Author Archives
I’m a cinephile/tv junkie/podcaster who loves to watch films, write them and write ABOUT them. My film and TV reviews are posted on 8bitwaffles.com and blakcinpehilewrites.wordpress.com. I also write film musings and rants on Instagram and Twitter (@blakcinephile). I am also the co-creator/co-host of “Double Feature: Versus” (https://doublefeaturevs.com), a podcast where my co-host Brad and I clash heads on two competing films with a single connection or theme.
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“Thank You Very Much”, an inclusive, insightful documentary about the comedy enigma Andy Kaufman arrives on home video via Drafthouse Films.
In the beginning of Alex Braverman’s documentary Thank You Very Much, there is a clip of performance artist/comedian Andy Kaufman stating how we would make a film: he would start with the climax, show the title “The End,” show a… Read More ›
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“Salaam Bombay!”, Mira Nair’s acclaimed gem about love, friendship, and tragedy on the streets of Mumbai receives a digital restoration release courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Mira Nair’s first narrative feature, the Indian Hindi-language drama Salaam Bombay!, is as much a documentary as it is a narrative of Bombay’s (now Mumbai’s) loud and chaotic street life. Even though its story and characters are crafted by Nair… Read More ›
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A great documentary of one great filmmaker watching another, Les Blank’s “Burden of Dreams” gets a 4K re-release courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
In the rare event where game recognizes game or a filmmaker puts his camera on another filmmaker, there’s no telling what moments of unflinching honesty and remarkable ambition you will find. In his 1982 film Burden of Dreams, documentarian Les… Read More ›
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Ari Aster’s incendiary, messy, modern western “Eddington” comes home courtesy of A24.
When it was announced that contemporary cinema’s most interesting enfant, Ari Aster, was developing a COVID-19 western, it did more than turn a few heads. Tackling one of the most uncertain and anxious times in recent memory seemed like an… Read More ›
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Alex Winter’s misunderstood zany black comedy “Freaked” gets a 4K upgrade, courtesy of Drafthouse Films.
It’s good to be in the age of once-reviled films getting their just due of 4K restoration. Once a film with little to no release, Alex Winter and Tom Stern’s 1993 over-the-top shock comedy Freaked is being re-released thanks to… Read More ›
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One of Jacques Audiard’s early hits, the unique romantic thriller “Read My Lips”, comes home to Blu-Ray, courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Before he brought us the polarizing 2024 crime musical Emilia Pérez, the Palme d’Or winning 2015 Dheepan, and the 2009 critically acclaimed gangster film A Prophet, director Jacques Audiard brought us the complex romance thriller Read My Lips in 2001…. Read More ›
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James Sweeney carries double duty of filmmaker/actor in “Twinless”, one of the most provocatively original dramedies in recent years.
There’s something to be said of independent film that continues to carry the torch of creativity and intrigue, taking its viewers on a journey of being entertained without a huge budget or expensive special effects. With his sophomore feature Twinless,… Read More ›
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Disney & Pixar’s “Elio,” a standard but fun, visually dazzling cosmos adventure of self-esteem, comes home in digital HD.
From 2008’s WALL-E to 2022’s Lightyear (and 2020’s Soul, if you count The Great Beyond as a qualifier), Pixar started a tradition of traveling into the beautiful outer space cosmos. In 2025, they continued this tradition with Elio. The film… Read More ›
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“Lilo & Stitch” come home digitally with a talented cast delivering great family entertainment in live-action.
Live-action remakes of coveted animated films can be a pain point of mine. Most of the time (well, all of the time), it’s an opportunity to juice more money out of an existing IP and less an opportunity to tell… Read More ›
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Vittorio De Sica’s first masterpiece “Shoeshine,” a devastating tale of innocence lost in postwar Italy, comes home in excellent restoration, courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Before he directed one of the greatest films of all time, 1948’s Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica became the face of Italian Neorealism in 1946 with his first masterpiece Shoeshine. Italian Neorealism was a post-World War II film movement which… Read More ›
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Enjoy the stunning cinematography “Rust” at home thanks to DECAL Releasing.
Reputation could make or break a film. While making what is arguably one of the greatest films of all time, Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola went through a plethora of production delays including casting switches, health problems with his lead… Read More ›
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Bennett Miller’s low-fi documentary about an eccentric NY tour guide “The Cruise” comes home in a lean, well-crafted Blu-ray release from Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Before he struck critically-acclaimed gold with Capote, Moneyball, and Foxcatcher, director Bennett Miller stepped onto the scene with the 1998 lo-fi, black and white documentary The Cruise. The documentary follows the eccentric tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch, a nasally-voiced human… Read More ›
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Alex Proyas’s “Dark City” touches down in all its sci-fi noir glory in a jam-packed Blu-ray from Arrow Video.
Once a box office bomb but now a celebrated cult classic in its own right, Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998) gives its audience the best of both worlds in its genre-bending plot — dystopian science fiction mixed with detective noir…. Read More ›
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Todd Solondz’s endurance test of cringe comedy and subversive subject matter, “Palindromes”, finally comes home in Blu-ray, courtesy of Radiance Films.
Writer-director Todd Solondz’s fifth feature Palindromes (2004) — a film of taboos, hypocrisies, and uncomfortable hard truths – is an exercise in cynical, cruel comedy. Known as one of independent cinema’s favorite misanthropes, Solondz paints his twisted portrait of motherhood,… Read More ›
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Once panned and now revered, Friedkin’s highly influential masterpiece “Sorcerer” gets a much-needed upscaled restoration courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
This film is a miracle of cinema. Let me explain. After struggles making the film, including production delays, cast conflicts, and more, William Friedkin’s tense masterpiece of a thriller Sorcerer was finally released in cinemas in 1977. Another film released… Read More ›
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Twisted masterpiece “Steppenwolf” brings all of its blood and brutality home courtesy of Arrow Video
Blowing me away (as well as many audience members) at Fantasia International Film Festival in 2024, Steppenwolf is a Kazakh language thriller which follows two characters — a psychopathic, murderous former police investigator (Berik Aytzhanov) and a woman consumed by… Read More ›
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Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” and his mosaic of Black life in the ‘70s get an overdue, beautiful 4K via The Criterion Collection.
There’s a key scene in Charles Burnett’s highly influential 1977 classic Killer of Sheep that is indicative of what one would call the Black experience. A mother puts on makeup in the mirror as her young daughter plays with her… Read More ›
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Showcasing a terrific vulnerable performance from Jeffrey Wright, Julien Schnabel’s fluid and impressionistic biopic “Basquiat” comes home in a beautiful new edition, courtesy of Criterion.
It is more fitting than ironic that an impressionistic biopic about the acclaimed neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat would also be written and directed by another painter. For his directorial debut (the first in a line of acclaimed releases including Before… Read More ›
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One of the most entertaining and charming high-concept films of the past few years, “A Samurai in Time” finally comes home in beautifully upscaled 1080p, courtesy of Third Window Films.
In a landscape of recycled IPs, a never-ending torrent of superhero fever, and films that are made for adults being shoved to the wayside, original high-concept films (strong examples being Inception (2010) and The Matrix (1999)) seem to be a… Read More ›
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Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” a beautiful, harrowing epic about the elusive American Dream, comes home in beautiful HD Blu-ray.
Clocking in at a whopping 215 minutes and being filmed in VistaVision (a high-resolution format once used for classic films such as Vertigo (1958) and The Ten Commandments (1956)), it is not hard to understand why someone would be quick… Read More ›