Masters of Cinema have recently released two of director King Hu’s influential martial arts epics featuring excellent restorations commissioned by the Taiwanese government. The Blu-rays provide informative supplements to give context to Dragon Gate Inn (1967) and A Touch of Zen (1971/75).
We here at Cagey Films are making some changes, beginning with a new index function to make it easier to search through our 400+ blog posts.
Network’s The British Film collection unearths two interesting titles from the ’60s, Michael Winner’s excellent West 11 and Christopher Morahan’s strange anti-comedy All Neat In Black Stockings, in decent quality DVD editions.
A new Blu-ray makes Philip Ridley’s elusive feature The Reflecting Skin available in a beautifully restored edition which includes several excellent supplements, including an illuminating commentary, a lengthy making-of documentary, and both if Ridley’s early short films.
Viewing the Indonesian genocide of 1965 from the victims’ point of view, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence is more devastating than his previous film, The Act of Killing, which dealt with the self-mythologizing of the murderers.
Despite facing a seemingly unending barrage of derision, M. Night Shyamalan continues to put out fine, underrated movies: The Visit is one of his best.
In 1993, back when I was working at the Winnipeg Film Group, I was offered a few days work as an extra on a TV movie being shot here: which is how I became the least convincing state trooper ever to appear on screen in Paul Shapiro’s serial killer comedy Heads, starring Jon Cryer, Ed Asner and Jennifer Tilly.
Giuseppe De Santis’ Bitter Rice (1949) expands the possibilities of neo-realism by incorporating elements of melodrama and film noir into the lives of women working in the rice fields of northern Italy.
I recently unearthed a university paper I wrote almost 30 years ago in which I tried to explain why Frank Capra’s work rubbed me the wrong way. It’s a glimpse of where I came from as a writer about film.
Arrow releases yet another impressive limited edition box-set with their dual-format edition of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor and Humanity, a key work in the transition of Japanese cinema from the “classical” post-war period to a more transgressive critique of the nation’s history and culture.