Category: FILM REVIEWS
Merian C. Cooper: Big Monkeys 2 & 3
Editor’s Blog and DVD reviews of The Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young from Warner Home Video…
Targeting the 80s Action Genre
The late, great Michael Kamen scored two iconic action films of the eighties – Lethal Weapon (1987), and Die Hard (1988) – and they were the genre’s definitive films, in fact, because they provided the template for filmmakers to imitate and composers to emulate for around a decade. Screenwriters tended to use ‘Die Hard on a plane/train/boat/chuck wagon/wobbly tricycle’ when pitching ideas to agents, and journalists liked to use the same phrases to describe what story, treatment or script the latest overpriced scribe had managed to sell for $1.5, $2.5, and $4.0 million to a sucker studio…
Back from Oblivion I: Evening Primrose (1966)
When a TV series – or a singular episode – from the early days of the idiot box is found to have survived studios & networks junking old kinescopes, re-using video stock, or the dumpster (very real threats that eliminated whole chunks of early TV history), it’s kind of an expected miracle, because many productions from the era of live TV are known / expected to be rare: productions like the dramatic anthology series Playhouse 90 were broadcast live, and filmed kinescopes were used for rebroadcasts…
Playing with heresy
Review of Warner Home Video’s swanky new Blu-ray of The Exorcist, plus the film’s 2 soundtrack albums…
Eros I: Bum-bums, & alternative cultural titillations
DVD reviews of Tinto Brass’ latest celebration of the posterior and delta, Monamour (Cult Epics), and The Nikkatsu Roman Porn Trailer Collection (Impulse Pictures) to whet the appetite for naughty pink things…
The fruits of imagination
DVD reviews of Adam Green’s Frozen and Peter Atencio’s The Rig (both from Anchor Bay)…
The Oscar-winning class of Francis Ford Coppola
Editor’s Blog on George Lucas’ feature film debut, THX 1138, released in 1971, and now available on Blu-ray…
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Part II
Review of the Argentinian documentary Metropolis Refound / Metropolis refundada (2010), which recently aired on TCM, covering the discovery of a near-complete 16mm print of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis…
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Part I
Editor’s Blog and review of the newly restored Metropolis, which premiered with a new score by Gabriel Thibaudeau, and is now playing exclusively at the TIFF Bell Lightbox…
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