The Ninja Trilogy

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Some days I truly miss the old video stores. There was something special about walking through the aisles looking at the same VHS covers you’d seen a thousand times, hoping to stumble across something special. In those days before IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, I often had no idea what a movie was like other than that cover and a description written on the back. Some of those covers made the movies seem utterly amazing. Some of them are still etched into my brain (like the cover for April Fool’s Day where a woman’s hair is braided to look like a hangman’s noose).

I don’t think I ever managed to see any of the Ninja Trilogy when I was a kid, though I do remember looking at those VHS tapes and wishing I could rent them, but I sure was thrilled when I learned they were getting the UHD treatment. Now I’ve not only seen them, but I own them, and I’ve reviewed them (something you can read right here at Cinema Sentries.)

Dogtooth (2009) 4K UHD Review

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Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most creative, strange, and incredible directors working today. Dogtooth was his second feature film, and it might be his strangest.

It is about a man and a woman with three adult children. The children have never been let out of the house/garden. They are regularly taught false meanings to everyday words. They believe they have a fourth sibling, whom was bad and thus was sent to live outside of the yard and to whom they regularly talk to and throw gifts (but who doesn’t actually exist.) Etc. Basically the parents had children to experiment on them.

It gets even weirder but that would spoil the film. It is utterly bizarre but like all Lanthimos films there is something deeper going on behind the strangeness. I loved it, but I don’t know that I’ll ever want to watch it again.

You can read my full review here.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIII Blu-ray Review

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I’ve talked about these film noir sets from Kino Lorber on multiple occasions. I’m always surprised they keep making them. I’m always surprised there are that many film noirs to release. But I love them just the same. I hope they keep making them forever.

This set includes a mostly great spy thriller, a surprisingly thoughtful thriller with a mentally ill killer, and a really rather good remake of a Hitchcock film.

You can read my full review here.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXV Blu-ray Review

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I’ve reviewed so many of these sets I don’t know what else to say about them. This one has three films from Republic Pictures directed by John H. Auer, whom I’d never heard of before.

The films are The Flame (1947) a melodramatic Double Indemnity-esque caper with too many characters and a couple of blondes I couldn’t tell apart. City That Never Sleeps (1953) is a docu-style drama filled with loads of interesting characters and some terrific noir cinematography. Hell’s Half Acre (1953) is an exotic noir set on the mean streets of Honolulu.

They are all pretty good, actually, and you can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIX

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I’ve reviewed a bunch of these film noir sets from Kino Lorber over the last few years. Not all of the films are great, some of them are pretty lousy if I’m being honest, but I love that these films are getting released in HD.

This set features stars such as Charlton Heston, Barbara Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Ryan, and Ida Lupino (those last two are in Beware, My Lovely a film I reviewed last Noirvember).

All three films are pretty good if not exactly true classics. You can read my full review here.

Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)

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I love me a good submarine movie and this is the film that essentially created all of the usual tropes of the genre. It isn’t the best that was ever made, but it isn’t far from it either. Anytime you’ve got Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable in a picture you know you’re gonna get something interesting. Anyway, here’s my full review over at Cinema Sentries.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XVI

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Kino Lorber, the boutique Blu-ray label has been releasing these sets of three relatively obscure film noirs for a few years now. I’ve reviewed quite a few of them, and while not every film is a classic, or even that good, I always enjoy watching them.

You can read my full review of this set over at Cinema Sentries.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XV

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I’m finally through with watching all those Shaw Brothers kung fu flicks, and I’m now ready to start my Noirvember watching properly.

First up was this nice set of three films from Kino Lorber. These aren’t the greatest movies ever made, they’re not even the greatest film noirs ever made. Actually, they’re not all even that good. But I love that these obscure and not amazing films keep getting Blu-ray releases.

You can read my review over at Cinema Sentries.

Shenandoah (1965)

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I liked all kinds of movies, all sorts of different genres. I’ve recently come to really love old westerns. But sometimes Westerners are hard to watch through modern eyes. Their treatment of Native Americans is shoddy at best, and racist at worst. Shenandoah does ok by Indians, but its treatment of the Civil War and slavery is a little muddy.

I try very hard in this blog to not get political. I have political opinions, of course, but I want this site to be a place where all sorts of views can come and enjoy what I have to offer. This was especially true when I was just sharing live music. But now that I’m writing more reviews some politics will inevitably slip in. It is difficult to review certain types of art without letting some political opinions in. But I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.

That being said there are certain opinions that I will let out proudly. I think it is pretty safe to say that slavery was bad. It was a great evil in this country. That’s not controversial, and if you want to argue that point then you can just see yourself out.

A lot of westerns are set during the Civil War. Very few of them are pro-slavery, but their treatment of that institution, and of black people in general, can be suspect. The older I get the more difficulty I have watching Civil War movies that make folks fighting for the Confederacy into heroes. I know not everyone who fought for the South owned slaves or was particularly pro-slavery. Lots of young men fought for the South because that was their patriotic duty, many probably had no opinion on slavery whatsoever.

I don’t want to get too far into the weeds with this. Shenandoah is a pretty good movie starring James Stewart. He plays a character who wants nothing to do with the war. He has no love for slavery, but neither will he lift a hand to help fight against it. My review wrestles with what to do with a character like that. It is something I wrestle with every time I watch a movie with outdated stereotypes. Sometimes I love the movie, but it is difficult to parse that with the way the movie handles certain issues.

Anyway, you can read my review here.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema IX

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Kino Lorber released two of their film noir sets in October which seemed weird to me since Noirvember was just a month later. But maybe they wanted to get them on the shelves a few weeks before the holiday so that fans would be ready to watch once November rolled around.

I watched these so long ago I had to read my own review just to remember if I liked this one (I did). You can do the same here.