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 ...
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Wings of Desire Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Stay
By Joe Keaton |
Not much happens in Wings of Desire (1987; dir. Wim Wenders), but it’s among the most beautiful of films. In ...
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Superman 5-Film Collection 4K UHD Review: Super-Reeve
By Joe Keaton |
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 ...
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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 ...
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The Seventh Seal Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: Chess with Death
By Joe Keaton |
The Criterion Collection has just released Ingmar Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal (1957), in 4K UHD. When I first saw ...
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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 ...
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Cool Hand Luke 4K UHD Review: Grin Like a Baby, Bite Like a Gator
By Joe Keaton |
It’s not I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) (still the best chain gang movie I’ve seen)—but… Cool ...
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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. ...
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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. ...
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Babylon 4K UHD Steelbook Review: That Old Hollywood Stomp
By Joe Keaton |
Babylon (2022; dir. Damien Chazelle) does for silent movies what Boogie Nights (1997; dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) did for ‘70s ...
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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 ...
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Rocky: The Knockout Collection 4K UHD Review: The Contender
By Joe Keaton |
A Philly ham-and-cheese tough with heart, Rocky Balboa is one of cinema’s best underdogs. Say what you like about its ...
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Training Day 4K UHD Review: King Kong Ain’t Got Sh*t on Him!
By Joe Keaton |
Let’s talk about Training Day (2001; dir. Antoine Fuqua). Modern-day L.A.: Jake, a rookie cop (Ethan Hawke, in an Oscar-nominated ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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The Magnificent Seven (1960) 4K UHD Review: McQueen Rising
By Joe Keaton |
It’s an Old West spin on a brilliant film, director Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. And hey, did it need to ...
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Dazed and Confused Criterion Collection 4K UHD Review: School’s Out
By Joe Keaton |
Dazed and Confused (1993; dir. Richard Linklater) circuits darkness: On the last day of school before the summer of 1976, ...
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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.) ...
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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 ...
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Pulp Fiction 4K UHD Review: Jukeboxer
By Joe Keaton |
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 ...
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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. ...
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The Polar Express 4K UHD Review: Dead-eyed and Dreaming
By Joe Keaton |
The Polar Express (2004; dir. Robert Zemeckis; rated G) is a weird, dark flick that should be darker. A motion-capture ...
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A Christmas Story 4K UHD Review: You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!
By Joe Keaton |
A Christmas Story (1983; dir. Bob Clark) is a charmer—a sweet and funny yuletide gem that’s never too cute for ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Blue Hawaii 4K UHD Limited Edition Review: Death by Half-baked Clambake
By Joe Keaton |
When did Elvis Presley’s decline start? From the cradle. I’m no Elvis scholar (I’ve listened to dozens of his albums ...
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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 ...
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Universal Classic Monsters: Icons of Horror Vol. 2 4K UHD Review: They Don’t Make ’em Like They Used To
By Joe Keaton |
Halloween is over, but we can celebrate it all year long—am I right? I’m always in a mood to watch ...
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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 ...
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Dressed to Kill (1980) 4K UHD Review: Hitchcock Outdone
By Joe Keaton |
To ‘get’ Dressed to Kill, you probably have to bear a soft spot in your heart for slasher movies. And it ...
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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, ...
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The War of the Worlds (1953)/When Worlds Collide 4K UHD Review: They Came From the ’50s
By Joe Keaton |
Producer George Pal’s thumbprint on science-fiction and fantasy films was big. A new limited edition, two-disc set from Paramount Pictures ...
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Scream 2 4K UHD Review: You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream… For Less Scream
By Joe Keaton |
I doubt the horror movie was ‘dead’ before Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) came out. Hadn’t The Silence of the Lambs ...
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Poltergeist (1982) 4K UHD Review: This Movie Is Clean
By Joe Keaton |
Director Tobe Hooper is most famous for Poltergeist (1982) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Chainsaw’s a sick, stone classic ...
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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 ...
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Director’s Edition 4K UHD Review: The Starship Ponderosa
By Joe Keaton |
Upon its release in 1979, Trekkies greeted Star Trek: The Motion Picture as an Event. Green-lit by Paramount in a ...
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God Told Me To 4K UHD Review: Holy Mindscrew
By Joe Keaton |
Larry Cohen, the writer-director of such cult faves as It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, and The Stuff, was a ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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: ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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The Untouchables 4K UHD Review: De Palma Lite
By Joe Keaton |
Great artists sometimes create beneath their gifts, just for a lark. This describes the role Brian De Palma plays in ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 Joe Keaton |
Chances are, you’ve seen Singin’ in the Rain. You already know how good it is. (If you’ve not seen it, ...
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RoboCop (1987) 4K UHD Review: FrankenCop
By Joe Keaton |
When it came out in 1987, RoboCop (dir. Paul Verhoeven) was one of my favorite movies. I was seven. I ...
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