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.
Once again, I’ve fallen way behind in commenting on the movies I’ve been watching: ’60s political agitprop, mind-bending time travel, demonic possession, cheesy B monster movies, Cold War submarines and futuristic trains …
Because it’s pretty hard to lose money with a horror movie, it’s been possible for filmmakers to experiment and push boundaries. But it’s a fact which has also produced a lot of laziness in both conception and execution, or at best a rote repetition of overly familiar formulas.
Continuing a review of the past month’s disk viewing; contemporary and classic thrillers, Czech animation, British cult TV, and a French dream of New York.
Elio Petri’s 1970 masterpiece Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion provides one of the most incisive dissections of the pathology of power ever committed to film.
The concept of genre is endlessly malleable, permitting filmmakers to borrow, invent, mix and match narrative elements to create a seemingly inexhaustible array of stories which combine familiar elements in new, or not so new, ways.
Genre, of course, is not limited to the fantastic — science fiction, fantasy, horror. Contemporary and historical dramas can also fall within genre boundaries. Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve) Denis Villeneuve’s thriller was much-praised by critics and audiences alike, and yet it struck me as a genre movie desperate to convince its viewers that it was actually […]
My friend Howard and I get together fairly regularly for an evening of conversation and movie viewing. The conversation often revolves around what he goes through teaching film courses to first-year university students … something I’m glad not to be involved with! The viewing more often than not focuses on older movies (we’re both pretty […]
I’ve mentioned the boutique label Twilight Time before; they continue to release an interestingly eclectic series of limited edition Blu-rays (3000 copies of each title), with their specialty being a focus on the films’ soundtracks (each title includes a separate music track), not so surprising since they’re available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment, a site […]
Falling behind again! Things have been hectic lately – working on a documentary which has turned out to be bigger than expected and is now way overdue, plus starting a new project with a tight deadline, I haven’t had a lot of time to write down notes on what I’ve been watching the past couple […]