Secretariat
January 18, 2011
After failing to win an Academy Award in 2002 for her brave performance in Unfaithful (losing out to Nicole Kidman in The Hours), cynical pundits surmised that Diane Lane took on the role of Penny Chenery, the owner of the legendary race horse Secretariat,...
The Naked Kiss: Criterion Collection
January 14, 2011
As Robert Polito wisely observes in the DVD liner notes for the Criterion Collection edition of The Naked Kiss (1964), Samuel Fuller’s film fuses the melodrama of Douglas Sirk with the pulpy prose of Russ Meyer. The result is what Polito calls a “noirish...
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
December 22, 2010
It has been over 20 years since Wall Street (1987) was released in theaters and, at the time, it was blamed for cashing in on the stock market crash that wiped out more than a few people’s fortunes. The financial landscape has changed radically since...
America Lost and Found: The BBS Story
December 20, 2010
To say Head (1968) is a cinematic oddity is an understatement. Intent at topping The Beatles at their own game, The Monkees appeared in a film that Bob Rafelson directed and co-wrote with none other than Jack Nicholson and that was even more experimental...
Cher: The Film Collection
November 22, 2010
Here’s a film that I bet William Friedkin would like to forget. At a time when popular musical acts like The Beatles and The Monkees were starring in movie musicals, Sonny and Cher decided to cash in on the trend too with Good Times (1967). Bored between...
Antichrist: Criterion Collection
November 15, 2010
For years, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has been something of a cinematic wild card, a provocateur whose films deeply divide audiences and critics alike. At times, he even seems to cultivate an enfant terrible reputation by making bold and controversial...
Paths of Glory: Criterion Collection
October 29, 2010
The subject of war was one that fascinated Stanley Kubrick for much of his career. His first film, Fear and Desire (1953), was an allegorical war picture and with Dr. Strangelove (1964), he made a scathingly satirical anti-war film. Full Metal Jacket...
The Brothers Bloom
October 21, 2010
It was with high expectations that I slipped Bloom into my DVD player. After all, Rian Johnson had made the excellent Dashiell-Hammet-in-high-school Brick, one of the coolest indie films of the past few years. Would Bloom have the sharp dialogue, excellent...
The Darjeeling Limited: Criterion Collection
October 11, 2010
Coming off the ambitiously mounted and complicated production that was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Wes Anderson wanted his next film to be much smaller in size and more intimate in scope. Initially inspired by living in Paris with actor...
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence: Criterion Collection
September 28, 2010
Nagisa Oshima’s film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) was based on Laurens van der Post’s mostly autobiographical 1963 novel The Seed and the Sower about a British military officer and a poorly treated prisoner-of-war set in the lush Javanese tropics...
