Home Video

Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Chinatown
  • IMDb: link

I don’t know if 1974’s Chinatown is without doubt the best film for everyone involved, both in front and behind the camera, but one could certainly make the case. Director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne come together with a neo-noir staple which provided Jack Nicholson one of his most famous roles as private investigator J. J. Gittes who struggles to find the truth surrounding the death of chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power (Darrell Zwerling), who Gittes was hired to surveil by a woman (Diane Ladd) pretending to be his wife (Faye Dunaway), and uncover how that death plays into a larger conspiracy of the Los Angeles draught and a land scheme which allows 30s Los Angeles to become a major character in the film.

…

Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.Read More »

Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. Read More »

The Grifters

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Grifters
  • IMDb: link

Stephen Frears‘ 1990 neo-noir crime thriller centered around three grifters in the City of Angels comes to the Criterion Collection on 4K and Blu-ray. One could make a strong case The Grifters, now 35 years-old, remains the director’s best film. Trust may be hard for the characters to find in the script, given the shadowy world of half-truths and lies, but the talent is evident in every frame of this stylish look at con artists getting in over their heads.

…

The GriftersRead More »

The Grifters Read More »

Back in Action

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Back in Action
  • IMDb: link

Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx star in this lame action thriller as former spies forced out of retirement after being spotted getting into a public altercation involving their rebellious teenage daughter (McKenna Roberts) in a night club. Back in Action is a charmless paint-by-number genre flick with the cast going through the motions as the family finds itself on the run eventually pulling in Emily’s (Diaz) British mother (Glenn Close) and her ridiculous boyfriend (Jamie Demetriou).

…

Back in ActionRead More »

Back in Action Read More »

The Substance

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Substance
  • IMDb: link

Part body horror and part treatise on societal pressures of women over the age of 40, The Substance stars Demi Moore as a fading Hollywood celebrity now host of a morning exercise hour about to be replaced by the lecherous producer (Dennis Quaid). Learning of an experimental procedure where she might recapture her youth, Elisabeth (Moore) takes “the Substance” and emerges from the husk of her body as the distinctly different Sue (Margaret Qualley) whose beauty quickly reopens all the doors closed to her older self. However, in order for this miracle to work, Sue and Elisabeth share consciousness, each a week at a time when the other is unconscious with any negative or selfish action by one potentially hurting the other.

…

The SubstanceRead More »

The Substance Read More »

Godzilla Minus One

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Godzilla Minus One
  • IMDb: link

Going back to basics, 2023’s Godzilla Minus One returns the story of Godzilla to post World War II Japan with themes of post-war trauma, regret, and anti-war and anti- nuclear messages so prevalent in the original film. Our protagonist is Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who encounters Godzilla at the end of WWII while flying as a kamikaze pilot who refused to crash his plane. Two years later, after cobbling together a family of other survivors, and working to remove leftover naval mines, Shikishima encounters Godzilla again. Centered around Shikishima’s guilt and cowardice, the return of Godzilla allows for a chance at redemption by becoming the suicide bomber he failed to be during the war.

…

Godzilla Minus OneRead More »

Godzilla Minus One Read More »