DVD Talk DVD Reviews https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/list/DVD Video DVD Talk DVD Review RSS Feed en-us The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 2 DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30786 Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:51:00 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 2 follows on Fantoma's Vol. 1 from last January. Between these two discs it is now possible to see perfect-quality DVDs of Anger's most noted short subjects. This second grouping of films revisits a different version of Rabbit's Moon while offering a first look at the interesting Kustom Kar Kommandos and the more notorious Invocation of My Demon Brother, Lucifer Rising and Scorpio Rising. The films really aren't that shocking, but they aren't family fare either. Although Kenneth Anger's work gives hints of a sensational alternate lifestyle, his films are not the work of a provocateur. The films in Volume 2 show him the master of a number of visual styles.

The power of a film like Read the entire review

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The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2 DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30752 Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:57:00 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series

The Product:
Many film fans have never heard of him. Others only know his name in conjunction with comments by noted supporters like John Waters and David Lynch. There will be an additional few who recognize his moniker from his famous books of Grand Guignol gossip, the scandalous Tinsel Town screeds Hollywood Babylon (I & II). Yet his contributions to the cinematic artform are barely acknowledged, reserved for silver screen students and scholars who are required to look beyond the mainstream for links to George and Michael Kuchar, Stan Brakhage, and even Andy Warhol. Part of the problem is the lack of available screenings. Like most avant-garde cinema, there were precious few outlets for such artistic expression, even in the more cosmopolitan cities of the world. Instead, glimpses had to be snatched from college retrospectives and gallery exhibitions. Now, thanks to DVD, many of t...Read the entire review

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Black Test Car DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/28139 Sat, 19 May 2007 01:22:55 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

One of Japan's most alarming directors, the provocative Yasuzo Masumura made subversive and taboo-breaking dramas like Manji and the deliriously perverse Moju (The Blind Beast). His earlier Giants and Toys is a cinematic scream of protest against cutthroat business practices within Japan's growing consumer-oriented business boom of the late 1950s. Masumura's 1962 drama Black Test Car returns to the world of business competition to draw a parallel between the development of a new car and all-out, take-no-prisoners warfare. Ethics and morals are the first casualties in a system that prioritizes career survival and company victory ahead...Read the entire review

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The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 1 DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/26312 Tue, 30 Jan 2007 13:34:31 UTC Highly Recommended

The Product:
Many film fans have never heard of him. Others only know his name in conjunction with comments by noted supporters like John Waters and David Lynch. There will be an additional few who recognize his moniker from his famous books of Grand Guignol gossip, the scandalous Tinsel Town screeds Hollywood Babylon (I & II). Yet his contributions to the cinematic artform are barely acknowledged, reserved for silver screen students and scholars who are required to look beyond the mainstream for links to George and Michael Kuchar, Stan Brakhage, and even Andy Warhol. Part of the problem is the lack of available screenings. Like most avant-garde cinema, there were precious few outlets for such artistic expression, even in the more cosmopolitan cities of the world. Instead, glimpses had to be snatched from college retrospectives and gallery exhibitions. Now, thanks to DVD, many of t...Read the entire review

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The Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume One DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/26047 Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:46:36 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger used his camera to express his innermost feelings. Encouraged to do exactly the same thing, modern film students invariably imitate their favorite Hollywood pictures. Los Angeles- based, and with a grandmother who was once a movie costumer, Anger essentially invented his own kind of cinema based upon what he could accomplish with some friends when the rest of the family left for the weekend. His first efforts are photographically crude but visually arresting; they communicate precise states of mind and conjure visuals that stick in the memory. As with Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger's homegrown art movies attracted the attention of the Hollywood art crowd, and his reputation quickly spread to museums and film clubs. High praise followed from luminaries like Jean Cocteau. Within a few years Anger was in New York and Euro...Read the entire review

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Red Angel DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/25576 Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:10:53 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Yasuzo Masumura has long been acknowledged as a master of sophisticated and often disturbing satires and genre pictures unlike those of his Japanese contemporaries. If Akira Kurosawa was criticized for making films with a foreign sensibility, Masumura's shockers go beyond consideration of national styles. Several years have passed since the Fantoma DVD label released three of his more notable pictures. Giants and Toys (1958) is a scathing criticism of the Japanese consumer culture and its cutthroat business environment. Manji (1964) is a delirious soap opera of sexual manipulation and emotional blackmail. And Masumura's Moju (The Blind Beast) (1969) is a...Read the entire review

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Red Angel DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/24448 Tue, 17 Oct 2006 03:49:37 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

One of only a handful of films directed by Yasuzo Masumura on DVD in North America, Red Angel is a startling and intelligent drama/war film with a few other genres worming their way into the picture to keep things interesting. It's also so damn good that it makes one wish more of the director's filmography were available in English friendly DVD editions.

The film follows Nishi (Ayako Wakao of Zatoichi Vs. Yojimbo and Masumura's earlier Swastika), a very pretty young nurse who heads to the front of the war with China during the late thirties to work at an army hospital. No sooner is she set up there then she's raped by some of her patients. One of the rapists, Sakamoto, is sent back into active combat when she reports what happened to those in charge. Before his departure, Sakamoto makes sure that Nishi knows that her telling on him has effectively give...Read the entire review

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The Fassbinder Collection II DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/23358 Tue, 22 Aug 2006 01:24:54 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movies:

While both films in this set, In A Year With 13 Moons and Martha, were previously made available as single disc releases, Fantoma have packaged them together in a small boxed set that features the same transfers, the same extras and the same liners notes bundled under some new cover art and released them at a more attractive price point as The Fassbinder Collection II. This makes it an affordable way for the curious who didn't pick up the single disc editions to add some of the late director's best films to their collection.

In A Year Of 13 Moons (1978):

An opening text scrawl tells us that the title of the film is taken from a phase of the moon that results in bad things happening all around, we meet Elvira (Volker Spengler), a transgendered woman currently getting the snot kicked out of her by a group of young thugs in a park somewhere...Read the entire review

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Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/23146 Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:55:46 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Although his career was cut short but his untimely death at a rather young age, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was debatably the most influential of the German new wave directors that emerged out of the 1960s and this effort from 1970, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?, (which he made when he was only twenty-five years old) is one of his most impressive efforts not only in terms of technique but also in terms of storytelling. An obvious influence on more modern filmmakers such as Lars Von Trier, the 'less is more' style that he employs in the film can easily be seen as having played a key role in the formation of the Dogme 95 movement, which itself has produced some interesting work.

Herr R. (Kurt Raab of The Stationmaster's Wife and Satan's Brew) is your average, everyday man who seems to lead an average everyday life. He spends his days between the office where h...Read the entire review

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Educational Archives - School Locker DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/22988 Tue, 01 Aug 2006 13:21:49 UTC Rent It

In 10 Words or Less
Education, American-style: learn from films

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Irony, making fun of people
Likes: Educational films
Dislikes: Boring films
Hates: Live birth on my big TV, propaganda

The Movies
Most everyone has had to sit through an educational film at one time or another. The older you are, the more you've sat through, and the more ridiculous they were when you were younger, though distance and perspective are a large part of that. All educational films have a few things in common: a defined point of view, a relatively clear message, low production values, a heavy-handed way of delivering the previously mentioned message and a general inability to grow old with grace. They also tend to fail...Read the entire review

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Forbidden Zone DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/12085 Sun, 29 Aug 2004 04:41:51 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Describing the indescribable is what Tiggers ... uh, Savant does best, so here goes. In 1977 or '78 Richard Elfman and Matthew Bright wanted to make a movie as an outgrowth of their Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo stage show, which I had the privilege of seeing at the Fox Venice theater early in the 1970s. The MK of the OB's aim was to create chaotic harmony on stage, and unlike many similar troupes they had the talent to do so. The musical nonsense wavered between operetta and Frank Zappa-like anarchy yet never worried about present-day musical taste. They were so musically inspired, at the time I thought the songs must have been parodies of operettas or old variety routines.

With the MK's about to simplify themselves into simply Oingo Boingo, Forbidden Zone was Richard Elfman's way of creating something with them that would l...Read the entire review

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In the Soup DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/11747 Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:54:50 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

In the Soup sounds like a generic 90s "indie" picture, but it's just too much fun to ignore. Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Beals and Seymour Cassel make a terrific acting trio, and the whole enterprise comes to life, a claim that all art-oriented indies make but few achieve.

Fantoma's DVD presents this quirky comedy in beautiful form, with a host of interesting extras.

Synopsis:

Broke and desperate filmmaker Adolpho Rollo (Steve Buscemi) is a Manhattan wannabe in love with the mysterious woman next door, Angelica Peña (Jennifer Beals). He puts out an ad offering to sell his 'fabulous' movie script for $500, and gets a response from Joe (Seymour Cassel), who gives him a thousand and says he'll raise ...Read the entire review

]]> Tigrero: A Film that Was Never Made DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/11089 Fri, 11 Jun 2004 06:46:08 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Tigrero is less a documentary than a document. In 1993 film director Sam Fuller (Pickup on South Street) returned to a tiny Karajá Indian community in the interior of the Amazon, accompanied by a director of a younger generation, Jim Jarmusch.

The trip was an honest pilgrimage as well as a stunt organized to create this film. Although he was still a remarkably active man, Fuller was soon to be slowed down by illness, according to his posthumously- published autobiography A Third Face (a good read). His wife Christa Lang helped him jet around the globe attending film festivals; his last directed theatrical feature was The Street of No Return in 1989.

Tigrero! was to be the name of an adventure film proposed for Darryl Zanuck at 20th Fox in 1954-55,...Read the entire review

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Martha DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/10267 Sun, 11 Apr 2004 18:34:12 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

This bizarre and intellectual domestic thriller from German New Wave spearhead Rainer Werner Fassbinder tapped into the idea of Douglas Sirk chic a decade before Pedro Almodóvar and with entirely different results. A hyper-stylized soap opera, it tells a tale of marital horror in cold strokes, and refuses to explain the psychology of either the villain or the victim. It's a creepy rumination on the reality behind entertainments like Gaslight, sparked by sharp direction and interesting performances.

Synopsis:

Martha (Margit Carstensen) returns from an Italian vacation when her father (horror director, actor and producer Adrian Hoven) dies suddenly while...Read the entire review

]]> One from the Heart DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/9130 Wed, 21 Jan 2004 04:37:12 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Revision, Jan. 19: the paragraph about the transfer of this disc has been amended ... I checked the disc out on a third DVD player, and the 'flaw' that I saw the first time through didn't appear. I believe I have an overly sensitive DVD player, or it was simply misreading the disc ... Glenn Erickson

Francis Coppola dropped the 'Ford' after Apocalypse Now but retained his adventurous nature through the massive undertaking of starting a new kind of Hollywood studio from scratch. Concentrating artistic resources at the old General Services lot, he tried to reinvent the filmmaking process from the ground up with new electronic tools and systems. It was a hugeundertaking that consumed his 70s profits and most of his personal wealth, and by the time he was ready to make his big personal production One From the HeartRead the entire review

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Hercules in the Haunted World DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/4326 Sat, 03 Aug 2002 21:15:43 UTC Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Mario Bava's first color film as a credited director is a Peplum mini-epic done Bava-style: weird settings, mysterious characters and clever special effects take the place of feeble swordfights and the usual massed battles. The result is a fanciful hybrid between ancient Greece and gothic weirdness. It's a lightweight film with very classy touches, thanks to Bava's hypnotic images and the presence of always-impressive Christopher Lee.

Synopsis:

Hercules (Reg Park) returns home to silly pal Telemachus (Franco Giacobini) and skirt-chasing good buddy Theseus (George Ardisson), but finds that his fiancee Queen Dianira (Leonora Ruffo) is sick with a memory-killing disease, and does not even remember him. Lyco (C...Read the entire review

]]> Giants and Toys DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/3348 Tue, 05 Feb 2002 02:49:41 UTC Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

After this movie, Savant is willing to admit that Yasuzo Masumura was some kind of film genius. Giants and Toys, a freewheeling but savagely critical look at the postwar economic boom,is the most illuminating film I've yet seen about Japanese culture. Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well was stylized social comment, but Masumura and writer Ishio Shirasaka's knife-edged picture of a consumer landscape devoured by American values and business practices, is the kind of picture I didn't know was ever made in Japan. American satires on advertising tended toward the cartoonish silliness of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?; this black comedy plays for keeps, with fewer bizarre touches than, say, The Loved One, and a much more accurate picture of its subject, the real Japan. Ruthlessly critical, it comes off as a powerful denunciation of ...Read the entire review

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