TIFF14/NYFF Round-Up

Here are links to my TIFF coverage from earlier this year, plus some reviews of films I saw in Toronto but pitched as NYFF reviews.

TIFF Review: A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
TIFF Review: Horse Money
TIFF Review: Goodbye to Language 3D
NYFF Review: Jauja
NYFF Review: Pasolini

Capsules:
Eden, Rosewater & Jauja
Pasolini, Tales & Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2
Phoenix, Tokyo Tribe & Hill of Freedom

Blu-Ray Review: The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie is too scattershot and content to be the satire some claim it is, but I nonetheless find its 40-jokes-per-minute mania pleasing, and liked it as much a second time as I did the first. Kids movies tend to come with loaded Blu-Rays, albeit dully so with features that even a child has no use for. So I was happy to see, then, that Warner's put together a great package, starting with a hilarious group commentary and filled with interesting production featurettes that delve into how the movie was made. Read my full review at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: The Man from Laramie

The Man from Laramie is the last Anthony Mann-James Stewart collaboration, and if it's not the best of their work (I'd narrowly give the edge to The Naked Spur, and possibly Bend of the River), it is nonetheless their most impressively ambitious, an acid-western take on King Lear that may be one of the most violent films to obscure most of its violence from explicit display. Twilight Time releases are always fairly modest, but the 4K restoration given the film results in their best looking release to date, and I'm pleased that this dirty B-movie now looks as good as its A-list counterparts. Read my full review at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: L'Eclisse

The more I watch and return to Michelangelo Antonioni, the less concerned I am with "solving" his elliptical form and the more I'm content simply to bask in it. L'Eclisse rates with Red Desert and The Passenger as one of the directors most beautiful, enrapturing works, along with one of the most unsettling. Criterion give their old DVD a solid upgrade to Blu-Ray, though I do hope they append a few more of the directors early and late shorts to some future release, maybe their inevitable upgrade of L'Avventura. Regardless, this is a fine release, and you can read my full thoughts on the film and its Blu-Ray at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: Like Someone in Love

Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love was one of my favorite films of 2013, and Criterion's Blu-Ray is predictably superlative, presenting its intricate sound design and Red camera cinematography without error and tossing in a few solid features. Check out my full review at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: A Hard Day's Night

I watched A Hard Day's Night for the first time back in 2009 when the Beatles remasters came out and loved it so much I was instantly ready to call it maybe the greatest of rock films. Watching it for the third time with Criterion's outstanding new Blu-Ray release, I'm only more committed to that notion, but now I'm struck by what I never saw in the movie before: underneath (and often, directly parallel) with its many irreverent jokes is a glimpse at why adults were so afraid of these mop-topped goofballs, how their unkempt images and rakish lack of tact made them revolutionary well before they turned to drugs and started writing counterculture anthems. Criterion honors the film's 50th anniversary with one of their most impressive single-film releases: there's a commentary track, the short film that inspired the Beatles to use Richard Lester, many in-depth features and one of the thickest booklets the label has put with a release that was not an actual, honest-to-God book. It's currently sitting at the top of my list of Blu-Ray releases for the year.

Read my full review at Slant.

Louie Season 4 Recaps

Rather than do individual posts, here are links to all of my Louie coverage

Episodes 1 & 2: "Back" and "Model"
Episodes 3 & 4: "So Did the Fat Lady" and "Elevator Part 1"
Episodes 5 & 6: "Elevator Part 2" and "Elevator Part 3"
Episodes 7 & 8: "Elevator Part 4" and "Elevator Part 5"
Episodes 9 & 10: "Elevator Part 6" and "Pamela Part 1"
Episodes 11 & 12: "In the Woods"
Episodes 13 & 14: "Pamela Part 2" and "Pamela Part 3"

Game of Thrones Season 4 Recaps

Very pleased to say that I am covering this season of Game of Thrones for Slant's House Next Door blog. Here are links to the first five recaps, and this post will be updated with links to future coverage.

Episode 1: "Two Swords"
Episode 2: "The Lion and the Rose"
Episode 3: "Breaker of Chains"
Episode 4: "Oathkeeper"
Episode 5: "First of His Name"
Episode 6: "The Laws of God and Men"
Episode 7: "Mockingbird"
Episode 8: "The Mountain and the Viper"
Episode 9: "The Watchers on the Wall"
Episode 10: "The Children"

Louie, Season 4, E01 "Back" and E02 "Model"

I'm covering Louie's new season for Slant's House Next Door, and here is my recap for the premiere double-header, which shows the series operating at its usual creative and aesthetic heights but also, in the second episode, an illustration of its worst traits. Overall, it's great to have the show back, but I hope the material with Yvonne Strahovski is an aberration.

Read my recap at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: The Big Gundown

Major props to Grindhouse Releasing, who have put out a few Blu-Rays but truly come into their own with their handling of The Big Gundown. A gorgeous restoration results in the finest looking Blu-Ray for a Western since Once Upon a Time in the West hit shelves, and a solid batch of extras only sweetens the pot. I can't wait to see where they go from here, but in the meantime, check out my review of their great release at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: Assault on Precinct 13 (Shout! Factory)

For a film that holds so few surprises, in which everything has been chosen for its economy, not its mystery, Assault on Precinct 13 nevertheless impresses itself on me even more with each new viewing. Contrary to Shout! revelatory work with neglected Carpenter masterworks like They Live and Prince of Darkness, Assault is on a disc that is only a marginal improvement over Anchor Bay's now-OOP disc, so those who have that are likely fine with what they've got. For everyone else, though, this is an essential purchase.

Read my review at Slant.

DVD Review: Computer Chess (Kino)

I belatedly caught up with Computer Chess when I received a DVD copy to review, and oh what an utter delight of a picture, what reassurance that American independent cinema can still stretch beyond the now-horrid confines of "Sundance" (there were a surprising, delightful number of movies that accomplished that this year, or maybe I'm finally getting a hold of the right screeners). This film is a new high for the great Andrew Bujalski, a work that starts with programmatic logic befitting its topic before slowly collapsing, its surreal dips a match for how the programmers' own sense of their narrow world is thrown off by the unpredictability of life. Perfectly cast and boasting the year's best script, Computer Chess should be seen by anyone who feels that indies have become as hidebound as blockbusters.

Read my full review at Slant.

Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, 2013)

I've been dying to see this film for nearly a year and a half, and I'm thrilled to say that Leviathan more than lives up to its reputation as very possibly the greatest and most singular cinematic achievement of the decade so far. My review scrambles for a few literary and filmic touchstones just to process it, but this film feels so unlike anything I've seen, even other works by the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab. I cannot recommend it enough, and even though I lack a reference to the film's theatrical impact, I can safely say that Cinema Guild's Blu-Ray gets the job done.

Check out my review of the film and its home-video release at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: The Big Parade (Warner)

Warner outdid themselves with this nearly flawless transfer of King Vidor's amazing The Big Parade. Barring some inevitable dropped frames and a scant amount of irreparable print damage, I've never seen a silent film look this blemish-free, and if it weren't for the healthy grain I'd assume they'd gone overboard with digital touch-ups. The film itself overwhelmed me, a foundational war film that outdoes nearly all the movies that followed in its wake and shamelessly cribbed its elements. A work of great, ambivalent humanism, rarely castigating patriotic fervor even as it stares honestly at its consequences.

My full review is up at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: Prince of Darkness (Shout!)

I cannot recommend the new Blu-Ray of Prince of Darkness enough. Having seen it alternately on DVD and streaming services, I was blown away by how clean the film looked, how clear its black levels were and how detailed the low-budget film could look at times. Carpenter has enjoyed a solid spate of Blu-Ray releases lately, and Shout! Factory's Scream sublabel seems hellbent on giving us as many of his films in good condition as possible. Add in some solid extras (all Carpenter commentaries are great affairs) and you've got an essential release for genre fans.

Read my full post at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: Charulata

If Criterion's recent releases sometimes feel a bit too safe (the forthcoming gargantuan Zatoichi box set and Bergman/Rossellini collabos not withstanding), their acquisition and planned release of a massive portion of Satyajit Ray's filmography represents a major coup and an essential service for American cinephiles. Charulata tops even The Music Room in both the quality of the film and the breathtaking perfection of a restored transfer that forever obliterates memories of horrid DVDs that looked worse than bootlegs sourced from VHS. And thank God for the revitalized image: this Ophülsian melodrama is told so beautifully through its frames that surely the film's power would be sapped by awful AV quality. Some nice extras round out the disc, one of Criterion's best and most important releases in years.

Read my full thoughts at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: The Muppet Movie

Over at Slant, I reviewed the new Blu-Ray of The Muppet Movie. It's a fine disc from Disney, with a transfer that faithfully preserves the occasionally questionable quality of late-'70s film stock while restoring a great depth of color and texture. As for the film itself, what is there to say? I instead wrote a little about what the Muppet mean to me, and how The Muppet Movie reflects that better than any of the other big-screen adaptations of Jim Henson's creations, fun as so many of them are.

Read my full review over at Slant.

Blu-Ray Review: Bullet to the Head

I'm very pleased that, after an earlier review copy was never sent to me, I am finally writing for Slant Magazine! My first review is for the Blu-Ray of Walter Hill's not-bad/not-great (but closer to the latter) Bullet to the Head. The film is above-averagely average, if that makes any sense, and the Blu-Ray matches, with a faithful transfer of an inconsistent image and a paltry extra. Nevertheless, I still enjoy this return to theatrical filmmaking from Hill, and I hope it finds at least a minor life on home video.

Read my full review at Slant.