In 10 Words or Less
Brilliant '80s time capsule in cult-classic form

The Movie
Unlike many fans of Repo Man, I discovered the film a bit later in life. I was always aware of the film, even if I did sometimes confuse it with another Emilio Estevez favorite, Men at Work, but it took some time before I gave it a good look. I feel like most of the film's fans first saw it at an age where they could identify with Estevez' Otto, an angry young man without much direction, clinging to whatever gave him some sense of place or purpose, be it punk rock or the car repossession wo...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Loosely based on the works (and less loosely on the life) of infamous author William S. Burroughs, David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is the perfect cinematic blend of art house, crime noir, horror and surrealism. Seeing as how Naked Lunch (the novel) is a totally free form work that really hasn't got much of an actual narrative, Cronenberg made the artistic decision to base his film of the same name on parts of the titular novel and the rest on actual events from Burroughs' life. He also liberally mixes in doses of aspects from his other books (it's not hard to see parts of both Junkie and Exterminator in the film) - so it's not quite a literal adaptation of a book that was once described as unfilmable, but it's damn good nonetheless.

A perfectly cast Peter Weller (probably best known as Robocop) plays William Lee (a pseudonym that Burrou...Read the entire review

Please Note: The images used here are taken from stills provided by The Criterion Collection and promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition of the film under review.

Robert Bresson's 1956 film A Man Escaped is, you could accurately say, a prison-break picture. Its tale of French Resistance fighter Fontaine's (Fran ois Leterrier) capture and condemnation by, and escape from, the Nazis during their occupation of France has story elements in common with The Great Escape, Stalag 17...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Please Note: The images used here are taken from promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

Writer/director/star Charles Chaplin moves on from his Little Tramp persona and embraces something entirely new in the darkly comic Monsieur Verdoux. Based on the story of a real-life "Bluebeard," and working from a script idea by Orson Welles (who originally was going to direct), the master filmmaker polished an odd little gem in this 1947 Oscar nominee. It's not exactly a gutbuster, but Monsieur Verdoux has a jaunty likability that works in concert and in opposition to its murderous intent, and proves as impressive and thought-provoking as Chaplin's previous effort, Read the entire review

Please Note: The images used here are taken from stills provided by The Criterion Collection and promotional materials, not the Blu-ray edition of the film under review.

For those who know of the character's origins, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "Colonel Blimp" -- played by Roger Livesey, with shape-shifting prowess, from a young, cocky man to an old, left-behind one -- is "Colonel Blimp" in name only. The comically proper, perspective-lacking Englishman from whom the 1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp gets its name, who only develops more clueless and blowhard-ish tendencies the older he gets, is based on a satirical character from news...Read the entire review

The Blob (1958) is one of the most emblematic and enduringly popular sci-fi films of the 1950s. Partly it's because of that goofy but apt and undeniably memorable title. Another reason is, unlike the vast majority of low-budget sci-fi films of its era, The Blob was photographed in color, thus making it much more desirable for local TV airings in the decades following its release which in turn kept it very much in the public eye. And, finally, its producers had the sense and incredible good fortune to cast Steve McQueen on the cusp of his stardom, the movie opening almost simultaneously with the television premiere of Wanted: Dead or Alive, a series that soon led to bigger and better things. McQueen's marquee value gave the film even more exposure through subsequent theatrical reissues during the 1960s, much to McQueen's great embarrassment.

He needn't have been, however, for ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Please Note: The images used here are taken from a previous standard-definition DVD release, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

I've always considered Badlands, the 1973 debut of writer/director/producer Terrence Malick, to be a little outside the rest of his oeuvre. In my head, it was easily the most conventional of his pictures, as it has the closest thing to a structured plot, essentially being a fugitive road movie at its very base. I imagined that for his debut, to earn his reputation, Malick had one foot in the studio system and one foot in the territory he would soon stake out as his own, getting the powers that be on board before completely leaping over to the other side.

Having now watched Badland...Read the entire review

The Movie

Note: the images accompanying this review are used for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect the contents of the Ministry of Fear Blu-ray.

Ministry of Fear's sturdily entertaining noir must have been as much of a "sure thing" as possible from the moment it first got the green light. After all, this handsomely mounted Paramount production was directed by Fritz Lang, adapted from a novel by Graham Greene, and starred the suave Ray Milland in a tense yarn suffused with plenty of wartime paranoia. And yet the film as released in 1944 was considered such a disappointment that both Lang and Greene spent years distancing themselves from it. Which begs the question: could it reall...Read the entire review

Please Note: The images used here are taken from promotional and other sources, not the Blu-ray edition of the film under review.

We're all fairly well-accustomed by now to movies that openly, self-reflexively acknowledge their own artificiality -- so many different filmmakers, from Godard to De Palma to Tarantino, have been doing it for so long, each for their own purposes ranging from post-modern playfulness to agonized intellectual frustration -...Read the entire review