In many interviews and talks, Peter Greenaway has declared with some certainty and no small amount of pomposity that narrative and character development are not only inessential, but weaknesses of the cinematic medium. He treats his work not as “movies” in the widely-accepted sense, but as a form of visual art in motion, the sort… Read More A Hundred Is Enough | Drowning by Numbers (1988) 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
I learned a somewhat interesting fact from watching Paul Schrader’s 1982 quasi-remake of Cat People. Actually, I had to look it up afterward. Regardless, now I know that leopards and panthers are the same species, differentiated mainly by color. Perhaps that’s common knowledge to others, but I’d never given it any thought previously, until confused… Read More Kinski Skinski | Cat People (1982) 4K Ultra HD
Ever since the phrase “auteur theory” was coined in the early 1960s, audiences and film connoisseurs who care to notice such things have typically considered a director to be the main artistic guiding force behind any movie. That thought often applies even in retrospect to older films, but wasn’t always the case, especially not during… Read More I Like the Dark, It’s Friendly | Cat People (1942) Criterion Blu-ray
Part Western, part noir, and mostly a bunch of tough guys glaring at one another for 80 minutes, Bad Day at Black Rock was a collision of B-movie and prestige picture when it was made in 1955. Headlined by a couple major stars, one veteran character actor, and some other notable talent on the rise,… Read More We’re Suspicious of Strangers, Is All | Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) Blu-ray
How does one describe a movie like Absolute Beginners? That’s a question I’ve been pondering since first watching it recently, a Blu-ray copy having sat on my shelf for just over a decade. I’m not sure it can be described. The best I’ve come up with is that the film feels like it exists in… Read More You’ll Never Stop Me from Having It All | Absolute Beginners (1986) Blu-ray
Not even the troubled production and financial failure of his masterpiece Brazil could prevent director Terry Gilliam from embarking on an even bigger and more elaborate project next. His subject: the filmed biography of a man who was, at one time, the most famous and revered individual on the Earth and its moon. As recounted… Read More This Is Precisely the Sort of Thing That No One Ever Believes | The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) Criterion 4K Ultra HD
In a very weird way, watching the original 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer feature film proves what a genius Joss Whedon once was. That anyone could take such a lousy, inept movie and turn it into a long-running and beloved TV series is an almost miraculous feat few could achieve. Unfortunately, beyond that, I find… Read More Does the Word “Duh” Mean Anything to You? | Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) Blu-ray
Cyborgs, clones, trained fleas, and a talking disembodied brain in a fish tank are just a few among the countless idiosyncrasies found in The City of Lost Children, a Dickensian tale of societal corruption and decay by way of Jules Verne and Terry Gilliam. I’ve loved this movie from the first time I saw it,… Read More You Fell into a Strange Net, Huh? | The City of Lost Children (1995) 4K Ultra HD
The actors who’ve played James Bond in the movie series have a tendency – not always, but often enough – to go out on their weakest notes: Connery with Diamonds Are Forever, Moore with A View to a Kill, and definitely Pierce Brosnan with Die Another Day. Brosnan caught something of a raw deal with… Read More Double-0 Status Rescinded | Die Another Day (2002) Blu-ray
Long before it became a respected cult item and a franchise-starter that would launch sequels, reboots, and a pretty darn good TV series too, The Evil Dead was just a gory splatterfest made for no money by an ambitious kid (barely 20-years-old when he shot it!) and his pals out at a little cabin in… Read More Not Another Peep, Time to Go to Sleep | The Evil Dead (1981) 4K Ultra HD
The Video File Blog 