Film.com DVD Blog

Blu-Ray Review: Stargate: The Movie -- 15th Anniversary Edition

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:34:00 PST

Fifteen years ago, two cinematic powerhouses came together and teamed up to form a union that would forever become infamous in critical circles but popular on the Hollywood set. Together these two men, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, would produce and direct (respectively) a number of of blockbuster hits that can only be described as spectacle. But before they rocked the world with films like Independence Day (ID4), The Patriot, or even the abysmal Godzilla, these two men would create one of…

DVD Review: March of the Penguins Limited Edition Giftset

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:21:00 PST

When March of the Penguins came out in the summer of 2005, a lot of party poopers were eager to scold the film and its fans for anthropomorphizing the Antarctic birds. They don't have human emotions! They only operate on instinct! Stop acting like they're people!

Those spoilsports should just shut up, obviously. People enjoy pretending that animals are just like us. It makes them seem cuter. If a penguin looks like a small fat guy wearing a tuxedo, then we are going to give him a name and…

DVD Alternatives to This Weekend's Theatrical Offerings

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:33:00 PST

We know how it is: You'd like to go to the movies this weekend, but you're gonna be busy staring at a big button, arguing with yourself about whether or not to push it. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, "Hey, did you see The Box this weekend?" you can reply, "No, I contemplated cinematic moral conundrums of a different order."

INSTEAD OF: The Box, Richard Kelly's mysterious thriller about a moral…

Criterion Review: Howards End A Timely Triumph

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:38:00 PST

"Live in fragments no longer," proclaims the heroine Margaret Schlegel in the E. M. Forster novel Howards End. Pure artistry defines this 1992 film from director James Ivory, which is as beautiful and timely 17 years later as the day it was released. Dealing with the problems of emotional connectivity in modern life, as well as the damaging effects of lies long lain dormant and the certainty of fate, Howards End is long overdue for a revival.

Two families seem inescapably interconnected as…

DVD Review: Orphan Abandoned on Single Feature DVD

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:27:00 PST

If there is one terrible legacy left to us by filmmaking in the '90s, it is the notion of the twist-dependent thriller. After the critical (and box office) success of such films as The Usual Suspects, Lone Star, The Crying Game, and especially The Sixth Sense, films that were constructed entirely around a single, mind-bending, story-changing twist became a hip and interesting way to tell a story. The big GOTCHA! of it, however, left classic storytelling to fall by the wayside, and films often…

Blu-Ray Review: Heat Looks Great, but There's Nothing New to See

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:12:00 PST

Fourteen years after Heat brought Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together onscreen for the first time, a new edition comes to Blu-ray. But do you need it?

De Niro plays McCauley, the head of a paramilitary-style robbery crew, with Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore as his backup and Pacino as Hanna, the cop tracking them down. As the police try to keep up with the crew's intricate schemes, a classic game of hunter and hunted turns back on itself, with a double-crossing sideman and a victim out for…

DVD Alternatives to This Weekend's Theatrical Offerings

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:54:00 PDT

We know how it is: You'd like to go to the movies this weekend, but you're still working on putting together your Michael Jackson costume for Halloween; sewing all those sequins onto that glove is taking forever. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, "Hey, did you see This Is It this weekend?" you can reply, "No, I eased on, eased on down the road instead."

INSTEAD OF: Michael Jackson's This Is It, the…

DVD Review: North by Northwest (50th Anniversary)

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:44:00 PDT

Yea! New DVDs! Wait, what? It's yet another version of a movie that's already gotten multiple DVD releases? What about all the great old movies that have never been released on DVD at all?

Oh, it's pointless to complain about such stuff. And I sound grumpier than I am, because this is the 50th Anniversary Edition of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest we're talking about. The word classic gets so overused in connection with movies that it's almost ceased to have meaning: this is one of the…

Criterion Review: Z by Costa-Gavras a Chaotic Thriller

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:50:00 PDT

This isn't a movie that wastes any time, it's filled to the brim with immediacy and action from the opening credit to the traumatic finale. Political parties are torn apart by secrecy and conspiracy as a tightly controlled population begins to violently demand their freedom. All at once strange, and yet as vaguely familiar as last night's dream, Z is the 1969 handiwork of director Constantin Costa-Gavras. This 1970 Academy Award Best Foreign Film winner is a simultaneous declaration against…

Criterion Review: Wings of Desire

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:52:00 PDT

If ever there were a film that could be ruined by a poor description, it is Wings of Desire. The surface explanation involves angels watching over the inhabitants of Berlin. But it is so much more, a hauntingly beautiful, quiet reflection of the very nature of humanity, and the longing of an eternal creature for the temporary moments available only to those who die.

Angels listen in on the thoughts and feelings of humans, and a relentless theme seems to be worry and sadness, the pain of human…