Category Archives: DVD Review

“Capital”: Costa-Gavras tries to topple a House of (Debit) Cards

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The 2008 financial meltdown is a tricky subject for a filmmaker to tackle — the reckless and greedy actions of a few financiers, and the lack of consequences they faced when it all blew up in their faces, remains one of the defining chapters in the new century. And yet few have access to their world, and even fewer understand how it works and how it went wrong (including the finance players themselves). As John Oliver said on “Last Week” a couple of weeks ago about net neutrality: “If you want to do something evil, hide it inside something boring.”

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“The Missing Picture”: An artist rebuilds his tortured past out of clay

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The figures are small, delicate, easily shattered. Their faces are simple lines and dots, but there’s a sadness, a weight to their rough expressions.

“A man is made,” artist and filmmaker Rithy Panh says in “The Missing Picture.” “It doesn’t take much. Only the will.”

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“The Color of Lies”: Claude Chabrol and the art of the offhanded thriller

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Claude Chabrol made thrillers that didn’t seem to realize they were thrillers. From his first film of the French New Wave, “La Beau Serge (modeled on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt”) to his later films a half-century later (like 2004’s haunting tale of obsession “The Bridesmaid”), his films had a very distinctive take on the thriller genre. Rather than amp up the lurid details, Chabrol’s camera felt almost detached from the action, letting the actors give naturalistic, almost languid performances, until they sort of just happen into a murder plot.

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“Ace in the Hole”: This reporter found a man buried alive. You won’t believe what happens next.

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If you think the media satire in Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole” is dated, I’ve got a Malaysian airliner I’d like to sell you. Even today, perhaps especially today, Wilder’s 1951 satire (his follow-up to “Sunset Boulevard”) hits a nerve  — especially if the viewer happens to be member of the media himself. Criterion released a dandy DVD edition in 2007, and it’s been re-released this month as a Blu-ray/DVD combo package with a sparkling new digital transfer.

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Blu-ray review: “Overlord” is a World War II movie unlike any other

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Is every war movie an anti-war movie? Many think so — Tom Hanks once said in an interview that he hoped that, by the end of “Saving Private Ryan,” the audience will hope it never sees one person shoot another person again. But then again, maybe ever war movie is a pro-war movie too, as it’s so hard not to get caught up in the characters’ struggle, to feel a visceral if awful excitement as Capt. Miller and his men fend off the Germans. It’s a mixed message – war is wrong, but warriors are heroes.

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Blu-ray review: “Riot in Cell Block 11: The Criterion Collection”

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There’s no question that “Riot in Cell Block 11” looks like it was made in 1954. There’s something a little bit square about it, from the get-them-in-their-seats provocativeness of the title to the faux newsreel that opens the film, laying out its prison reform themes so baldly that nobody can miss them.

 

But dig down into “Cell Block 11,” and you find a potboiler drama that was both far ahead of its time and, in some ways, far ahead of ours.

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DVD Review: “Mystery Science Theater 3000, Vol. XXIX”

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And the riffs just keep on coming. Between the news that the Rifftrax guys will be hosting a new miniseries on the National Geographic Channel and the latest release of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” DVD sets from Shout! Factory, it’s a good time to be snarky.

After 28 installments and over 100 films, the Shout! Factory sets have this down to a science; like its predecessors, “Vol. 29” features four films, spanning the MST3k-verse from the uneven first season through the Golden Age on Comedy Central, and finally one from the Sci-Fi Network years. Sprinkle some bonus features on top, and you’ve got some cheesy goodness in store.

Original host Joel Hodgson, who seems to have really embraced the “MST3K” legacy in recent years, provides new introductions for the first two films in the set, “Untamed Youth” and “Hercules and the Captive Women.” “Untamed Youth” is a classic ’50s troubled-teens drama with Mamie Van Doren, who appears in a new interview on the disc talking about her experiences as a ’50 starlet. (It does not sound fun – when she wanted to start a family, the studio immediately dumped her.)

The “Hercules” movies are among my favorites in “MST3k” and “Captive Women” is classic Italian-dubbed sword-and-sandals badness. The disc also includes a surprisingly engaging interview with artist Steve Vance, who draws the delightful ’50s-style mini-posters that Shout! Factory includes with each film.

“The Thing That Couldn’t Die” (not to be confused with “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”) is a slow-moving late ’50s horror film. The disc includes an entertaining making-of doc — at one time, strangely, an overstretched Universal Pictures shut down production on every film except this one, because it was so far under the radar.

But the jewel in “XXIX” is one of the best episodes of the Sci-FI Channel era, “Pumaman.” An incredibly cheap “Superman” knockoff from 1980, it boasts some of the worst “flying” visual effects imaginable, and a hero who wears a cape and sensible slacks. It is pure gold, and the disc includes an interview with star Walter G. Alton, Jr. How Alton became Pumaman is an odd story — he was a New York attorney who, when his firm refused to make him partner, decided to take a break and try acting. After “Pumaman,” he wisely went back to the law.

Alton also continues a run of MST3K “stars” who clearly bristle at the idea of the show making fun of their work. To quote from the opening theme song, they should really just relax. The show and the disc sets have brought a whole new audience to films that would have otherwise been forgotten. The Shout! Factory disc even includes an “Un-MSTied” version of “Pumaman” in its original form, although anyone who could sit through that would really be some kind of superhero.