Tropic Thunder: 2-Disc Director’s Cut
November 25, 2008
For the last few years, Ben Stiller has been coasting on his patented, one-note neurotic doormat shtick in films like Night at the Museum (2006), The Heartbreak Kid (2007), and others. What happened to the guy who could play a self-destructive junkie...
Stop-Loss
July 25, 2008
It has been almost ten years since Kimberly Peirce’s critically acclaimed, award-winning independent film, Boys Don’t Cry (1999). She’s returned with her first studio film – a drama about the current war in Iraq. So far, this kind of film has...
The Fall of the Roman Empire: Limited Collector’s Edition
April 24, 2008
It’s a cliché to say but they really don’t make films like The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) anymore. Anthony Mann’s magnum opus is part of a grand tradition of big budget historical epics like Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and El Cid (1961)....
Walker: Criterion Collection
February 11, 2008
Walker (1987) is an unconventional biopic that effectively burned any remaining bridges Alex Cox had with Hollywood. He took a modest amount of studio money and made a film about William Walker, an opportunistic American who invaded Nicaragua and became...
Ivan’s Childhood
August 2, 2007
Ivan’s Childhood (1962) was Andrei Tarkovsky’s first film and it is certainly an impressive debut. The script was based on a novella by Vladimir Bugomolov but when the novice director came on board he reworked it with his friend Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky....
300
July 30, 2007
Capitalizing on the success of Sin City (2005) and some canny marketing (the screening of a trailer at the San Diego Comic Con was particularly effective), 300 (2006) became a surprise commercial hit despite mostly scathing reviews. Like Sin City and...
Army of Shadows
May 21, 2007
For reasons that are still unknown, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969) was never distributed in North America. It wasn’t until April 2006 that it finally enjoyed a theatrical release on that continent. Who so long? Was it perhaps Melville’s...
Overlord
April 13, 2007
Stuart Cooper’s Overlord (1975) is proof that you can make an epic movie about World War II with very little money. His film depicts one man’s journey from basic training to D-Day. He did this by blending archival war footage from the Imperial War...
49th Parallel: Criterion Collection
March 10, 2007
In 1940, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger proposed to make a film on a grand scale with movie stars and filming to predominantly take place in Canada. Set during the early years of World War II before the United States became involved, 49th Parallel...
Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut
March 10, 2007
Not satisfied with the theatrical cut of Alexander (2004), a long-gestating project that he had been working on for years, or even happy with his own director’s cut in 2005, Oliver Stone has revisited his film a third and final time with an expanded...
