DVD Talk DVD Reviews https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/list/DVD Video DVD Talk DVD Review RSS Feed en-us A Blonde In Love (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/73952 Tue, 13 Aug 2019 17:41:49 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

Once Milos Forman left his home country of Czechoslovakia for Hollywood, he was allowed to fully explore the anti-authoritarian context of his work without worrying about the oppressive state interfering with his art. This created some of the boldest examples of brutal and often tragicomic condemnation of abusive authority that dehumanizes its subject either in the name of unchecked power or as a form of brainwashing. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Hair are still some of the boldest examples of counterculture cinema of the ‘70s.

Forman wasn't so unchained during the ‘60s, when he was still directing in Czechoslovakia. The communist country's draconian rules against art that challenged the party line meant that Forman had to be saddled with non-political work that forced him to include politically satirical elements under a veneer of mainstream com...Read the entire review

]]>
The Lighthouse (Mayak) DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51819 Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:44:06 UTC Rent It

THE FILM:

What to say of a film that, on the surface, seems like something I would love, yet is somehow less than the sum of its lyrical, free-associative parts? Such is the case with Maria Saakyan's The Lighthouse (Mayak), and "on the surface" is probably the key phrase. Though it is an impassioned and, most of all, beautiful film, it takes on a more profound subject--the loss of home, normalcy, and people's history that results when war encompasses a community--than its superficial visual strategies alone are up to, and it lacks the depth, substance, and focus it needs to make the kind of impression it clearly means to.

The Lighthouse's story concerns a young woman named Lena (Anna Kapaleva), who returns from Moscow to her home v...Read the entire review

]]>
Two Films by Marc Isaacs: All White in Barking / Men of the City DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/46997 Sun, 05 Dec 2010 01:59:02 UTC Recommended

In 2009, the British independent DVD label, Second Run, released Three Films by Marc Isaacs, the first output from an immensely talented documentary filmmaker. The recent Two Films by Marc Isaacs brings viewers up to date with Isaac's most recent work.

Made for Storyville, the BBC near-equivalent to PBS's Independent Lens, All White in Barking (72 min., 2007) and Men of the City (58 min., 2009) provide revealing portraits of common Londoners.

When the working-class London borough of Barking briefly made the news for electing far-right British National Party (BNP) candidates in 2006, the British media generally sensationalized the story of a d...Read the entire review

]]>
Adelheid -- Second Run UK Import DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/46468 Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:59:39 UTC Rent It

The Film:


Czech New Wave auteur František Vláčil only directed a handful of feature-length pictures, yet his expressive, almost Bergman-esque style with both Marketa Lazarová and The Valley of the Bees (Údolí včel) makes a quick impression as an existential voice. That's perhaps why Adelheid, Vláčil first soiree in color, is something of a disappointment; his construction of a conflicted post-WWII love affair between a Czech and a German, separated by the language barrier, only intermittently provokes thought within a one-dimensional and contentiously heavy-handed environment. Though the eagerness to ab...Read the entire review

]]>
The František Vláčil Collection DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/45811 Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:04:55 UTC Highly Recommended

In 1998, Czech film critics named František Vláčil's 1967 masterpiece Marketa Lazarová the greatest Czech film of all time, but eleven years later it's still not available on DVD in North America. Fortunately though, North American viewers with region-free DVD players can turn to the United Kingdom's premiere boutique art house label Second Run. Available since 2007, Marketa Lazarová is now also available in an inexpensive box set along with František Vláčil's 1968 follow-up The Valley of the Bees (Údolí vcel), and his competent though lesser Adelheid (1970), together with an exclusive bonus DVD of Tomás Hejtmánek's 2003 feature-length tribute to Vláčil entitled Sentiment. Like Marketa Lazarová, Valley of the Bees and Adelheid are available separately from Second Run, however, this box set is so ine...Read the entire review

]]>
The Unpolished DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/45557 Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:25:39 UTC Recommended

The Movie:
There are teenagers who rebel by skipping school and doing drugs. They get caught on the streets and returned to school. Stevie, on the other hand, gets in trouble when she tries to attend school. The teacher notices her, recognizes that she isn't enrolled and gives her the boot.

The Unpolished follows the aimless life of a 13-year-old girl growing up with drug-trafficking parents who don't give her the boundaries or order she needs. Her dad just got out of prison. Her mother just inherited a house from her parents, who were apparently strict and disapproving. Stevie's parents are the complete opposite, with no notion of order or stability. New people show up at the house randomly while others vanish with no announcement.

German director Pia Marais has crafted an observant, surprising and raw study of life outside of the societal norm, carried marvelously by y...Read the entire review

]]>
Black Snow (Ben Ming Nian) -- Second Run UK Import DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/44293 Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:50:39 UTC Recommended

The Film:



Some time after the collapse of the Cultural Revolution in China, the lead character in Black Snow, Li Huiquan, has been released from a labor camp. He returns home with a knapsack and an underdeveloped education, vowing (non-verbal to us, but obvious) to stray from the life of crime that crippled his youth. Only 24, he hasn't had the chance to life much of a life outside of the loosely-threaded crime syndicate he operated within, never even having a chance to lose his virginity. As he returns to "normal" life, he mans a clothing stand that rides the line between honest work and treading over into the black market, seeing many faces from his past through his everyday routine of peddling shoes, smoking to vast degrees, and holing up...Read the entire review

]]>
Diamonds of the Night DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/43897 Wed, 26 May 2010 19:03:42 UTC Recommended

The Czech New Wave classic Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci, 1964) is a study in minimalism. Though based on a conventional novella written by Holocaust survivor Arnošt Lustig, first-time filmmaker Jan Němec stripped the screenplay down to the bone. Excised are the protagonists' backstories save for a few repeated snippets of wordless images. Gone also is nearly all the dialogue. What remains is a story of two nameless, nearly wordless, young concentration camp escapees on the run, chased by the authorities and a posse of old men.

With no more than twenty lines of dialogue retained, the viewer is compelled to intuit the story almost entirely through visual cues. The film begins with the protagonists, two teenage boys, sprinting up a wooded hill w...Read the entire review

]]>
The Valley of the Bees -- Second Run UK Import DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/43650 Mon, 10 May 2010 21:49:24 UTC Highly Recommended

The Film:


There's a ritual among athletes, especially boxers or other prizefighters, where they detach themselves from everything else in the world and concentrate solely on honing their bodies for a significant bout. Some stay around their home and gym locally, while others -- if they have the means -- might travel to a faraway place to better their focus. They eat purely, exercise extensively, and, most importantly, often abstain from sexual activity, and the results typically lead to a form of euphoria or joy about their triumph over pain. Now, imagine doing all of this somewhat against your will for a goal or purpose that you're not even certain that you believe in, a theme that persists even amid modern wartime conflicts. That becomes the central...Read the entire review

]]>
Gaea Girls / Shinjuku Boys DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/42981 Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:28:04 UTC Recommended

Women marginalized by patriarchal society is a reoccurring subject in the documentaries of Kim Longinotto. In the prior double-feature DVD release from UK's Second Run label, Divorce Iranian Style / Runaway, Longinotto examined customary and legal inequality imposed on Iranian women in their familial relations with fathers, brothers, and husbands. In Second Run's most recent double-feature DVD release of her work, Gaea Girls / Shinjuku Boys, Longinotto and co-director Jano Williams document Japanese women who dare to step beyond the rigid patriarchal social norms of their homeland.

The hour-long Shinjuku Boys (1995) follows three onnabe (female-to-male transsexuals) who work in a nightclub catering to a female clientele looking for escape from their daily lives of domineering husbands and ...Read the entire review

]]>
Blissfully Yours DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/41570 Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:37:36 UTC Recommended

While Apichatpong Weerasethakul may never become a household name, it's one that's become well recognized among cinephiles, even if most can't pronounce it. The 39-year-old Thai writer, director, and producer of indie art films, who goes by Joe and is a graduate of the Chicago Art Institute, has completed five feature films and more than two dozen shorts to date. A darling of the festival circuit, Weerasethakul has earned numerous accolades, most notably the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004 for Tropical Malady (Sud pralad), and Cannes' award for young talent, the Prize Un Certain Regard for Blissfully Yours (Sud senaeha) in 2002.

Blissfully Yours, Weerasethakul's second feature film, was the first to receive a limited theatrical release throughout much of...Read the entire review

]]>
Diary for My Children (Napio gyermekeimnek) DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/40329 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:42:31 UTC Rent It

THE MOVIE:

NOTE: This review is of a Region 0, PAL-formatted DVD. Please be sure you have the equipment to play this disc before seeking it out for purchase.

The 1984 Hungarian movie Diary for My Children (Napló gyermekeimnek) is a deeply personal film about one girl's return to a home country that she barely remembers. Set in Budapest in the late 1940s, the movie is the story of Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), a teenaged girl who had been living in Soviet exile with her mother and father. Following the death of both parents, Juli has been retrieved by friends of the family. Back in Budapest, she lives with Magda (Anna Polony) and Magda's parents. It's a warm environment to begin with. Magda owes a debt to Juli's mother, her friend at one time, and the girl quickly bonds with the man that she will call Grandfather (Pál Zolnay). It's a situation, however, that was...Read the entire review

]]>
Blood (O Sangue) DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/40225 Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:04:11 UTC Recommended

Despite being a respected presence on the festival circuit, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa is still relatively unknown among English-speaking audiences with none of his oeuvre previously available on home video in the United States or the Commonwealth countries, but that's soon to change. With a box-set from Criterion and two individual releases from Eureka's Masters of Cinema label tentatively scheduled for next spring, the work of Pedro Costa will finally be available to those of us that missed Colossal Youth (Juventude Em Marcha, 2006) in its limited theatrical release. Even better, Second Run DVD has scooped both Criterion and Masters of Cinema with the recent DVD release of Costa's 1989 debut feature Blood (O Sangue).

Shot in full-frame (1.33:1) monochrome by cinematographer Martin Schäfer (Kings of the Road, Radio On) Blood seems to be a fi...Read the entire review

]]>
Three Films by Marc Isaacs: Lift / Travellers / Calais: The Last Border DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/39775 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:26:27 UTC Highly Recommended

Lives caught in motion is the transcendent theme of the recent release from the UK label Second Run entitled Three Films by Marc Isaacs. The transience pervading Isaacs' documentaries is both physical and psychological: physical in that Isaacs's interviewees are literally in transit from one place to another; psychological in that Issacs' camera and questions prompt introspection from his subjects about past experiences and hopes and fears about the future.

Isaacs' first documentary, the twenty-five minute Lift (2001), was filmed in the elevator of a high-rise apartment tower in a low-income English neighborhood composed of elderly Jews on fixed incomes, working-class whites, and a diverse mix of immigrants. Isaacs spent up to ten hours a day for ten weeks stationed in the building's elevator recording the comings and goings of the residents. The residents come to expect Isaacs' pre...Read the entire review

]]>
Daisies DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/37806 Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:06:47 UTC Highly Recommended

Dada-inspired surrealism generally leaves me cold, but I have nothing but admiration for Věra Chytilová's 1966 Czech New Wave classic Daisies (Sedmikrásky). The film, which lacks a traditional narrative structure, revolves around two young women who've decided that the world has been spoiled so they will be spoiled too. The self-described dolls are beautiful but empty ciphers without personal histories, motivated only by a nihilistic desire to spoil themselves and ruin everyone and everything around them. Older libidinous men are the principal target of the girls' machinations, but a nightclub, banquet, and other proxies for bourgeois consumption are also targeted.

Věra Chytilová and co-writer Ester Krumbachová purportedly originally inten...Read the entire review

]]>
The Red and the White DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/37529 Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:53:19 UTC Highly Recommended

When I saw Miklós Jancsó's The Red and the White (Csillagosok, katonák) for the first time a few years ago I had no idea what to expect. It was the first film by Jancsó that I'd seen, and I knew nothing about it beforehand other than that it was about the Russian Civil War. Coming to the film with no expectations or foreknowledge provided a surprising viewing experience that I still cherish. I'm hesitant to ruin anyone's opportunity to see this film with fresh eyes. Accordingly, in this review I'm going to limit this paragraph and the two that follow it to general observations about the film and its director that will not detract from an initial viewing experience. Viewers who wish to experience the film unmediated by analysis of plot mechanics are invited to then skip to the discussion of the DVD's video, audio, and extras, and then leave off there until after watching the film....Read the entire review

]]>
The Round-Up DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/37485 Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:16:53 UTC Highly Recommended

Miklós Jancsó's most acclaimed film is known in English as The Round-Up, though the Hungarian title Szegénylegények translates as "The Hopeless Ones." Both titles are apt. "The Round-Up" refers to the capture and detention of a motley assortment of Hungarian brigands composed of opportunists and disillusioned revolutionaries. "The Hopeless Ones" refers to their psychological condition - these are men without hope of control over their fates. They may be complicit in the prosecution of their peers or not as they choose, but they cannot know whether their betrayals will save their lives or merely hasten their deaths.

The Round-Up is set in 1869 at a slapdash stockade-like prison on a vast Hungarian plain. The wardens are fellow Hungarians serving a n...Read the entire review

]]>
My Way Home DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/37449 Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:01:41 UTC Highly Recommended

My Way Home (Így jöttem) concerns Jóska, a 17-year-old Hungarian conscript, returning defeated from the Soviet frontier near the end of World War II. When the film begins the front has already swept past Hungary depositing a victorious Soviet occupation over the rolling Hungarian steppe. Jóska (András Kozák) is one of many thousands of Hungarians on the move in the wake of their nation's defeat and occupation. Dotting the plains are prisoner of war camps where Soviet garrisons haphazardly sort their prisoners into groups for execution, internment, forced labor or release.

Jóska is detained by partisans, freed, caught by Cossack cavalry, released, caught again, briefly interned, released, caught again, and then detailed as a forced laborer to a solitary Ru...Read the entire review

]]>
Celia DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/37127 Mon, 04 May 2009 20:49:22 UTC Recommended

Celia, the most recent release from the splendid British boutique label Second Run DVD, captures the end of the age of innocence for a nine-year-old girl growing up in Australia in 1957, the height of the Communist panic. Over a span of a few weeks, Celia sees her childhood fantasy world give way to the harsh realities of the adult world of fear, lust, and malice. Beginning with the death of a beloved grandmother, Celia experiences a series of deaths, losses, betrayals and accommodations that collectively fatally undermine her childish innocence.

Over the course of an Australian summer, Celia is compelled to face the harsh truths of adulthood: People and pets are mortal; they die. Parents are ordinary human beings; they're flawed. Relationships are fragile; they may ...Read the entire review

]]>
Palms DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/36234 Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:34:08 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series

Palms (Ладони/Ladoni, 1993), an essay film by Artur Aristakisyan, is the ecstatic rant of a holy fool to his unborn son told over stark observational documentary footage of the deformed, crippled, retarded, deranged, enfeebled and destitute outsiders of Kishinev, Moldova. The 139-minute film is divided into two halves each consisting of a prologue and five chapters. The only words are those of the narrator.

Palms is visually arresting. Shot handheld, on high-contrast black-and-white 16mm film, then blown-up to 35mm, Palms looks more like forgotten rushes from Alexander Medvedkin's Cine-Train than it does a film barely more than 15 years old. Aristakisyan shows us malnurished child...Read the entire review

]]>
Divorce Iranian Style / Runaway DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/36167 Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:08:37 UTC Highly Recommended

Since launching in August 2005, Second Run has quickly become one of the preeminent DVD distributors of critically-important but commercially tenuous films. To date, their catalog has prominently featured Cold-War Eastern European, gay, and documentary cinema. Second Run's newest release features two documentaries concerned with contemporary social issues in Iran from British filmmaker Kim Longinotto and Iranian-born, legal scholar Ziba Mir-Hosseini.

Though woefully underrepresented on DVD, Kim Longinotto has a prodigious record as a filmmaker. Having completed more than a dozen long-form documentaries since 1976, her work is marked by an objective, but humanist approach that gives voice to women, especially those marginalized by patriarchy, around the world.

Longinotto met Ziba Mir-Hosseini author of Marriage On Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in 1996. The two hit it off and ag...Read the entire review

]]>
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/35979 Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:49:55 UTC Recommended

Released two years after Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the political liberalizations of '68, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divů) was a retreat from the overtly political filmmaking of Jaromil Jireš' prior film The Joke (Zert) into obscurant gothic-surrealism.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is an expressionist fantasy presented from the viewpoint of the 13-year-old titular protagonist, played by the age-appropriate Jaroslava Schallerová in her first leading role. Separating Valerie's fantasy world from her ordinary life isn't entirely possible, but the essential facts seem to be these: At the turn of the 20th Century, Valerie lives alone with her grandmother in a provincial Czech town. During the week in question, a troupe of actors arrive, as do a group of missionaries, but the most important event for the ...Read the entire review

]]>
Fighters / Real Money DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/35836 Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:01:47 UTC Recommended

The two-disc set of Fighters / Real Money is the third release of filmmaker Ron Peck's work from the UK-based boutique DVD label Second Run following the groundbreaking pre-AIDS gay cruising film Nighthawks (1978) and the autobiographical follow-up Strip Jack Naked (1991).

Originally televised in June 1991 on Britain's Channel 4, contemporaneously with the limited theatrical release of Strip Jack Naked, Fighters is an in-depth and up-close exploration of the world of boxing in London's East End. Culled from 160 hours of video, the 101-minute documentary follows a group of prizefighters and aspiring amatuers who dream of making it big, but who can realistically expect only to make enough money to open a shop when they're washed up at 30 or 35, if they're both lucky and frugal.

Ron Peck's introduction to the world of boxing came through film; first from watchi...Read the entire review

]]>
The Cremator DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/35687 Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:54:44 UTC Recommended

The 1968 Czech New Wave classic The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol) does for the petite bourgeois of 1930's Prague what American Psycho does for the investment bankers of 1980's Manhattan. The Cremator is a surrealist black comedy of the macabre about a man obsessed with the twin notions that life is suffering and that cremation is the most humane and expedient way of releasing the soul from its earthly confines. While either of these beliefs may be harmless on their own, they make for a deadly combination when set against the backdrop of Hitler's National Socialism.

Karl Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrušínský) is a pillar of his community. He has a solid, middle-class job at a crematorium. He's an attentive husband and a good father. He comes home for dinner every night and takes his family out on the weekends. He doesn't drink or smoke, and has no vices other than o...Read the entire review

]]>
The Third Part of the Night DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/35623 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:35:53 UTC Recommended

Fans of Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 cult classic Possession should be well pleased with the Second Run release of his 1971 début The Third Part of the Night (Trzecia część nocy). If you're not familiar with Żuławski's style, think of Joseph Losey's Kafkaesque Mr. Klein crossed with the horror of David Cronenberg. Based on an autobiographical screenplay written by his father about life in Nazi-occupied Poland, the film addresses themes of surreal psychological terror and the disintegration of social structure during the Occupation.

Andrzej Żuławski was born in Lwów, Poland on November 22, 1940. The cosmopolitan city had already been laid low by the ruthless mass murder of...Read the entire review

]]>
Passenger DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/35603 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:54:24 UTC Highly Recommended

Few films are as marked by the circumstances of their creation as the 1963 Polish cinema classic Passenger (Pasażerka). The film was the third iteration of the story of a chance encounter aboard a luxury liner between an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor and her former camp overseer. Previously adapted for radio and television, the film was midway through principal shooting when thirty-nine-year-old director Andrzej Munk was fatally injured in a car accident. Following Munk's untimely death, Passenger was completed by a circle of collaborators and friends led by Witold Lesiewicz. Supremely respectful of Munk's vision, Lesiewicz filmed only those remaining scenes for which Munk had left a screenplay or had otherwise detailed his intentions. For portions of the story about which Munk's intentions were unknown, Lesiewicz merely highlights some of the questions that t...Read the entire review

]]>
Tropical Malady DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/35510 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:35:59 UTC Highly Recommended

Tropical Malady (Sud pralad) was world cinema's Rorschach inkblot for 2004. This forth feature film from Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul created a stir at Cannes. Several festival goers walked out of the screening while many of those that stayed booed during the credits, and jeered during the post-screening Q&A. Summing up the view held by many attendees, Deborah Young, writing for Variety, called it an "exceedingly strange . . . incomprehensible . . . pic [that will] sorely try the patience of most arthouse viewers." Nevertheless, the film engendered as many ardent defenders as detractors including Cannes jury president Quentin Tarantino.

Despite the controversy, Tropical Malady was awarded the Jury Prize and was a finalist for the Go...Read the entire review

]]>