Since Otar Left is meant to play out like a fable, but Julie Bertuccelli’s direction isn’t nimble enough to carry it off.
The film’s constant bloodletting is more desensitizing than provocative.
The film shows off Bellocchio’s lukewarm debating skills.
David Mckenzie seems less concerned with the film’s central mystery than he is with taking his characters’ clothes off.
It panders to its modern audience with the kind of look-Ma visual brouhaha that the Tobe Hoopers of the world couldn’t be bothered with.
The film’s awful sound design is trumped only by a shrill Vasanthis Chaturani’s sadistic desire to add vocal contractions to every line delivery.
There’s nothing kinky about Jan Jakub Kolski’s Pornography.
Crimson Gold is more cyclical, socially conscious cinema from the world of Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami.
This is more or less a teaser for the inevitable DVD package containing all three films.
Mystic River is a somber evocation of a poor, close-knit section of Boston on the brink of moral collapse.
New Yorker Video deserves some kind of humanitarian award for finally releasing Lanzmann’s seminal film on DVD.
A Thousand Months is a stark but lovely evocation of the many melodramas that simultaneously haunt and enliven a Moroccan village.
It remains one of the most life-affirming works of art ever produced for the cinema.
Every sound, line of dialogue, and cloying musical number comes through loud and clear.
The Lion King is loaded with hoary bibilical references (rays of light, burning bushes) and Shakespearean shout-outs, but that’s all they are.
Rithy Panh’s more abstract observations serve to distance us critically from the horrors committed at S21.
Dogville is less anti-American than it is, quite simply, anti-oppression.
This undervalued spooker should easily find a cult following on home video.
As usual, this year’s New York Film Festival slate features numerous recyclables from Cannes and Toronto.
While there’s no commentary track to sell some prospective buyers, I’d keep this DVD edition solely for the awesome interactive menus.