England’s Arrow Video, while still largely focusing on genre titles, is rapidly becoming the equal of the BFI and Criterion in the quality of their releases, including extensive, informative supplements on many disks.
The consequences of one man’s decision in Steven Knight’s Locke outweigh the fate of the world in Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow.
Warners, once in the forefront of quality disk supplements, now more often releases bare bones titles even when the movies cry out for commentaries and documentaries to illuminate their importance.
Among other recent disks, Ben Wheatley’s A Field In England and Frank Perry’s The Swimmer use realistic performance and imagery to dig below material reality to strange symbolic and psychological depths, while the Estonian documentary Disco and Atomic War transforms the social and political facts of the Cold War into something strange and very funny.
In recent years I’ve found myself watching – and liking – movies on disk which I initially had little interest in seeing when they first came out in theatres. Cases in point: the latest films by Ron Howard and the Coen Brothers.
Twilight Time has become one of the most notable boutique labels over the past couple of years; with each title limited to 3000 units, collectors feel a sense of urgency with every new release. Available only through the Screen Archives Entertainment website which specializes in movie soundtracks, Twilight Time’s initial focus was on the music, […]
Criterion offers a strong presentation of Don Siegel’s breakout movie, Riot In Cell Block 11 (1954), a powerful docudrama which avoids all prison movie cliches.
Recent disks offer a range of horror movies displaying commercial and artier approaches to the genre from Vincent Price vehicles from American-International to Roger Vadim’s visually rich LeFanu adaptation …et mourir de plaisir and Bill Gunn’s key Black Cinema offering from 1973, Ganja & Hess.
The work of the great English cinematographer Oswald Morris, in both colour and black-and-white, added enormously to the films he worked on. He had a long and fruitful association with John Huston (his work on Moulin Rouge in 1952 pushed the boundaries of what Technicolor was supposed to be able to do), and also shot […]
Criterion follows up last year’s Safety Last! with a richly produced edition of Harold Lloyd’s biggest hit, The Freshman.