Cinema

Overlooked thriller turns 40

January 18th, 2017

Jodie Foster today is known primarily as a film director and as an Oscar-winning actress for “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and “The Accused” (1988). Some may also remember her as a child actress in TV and children’s films of the 1960s and 70s.

Mature for her age, by age 13 she broke into serious and adult roles as a key supporting character in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976) and the lesser-known but even more challenging and complex title role in the…

The year 2016 in Blu-ray: cornucopia for collectors

January 11th, 2017

Last summer marked the ten-year anniversary that the Blu-ray home video format has been on the market. Despite the fact that many people are switching to online streaming options for watching movies, and others continue to remain satisfied with DVD or even VHS quality, the high-definition Blu-ray format has built a solid collector base and has become the medium of choice for discriminating viewers, especially those with home theatres and HD projectors.

As in the past two years, 2016 saw…

“The Eagle Huntress” Takes Flight

January 11th, 2017

A completely engaging adventure on each of its multiple levels, Otto Bell’s “The Eagle Huntress” combines old-fashioned nature documentary with both a rousing sports competition angle and a front-and-center challenge to gender role expectations that translate universally beyond the remote Mongolian setting. Aisholpan Nurgaiv, a 13-year-old Kazakh girl, is instantly likable: a no-nonsense kid who earns top marks at her boarding school and can pin any and all of the boys at…

Ford Hunts for “Nocturnal Animals”

December 21st, 2016

Partially avoiding the sophomore slump, renaissance man Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals” is less rewarding and accomplished than “A Single Man.” Adapted by the director from Austin Wright’s 1993 novel “Tony and Susan,” “Nocturnal Animals” is a stylishly designed noir that alternates between the terror of a West Texas road nightmare and the misfortunes of an icy Los Angeles gallerist in a precarious, toxic marriage.

Ford can be commended for allowing the menagerie of…

Blu-ray potpourri for the holidays

December 21st, 2016

Although the commercial celebration began the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve is this Saturday night (coincidentally this year, also the first night of Hanukkah). The holiday season of a week or so features religious observances, sharing of traditional activities, memories, food, and fun. It is also typically a vacation time for relaxing with family and friends, often watching movies together.

The various cable TV channels are rife with repeated showings of favorite Christmas…

Being Darth Vader: “I Am Your Father” peers behind Prowse’s mask

December 14th, 2016

With the October 2016 announcement that he would no longer attend international shows to meet fans and sign autographs in person, David Prowse closed a chapter of his life that some “Star Wars” aficionados had anticipated since a 2009 cancer diagnosis and a controversial 2014 claim that the Darth Vader portrayer had been suffering from dementia.

Prowse, whose sour grapes and willingness to communicate with the press have run afoul of Lucasfilm gatekeepers on multiple occasions over…

Spanish director’s black comedy masterpiece

December 14th, 2016

Most fans of international cinema are probably familiar with the names of Luis Buñuel, Pedro Almodóvar, and Alejandro Amenábar. Other important Spanish directors such as Luis García Berlanga, however, are little-known outside of Spain, even though Berlanga’s “Plácido” (1961) was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

The film that Spanish filmmakers, critics, and Berlanga himself consider his masterpiece, “El Verdugo” (“The Executioner”) (1963), recently…

Comedy legends with limited Blu-ray exposure

December 7th, 2016

Three Stooges fans probably already know that all 190 of their Columbia shorts are on DVD in a multi-disc collection and in eight individual volumes. Although remastered in HD, sadly none are yet on Blu-ray. That will change next month when the two 1953 shorts they filmed in 3-D will be bonuses on the 3-D restoration of Vincent Price’s “The Mad Magician” (1954), coming to 3-D Blu-ray from Twilight Time.

Meanwhile, last year Mill Creek Entertainment released two triple-feature…

Big Sky stories: Reichardt’s “Certain Women”

December 7th, 2016

Master filmmaker Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women,” based on stories by Maile Meloy, shares the quiet fortunes and misfortunes of three protagonists and the friends, family, and strangers in orbit around them.

Set in Montana, the film moves at the director’s deliberately measured pace, a technique that suits Reichardt’s alliance with the western, the genre that perhaps best describes her body of work.

As taciturn, secretive, and enigmatic as her best films, “Certain Women”…

An actor’s struggle and a woman’s sacrifice

November 30th, 2016

“The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum” (1939) is an ambitious and idiosyncratic work by master filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi (1898-1956), based on a stage play adaptation of a novel about Japan’s stylized kabuki theatre. This September the Criterion Collection released to Blu-ray the Shochiku Studios’ new 4k digital restoration of the film.

Mizoguchi was one of Japan’s major directors, making about 75 films from 1923 until his death, but little of his earlier career survives, and he…