Unusual home video selections for the somewhat discerning cinephile!

• 'Looper' Seems Behind the Times, But 'Cosmopolis' Approaches Timelessness Published 1/9/2013 at 10:49 a.m. 0 comments

  Perhaps it’s a function of generation, but I remain fascinated by the short period during which Charlton Heston was Hollywood’s Man of the Future, its übermensch of dystopia. Maybe it was simply the success of The Planet of the Apes ...

• The Best Home Video of 2012 Published 12/26/2012 at 5:00 p.m. 0 comments

  Our critic picks the best DVD, Blu-Ray, and streaming choices of the year.

• Time-Travel Thriller 'Sound of My Voice' Hits the Wrong Notes Published 12/12/2012 at 10:00 a.m. 0 comments

  Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) are skeptical. They’ve heard about the ethereal blonde woman drawing followers to a suburban California basement, but they can’t believe she’s anything but a sham, a cult leader sucking in the gullible, the ...

• A New Criterion Edition Sparks Reconsideration of 'Heaven’s Gate' Published 11/28/2012 at 11:46 a.m. 0 comments

  For a generation of filmgoers, the very title is synonymous with “bloated debacle.”

• It’s the Right Time for a New Edition of Godard’s Biting, Class-Conscious Comedy 'Weekend' Published 11/14/2012 at 11:52 a.m. 0 comments

  If there was ever a time for Weekend to reappear, it’s our recessionary, Occupied era.

• Lives of the Artists: Two New Docs Offer Insight Into the Creative Life Published 10/24/2012 at 11:12 a.m. 0 comments

  In many ways, Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (Music Box DVD) is a film about watching a woman sit nonreactive, silent, motionless in front of a parade of strangers for hours, for weeks, for months. But Matthew Akers’ new ...

• The Criterion Collection Stretches the Boundaries of Classic Cinema Published 10/10/2012 at 12:24 p.m. 0 comments

  What makes a classic film a classic? Landing on some critic’s list? Currency among cinephiles over time? One possible definition is inclusion in the Criterion Collection, the movie-nerd benchmark for quality and erudition.

• 'Beyond the Black Rainbow' Is More Than Just a Stylish Tribute to ’80s Horror and Sci-Fi Published 9/19/2012 at 11:06 a.m. 0 comments

  The stark, chromatic décor and the pulsing synth score telegraph the days when future visions were transmitted via VHS cassette, or maybe expensive laserdisc. But then this isn’t quite like any 1983 that ever existed on film, much less anything ...

• Two Different Approaches To Murder: 'The Snowtown Murders' and 'Kill List' Published 9/5/2012 at 9:47 a.m. 0 comments

  Poverty, broken windows, broken family structures, substance abuse—you know the story. As The Snowtown Murders unfolds, this based-on-actual-events tale takes an even more disturbing turn. Casual murder as a fact of life gets an altogether more facile rendering in Kill ...

• Two New Documentaries Look at the Dramatic Lives of Bob Marley and Bobby Liebling Published 8/22/2012 at 11:25 a.m. 0 comments

  Bob Marley remains one of the best-known people on the planet, even 31 years after he left it. But all the namechecks and merchandising have left him seeming like more of an icon than a mere mortal, or even an ...

• Dog Days: Our Critic Suffers Through the Late-Summer Dregs of Home Video So You Don’t Have To Published 8/8/2012 at 11:08 a.m. 0 comments

  There comes a time every summer when the home-entertainment enthusiast finds him- or herself at a loss, surveying the options for a wind-down flick and finding them wanting. Or maybe this only happens to home-entertainment enthusiasts who write biweekly columns ...

• Kenneth Lonergan Gives Viewers Plenty to Talk About With Two Cuts of His Long-Awaited Indie Drama 'Margaret' Published 7/25/2012 at 11:42 a.m. 0 comments

  Margaret is a masterpiece. Margaret is a debacle. It’s the follow-up from hell, the vindication of an exacting filmmaker, a potential career-crippler. It’s indulgent and “arty,” and it’s brisk and disciplined. And none of these judgments are necessarily dependent on ...

• Two Rare Spaghetti Westerns Exemplify Gritty Italian Filmmaking of the ’60s Published 7/11/2012 at 5:44 p.m. 0 comments

  The stylistic legacy of director Sergio Leone and his less-celebrated muchachos extends into the present day, not least in Quentin Tarantino’s forthcoming pasta-faux-zool Django Unchained. But there are still plenty of treasures left unexplored by most quick-draw cinephiles, and niche ...

• 'My Joy' and 'Once Upon a TIme in Anatolia' Detour Around Road-Movie Cliches Published 6/27/2012 at 11:25 a.m. 0 comments

  Funny how often driving scenes in movies don’t really take you anywhere. They bring characters into two-shot-friendly proximity and provide the semblance of action while dialogue plays out, but what you see out the windshield is sometimes just backdrop. Even ...

• Hockey Comedy 'Goon' Tries to Rise Above Sports-Movie Cliches Published 6/13/2012 at 10:51 a.m. 0 comments

  Goon wishes badly that it weren’t a typical sports movie. Co-written by Evan Goldberg and Jay Baruchel, the hockey comedy clearly emulates/aspires to Slapshot, the profane, cynical 1977 flick that remains the unimpeachable gold standard for sports comedies to this ...

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