Are you reading me? Well, I’m the only review here, so you must be reading me. That’s right this review is going to jump into Martin Scorsese’s universally loved Taxi Driver (1976). While it is important to state this 100… Read More ›
crime
Get into the down and dirty of filmmaking on your own budget with the bounty of bonus features within “The Last Stop in Yuma County” on home video.
It’s no small feat and an incredible gamble to make a film. It requires a team of creatives working tirelessly toward the same goal, forced to confront their limitations and turn them into opportunities at every step. In the case… Read More ›
The skills of Oz Perkins are on full display in the audience-dividing “Longlegs.”
When you think of the scariest films you’ve ever seen, what is it about them that truly scares you? Is it the immediate fear of being gutted by a silent, masked killer? Is it the ethereal impermanence of a ghostly… Read More ›
A redefinition of “cool” comes home with Criterion’s 4K restoration of Jean‑Pierre Melville’s influential classic “Le samouraï.”
Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 French classic Le samouraï (The Samurai) is a testament to why people love cinema. And if it’s not considered as such, then it damn well should be. Its mere existence is a miracle of the hybrid hitman/samurai… Read More ›
Criterion adds the Lana and Lilly Wachowski erotic noir “Bound” to its 4K collection.
Having never seen Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s second feature, I was immediately intrigued when I saw it was being added to the Criterion Collection. Knowing quite literally nothing about the movie other than the fact that it was a Wachowski… Read More ›
Writer/Director Ran Huang asks “What Remains” in the darker grey areas of ethics and morality.
What Remains is a film that presents itself as a detective procedural with a possible serial killer being interviewed by his psychiatrist and a detective trying to piece together the killer’s muddled and confused confessions of murder and rape. What… Read More ›
Arrow’s 4K release of “American Gigolo” delivers high quality bangs for your buck.
When thinking of ‘80s filmmaking, most fans often point to the usual suspects: John Hughes teenage dramedies, over-to-top action spectacles, along with a few (now iconic) slasher flicks. But one early example of the decade deserves its flowers just as… Read More ›
Paramount Pictures releases “Chinatown” in 4K UHD for its 50th anniversary.
Even though I’d had every plot point of Chinatown (1974) spoiled for me by film school staples like Robert McKee’s STORY, by the end of my first watch through of the new 4K edition from Paramount Presents, I still wanted… Read More ›
Grab your Tropical Fruit Bubblicious and Skittles buckle up for another ride with Mike and Marcus in “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.”
The Bad Boys franchise has become a staple in the “buddy cop” genre. The film delivered the expected goods, thanks to the banter of Martin Lawrence (Life) and Will Smith (Men in Black). Add in director Michael Bay (Armageddon) (the… Read More ›
“Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)” releases a beautiful Criterion Blu-ray with special features.
Awards season has come and gone once again, like another overblown, overwrought, overlong thief in the night, spanning an impressive seven months from the beginning of the Venice Film Festival to that of the Academy Awards. Though, unlike other years,… Read More ›
Don’t put this steelbook in the science oven! “American Hustle” is out now in 4K UHD.
The year was 2013, and David O. Russell continued to prove that he was the director that was going to change things. No matter what one thought of his films, there was no denying they had something special about them…. Read More ›
“Narc” keeps its noir essence in high definition thanks to Arrow Video.
When reviewing a label release for something I have never seen, it is always interesting to see how the movie looks and what the restoration does to it as there are no nostalgia/rose-colored glasses towards the project itself. The only… Read More ›
“The Scarface Mob” never had better looking mugshots than in Arrow’s Blu-ray release.
For a “movie” that is 65 years old and was originally a two-part series premiere pilot, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought this would look as clean and crisp as it possibly does. It is truly so… Read More ›
The fourth entry in the “Crime City” series, “The Roundup: Punishment” demonstrates no signs of slacking, even with a new director and writer behind the scenes.
Since 2017’s The Outlaws, actor Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. and credited here as Don Lee) has led what would become the Crime City series, an action crime series that borrows from Korean headlines for the foundation of each film. Each film… Read More ›
Bring home three of a kind to a full house with the “Ocean’s Trilogy” on 4K UHD for the first time.
Remakes are almost always met with the same reaction upon announcement: “why?”. To many, remakes are a sign of laziness on the part of studios, opting to lean-in on what audiences know or have a relationship with rather than taking… Read More ›
Noboru Nakamura’s “The Shape of Night” is the latest Shochiku studio release by Radiance Films.
Trigger Warning: The Shape of Night contains an exploration of sex work, the narrative of which may prove difficult to endure for those who’ve suffered sexual assault. In 1929, Japanese film studio Shochiku was established, transitioning from the theatrical arts… Read More ›
“Red Rooms” takes audiences on a frightfully intense rollercoaster of court proceedings. [The Overlook Film Festival]
There are movies that focus on courtroom procedurals and the drama that comes from the hearing itself that either are so effective they’re traumatizing or so dull they entirely lose the audience. Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms (Les chambres rouges) thankfully… Read More ›
The on-disc bonus features may be bare, but the action in “Baby Assassins 2” is anything but.
The slacker comedy comes in many shapes and varieties. You’ve got rom-com Mallrats (1995), straight comedy Friday (1995), dramedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and comedic thriller The Big Lebowski (1998). Each one uses the slackers at their center to… Read More ›
Director Raymond St-Jean tackles the story of Canadian hitman Donald Lavoie in “Dusk for a Hitman (Crépuscule pour un tueur).”
Real life is often fodder for storytelling. Typically, one will take an experience or emotion and transcribe that into something unique. However, fiction isn’t always as compelling as reality, which is why we get stories like Dumb Money (2023) detailing… Read More ›
“Cold Wallet” is a home invasion thriller that lacks any strength in the teeth it tries to bare. [SXSW]
Capitalism is great when you’re rich and the worst when you’re poor. Or, in the case of current economic insecurities in the U.S., middle class. Capitalism functions off the premise that trade and industry are better off when private owners… Read More ›