Criterion’s Blu-ray release of One-Eyed Jacks is one of the disk highlights of the year, its restored image and sound confirming this great western’s stature. Marlon Brando’s sole directing effort is a key transitional moment between the traditional western and the national myth it represented and the modern deconstruction of that myth by filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn.
Artsploitation Films has released George Moises’s Counter Clockwise (2016), a new low-budget addition to the time travel paradox sub-genre; and several notable cinema personalities have recently departed.
With a three disk first volume, Arrow Video embark on an ambitious undertaking with the American Horror Project, which intends to gather together independent, fringe features from the ’70s and ’80s, surrounded by supplementary features which provide context and possibly a cumulative history of this genre niche. Set one gathers three movies of varying quality.
Sometimes sharing a favourite movie doesn’t produce the reaction we expect; it can be puzzling, even a little painful to discover that a friend doesn’t always like the same things we do.
Robert Altman’s masterpiece, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), finally gets a worthy disk release. Criterion gives us a wonderful transfer along with almost three hours of informative supplements.
Two excellent recent Blu-ray releases from the BFI illuminate the extremes of high and low art in British film of the early 1970s. Ken Russell’s version of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love is exemplary literary adaptation, while Don Sharp’s Psychomania is … well, something else again!
Despite truly dismal digital projection a recent big-screen viewing of The Birds reconfirms its status as one of Hitchcock’s finest films, and one of the best disaster films ever made.
Criterion releases some high-end trash with an extras-packed edition of Valley of the Dolls, and a collection of journalistic reviews by Graham Greene offers interesting insights into movies in the ’30s.
Some fairly random thoughts on an old TV show, a couple of violent satires, and large-A Acting in the films of Bennett Miller.
Revisiting old favourites like the original Star Trek series and familiar genres from samurai sword fights to supernatural monsters is like eating comfort food, triggering familiar emotions; even Satanic horrors can be paradoxically soothing.