There are so many different options in terms of what one can watch these days that I often feel overwhelmed. My wife makes fun of me because I’ll often spend half my evening scanning through the various streaming services trying to make a decision on what to watch. What I choose often seems random but whenever I step back and analyze my choices, patterns tend to arise. Over the course of several weeks and months, I tend to watch movies from specific genres or that deal with certain themes, or more often than not, ones by the same director or writer or actor.
Sometimes the review choices that come across my desk fall into patterns I’ve already established and it almost seems fortuitous. Several weeks ago, after listening to a podcast about it, I watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. It is a weird, incredibly slow moving film that I found utterly fascinating. I had watched his Solaris several years before and barely made it through. I just couldn’t get in tune with his very deliberate, languidly paced type of cinema. But now, it seems, I’m right on that wavelength. From there I watched Andrei Rublev, and that’s when I discovered Kino Lorber was putting out a really nice edition of the last film he ever made, The Sacrifice. I just knew I had to review it.
And so I did. You can read my review. It’s a great movie and a great release. It also has that art-house, movie-nerd credential to it that always adds a special charm to any collection.
Also out this week that looks interesting:
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure: Such a dumb film. Such a hilarious one. Such nostalgia. Shout Factory has basically rehashed an old transfer with old extras, added in a new interview with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, bundled it in a nice-looking Steelbook, and called it good. I called it pretty good in my review.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: Shout Factory has basically rehashed an old transfer with old extras and bundled it in a nice -ooking Steelbook and called it good. David Wangberg has our review.
Ricky and Morty: Season 3: Dan Harmon’s weird looking animated show has drawn some controversy stemming over its fan base of late. I’ve never seen any of it so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
The Bloodthirsty Trilogy: Arrow Video is releasing three vampire films from Japan which were inspired from the old Hammer Horror films.
The Other Side of Hope (Criterion Collection): Finish film about a group of Syrian refugees who have recently taken refuge in Finland and befriend a couple of outcasts.
The Forgiven: Roland Joffe directed this film about Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It stars Forest Whitaker, Eric Bana, and Vince Vaughn.
Two Thousand Maniacs: Arrow Video does their thing to Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter classic. This was previously issued as part of the Herschell Gordon Lewis boxed set.
