David Lynch’s 1992 prequel to the tv series Twin Peaks has received a 4K Criterion upgrade, which will be good news for his legions of fans and film lovers in general. The harrowing tale of the last week of Laura Palmer’s life is much darker and bleaker than the show’s beloved blend of weirdness and…
The mighty Star Trek franchise is still a big deal in fan circles, which will make this 60th Anniversary disc set a desirable item for the curious. Six decades later, Roddenberry’s idealistic space odyssey presents a winning stack of attitudes, some progressive and other dated. It doesn’t matter, as we still love the personality dynamics…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week we celebrate some Hong Kong action films, two directed by John Woo and one not. There will be wine pairings, too. For all three. Hard Boiled was Woo’s 1992 answer to…
Dennis Hopper’s Texas neo-noir is a sultry sizzler, long on atmosphere and rather poky in the pace department. Ladies’ man Don Johnson drifts into a Texas burg and commences romancing both Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen. But who is seducing whom and for what underhanded reason? Throw in a bank robbery and a couple of…
They say You Can’t Go Homer again, but it’s no problem making a slam-bang fantasy Iliad tuned to the star chemistry of Brad Pitt and the new (in 2003) ability to fill the screen with thousands of Greeks battling with sword ‘n’ shield. David Benioff’s script is intelligent and the dialogue isn’t bad; Pitt swings…
Is it surreal, or psychedelic? The source novel dates from 1813. This mind-blowing exercise in narrative puzzle-making is a classic with unique qualities, and its Polish director Wojciech Has is a genius. Investigating a strange book found on a Spanish battlefield, soldier Zbigniew Cybulski is plunged into a fantasy vs reality labyrinth that darn near…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, our films center on battlefields of one type or another. After the fight, a wine pairing for each. The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 Italian-Algerian film, co-written and directed by…
At the peak of the style called film noir are a few classics that approach perfection, and Jacques Tourneur’s supremely poetic film is certainly in the top ten. Daniel Mainwaring’s pulp novel has plenty of macabre twists but the adaptation benefits from the electric charge generated by Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Her fugitive is…
Two decades later, this daring documentary is still the only authoritative reportage on a near-taboo subject: the gross and gory graphic auto accident movies once shown to high schoolers with the idea of scaring them into driving more safely. Filmmaker Bret Wood has reconstructed and partly revised the docu, which tells the full story of…
