This week we've got 2 wonderful films of the same Korean director, plus a slew of other delights, especially of the retro flavor: 70's sword and scorcery and made-for-TV horror. Don't miss what's inside! 

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: August 23, 2011

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Rating (out of five): ***1/2

Until I watched Kino’s new DVD special edition of David Holzman's Diary, I was only familiar with its significance as a hatch-mark on a film history timeline. Diary is often cited as one of the earliest mockumentaries, prefiguring (among others) Christopher Guest’s skewering of self-serious musicians, dog show denizens, community theater actors, etc.

In this case, director Jim McBride aims his satirical guns at a particular type of pseudo-intellectual, the eponymous Holzman (L.M. Kit Carson, who co-wrote the film with McBride). Holzman is a recently unemployed cinema obsessive who decides to film himself over the course of a week in July 1967. He cites Godard’s oft-repeated axiom that “film is truth 24 frames per second” as his mantra. As the film unfolds, it becomes abundantly clear that Holzman is a budding sociopath, documenting his own devolution. Holzman makes for insufferable company, both for his (soon to be ex-) girlfriend Penny (Eileen Dietz) and the viewer. 

Continue Reading David Holzman's Diary

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of five): ****

Comparing a movie to an after-school special generally means something derogatory. Not in this case. Not at all. For writer/-director Michael Pavone has given us a coming-of-age, junior-high-school story that's rare in lots of ways. It's the first really good film -- one for which no excuses need be made -- from the WWE (yes, the company formerly known as The World Wide Wrestling Federation). It has a cast -- Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Molly Parker plus a group of remarkably gifted unknowns and even a WWE superstar (Randy Orton) who proves quite a good actor -- of which any movie would be proud to boast; and best of all, it handles coming-of-age and all the complexities of the adult and teenage worlds with remarkable depth, understanding, generosity and tact. In short, it's an important film that will undoubtedly -- due to its provenance (particularly, I fear, that WWE connection) -- get lost in the hustle and bustle of the mainstream mix.

Continue Reading That's What I Am

It's a great week to revisit old movies, as we've got everything from Kubrick's earliest, a new on DVD Polanski movie, mad science sci-fi from the 60's, and much, much more. 

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: August 16, 2011.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of five): ****

While director Edgar Wright was working on his fake trailer for Grindhouse (2007), and preparing Hot Fuzz (2007), Quentin Tarantino screened a couple of cop films for him: Stuart Rosenberg's The Laughing Policeman (1973) and Ruggero Deodato's Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976).

Of the second film, Wright said it was "the most amazing title, ever, apart from Half Past Dead. It's probably the most homoerotic cop film I've ever seen. The cops in it share a bedroom. They have bunks, and they're both real lady killers, but the fact that they share a bedroom -- it's like Bert and Ernie from 'Sesame Street.'"

Continue Reading Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man

Reviewer: Jeffrey M Anderson
Rating (out of five): ****

Thanks to a fan club that includes Quentin Tarantino and John Woo (as well making an appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless), Jean-Pierre Melville is primarily known as a director of cool crime films. In 2006, there was a small revelation with the official U.S. release of Army of Shadows (1969), a cool crime film that took place during WWII and dealt with the French Resistance; it quickly became apparent that this subject was dear to Melville's heart. Now comes Léon Morin, Priest (1961), making its DVD debut via the Criterion Collection. It's a movie without any crime elements at all, and is almost entirely wrapped up in the Occupation and Resistance. And yet it hardly even touches on those things. The story is almost totally boiled down to the interactions between two characters. They talk almost entirely about religion. They barely talk about the war or its effects at all. But in these talks, everything becomes clear.

Continue Reading Léon Morin, Priest

Reviewer: Jeffrey M Anderson
Rating (out of five): ****

In last year's Kick-Ass, an ordinary comic book nerd dons a costume and becomes a superhero. Despite his lack of superpowers, he eventually finds himself on a super adventure, with a big, spectacular showdown. James Gunn's Super starts out much the same way, except that this hero (played by Rainn Wilson) doesn't know much about comic books and he's a little less of a role model. In fact, comparisons to Travis Bickle are appropriate.

Frank D'Arbo (Wilson) is the ultimate in schlubby. His clothes and hair are schlubby, he lives in a schlubby town (actually Shreveport, Louisiana), and works as a cook in a schlubby little diner. He has somehow lucked into a beautiful wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), though she is on the verge of leaving him; she's a recovering addict and is falling off the wagon. When she finally does, it's for a slick, sleazy club owner/drug dealer, Jacques (Kevin Bacon). Frank feels a terrible sense of injustice; he wants to get his wife back, but he also wants to rescue her from that bad influence.

Continue Reading Super

If Wall Street's got you down there's plenty of escapism to be had in this week's batch of new releases, including lots of comedy, foriegn horror (appropriately addressing a sociopathic desire for home ownership), anime, and more, inside!

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: August 9, 2011.

We've got a small but eclectic offering this week, which includes a 1960's stranded-in-a-desert flick from Olive Films, a new one from Film Movement, and more, inside. 

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: August 2, 2011.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of five): ***

Mexican director Jorge Michel Grau's undeniably creepy if tonally uneven We Are What We Are (Somos los que hay) is on the one hand a melancholy dysfunctional family tale, and on the other hand, well... they'd like to eat it.

After their father perishes in a heap on a city sidewalk, the two sons, Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro) and Julian (Alan Chávez*), help their haggard mother (Carmen Beato) with the family finances as well as the family appetite, despite not being especially equipped for either role. The most important thing? Continuing the family "ritual" -- the unpleasant task the patriarch done for them for years. Meanwhile, two curious cops, after seeing the coroner find a finger in the man's stomach, decide to investigate further -- at their own risk.

Continue Reading We Are What We Are