeping, groveling and myriad other abasements of the spirit. There's little nobility found in the clashes between Fukasaku's low-rent Japanese gangsters, only the "Battles Without Honor and Humanity" promised in the subtitle. "The Yakuza Papers" consists … [Read more...]
DVD reviews: ‘Nutty Professor,’ ‘The Bellboy’
Paradox completists eventually must turn to la mystere de Jerry -- why is it that French film masters such as Godard and Truffaut so loved Jerry Lewis? The Franco-Lewis thing has become a well-worn joke -- something to chew on with your Freedom Fries -- but it's a safe bet the directors weren't thinking of the braying, pratfalling side of the … [Read more...]
