Branded to Kill Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Yakuza Movie as Experimental Art
By Kent Conrad |
Goro Hanada's life is spinning out of control. His wife spends all his money, so he's always on the financial ...
Read More 
Wings of Desire Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Stay
By Rocky London |
Not much happens in Wings of Desire (1987; dir. Wim Wenders), but it’s among the most beautiful of films. In ...
Read More 
Superman 5-Film Collection 4K UHD Review: Super-Reeve
By Rocky London |
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… Warner Bros.’s new 4K UHD Superman 5-Film Collection (1978-1987)! But is it worth ...
Read More 
All-Star Superman 4K UHD Review: Great Comics, Okay Movie
By Kent Conrad |
Superman is a difficult character to write good stories about because… he's Superman. Impervious to damage, always the strongest and ...
Read More 
The Seventh Seal Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Chess with Death
By Rocky London |
The Criterion Collection has just released Ingmar Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal (1957), in 4K UHD. When I first saw ...
Read More 
Star Trek: The Next Generation 4-Movie Collection 4K UHD Review: First 4K Contact
By Steve Geise |
Following up on last year’s six-movie 4K box set of the original Star Trek movies, Paramount has moved on to ...
Read More 
Cool Hand Luke 4K UHD Review: Grin Like a Baby, Bite Like a Gator
By Rocky London |
It’s not I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) (still the best chain gang movie I’ve seen)—but… Cool ...
Read More 
The Maltese Falcon (1941) 4K UHD Review: Bogart’s Big Break
By Kent Conrad |
Is The Maltese Falcon a film noir? To many viewers, it's not a question. It's black and white. There's crime. ...
Read More 
Dead Silence (2007) 4K UHD Review: Scary Dolls Don’t Do Anything
By Kent Conrad |
James Wan has had an interesting career. An absolute underdog, coming from Malaysia via Australia, he made the film Saw. ...
Read More 
Babylon 4K UHD Steelbook Review: That Old Hollywood Stomp
By Rocky London |
Babylon (2022; dir. Damien Chazelle) does for silent movies what Boogie Nights (1997; dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) did for ‘70s ...
Read More 
Dragonslayer (1981) 4K UHD Review: Great Dragon, Murky Movie
By Kent Conrad |
The title Dragonslayer brings to mind knights in shining armor. Villainous, fire-breathing wyrms. Damsels chained to posts in sacrifice to ...
Read More 
Rocky: The Knockout Collection 4K UHD Review: The Contender
By Rocky London |
A Philly ham-and-cheese tough with heart, Rocky Balboa is one of cinema’s best underdogs. Say what you like about its ...
Read More 
Training Day 4K UHD Review: King Kong Ain’t Got Sh*t on Him!
By Rocky London |
Let’s talk about Training Day (2001; dir. Antoine Fuqua). Modern-day L.A.: Jake, a rookie cop (Ethan Hawke, in an Oscar-nominated ...
Read More 
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Grinding Relentless Horror Classic
By Kent Conrad |
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre deserves its reputation. For grisliness, for nastiness. And for excellence. It's a rare movie that ...
Read More 
Kubo and the Two Strings 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Stop-motion Tribute to Samurai Cinema
By Kent Conrad |
Kubo and the Two Strings is the story of an estranged family coming together. It is the story of a ...
Read More 
The Boxtrolls 4K UHD Steelbook Review: Charming, Odd, Ugly Beautiful?
By Kent Conrad |
Stop motion animation is a pretty weird medium. It was an early special effects trick, long since superseded by technology. ...
Read More 
The Magnificent Seven (1960) 4K UHD Review: McQueen Rising
By Rocky London |
It’s an Old West spin on a brilliant film, director Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. And hey, did it need to ...
Read More 
Dazed and Confused Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: School’s Out
By Rocky London |
Dazed and Confused (1993; dir. Richard Linklater) circuits darkness: On the last day of school before the summer of 1976, ...
Read More 
Three Colors Trilogy Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Enigmatic Masterpieces About People Connecting
By Kent Conrad |
The Three Colors of this film trilogy, Blue, White, and Red, are so-chosen for the French tri-color flag (sorry, U.S.A.) ...
Read More 
Silent Running 4K UHD: Sci-Fi Hippy Dreams Dying
By Kent Conrad |
One of the things that made Star Wars such a huge hit was the state of '70s cinematic sci-fi. Because ...
Read More 
Pulp Fiction 4K UHD Review: Jukeboxer
By Rocky London |
Joy to the world: Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction—a gritty crime romp set in mid-1990s L.A.—is now out in 4K Ultra ...
Read More 
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 4K UHD Review: Calamitous Christmas Classic
By Kent Conrad |
Clark Griswold, the epitome of the American Middle-Class male, is on a slow burn. He has a vision of perfection. ...
Read More 
The Polar Express 4K UHD Review: Dead-eyed and Dreaming
By Rocky London |
The Polar Express (2004; dir. Robert Zemeckis; rated G) is a weird, dark flick that should be darker. A motion-capture ...
Read More 
A Christmas Story 4K UHD Review: You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!
By Rocky London |
A Christmas Story (1983; dir. Bob Clark) is a charmer—a sweet and funny yuletide gem that’s never too cute for ...
Read More 
Planes, Trains and Automobiles 4K UHD Review: Thanksgiving’s Annual Lesson
By Kent Conrad |
Neal Page is not a bad guy. He's tightly wound, a little too serious, but the most important thing to ...
Read More 
Elf (2003) 4K UHD Review: Farrell and Favreau Hit
By Kent Conrad |
Elf is a strange premise, anchored on a strange performance. Will Ferrell plays the grown-up version of a baby from ...
Read More 
Blue Hawaii 4K UHD Limited Edition Review: Death by Half-baked Clambake
By Rocky London |
When did Elvis Presley’s decline start? From the cradle. I’m no Elvis scholar (I’ve listened to dozens of his albums ...
Read More 
The Company of Wolves 4K UHD Review: Little Red’s Wolf Fetish
By Kent Conrad |
The Company of Wolves (1984) is only kind of a werewolf movie, in that werewolves in the 20th century took ...
Read More 
Universal Classic Monsters: Icons of Horror Vol. 2 4K UHD Review: They Don’t Make ’em Like They Used To
By Rocky London |
Halloween is over, but we can celebrate it all year long—am I right? I’m always in a mood to watch ...
Read More 
Casablanca 4K UHD Review: Here’s Looking at UHD
By Kent Conrad |
There's an old joke about a woman who saw Hamlet for the first time and hated it. "It was all ...
Read More 
Dressed to Kill (1980) 4K UHD Review: Hitchcock Outdone
By Rocky London |
To ‘get’ Dressed to Kill, you probably have to bear a soft spot in your heart for slasher movies. And it ...
Read More 
Army of Darkness 4K UHD Limited Edition Steelbook Review: Long Live the Medieval Dead
By Kent Conrad |
Army of Darkness was my personal introduction to the Evil Dead. Because of Universal's awful marketing at the time, however, ...
Read More 
The War of the Worlds (1953)/When Worlds Collide 4K UHD Review: They Came From the ’50s
By Rocky London |
Producer George Pal’s thumbprint on science-fiction and fantasy films was big. A new limited edition, two-disc set from Paramount Pictures ...
Read More 
Scream 2 4K UHD Review: You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream… For Less Scream
By Rocky London |
I doubt the horror movie was ‘dead’ before Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) came out. Hadn’t The Silence of the Lambs ...
Read More 
Poltergeist (1982) 4K UHD Review: This Movie Is Clean
By Rocky London |
Director Tobe Hooper is most famous for Poltergeist (1982) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Chainsaw’s a sick, stone classic ...
Read More 
The Lost Boys 4K UHD Review: Flashy ’80s Vampire Flick
By Kent Conrad |
Half of the The Lost Boys is a moody gothic music-video styled horror movie. The other half is the '80s ...
Read More 
Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Director’s Edition 4K UHD Review: The Starship Ponderosa
By Rocky London |
Upon its release in 1979, Trekkies greeted Star Trek: The Motion Picture as an Event. Green-lit by Paramount in a ...
Read More 
God Told Me To 4K UHD Review: Holy Mindscrew
By Rocky London |
Larry Cohen, the writer-director of such cult faves as It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, and The Stuff, was a ...
Read More 
Event Horizon 4K UHD Review: Atmospheric Space Chiller
By Kent Conrad |
At first glance, Event Horizon looks like a rip-off of Alien. A crew in space, far from any aid, investigating ...
Read More 
Flatliners (1990) 4K UHD Review: Visually Stimulating Psychological Thriller
By Kent Conrad |
Doctors lead very exciting lives in movies. Every doctor I've known in real life has been a little dull. Intelligent, ...
Read More 
Edge of Tomorrow 4K UHD Review: Groundhog D-Day
By Kent Conrad |
It is a strange time to look at a film that earned hundreds of millions at the box-office and wonder: ...
Read More 
True Romance 4K UHD Review: Sick Love, Slick Film
By Kent Conrad |
True Romance isn't a Quentin Tarantino movie. His name is on the screenplay. It has many scenes which no other ...
Read More 
Raiders of the Lost Ark Limited Edition Steelbook 4K UHD Review: Cinematic Adventure Perfection
By Kent Conrad |
Watching as a child, I knew that Raiders of the Lost Ark was a great adventure. It had everything you ...
Read More 
Candyman (1992) 4K UHD Review: Urban Legend, Urban Horror
By Kent Conrad |
Of the many great things about Bernard Rose's Candyman, one of the best is that it isn’t structured like a ...
Read More 
The Untouchables 4K UHD Review: De Palma Lite
By Rocky London |
Great artists sometimes create beneath their gifts, just for a lark. This describes the role Brian De Palma plays in ...
Read More 
12 Monkeys (1995) 4K UHD Review: Time-Travel Tragedy
By Kent Conrad |
Terry Gilliam lives to be idiosyncratic. In a British comedy troupe, Monty Python, he was the American. In Hollywood filmmaking, ...
Read More 
Wild Things 4K UHD Review: High Level Sleaze
By Kent Conrad |
Wild Things is trash. But it's a kind of exquisite trash. It's the best Cinemax-style soft porn ever made. It's ...
Read More 
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 4K UHD Review: End of the Classic Western
By Kent Conrad |
The ubiquity of the popularity of the Western is a cultural phenomenon that is hard to fathom. It wasn't just ...
Read More Singin’ in the Rain 4K UHD Review: A Pure Joy
By Rocky London |
Chances are, you’ve seen Singin’ in the Rain. You already know how good it is. (If you’ve not seen it, ...
Read More 
RoboCop (1987) 4K UHD Review: FrankenCop
By Rocky London |
When it came out in 1987, RoboCop (dir. Paul Verhoeven) was one of my favorite movies. I was seven. I ...
Read More
Recent Comments