Recently in Blu-ray Category
November 10, 2023
I wanted to look at the new Blu-ray Disc release of Story of O (out this week from the Canadian company Somerville House) for two reasons. First, I'm interested in what happens to obscure and cult films as they make their way to the new high-definition formats, and this French sexploitation drama from the mid-1970s certainly qualifies. Second, I know that while Story of O has some kind of literary pedigree (a sort of de Sade pastiche written under the pen name Pauline Réage, the novel broke significant ground for erotic fiction as well as bondage fetishists), the film version in particular has long been a pervy grail of softcore cinema -- knowledgable viewers of a certain sexual inclination find this mix of epic skin flick, softcore potboiler, and S&M; psychodrama to be in a class of its own.
Continue reading Story of O [Blu-ray Disc] (Jaeckin, 1975).
November 9, 2023
Sukiyaki Western Django, Japanese director Takashi Miike's take on the spaghetti western, owes an explicit debt to the Sergio Corbucci/Franco Nero film Django, which it references in both title and content, as well as to the history of genre crossings between Eastern and Western cinema -- the way Seven Samurai begat The Magnificent Seven, and especially the way Yojimbo begat A Fistful of Dollars and then a slew of good-natured imitations. You can trace the narrative of Sukiyaki Western Django in its basic form all the way back to Dashiell Hammet's novel Red Harvest, which is all about a Pinkerton dick from L.A. who starts investigating a murder in a small town where he ends up playing various factions against each other as a crafty third party. That story was the unofficial inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's wandering samurai film Yojimbo, as well as for Sergio Leone's unacknowledged remake, A Fistful of Dollars.
Continue reading Sukiyaki Western Django [Blu-ray Disc] (Takashi Miike, 2008).
October 20, 2024
My review of Zombie Strippers is online at FilmFreakCentral.net:
It's so dreadful, in fact, that I may be underrating it in at least one respect: Zombie Strippers! actually gives the early-1980s sci-fi porn flick Café Flesh a run for its money as the most joyless, nigh despairing movie about sexual arousal in film history.
September 29, 2024
My review of Can't Hardly Wait on Blu-ray Disc is online at FilmFreakCentral.net:
Can't Hardly Wait deals in a shameless, sunny-eyed idealism that prizes sincerity and explicitly privileges the notion of true love; the spirit of Wim Wenders even touches the film as, in one spectacularly sweet vignette, a bikini-clad angel (Jenna Elfman, in a terrific uncredited cameo) touches down outside a neon-lit diner to dispense some hard-won advice to the broken-hearted protagonist. In short, we're a long way yet from the crass, porn-inflected attitudes of Superbad.
September 25, 2024
My review of Starship Troopers 3: Marauder on Blu-ray Disc is online at FilmFreakCentral.net
Over the course of Starship Troopers 3, the human government's position on religion evolves from wary tolerance (because the more pious citizens tend to oppose the war) to outright enthusiasm, once the military manages to conflate aggression and holiness in the public mind. "God's back," declares a government mouthpiece at film's end, "and He's a citizen, too!"
September 15, 2024
September 6, 2024
My review of The Counterfeiters [on Blu-ray Disc] is online over at Filmfreakcentral.net.
This year's winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) is defined in equal terms by what it is and what it isn't. It is a Holocaust survivor's yarn told with a certain playfulness and no lack of moral consideration, but it is not really a concentration-camp movie; mostly, it feels like a prison caper yarn that happens to take place in Sachsenhausen. The film's weight comes from the things we know about but cannot see within the frame: those haunting images of emaciated Jews, the walking-dead stares of the prisoners consigned to the gas chambers and crematoria, the tragedy of systematic genocide.
August 11, 2024
My review of Felon on Blu-ray Disc is online at filmfreakcentral.net:
If Jeffrey Lebowski had made a few wrong turns in life--if, let's say, he had brutally murdered some very bad men, as well as their families--he may have turned out not entirely unlike John Smith, the hulkingly mellow convict played by a moustachioed, goateed Val Kilmer in Felon. Judging from the wide berth the rest of the inmates give him, Smith is known as the silent-but-deadly type. Kilmer plays him from behind a whole bunch of prison tattoos with a steely glare, but also with a kind of openness that doesn't immediately compute. Although he's tagged as a sociopath, he's really just the opposite. He believes in justice, and he longs for the death sentence he feels his crimes deserve.
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