Category: Reviews

Foreign Film February: Iphigenia (1977)

iphigenia

I’m a big fan of Radiance Films. They put out really cool releases of relatively obscure films. My understanding is that one of the guys who used to run Arrow Video now runs Radiance, and that checks out. Arrow made a name for themselves by doing some very nice restorations of low-budget cult films and giving them loads of cool extras. Radiance is doing the same but with obscure arthouse European films. 

I try to get as many of them as I can, and I’m never disappointed.

Iphigenia is based on a Greek legend about Agamemnon having to sacrifice his firstborn child in order to win the war with Troy. It is a really beautiful, wonderfully made film, and I’m so glad I watched it.  You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

Foreign Film February: 2 Minutes Late (1952)

2 minutes late poster

Pretty much whenever I watch a movie, I internally review it. More often than not, once the movie is over, I’ll spend some time mentally writing a review. Sometimes that makes it onto the page, and I post it here or elsewhere. Sometimes I get distracted, and it never goes anywhere.

Every once in a while I’ll mentally write a review and think that I have actually posted it only to discover, later, that I never did write it out. This is one such occasion. I sure thought I had written a review for this film, but alas, I have not.

The trouble is I watched this a couple of weeks ago, and the plotting details are already foggy. And because this is a fairly obscure Norwegian film from 1952, there aren’t a lot of details of the film online. 

But it is still Foreign Film February, and I wanted to write something about it, so here goes. 

The Criterion Channel is running a little collection of Nordic Noir, and I’ve been enjoying it. The first two films I watched weren’t all that noirish, to be honest. There were hints of noir in there, but you have to stretch the definition a little bit to categorize them as such. But 2 Minutes Late is straight-up noir, and I loved it.

Max Paduan (Poul Reichhardt) is married to the nervous, clingy, and extraordinarily jealous Grete (Grethe Thordahl). She’s even jealous of her sister Beth (Astrid Villaume), thinking her friendship with her husband might be something more. 

One day Grete goes to an old bookstore to find something to read while she’s getting her hair done. She accidentally leaves her purse behind. When she returns, she finds the owner has left for lunch, but a little push on the door and it opens. She smells something strange in the store but shrugs it off, grabs her purse, and leaves. 

Later she’ll learn someone was murdered in that store right around the time she was in it. Suspicions fall on Max, and it is Beth who does some investigating to find out who really did it. The plot gets all sorts of twisty, and it’s filled with lots of interesting little details. This is where my memory gets fuzzy. I don’t remember exactly where it all goes, but I do remember I quite liked it.

If you like film noir and have the Criterion Channel I highly recommend it.

Stranger On the Third Floor (1940)

stranger on the third floor bluray

I freaking love me some Peter Lorre. I am a huge film noir fan. Stranger on the Third Floor stars Peter Lorre and is often cited as the very first noir. Several times now I’ve gotten all sorts of excited thinking about that and put this movie on only to be disappointed by it. 

It isn’t a terrible film, but it is definitely a B-movie that never expected to be talked about some seventy years after it first appeared on screens. And Peter Lorre is in it for less than ten minutes.  He’s great, and there is a pretty cool dream sequence in the middle, but other than that it is kind of dull.  Anyway, you can read my full review here.

Spencer Tracy 4-Film Collection

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Spencer Tracy is one of those actors whom I like in just about everything but that I’ve never really gravitated towards. I have no idea why. I got this four-film set the other day and quite enjoyed it (well, three of the films, anyways).

You can read my review of the entire set here.

Red Dust (1932)

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Warner Archive and Kino Lorber both put out a lot of what you might call second-tier classic films. These are movies with big-name stars or directors that, for one reason or another, are not all that well known all these decades later. 

I quite enjoy watching and reviewing them because you never know what you are going to get. Sure, most of them are not the greatest films, but usually they aren’t bad, and once in a while you find a real gem.

Red Dust is a very enjoyable little film. It stars Clark Gable as a rubber plantation owner in Asia and Jean Harlow as the no-nonsense sex worker he falls in love with. Mary Astor also appears as the prim and proper lady Gable’s character initially falls for.  Anyways, I quite enjoyed it, and you can read my review here.

The Sin of Nora Moran (1933)

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I love it when a low-budget film that should have been forgotten about weeks after its release and completely forgotten by time manages to do something completely different and become a classic. Remembered nearly one hundred years after it was released.

The Sin of Nora Moran was a poverty row drama whose story was a dime-a-dozen, but they did something in the editing room that made it interesting and different, and here we are with a new Blu-ray release of it in 2026. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

James Stewart Collection

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James Stewart is one of my favorite classic actors. He made a ton of great movies and is always good in them. I recently reviewed a boxed set of four of his films – The Naked Spur, The Shop Around the Corner, How the West Was Won, and The Mortal Storm – for Cinema Sentries. It is a great set and I mostly loved the movie. You can read the full review here.

Fackham Hall (2025)

fackham hall

Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I request review copies just for my wife. I’m on record as stating I’m weird about comedies. I don’t like movies or shows that are just joke factories. I want a story and characters first and then jokes.

But she’s a fan of silliness, and she had mentioned wanting to see this film, so when I got offered a Blu-ray, I took it. 

It took me a little while to warm up to Fackham Hall, but once I got into its groove, I found it to be very funny. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

The Verdict (1946)

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Peter Greenstreet and Peter Lorre starred in nine films together including two absolute bangers – The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. The Verdict was their final collaboration, and sadly it isn’t great. But it isn’t terrible and it was the first film ever directed by Don Siegel so it has that going for it. You can read my full review here.