French director Jacques Deray's Symphony for a Massacre (Symphonie pour un massacre, 1963) is an engrossing, well-acted crime thriller despite its sometimes sluggish pacing and the fact that attentive viewers will be able to accurately predict its major plot developments well in advance. Best remembered for the classic film La Piscine (1969), the best of many films he made with star Alain Delon, Symphony for a Massacre was Deray's third feature as director, its screenplay co-written by another French master, Claude Sautet (Classe tous risques, 1960).

Writing a spoiler-free review of the film is virtually impossible as its major qualities are in its plotting; the first half of the film has the audience guessing what its main chara...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Director Jean Chapot's 1973 film, The Burned Barns (or Les granges brûlées in its native France) would be the filmmaker's last theatrical effort as after the difficulties he ran into on this shoot, he'd make the shift into television productions. Regardless, if he somewhat infamously had trouble corralling his two leads, Simone Signoret and Alain Delon, their performances in this imperfect but interesting murder mystery are so very good that the movie is worth seeing for their work alone.

Early in the movie, the corpse of a beautiful young woman is found brutally murdered in the French countryside on the outskirts of The Burned Barns farm. The farm is run by a stern woman named Rose (played by Signoret) and her husband Pierre (Paul Crauchet) and it is operated by them and their family, Paul (Bernard Le Coq), who is married to Monique (Miou-Miou)...Read the entire review

Dementia (1953), equally known under a later title, Daughter of Horror (a 1957 release), is a difficult film to describe. Originally conceived by writer-producer-director John Parker as an experimental short with no spoken dialogue, it was expanded to 58 minutes and played few theatrical bookings in 1953 and '55 before it was acquired by producer-distributor Jack H. Harris, who cut several minutes and added some narration by a young Ed McMahon, who is briefly, murkily glimpsed in added footage, at least it appears to be him. That version, Daughter of Horror, also had few bookings. However, scenes from the reedited Daughter of Horror turned up as the movie playing at the movie theater in the Harris-produced The Blob (1958). The identity of that film-within-a-film was a mystery for many years.

Then as now, critics and audiences are sharply divided about Dem...Read the entire review

An untitled double-feature billed as "Film Noir Classics," Dancing with Crime (1947) and The Green Cockatoo (1937) are really British crime mellers that would be potboilers were it not for the handful of star names in each cast. Further, while both films may have been "digitized in association with the British Film Institute," Cockatoo is obviously derived from secondary elements; it looks okay, but far from great.

Dancing with Crime (1947) is a very ordinary crime thriller with a pedestrian script, though its cast and depiction of early postwar Britain is interesting. A young Richard Attenborough stars as London cabby Ted Peters, engaged...Read the entire review

Originally planned as project for director Frank Capra, It Happened Tomorrow (1944) was directed instead by French import René Clair (Le Million, À nous la liberté) during that filmmaker's ten-year stint of British and Hollywood films, including I Married a Witch (1942) and the great Agatha Christie adaptation And Then There Were None (1945). It Happened Tomorrow is at the weaker end of this spectrum, but it's a pleasant and clever fantasy-comedy-romance.

Based on Lord Dunsany's one-act play The Jest of Haha Laba, and an adaptation by Hugh Wedlock and Howard Snyder (when it was tied to Capra), the story begins in the present day, on the Golden Wedding Anniversary celebration of Larry and Sylvia Stevens (Dick Powell and L...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Cohen Media Group offers up a double feature of vintage British noir films in high definition with these two films made in 1955 and 1946 respectively. Here's a look at what to expect…

Cast A Dark Shadow:

Directed by Lewis Gilbert and released to theaters in 1955, Cast A Dark Shadow follows a young man named Edward "Teddy" Bare (Dirk Bogarde) whose older wife of one year, Monica (Mona Washbourne), requests that her lawyer, Phillip Mortimer (Robert Flemyng), change her will. Edward assumes that this will not end in his favor and so he decides to murder her, making the blatant homicide look like a drunken accident. With Monica having shuffled off this mortal coil, Edward learns that she did actually want to leave all of her money to him, and that because the will wasn't altered in time, her existing last will and testament will be what the lawyer...Read the entire review

Not long before director Bertrand Tavernier's death just last month, he left cinephiles the invaluable My Journey Through French Cinema ( Voyage à travers le cinéma français, 2016), a marvelous three-and-a-half-hour documentary so good that he followed it up with an even longer eight-hour series, Journeys Through French Cinema ( Voyages à travers le cinéma français, 2017-18), his final credit. Both are now available in the U.S., on Blu-ray from the Cohen Media Group.

The second series itself is wonderful. Cohen's presentation is another matter, problematic and ultimately quite frustrating. To begin with, the two completely different shows confusingly have almost identical cover art, but the bigger problem involves the English subtitling. The original French version identifies clips via text in the bottom right-hand corner of the image with the movie's title, ...Read the entire review

The Movies:

The images accompanying this review are promotional stills which do not reflect the quality of the Blu-ray under review.

The Cineteca di Bologna and Cohen Media Group teamed up a few years ago to restore and re-release all of Buster Keaton's silent films. (One exception: Criterion released the Cineteca's restoration of The Cameraman, Keaton's first film under his infamous contract with MGM.) Cohen has been releasing the full-length films in double-features on Blu-ray in their Buster Keaton Collection. The most recent release, Vol. 4, pairs up the cowboy comedy Go West (1925) and the slapstick sports flick College (1927).

Go West is a little slow-starting, as it tries to figure o...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Sometimes you wander into a topic that you knew little about and find yourself a little engrossed by it. And whether it was quarantine drinks or a lack of other topics, I found myself really into Shooting the Mafia, a recent documentary whose title may throw you off a little.

Directed by Kim Longinetto, the film's focus is on Letizia Battalgia, an Italian woman in Palermo who divorced her husband at the age of 35 and began work into photojournalism, with her primary topic being the behavior and actions of the Corleonesi mafia, which was a sect of figures from Corleone within Palermo. And yes, THAT Corleone, inspired by the Godfather films that we know so much about. Given the scale of the body count and Battaglia's devotion to her work, she amassed more than a half mi...Read the entire review

The Return of Martin Guerre (Le Retour de Martin Guerre, 1982), an historical drama set in Medieval France, was a big art house hit when it was new, winning many international awards and prompting an American remake, Sommersby (1993), with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster in roles played in the original film by Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye.

The original film is based on a true story and, indeed, seems to follow the historical events as recorded quite closely. The movie is structured as a mystery, but the dénouement is really less important than the film's many other qualities, ranging from the impressive authentic period details, especially the Oscar-nominated costume design, to the many intriguing issues it raises.

Partly told in flashback, t...Read the entire review

Back in 1987, film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill produced the revelatory three-part television documentary Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow. The three-hour program traced the rise, fall, and rise of the silent comedy genius, incorporating well-chosen film clips from Keaton's films, interviews with still-living associates, rare footage from newsreels, TV commercials, home movies, and Brownlow's own 16mm interviews with the comedian-director.

Now, more than 30 years later, comes director Peter Bogdanovich's The Great Buster (2018). While one would hardly begrudge any project that might introduce Keaton's masterpieces to a new audience, it's a curious documentary insofar as almost all of it covers the same ground in the same way using the same film excerpts. Often, the new film's interviewees even tell, second-hand, anecdotes directly culled from the Brownlow-Gill series. Th...Read the entire review

It's the beginning of another school year at the strict girls' school Anne (Eleonore Klarwein) and her older sister Frederique (Odile Michel) attend, and change is in the air. Frederique has her eyes set on boys, all prepared to grow up, whereas Anne and her friends are still just sharing gossip about them. For what seems like the first time, the two girls are finding their tastes and paths diverging, adding an air of tension to their relationship. Their mother (Anouk Ferjac) frets about their slipping grades, which are exacerbated by abusive, ineffective, and oblivious teachers, which neither of the girls think they can explain to her honestly. In the background, there are the lingering wounds from mom's divorce from their fussy, half-absent father (Michel Puterflam), who spoils them but doesn't seem to listen to them, and on a larger scale, the aftershocks of the French-Algerian war.

Politics is t...Read the entire review

The Film:

The Movie:

I know of Julian Schnabel fairly superficially as a director (save for his work in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and a little less as a painter. It's not by conscious choice per se, just that he wasn't doing enough movies for me to have an interest in him take hold I guess. He appears to be an interesting enough figure, as A Private Portrait, a documentary covering his life and work, appears to portray.

Pappi Corsicato directed the film, which covers Schnabel's life from his origins in Texas, to his move to New York as a child with his family. His emergence as an artist in New York is shown as well as an emergence into film direction. Through the film, interviews with Schnabel's family and children are given time on screen, as is interviews with his friends, including Al Paci...Read the entire review

The Insult is an edge-of-your-seat thrillerand dramaabout a conflict which arises between Tony Hanna (Adel Karam), aLebaneseChristian, and Yasser Salameh (Kamel E Basha), a Palestinian refugee.The twoindividuals start an argument over something relatively small whichcould haveeasily been resolved with a simple apology. Things go in a muchdifferent direction.Directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Ziad Douiri (The Attack),this is astrong political film about a major world issue.

Instead of resolving the conflict with an apologysharedbetween them, things rapidly spiral out of control between the two men.A giantcourt-room battle begins between the two sides over insults thrown. Thereasonfor their immense conflict soon...Read the entire review

Anyone who knows film should know of Agnes Varda: a film director, documentarian, and photographer who was a key figure in the French New Wave. Her work, which is often noted for its feminist themes and her keen eye for details and people, has been celebrated across the world over the last 7 decades. Perhaps less familiar to viewers is the work of JR, a French photographer whose work blends photography and graffiti, taking blown-up black-and-white photographs and pasting them to the sides of buildings and other structures to create art that blends in with the environment around it. Faces Places is a wonderful documentary that brings both artists together in an overwhelmingly charming exploration of the French countryside and interactions with its residents.

Watching Faces Places, the thread that links Varda and JR, outside of technique or format, is their passion for people of all ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

"England has always been disinclined to accept human nature." --Lasker-Jones (Ben Kingsley) in Maurice

Maurice (1987) is the oft-forgotten middle installment of Merchant-Ivory's trilogy of E.M. Forster adaptations, bookended by A Room with a View (1985) and Howards End (1992). Now in a gorgeous 4K restoration, the Cohen Film Collection has revived this quiet gem of gay arthouse cinema. And, let's be honest, it's probably because it is an unabashedly gay film that we don't hear about it as often as we do those other two Forster films.

...Read the entire review

There's no shortage of movies about the unexpected connections that bind strangers together. Most of these films -- Cloud Atlas, Magnolia -- come with an expansiveness and ambition that is looked at as part of the territory, possibly because filmmakers and audiences consider a large number of characters as a shorthand for scope. With those sorts of films in mind, Heal the Living, adapted from a book by Maylis de Kerangal by filmmaker Katell Quillevere, surprises the viewer twice. First, Quillevere's comparatively low-key approach is so effective that it underlines the artifice of the tried and true method (even as a fan of both movies mentioned), and secondly, it does so without any noticeable compulsion to draw the audience's attention to it. The film is a quiet paradox: both revelatory and unassuming at the same time.

The story begins when Simon (Gabin Verdet) takes a roa...Read the entire review

1992's "Howards End" marked the third Merchant Ivory production of an E.M. Forster novel, following "A Room with a View" and "Maurice." Nominated for nine Academy Awards, "Howards End" would wind up bringing home Best Actress (for Emma Thompson), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's second for a Merchant Ivory production), and Best Art Direction. With a runtime of nearly two-and-a-half hours, "Howards End" is the rare quiet character drama that feels like it runs half that amount. The production assembles an accomplished cast, including Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, and Prunella Scales, to name a few highlights. Set in the early 1900s, "Howards End" is a classic Forster tale of social classes mixing against type and the personal ramifications that result. Approaching its 25th anniversary in 2017, "Howards End" sees its second Blu-Ray release, repl...Read the entire review

There is a pretty great movie inside Les Cowboys, Thomas Bidegain's film about a family's search for their missing daughter across more than a decade across cultures and country lines. Although the common comparison is to that of The Searchers, there is also arguably a dash of Hitchcock, and some smatterings of cultural commentary about racial tensions (which may or may not have seemed more insightful to American viewers, oh, about a week ago as of this writing). Unfortunately, Bidegain, making his directorial debut after assisting in the writing of several screenplays (including this one), can't figure out to convey his ideas with the necessary intensity or intrigue to make them dramatically engaging. The film drifts along, dropping threads for different ones, before circling back to its initial conceit.

While attending what is known as a "cowboy fair" -- something that looks essen...Read the entire review

The Movies:

Two films directed by Douglas Sirk in the late forties debut on Blu-ray for the first time by way of this two disc Blu-ray collection from The Cohen Media Group.

A Scandal In Paris (1946):

Based on the exploits of real life criminal, François Eugène Vidocq, A Scandal In Paris begins with the man's birth behind the walls of a French prison in 1775. As the years go on and grows into an adult (and is played by George Sanders), we see him rise to power as the Chief Of Police. Vidocq, however, has plans to use this position to his advantage and sets into motion a plan to rob one of the largest banks in the city. But of course, things happen in between, which is where the bulk of the film lies.

It doesn't go as planned and eventually Vidoq finds himself behind bars, but in prison he befriends Emile Vernet (Akim Tamiroff), the member of an entire f...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Much like Mike Leigh's unfairly neglected artist portrait Mr. Turner, Maurice Pialat's excellent 1991 film Van Gogh does not attempt to squeeze its subject into a typical biopic mold; instead, it uses slice-of-life vignettes to conjure the famous painter as a flesh-and-blood man. Pialat's version of Vincent Van Gogh is unsurprisingly similar to the prickly, emotionally detached, and somewhat debauched protagonists of his earlier fiction films -- which are, for the most part, semi-autobiographical. Whether or not Pialat has chosen to re-fashion Van Gogh in his own image is up for debate (and probably beside the point), but Pialat has definitely tr...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In this second volume of their Films of Maurice Pialat series, Cohen Film Collection has chosen to follow-up their initial triple feature of Pialat's work with a stand-alone feature, Under the Sun of Satan (Volume 3 is also going to be a single film, Van Gogh). Based on a novel by Georges Bernanos (Diary of a Country Priest, Mouchette)...Read the entire review

The Collection:

Maurice Pialat is not exactly a household name to American cinephiles, even with two films canonized by the Criterion Collection (L'Enfance Nue and À Nos Amours). This new triple feature of Pialat re-releases (similar to the Cohen Film Collection's recent packages for the Taviani brothers and Benoît Jacquot) should hopefully go a long way toward correcting that. Pialat's fondness for naturalistic acting and bold emotions have earned him comparisons to John Cassavetes, although Pialat is far m...Read the entire review

A Married Woman (UneFemme Mariee) (1964) is a film by acclaimed filmmaker Jean LucGodard (Breathless). The film stars Macha Meril(Belle de Jour) as Charlotte, a youngwoman who is torn between choosing between her husband Pierre (PhilippeLeroy)and her lover Robert (Bernard Noel).

Charlotte is ayoung woman living in Paris with her husband and son. She spends muchof hertime reading hip fashion magazines. Philippe Leroy (LaFemme Nikita) stars as her husband, Pierre. Bernard Noel (The Fire Within) stars as Robert, Charlotte'slover.

Read the entire review

The Collection:

Much like their recently released Benoît Jacquot set, the Cohen Film Collection has brought together another triple feature of world cinema classics that are less well-known today in the US than they should be. This time, the focus is on the work of Italian brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, and three of their biggest international successes: the coming-of-age story Padre Padrone (1977), the World War II drama The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982), and the Luigi Pirandello anthology film Kaos (1984). Watched together, these films share a theme of deep sympathy for and understanding of peasant life in Italy, revealed in ways that are charming, funny, shocking, and sad.

Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70267 Wed, 03 Feb 2016 01:44:51 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

In the absorbing, stylish French drama The New Girlfriend, a young woman's preconceptions about love and sexuality get upended after learning a secret held by her best friend's husband. Françoise Ozon's twisty little tale ended up on a few critics' lists of the best LGBT films of 2015. For those who couldn't catch it during its limited theatrical release, the solid Blu-ray edition from Cohen Media Group is the next best thing.

Like Ozon's previous international hits 8 Women and Swimming Pool, The New Girlfriend sports a plot that combines mischievous humor and offbeat, sometimes absurd twists in a plush Euro-chic setting. Adapted from a short story by British suspense author Ruth Rendell, the story follows the awakening of Claire (the gamine-like Anaïs Demoustier) as she adjusts to the loss of her friend since childhood, the blonde, enigmatic Laura...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70317 Sat, 02 Jan 2016 11:00:10 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series

Probably like many, I was expecting the Jean Gabin-Alain Delon film Two Men in Town (Deux hommes dans la ville, also known as Two Against the Law, 1973) to be a typically excellent French crime picture, something along the lines of The Sicilian Clan (1969, with both Delon and Gabin), Le Cercle rouge (1970), or Un flic (both with Delon, 1972). Two Men in Town has the expected crime film elements at its periphery but, instead, the movie has other concerns entirely. It's a very impressive if deeply depressing, even disturbing work.

It's also a picture impossible to discuss without giving away key plot elements, so if you're curious about this DVD Talk Collector Series Title film, stop reading here and read the review after having seen it. Spoilers will follow.

Highly regarded in its native France, the film was treated to a 4K restoration in 2014...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/69714 Wed, 04 Nov 2015 18:21:34 UTC Highly Recommended

The Collection:

Benoît Jacquot is from the generation of French directors right after the famed New Wave; it's a generation influenced both by that earlier iconoclastic movement and by the more traditional American and French films that inspired its key players. Jacquot's films teeter across a tightrope of tossed-off naturalism and carefully crafted poetry. Cohen Film Collection (who recently released Jacquot's 3 Hearts) has brought together three of the director's best known films from the '90s, in a great-looking and nicely supplemented set. It offers a nice primer for viewers unfamiliar with this infrequently heralded director.

The Disenchanted (1990)

Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/69721 Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:48:11 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Director Benoît Jacquot's 2014 romantic French drama 3 Hearts has such a killer set-up that it makes the film's somewhat meandering middle tolerable, in the hopes that the story will pay off big. Unfortunately, while the conclusion isn't a misstep exactly, it lacks the fireworks that this story felt like it deserved.

Tax inspector Marc (Benoît Poelvoorde) misses the last train and finds himself stranded in a small town for the night. He spots an attractive woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and asks where he can find a hotel, then uses the opportunity to chat her up. They find a hotel for him, but he asks her if she minds continuing to walk around the town instead. Poelvoorde and Gainsbourg generate a palpable electricity that make these...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/69086 Thu, 06 Aug 2015 00:04:07 UTC Highly Recommended

The Cohen Film Collection presents a newly remastered double feature by Alain Resnais, the masterful filmmaker behind Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad, who died last year at age 91. Resnais worked at a fairly consistent pace for most of his life, and a few of his late works, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet and Wild Grass, have garnered widespread critical respect. This new double feature goes back to some lesser-known efforts from the '80s which make perfect sense as a pair on paper -- the films were released ...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/68297 Wed, 15 Jul 2015 01:51:31 UTC DVD Talk Collector Series

The Movie:

Timbuktu is a powerful indictment of the direct effects of religious extremism on the human soul. A profoundly moving piece of artistic expression against those who seek to corrupt and undermine the human spirit in the name of power, it's an equally beautiful and enraging experience that you'll think about long after watching.

Co-writer/director Abderrahmane Sissako's masterpiece consists of a series of vignettes about how the otherwise calm and humble lives of people in a small society around the dunes of Timbuktu are destroyed by a regional takeover from a group of extremist Islamic Jihadists. Even though their affiliation is not clearly stated in the film, the Jihadists fly the ISIL flag, leading the audience to bel...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/68485 Mon, 13 Jul 2015 13:06:44 UTC Highly Recommended

The Movie:

The new documentary Deli Man is part personal profile and part cultural feature story on yet another disappearing American institution: the Jewish delicatessen. The film amiably and entertainingly discusses the history of delis while also throwing a spotlight on the die-hard practitioners of the craft who continue to hang on during the business's overall decline. At their peak in the '30s and '40s, there were around 1500 Jewish delicatessens in New York City alone, while now, the film reports, there are only around 150 in the entire United States. The film suggests it takes an unusual dedication to tradition -- and probably more than a touch of insanity -- to work in the Jewish deli business in the twenty-first century.

When we are f...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/67954 Sun, 07 Jun 2015 09:39:35 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

With Magician: The Astonishing Life & Work of Orson Welles, documentarian Chuck Workman faced the herculean task of condensing one of the 20th century's richest, most varied lives into 94 minutes. Realizing that he can't possibly please everybody, Workman assembled a bunch of new interviews, beautifully selected film clips, vintage interviews and other Welles ephemera into a delightful, impressionistic portrait. Like its multi-hyphenate subject, the doc's got a little something for everyone.

The quirky yet honorific Magician comes across like Orson Welles himself (or, at least, the way he presented himself in interviews) - briskly surveying an extraordinary life from beginning to end with a detached bemusement. Best-known for the movie montages he did for the Academy Awards television broadcasts in the '80s and '90s, Workman applies the same collage-like techniqu...Read the entire review

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