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Blu-ray Movies

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Blu-ray movies

June 2014

Ace in the HoleAnything for a Story

The Criterion Collection 396
Format: Blu-ray and DVD

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***1/2

Extras
****

Ponder this: between 1944 and 1955, Billy Wilder wrote and/or directed Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), A Foreign Affair (1948), A Song Is Born (1948), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), and Some Like It Hot (1955). That's quite a run. It's not just that most of these movies are considered great films; it's that they were all so popular that even most moviegoers who haven't seen them have still heard of them.

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Blu-ray movies

May 2014

Double IndemnityA Brilliant Edition of One of America's Greatest Films

Universal 61120920
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment
****1/2

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***1/2

Extras
****

Just about everyone concerned with this special edition of Double Indemnity credits it with being the first film noir -- the one everybody else imitated. It's a brilliant and entertaining movie that's perfectly paced; it never drags or lets up on the tension. A lot of this effect is due to the excellent screenplay by director Billy Wilder, partnering with pulp-fiction writer Raymond Chandler. Together they spiked-up James M. Cain's novella to make it a much more compelling narrative.

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Blu-ray movies

April 2014

Riot in Cell Block 11Prison Reform: A Hot Topic in Both 1954 and 2014

The Criterion Collection 704
Format: Blu-ray and DVD

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****1/2

Sound Quality
***1/2

Extras
****

Prison reform is a contemporary issue, with state and federal governments hotly debating its solution. Prisons are overcrowded, often due to the incarceration of prisoners who have committed mere misdemeanors, and the imprisonment of so many has become a very expensive proposition. But Criterion's release of Riot in Cell Block 11 reminds us that prison reform isn't a new issue.

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Blu-ray movies

March 2014

Inside Llewyn DavisAn Intimate Portrait of New York's Coffee Houses in 1961

Sony Pictures 42859
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment
***1/2

Picture Quality
***1/2

Sound Quality
****

Extras
***

Set in the Greenwich Village folk-music scene of the early 1960s, Inside Llewyn Davis is a black comedy about the fading coffee houses of the time. There are no clinking glasses and buzzing conversations as in the jazz clubs; everyone at the coffee house is respectful and quiet, saving it all until the applause at the end of a number. At the time the movie takes place, I was in Boston hearing Odetta at the coffee houses there, and I can confirm that the reverential tone of Inside Llewyn Davis is spot on.

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Blu-ray movies

March 2013

The Hidden FortressBlu-ray Does Justice to Kurosawa’s Depth-of-Field Shots

The Criterion Collection 116
Format: Blu-ray and DVD

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***

Extras
****

The Hidden Fortress is one of director Akira Kurosawa's most accessible gems. In 1958 it put him back in favor with Japanese audiences and grossed quite a bit of money, but it became popular in the West only when George Lucas identified it as one of his inspirations for Star Wars. Renewed familiarity with the black-and-white classic uncovers an excellent action-adventure movie that was practically a textbook on the use of widescreen and anamorphic lenses.

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Blu-ray movies

March 2013

TessA Sweeping Romance with a Charismatic Star

The Criterion Collection 697
Format: Blu-ray and DVD

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
****

Extras
****

The later 1970s seem to have been just the right time for epic film romances. Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon in 1975, Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven in 1978, and Roman Polanski's Tess in 1979. All of the movies presented sweeping landscapes of the countryside in which they were filmed, but it was Polanski's movie that had the best plot and character development.

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Blu-ray movies

February 2014

Foreign CorrespondentEspionage with Alfred Hitchcock in 1940

The Criterion Collection 696
Format: Blu-ray and DVD

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***

Extras
****

Foreign Correspondent (1940) shares honors with Rebecca (also 1940) as being one of Alfred Hitchcock's first American movies. But perhaps it's really the first because Hitchcock felt that David O. Selznick had micromanaged Rebecca in such a way that it lacked the usual Hitchcockian humor and was really apart from his oeuvre.

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Blu-ray movies

January 2014

RififiGrandfather of Heist Films Gets the TLC Criterion Treatment

The Criterion Collection 115
Format: Blu-ray and DVD

Overall Enjoyment
****1/2

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***

Extras
***

The Hollywood blacklist created a paranoid time in Tinseltown when noted directors, screenplay writers, actors, and technicians could not be hired if they were suspected of having anything to do with the Communist party. Many were falsely accused and driven out of work, and some wrote under pseudonyms. Director Jules Dassin, interviewed in 2000 by Criterion in an extra included on this new release of Rififi, is still emotional about his blacklist history.

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Blu-ray movies

January 2014

Throne of BloodCriterion Doubles Up

The Criterion Collection 190
Format: Blu-ray and DVD

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***

Extras
***1/2

Criterion gives us two for one twice over with the release of Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. First, they've stopped doing double inventory by putting both the Blu-ray and DVD versions in the same package. Judging by the press announcements for future 2014 releases, dual-format editions are to become a standard feature. Second, and probably not to become standard, is that Throne of Blood includes two different sets of subtitles, one by Japanese-film translator Linda Hoaglund and the other by Kurosawa expert Donald Richie.

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Blu-ray movies

October 2013

The UninvitedTaking Ghosts Seriously

The Criterion Collection 677
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
*****

Sound Quality
***

Extras
****

Just in time for Halloween, Criterion, who brought us Eyes Without a Face last week, has released The Uninvited, a classic black-and-white ghost story directed by Lewis Allen in 1944. It's considered the first Hollywood film to take ghosts seriously and not explain them as the result of manmade parlor tricks.

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  1. "Eyes Without a Face"
  2. "The Devil’s Backbone"
  3. "Seconds"
  4. "Babette's Feast"
  5. "Things to Come"
  6. "Richard III"
  7. "Jack Reacher"
  8. "The Blob"
  9. "Badlands"
  10. "Africa: Eye to Eye with the Unknown"
  11. "On the Waterfront"
  12. "The Awakening"
  13. "The Tin Drum"
  14. "Purple Noon"
  15. "Manufactured Landscapes"
  16. "Rashomon"
  17. "Rosemary's Baby"
  18. "Moonrise Kingdom"
  19. "Les visiteurs du soir"
  20. "Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures"
  21. "Titanic"
  22. The Rescuers: 35th Anniversary Edition (The Rescuers / The Rescuers Down Under)
  23. "The Hunger Games"
  24. "Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax"
  25. "High Fidelity"
  26. "Down by Law"
  27. "Yellow Submarine"
  28. "Barbarella"
  29. "Shallow Grave"
  30. "Accident"
  31. "The Secret World of Arrietty"
  32. "Buck Privates"
  33. "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol"
  34. "War Horse"
  35. "A Night to Remember"
  36. "To Catch a Thief"
  37. "Dangerous Liaisons"
  38. "Lady and the Tramp: Diamond Edition"
  39. "Real Steel"
  40. "Godzilla"
  41. "Design for Living"
  42. "Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy"
  43. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"
  44. "The Lady Vanishes" (1938)
  45. "The Debt"
  46. "Super 8"
  47. "Beginners"
  48. "Island of Lost Souls"
  49. "The Four Feathers" (1939)
  50. "The Tree of Life"
  51. "Captain America: The First Avenger"
  52. "The Lion King: Diamond Edition"
  53. "Dumbo: 70th Anniversary Edition"
  54. "Hanna"
  55. "Cul-de-sac"
  56. "Jane Eyre"
  57. "Source Code"
  58. "Insidious"
  59. "Beauty and the Beast" (1946)
  60. "Kiss Me Deadly"
  61. "Solaris"
  62. "American Graffiti"
  63. "Papillon"
  64. "Smiles of a Summer Night"
  65. "Blow Out"
  66. "Kes"
  67. "The Incredibles"
  68. "Tron: Legacy / Tron: The Original Classic"
  69. "The Ten Commandments"
  70. "Topsy-Turvy"
  71. "Sweet Smell of Success"
  72. "Fish Tank"
  73. "Bambi"
  74. "Waiting for Superman"
  75. "Let Me In"
  76. "Alice in Wonderland: 60th Anniversary Edition"
  77. "Once Upon a Time in America"
  78. "The American"
  79. "Backdraft: Anniversary Edition"
  80. "The Disappearance of Alice Creed"
  81. "Cronos"
  82. "Fantasia / Fantasia 2000"
  83. "America Lost and Found: The BBS Story"
  84. "Disney’s A Christmas Carol"
  85. "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Level Up! Collector’s Edition"
  86. "Toy Story 3"
  87. "I Am Love"
  88. "Psycho -- 50th Anniversary Edition"
  89. "The Magician"
  90. "Beauty and the Beast: Three-Disc Diamond Edition"
  91. "Babies"
  92. "Breathless"
  93. "Eyeborgs"
  94. "Black Orpheus"
  95. "Kalifornia"
  96. "Mother"
  97. "Black Narcissus"
  98. "Brooklyn’s Finest"
  99. "The Leopard"
  100. "Green Zone"
  101. "Flash Gordon"
  102. "The Wolfman: Two-Disc Unrated Director’s Cut"
  103. "The Road"
  104. "Tombstone"
  105. "Saving Private Ryan: Sapphire Series"
  106. "M"
  107. "Avatar"
  108. "Ride with the Devil"
  109. "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call -- New Orleans"
  110. "Sherlock Holmes"
  111. "Broken Embraces"
  112. "Toy Story: Special Edition"

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