Scott Thurman's documentary The Revisionaries focuses in, for our amusement and enlightenment, on one more episode of the United States' seemingly endless "culture wars," the vying for political and cultural power at every level between those convinced that the U.S. is a "Christian nation" and those who take a more pluralistic/egalitarian view. It's a microcosm of something that's been going on for decades all over the country, which is ostensibly its relevance to all of us, not just the red state (Texas) where it documents a heated debate going down over public-school textbook standards; the terms employed in that debate, the arguments raised and rebutted and counter-rebutted, the oil-a...Read the entire review

A shorthand description of the 2011 comedy All Together would be this: it's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, spoken in French. You have my permission to use that at your next cocktail party.

Summing up a film in a Twitter-sized morsel is cool and all, even though it does a disservice to something like All Together, a breezy, somewhat lightweight effort which dares to portray people in their sixties and seventies as vibrant human beings. That concept alone elevates the film above its episodic (but enjoyable) story and timid direction. The film also offers the chance to see non-French actresses Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin speaking in a foreign language (and doing pretty well at it).

All Together, which was or...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Both the pitfalls and the achievement of the film are already hinted at in the title of Pip Chodorov's documentary Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film. It avoids making any false promises by wisely referring to itself as "a" history, not "the" history, of the diverse kinds of short, small-scale, non-narrative movies that can be described as experimental (any comprehensiveness clearly being impossible at its compact running time of 82 minutes), and its somewhat lopsided focus -- on the direct predecessors of Chodorov (himself an experimental filmmaker from NYC) from the '60s-era Greenwich Village boom in experimental cinema, a critical mass reached in the messy but intent and fruitful venturing outside of commercial/storytelling fil...Read the entire review

Here's something you don't see here in the US every day- a Russian musical! Hipsters, or its original Russian title Stiilyagi takes place during 1955 in Moscow. Mels (Anton Shagin) is a member of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League), where activities include upholding the Communist party's values. As the movie begins, he is out with comrades to break up an underground party of youths known as hipsters, who celebrate American jazz culture by dressing in bright colors and dancing to music which was prohibited in Russia.

Upon seeing the party however, Mels becomes fascinated by the music and dancing, and also catches the eye of Polya (Oksana Akin...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Ever hear of the child's book called The Little Engine That Could? 1953's surprise hit The Little Fugitive is The Little Film That Could. Kino's beautifully done blu ray edition serves as a great excuse to revisit this charming classic.

The film, which follows a little boy as he spends an eventful day and evening at New York's Coney Island (really - that's about it), has had an influence which stands in marked contrast with its humble concept and execution. Husband-and-wife photographers Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin, working with collaborator Ray Ashley, conceived The Little Fugitive as a slice-of-life look at the way children perceive things in an urban environment. The $30,000 film was shot with a single hand-held camera (constructed by Engel especially for this project), using a small cast of mostly non-professionals, and a script that made ample use of Cone...Read the entire review

Except for his first starring feature, The Saphead (1920), College (1927) is the least Keatonish of Buster Keaton's silent comedies. It was made quickly and inexpensively in direct response to what's now his signature film, The General (1927). Despite that film's eventual acclaim, at the time The General was considered an expensive financial flop. College, by contrast, is much more modest and far less ambitious. It's also atypically derivative, as it unavoidably invites comparison to Harold Lloyd's hugely successful and far superior The Freshman (1925), with its climatic football game replaced here with a rowing race. On its own terms College isn't bad - unexpectedly, my five-year-old daughter loved it - but in a cluster of masterpieces it's minor and not representative of Keaton's unique talent.

Kino's Blu-ray of College, originally a United ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Buster Keaton's College is a note-perfect send-up of university comedies, and in a funny way, an early critique of how motion pictures so regularly hire older adults to play young ones. Old Stone Face as a new high school graduate? It's a great sight gag, that's to be sure, and only the beginning of what is a very funny silent film.

College was released in 1927 at a time when higher education stories were trendy. Keaton, who is believed to have done most of the directing on this picture in addition to starring, plays an uber-smart student who finds himself in hot water for his intellectually pompous anti-sports philosophy. His high school sweetheart (Anne Cornwall) rejects her suitor until he can learn to stop being so stuck-up. Devas...Read the entire review

Whores' Glory, the new film by Austrian director Michael Glawogger (Megacities, Workingman's Death, checks into three countries around the globe to investigate the personal and professional lives of professional sex workers. The director and his crew visit "The Fishtank" in Bangkok, the "City of Joy" in Faridpur, Bangladesh, and "The Zone" in Reynosa, Mexico, where the women and their customers are surprisingly happy to speak to Glawogger about their experiences.

In terms of the conditions in which the women are asked to work, Glawogger goes roughly from best to worst. At The Fishtank, the women sit in a brightly lit room that equates to a showroom floor, complete with male employees who pitch the women (identified by number nametags) to potential customers. Inside, the women have regular conversations, about their lives and work, while they wait for someone to choose them....Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

A middling indie success in pre-code Hollywood, and a cult hit that gained in reputation in the decades that followed, the infamous Bela Lugosi-vehicle White Zombie is newly restored for high-def and now available on DVD. Released in 1932, director Victor Halperin's creepy horror film is perhaps most known for being the first major zombie movie, establishing a lot of what would later be genre clich s, including the slow-moving, brainless, vacant-eyed demeanor that would become the undead standard. In this instance, the zombies themselves aren't very scary, but White Zombie otherwise makes up for their faltering by heaping on plenty of atmosphere.

The story, such as it is, concerns itself with Neil and Madeline (John Harron and Madge B...Read the entire review

This is an interesting film to see on DVD since it was initially shown in theaters only once, in March 1970. It consists primarily of news footage shot of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr dating from 1955, when he began attracting significant media attention, through 1968 when he was assassinated. Interspersed throughout are short segments shot in a studio for this film release, of celebrities of the time (Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Ben Gazzara, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Anthony Quinn, Clarence Williams III, and Joanne Woodward) reciting quotations from other African-American writers which are not cited. Since its initial showing, it has since only been seen in edited form until this DVD release from Kino using a restoration by the Lib...Read the entire review

Of horror's prolific "First Cycle" (1931-36), an era that produced such classics as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Freaks, The Black Cat, and Mad Love, White Zombie (1932) was a uniquely low-budget, independent production, a real anomaly. The first feature-length zombie movie, it rips off parts of Dracula while at the same time anticipates many of salacious pre-Code horrors of Island of Lost Souls, released later that same year. Shot in just 11 days for $62,500 (by way of comparison, one-quarter the cost of Frankenstein), White Zombie nevertheless belies its cheapness in clever little ways and the picture brims with hysterical, vividly realized atmosphere. It's not in the same league as the best horror films from the '31-'36 period, but it's unquestionably memorable.

White Zombie was not a great success du...Read the entire review

The scary thing is how many of these shorts I remember seeing in school.... Kino Classics has released Classic Educational Shorts, Volume 6: Troubled Teens, a single disc collection of 18 educational/social guidance shorts from the 1950s through the 1980s (teens weren't troubled in the 1940s, apparently), focusing this time on how to explain to young Johnny why he shouldn't speed, why he should brush his teeth, why he shouldn't beat people up―and most importantly―why he suddenly feels funny in his bathing suit area. Selected by A/V Geeks founder Skip Elsheimer (who provides the informative, amusing "film notes" for each entry that I've reprinted below), the short films included in these Classic Educational Shorts collections were shown to American school kids like myself on noisy, squelchy 16mm projectors right up to the 1980s. As I wrote in my Volume 5 r...Read the entire review

I lived this stuff...and believed it all. Kino Classics has released Classic Educational Shorts, Volume 5: Rules for School, a single disc collection of 15 educational/social guidance shorts from the 1940s through the 1980s, focusing on how to make little Johnny more conscientious, more safe, more quiet―and most importantly―more obedient in school. Selected by A/V Geeks founder Skip Elsheimer (who provides the informative, amusing "film notes" for each entry that I've reprinted below), the short films included in these Classic Educational Shorts collections were shown to American school kids like myself on noisy, squelchy 16mm projectors right up to the 1980s. If you were a movie-crazed kid like I was, the Friday afternoon announcement that your teacher was fried after a long week of trying to control her little bastards and needed 15 measl...Read the entire review