Part of the fun of the 21st century superhero shows is the effort put into worldbuilding. Not just the cast of characters but the entire ecosystem of the city, the attitudes towards heroes and villains from the civilians, and histories that hold sway over The fun of the CW superhero shows—Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends […]
Superheroes dominate TV almost as much as they do the movies. They’re not quite the ratings blockbuster compared to the big screen spectacles but they are all over the TV schedule and streaming menus. So it’s no surprise that anti-heroes and villains are taking center stage in more productions. Especially in Gotham, the story of […]
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Steven Spielberg’s suburban fairy tale for kids who think they are too hip to believe in fairies, turns 35 with a new E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 35th Anniversary Limited Edition (Universal) plus additional Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD editions. Henry Thomas is Elliot, an emotionally bruised kid suffering under his parents’ […]
Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow / Drunken Master (Twilight Time) Boyish, baby-faced Jackie Chan trained at the famed Peking Opera Academy, had an early career as a stunt man, supporting player and fight choreographer in scores of Hong Kong films, and was unexpectedly chosen as “the next Bruce Lee” in a series of stiff, serious […]
Catching up on some of the silent films released to Blu-ray and DVD in the past months… Beggars of Life (Kino Lorber) William Wellman was one of the most versatile directors of his day, making everything from comedies and musicals to gritty dramas and war movies, and his World War I epic Wings (1927) won […]
I’d always known Marion Davies is one of the most gifted comediennes of the silent era, thanks to her collaborations with King Vidor, The Patsy (1928) and Show People (1928), two magnificent comedies carried by Davies’ charisma and empathy as well as her easy way with comedy, and readily available on DVD thanks to the […]
Actor, director, and playwright Sacha Guitry was a giant of French cinema as writer, director, and star of a series of witty and inventive movies from the 1930s through the 1950s. For his weirdly exuberant black comedy La Poison (1951) he gives the lead to the great Michel Simon, who plays a gruff bear of […]
A year after Kino’s superb Pioneers of African-American Cinema, Flicker Alley’s Early Women Filmmakers collects and curates the work of women filmmakers in the U.S. and Europe before World War II. Women ironically had more opportunities in the early years of filmmaking, not just as directors but as writers, editors, and producers, than they did […]
It took so long for Hollywood to finally find a way to harness the unique mix of martial arts mastery, dance-like grace, playful humor, and giddy charm that had made Jackie Chan a superstar throughout the rest of the world that he was almost too old to show off the extent of his physical prowess […]
“Do you want to meet a ghost?” The meditative and metaphysical horror cinema of Kiyoshi Kurosawa made him one of the masters of Japanese horror during its amazing cycle of surreal and nightmarish horror films of the 1990s and 2000s, but his films never really crossed over to the general audience in the U.S. His […]
