"The 1970s was a hotbed of scandalous art cinema, but Salò - unlike such X-rated shockers as Last Tango in Paris or In the Realm of the Senses - has not been tamed by the passage of years," writes Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times. "If anything, there is a cruel, chilling timelessness to both its imagery and its logic. The shock hasn't worn off in the slightest. While Pasolini mingled the sacred and the profane in much of his earlier work, Salò exists in an utterly godless realm."

"Today, Criterion has at long last rescued Salò from collector lust and paper-bag infamy via an authorized deluxe two-disc edition, boasting an immaculate transfer (the prior, short-lived legitimate release lost considerable picture quality in its film-to-digital journey) and a handful of accompanying short subjects that document the film's conception, production, release, and legacy," writes Bruce Bennett, who tells the story of the film's making in the New York Sun. "What no one involved could imagine was that Pasolini would not live to see his profoundly isolating, suffocatingly formalist, stomach-churning masterpiece alternately excoriated and lionized upon its release and for four decades afterward."

"Stuck in the summertime hell of superhero crapola and CGI migraines, it's not hard from where I stand (which is, frankly, still a state of bedevilment about how the typically abbreviated and overwrought non-storyness of The Dark Knight has so many educated viewers bamboozled) to find relief in the forgotten matinee fodder of a less bombastic time," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC. "This week, it's René Clément's rather delightful 1964 suspenser Les Félins (The Felines), titled here (after the American pulp paperback it was based on, by prolific noiriste Day Keene) Joy House. There's not much that's earth-shaking about Joy House (except perhaps Lalo Schifrin's pre-Jerry Goldsmith score). But it's a movie in a way movies haven't been in a long time: graceful, relaxed, fun-loving, unpretentious." Also reviewed is the "overlooked Hungarian film The Witman Boys."

(This originally appeared on GreenCine Daily.)

Now then: "The behemothic, almost impossible to see, hardcore-critic-exalted art film legends keep coming at us on DVD - will there be any Holy Grails left? - but it's likely that no movie has been awaited as intensely and with as high expectations as Béla Tarr's Satantango (1994)," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC. "Finally, after literally years of rumors and broken promises and restoration troubles, Facets has brought this cathedral of a movie to disc, and we can all explore its frontiers at will.... Films like Satantango may not necessarily change your life, but they cannot help but become a part of it once they are experienced." Update, 7/24: Jason Anderson for Artforum: "It may sound absurd to say that a seven-hour movie has hardly a wasted moment - as famously insisted by Susan Sontag - but Tarr's minimalism has maximum impact, especially when the film's satiric nature becomes more prominent in the final hour." Also: Maria Komodore on GC Guru.

Also reviewed: Eagle Shooting Heroes, "a Hong Kong self-parody that's as utterly goofy and bubbly and schticky as any Keystone Kops two-reeler, but packed with ordinarily stoic stars (Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, Leslie Cheung, Jacky Cheung, Tony Leung Ka Fai, etc) making ridiculous hay of their screen personas and the entire wuxia pian genre."

Reviewer: Steve Goldstein
Rating (out of 5): **** (for all 3 films)

When MGM first paired its rising musical star Gene Kelly with the heartthrob crooner Frank Sinatra, audiences must have expected Kelly to take the dancing turns and Sinatra to take the vocal spotlights. Instead, Kelly and Sinatra took the route of Paramount's then-current hit team of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. MGM's boys would share everything-the singing, dancing, joke telling and skirt chasing. There would be a difference, though. Hope and Crosby's movies conformed, often surrealistically, to their comedic personas. Kelly and Sinatra, in the three movies collected in the DVD box set "The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection" (Warner Home Video), served the genre - in this case, the movie musical. Their three movies together chart the development of the genre, as well as Kelly's expanding creative freedom as a dancer, choreographer and, ultimately, director.   Continue reading "Sinatra and Kelly: MGM's Double-Play Combo of the 40s" >>