The DVD Wrapup: Ant-Man, Minions, Blind, Girl King, Speedy, Lucky and more
Ant-Man: Blu-ray/3D Although Ant-Man was introduced to the world in 1962, via Marvel Comic’s Tales to Astonish No. 27, the shape-shifting superhero made his first live-action cameo in 1979, in the...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: M:I, Ted 2, Burroughs, Time Out of Mind, Slow Learners and more
Mission:Impossible: Rogue Nation: Blu-ray A year ago, I think it’s safe to say, Alicia Vikander and Rebecca Ferguson probably would have been off the radar screens of paparazzi everywhere, except in...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: War Room, Nasty Baby, Queen of Earth, Leonard Cohen and more
War Room: Blu-ray When it comes to faith-based movies and box-office obsessives, the old bromide applies, “They may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but, you can’t argue with success.” Even more simply...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Sicario, Sleeping With Other People, Maneater, Cruel, Broad...
Sicario: Blu-ray In 2010, Gianfranco Rosi’s frightening interview with a real-life cartel assassin, El Sicario, Room 164, was awarded the top-documentary prize at the Venice Film Festival. Based on a...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: The Walk, Irrational Man, Look of Silence, Bitter Rice, Last...
The Walk: Blu-ray On September 10, 2001, it’s likely that some visitors to Lower Manhattan pointed to the summit of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and recalled the day, 27 years earlier,...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Straight Outta Compton, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Howl, I Am...
Straight Outta Compton: Blu-ray As difficult as it might be for fans of Straight Outta Compton to believe that it was nearly shut out of Oscar competition, it’s just that hard for me be to believe that...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Burnt, Assassin, New Girlfriend, Patels, Mr. Robot and more
Burnt: Blu-ray A few years before Bradley Cooper broke from the pack of nearly interchangeable white male actors in The Hangover, he starred in an ill-fated Fox TV series, “Kitchen Confidential,” based...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Bridge of Spies, Truth, Snow White, Breathe and more
Bridge of Spies: Blu-ray There’s always a point in a Steven Spielberg movie where I want to pull out my cellphone–or hit the pause button on my remote–to check the validity of what’s just happened on...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: 99 Homes, Grandma, Crimson Peak, Jan Troell, Sheba Baby and more
99 Homes: Blu-ray One way to view Ramin Bahrani’s gut-churning drama, 99 Homes, is as a powerful indictment of the corrupt practices embraced by the real-estate industry in the still unresolved...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Black Mass, Trumbo, Death by Hanging, Taviani Trilogy, Iron...
Black Mass: Blu-ray Anyone who’s only started watching movies recently would think that South Boston has always been the crime capital of America. It wasn’t until Peter Yate’s splendid adaptation of...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Spotlight, Good Dinosaur, Cannibal Women, Bees and more
Spotlight: Blu-ray Sometimes, when the words “priest,” and “pedophilia” appear in a feature story or movie review, everything that comes after them is superfluous. As bummers go, the subject of Roman...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Danish Girl, Boy, Intruders, Beautiful When Angry, Iron Sheik...
The Danish Girl: Blu-ray As the just completed awards season evolved, the biggest controversy surrounding The Danish Girl was the decision made by its distribution company, Focus Features, to promote...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Agnes Varda, Macbeth, Coming Home, Finding Gaston and more
Jane B. Par Agnès V./Kung-Fu Master: Blu-ray At 87, the much celebrated European filmmaker Agnès Varda doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Aligned with the French New Wave, her early work not only...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Stealing Cars, Dixieland, Great Hypnotist, The Forest, Dreams...
Stealing Cars If this affecting teen drama had been made in the 1930s, it might have starred Mickey Rooney as the most unrepentant juvenile delinquent in a reform school full of hard cases. Or, it...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Burns on Robinson, The Force Awakens, Dylan/Zappa, Jorg...
PBS: Ken Burns: Jackie Robinson: Blu-ray Considering that Ken Burns put a tight focus on Jackie Robinson several times in his epochal 1994 documentary series, “Baseball,” and MLB has bent over...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: East Side Sushi, Glassland, Scherzo Diabolico, The Club,...
East Side Sushi Every 10 years or so, the media get on their high horse about the lack of diversity in Hollywood – usually, vis a vis that season’s minority-free Oscar nominations – without also...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Mustang, Where to Invade Next, Patty Duke, In a Lonely Place...
Mustang: Blu-ray Once upon a time, when the world was a much larger place, the Arabic and Farsi-speaking world was seen from afar as a land of camel caravans, wandering Bedouins, harems, men who...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Zoolander 2, Finest Hours, A Married Woman, Manhunter, The...
Zoolander No. 2: The Magnum Edition: Blu-ray In the opening moments of Zoolander 2, Justin Bieber is machine-gunned to death in an international conspiracy to rid the world of beautiful celebrities, a...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: Janis, Triple 9, Princess, Wim Wenders, City of Women, Blood...
Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue GG Allin: Carnival of Excess For as long as I can remember, someone has been trying to make a biopic about Janis Joplin. The closest anyone has come is Mark Rydell’s 1979...
View ArticleThe DVD Wrapup: 45 Years, 10 Cloverfield Lane, London Has Fallen,...
45 Years: Blu-ray I, Anna Once upon a time in Hollywood, movies that featured elderly characters played by venerable stars could be counted on to attract a decent-sized slice of the box-office pie and...
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