Tess: Criterion Collection
March 18, 2014
Based on Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Tess (1979) ended a prolific decade of memorable films for Roman Polanski who, at this point in his career, had been exiled to Europe due to legal problems in the United States. The film featured...
Fish Tank: Criterion Collection
February 17, 2011
Fish Tank (2009) is Andrea Arnold’s third feature film and already she’s drawing comparisons to Ken Loach for her unflinching kitchen sink realism approach towards her depiction of working class English people. All three of her films feature young...
Paris, Texas: Criterion Collection
February 1, 2010
Films made about the United States by foreign filmmakers are interesting because quite often they provide a unique perspective – someone from the outside looking in. German filmmaker Wim Wenders did just this with his film Paris, Texas (1984). It was...
Robin Hood Season 3
January 30, 2010
It’s always difficult for a TV series to fill the slot of a more popular one, which is why when Robin Hood launched in 2006, replacing Doctor Who, it wasn’t met with the excitement it perhaps deserved. The first season of Robin Hood was good clean...
Monsoon Wedding: Criterion Collection
October 14, 2009
With the surprise phenomenonal success of Slumdog Millionaire (2008) people have a tendency to forget, or are simply unaware, that filmmakers like Mira Nair have been working hard for years at bringing Indian culture to the mainstream. She arrived on...
Breach
June 18, 2007
Based on one of the most significant lapses of national security in the history of U.S. intelligence, Breach (2007) continues director Billy Ray’s aptitude and interest for factually-based exposes featuring antagonists with a knack for deception. His...
American Hardcore
February 22, 2007
While there have been plenty of books and documentaries chronicling the New York and British punk rock scenes of the 1970s, there has been very little of substance covering the subsequent emergence of the punk (what was labeled as “hardcore”) scene...
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Deluxe Edition
February 14, 2006
When Johnny Depp and Tim Burton team up to do a movie the results are usually fantastic: Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood (1994) and to a lesser degree Sleepy Hollow (1999). However, since Planet of the Apes (2001), Burton’s films have been missing...
Austin City Limits Music Festival
January 10, 2006
Austin City Limits has been a staple on public television for several decades. It has always provided a venue for musical acts from all over the world and in all kinds of genres. Known early on for championing country, blues and rockabilly, the show has...
Wonderfalls: The Complete Viewer Collection
August 15, 2005
They say that the good die young and this certainly is true of network television. It used to be that a show was given time to find its audience. Cheers had poor ratings its first season but gradually developed an audience and became the beloved classic...