Cagey Films Blog

Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation (2015):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Agu (Abraham Attah) hallucinates as he goes into battle in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Cary Joji Fukunaga’s adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala’s novel Beasts of No Nation (2015), a problematic depiction of child soldiers in Africa gets an impressive release on Blu-ray from Criterion. Fukunaga’s skills as cinematographer and director of actors are on full display, but the film falters in its treatment of of some of the moral issues it raises.

Recent Arrow box sets

Wronged man Gary Hamilton (Klaus Kinski) looks for revenge in Antonio Margheriti's And God Said to Cain (1970)

Three recent box sets from Arrow will satisfy a wide range of genre appetites with five thrillers from Italy in the ’70s, four spaghetti westerns from the ’60s, and Daiei’s 1966 trilogy of period fantasies featuring a statue which comes to life to punish various cruel warlords who oppress local peasants.

D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: “Company” (1970):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Stephen Sondheim coaches a singer on pronouncing a single syllable in D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: “Company” (1970)

Criterion’s new Blu-ray of D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: “Company” (1970) is a fascinating glimpse of the intense physical and mental labour which goes into the process of artistic creation, closely observing the recording of the original cast performing the songs from Stephen Sondheim’s breakthough Broadway show Company in one long fourteen-hour session. Tense, exhausting and exhilarating, it depicts dedicated professionals doing their jobs under intense pressure to deliver under a near-impossible deadline.

Not exactly back to normal

Surgeon Charles (Rufus Sewell) loses his tenuous grip on reality in M. Night Shyamalan's Old (2021)

Wanting to see the new M. Night Shyamalan movie, I braced myself and went to a theatre for the first time in more than a year-and-a-half. The movie was effectively creepy, but the theatre was scarier – almost deserted, with a haunting air of the End Times about it. A staff person checked my vaccine status, but no one even bothered to look at my ticket and after the show I got an email from the theatre chain thanking me for going and pleading with me to come again soon.

Farewell to a good friend: Dave Barber

Dave at the 2004 opening of my friend Gord Wilding's show at Artspace

Long-time friend Dave Barber, programmer of the Cinematheque and heart and soul of the Winnipeg Film Group died on Monday July 26 after six hard weeks in hospital, leaving behind a local and national film community which owed him an enormous debt for his unceasing work to get Canadian independent cinema seen by audiences across the country. For those close to him, the loss is more personal and painful; Dave’s decency and humour affected us all deeply and its absence now leaves a painful hole which will be impossible to fill.

Blasts from the past

Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1966-67):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Winter 2024 viewing, part two: Vinegar Syndrome

Boxed In

Rewriting the West:
Monte Hellman’s The Shooting and Ride In the Whirlwind