Blu-ray essentials – Paper Moon
What’s Up Doc? was one of the highest grossing films of 1972 and running hot from its success, director Peter Bogdanovich chose to make another movie just as influenced by the older Hollywood that he has always heaped with praise and adoration. The leads of the picture were real life father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O’Neal as Moses, a depression … Read more
The ‘Burbs is a great film but we shouldn’t ignore the ending
The following post will, unsurprisingly, include major spoilers. Joe Dante‘s The ‘Burbs, which Arrow Video are releasing on Blu-ray this week, counts among the director’s best films and represents some of the best work Tom Hanks has ever done. Nonetheless, the film has problems. Really, it has one big problem. Its ending. At the other end, … Read more
Blu-ray essentials: Re-Animator
Rather surprisingly Stuart Gordon‘s début feature, Re-Animator, was originally conceived as a television series for PBS. The source material, H.P. Lovecraft‘s Herbert West-Reanimator, would have lent the project a certain amount of in-built respectability but it’s hard to imagine the small screen version would have been quite so splatter filled and delightfully boundary pushing. But, oh … Read more
Too Late Blues Blu-ray Review
There’s a moment towards the end of John Cassavetes’ superb 1962 jazz picture Too Late Blues in which Benny Flowers (Everett Chambers) verbally destroys Ghost (Bobby Darin), the tragic hero of the film. Flowers lays out the way in which Ghost, a talented jazz pianist, has sold out and you can see Ghost slowly fall apart, decimated by the … Read more