2014

Director Tetsuya Nakashima is hellbent to that end in The World of Kanako, his ultra-violent, ultra-stylized 2014 extreme revenge flick. It was released in America last fall by Drafthouse Films and comes to Blu-ray today.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Beloved Sisters, out now on Blu Ray and DVD through Music Box Films, is a dull slog through Enlightenment-era Europe about two aristocratic sisters who fall in love with German writer Friedrich Schiller.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Damian Szifron’s extraordinarily fun and twisted movie Wild Tales, out on Blu-ray tomorrow, was nominated for a best foreign language film Oscar earlier this year.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Mr. Turner covers 25 years of the contradictory painter’s life, and it often feels like it, moving at a languorous pace over its two-and-a-half hours. Like it’s subject, however, the film has an irascible charm.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Moore is the reason it works. She’s so natural and free of vanity. She doesn’t telegraph the tragedy of her situation like so many made-for-TV movies do. It’s a quiet performance and the uncertainty of how present Alice is undercuts everything, even the joyful moments.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

In The Guest, out now on Blu-ray, Barrett and Wingard aim their sights towards a more straightforward thriller, adding in just enough shocking violence to border on being a horror movie.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Two legendary rock n’ roll figures get the biopic treatment with wildly different results, new on Blu-ray this week.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

This electrifying film puts the tension, the fear, the courage, and the tragedy in perspective, and dramatizes it through the struggles of people, not rhetoric.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The movie wants to be about courage and resilience, but it’s painted in so many broad strokes and tired clichés that it doesn’t quite register on that level.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The Imitation Game is an enjoyable and well-done biopic that lacks a certain intangible hook which holds it back in my mind from a Best Picture nomination, despite some of the nods it has already gotten.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

With his new film Big Eyes, Tim Burton and collaborators suffer from what I like to call bad history teacher syndrome. They are too interested in the what and not enough in the how or the why.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A witch tasks a childless baker and his wife with procuring magical items from classic fairy tales to reverse the curse put on their family tree.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

“Wild” breaks the mold of other trip-as-self-discovery films with a refreshing honesty.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

When I was a kid, I loved — and still love — Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, out now on a fantastic-looking Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. It offered a wealth of visual delights, a main character I could relate to, a sardonic sense of humor, and it never pandered.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The third and final entry in The Hobbit trilogy is by far the strongest of the three. It gives a faithful and lovingly-crafted foray into Middle Earth for fans of the book and new fans alike, while being able to incorporate lore from other writings of Tolkien into the mix and tying all six films together as a unit, binding them with common story elements and ties to each other.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }