Ettore Scola’s A Special Day (1977) is a subtle, emotionally resonant chamber film featuring Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in two of their finest roles as people struggling against socially-imposed roles in fascist Italy.
Since the end of the studio system, the term B-movie has come to refer more to content than budget; recent viewing covers a wide range of styles within this nebulous category.
Hard to Be a God (2013), the final film of Russian director Aleksei German, more than a decade in the making, is a dense, obscure, visually stunning adaptation of a novel by the Strugatsky brothers. While German’s storytelling is extremely oblique, this depiction of a brutal medieval world which eventually corrupts Earth scientists who have traveled there to study a Renaissance which failed to happen, is realized with such visceral power that the viewer becomes immersed in the filth, madness and horror, occasionally gleaning brief moments of transcendent beauty.
Cagey Films publishes the second volume of The David Lynch Files, this one featuring a journal of the production of Dune in Mexico during the summer of 1983, plus a number of previously unpublished interviews with Lynch and others working on the movie.
While Mario Bava paved the way for Italian horror, directors who followed him pushed the limits of violence, foremost among them Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.
The Criterion Collection has released an impressive hi-def upgrade of Leonard Kastle’s gritty, blackly comic true-crime feature The Honeymoon Killers (1979).
The visual master Mario Bava virtually invented the Italian genre called giallo, influencing generations of filmmakers who followed and built on his stylistic and thematic example. Arrow video has been releasing a series of impressive editions of Bava’s films on Blu-ray, offering alternative versions and a rich array of supplements to provide a critical and historical context for his work.
The visual master Mario Bava virtually invented the Italian horror film, influencing generations of filmmakers who followed and built on his stylistic and thematic example. Arrow video has been releasing a series of impressive editions of Bava’s films on Blu-ray, offering alternative versions and a rich array of supplements to provide a critical and historical context for his work.
Criterion have released an impressive Blu-ray edition of Blind Chance, a key transitional film for Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski as he moved from documentary realism towards the more abstract and philosophical films he became best known for.
Cagey Films has begun to issue content from the site, as well as new material, in a projected series of eBooks, beginning with a volume devoted to David Lynch and the making of Eraserhead.