DVD/Blu-Ray Review
Blu-ray review: Hungarian Masters
Despite the political and economic factors which have blighted its film industry over the decades, Hungary has always been a powerhouse of Eastern European cinema. Since the dawn of the twentieth century, the country has produced a number of notable personalities who’ve had a huge influence on domestic and world cinema. However, most of its …
Blu-Ray Review: The Love of Jeanne Ney
While the silent era planted the foundation stones for a global film industry which is now worth countless billions, it feels like it’s often dismissed as merely a genre in conversation. When in fact it was cinema, in all its entirety and diversity. The Weimar Republic played host to some of the most influential directors …
Blu-Ray Review: Menace II Society
Over the last decade, the film industry has taken major steps forward on the diversity and inclusion fronts. However, successful producers and studio heads have traditionally been white men. The same can be said for directors and leading actors. The African-American voice was largely sidelined or reduced in mainstream US cinema, but things began to …
Blu-ray Review: Le Samouraï
During the 1960s and 1970s, Alain Delon was one of the most iconic faces of European cinema. He made a string of eye-catching films with famous directors, including Antonioni (L’Eclisse), Visconti (The Leopard), Clément (Plein Soleil) and Losey (Mr Klein). However, it’s probably his work with the great Jean-Pierre Melville which remains the most feted. …
Blu-Ray Review: Champion
Boxing is one sport which punches well above its weight when it comes to popularity and media attention. Indeed, the amount of money to be made, primarily for uneducated young men, has made it a way out of poverty and a viable alternative to a life of crime. These factors have also made big box …
Blu-ray Review: Mill of the Stone Women
When you see programmes charting the history of horror cinema, all too often they concentrate almost exclusively on films emanating from the English-speaking world. Take Italy, for instance. A country which has been responsible for some of the most iconic and memorable moments in genre cinema. The likes of Dario Argento’s Supsiria, Lucio Fulci’s The …
Blu-Ray Review: Free Hand for a Tough Cop
Taking their influences from both France and the United States, Italian Poliziotteschi films of the 1960s and 1970s mix hard-boiled crime-fighting with a lot of running and chasing. Reacting to a soaring crime rate and a period of political turmoil within the country, more often than not they featured a vigilante in some shape of …
Blu-Ray Review: The Thin Red Line
While the end of World War II in Europe officially came on VE Day, 7 May 1945, fighting continued in the Pacific arena. Japan eventually surrendered to America at the beginning of September, but the conflict didn’t simply stop overnight in a war which encompasses much of the globe. There have been countless films about …
Blu-Ray Review: Devi
Not all directors are equal, or treated equally. Especially in the way their work is perceived of celebrated in the Western world. While the likes of Kurosawa, Truffaut, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky and Fellini are lauded and almost worshipped by cinephiles, other filmmakers, such as Satyajit Ray, have found their bodies of work rather overlooked or underappreciated. …
Blu-Ray Review: The Great Silence
Whilst most actors today seem to have been through a PR finishing school on how to answer interview questions, that has not always been the case. There was a time when the film industry was full of characters. However, there were few who could match Klaus Kinski when it came to intensity and volatility. While …