Videophiled Classic and Cult: Bill & Ted and World War II

by Sean Axmaker | Oct 15, 2016 | Home Viewing, What's Hot

Samuel Fuller writes and directs Fixed Bayonets! (Kino Classics, Blu-ray), a Korean War platoon drama set in snowy winter mountains. The small-scale production focuses on a small squad of American soldiers ordered to hold a mountain pass while their division retreats...

Videophiled Silents: John Ford’s ‘3 Bad Men’ and Fritz Lang’s ‘Destiny’ and ‘Spiders’ on Blu-ray

by Sean Axmaker | Aug 25, 2016 | Home Viewing, What's Hot

3 Bad Men (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) – After John Ford had a major hit with his epic of westward expansion The Iron Horse, he returned to the old west and the theme of the settling of the frontier two years later with 3 Bad Men (1926). George O’Brien...

Videophiled Noir III: ‘Try and Get Me’ and the 1946 ‘The Chase’ restored

by Sean Axmaker | Jul 11, 2016 | Home Viewing, What's Hot

A couple of months back I reviewed two Film Noir Foundation restorations of orphaned films—that is, films that were produced independently, outside of the studio system, by entities that no longer existed. With no one left to protect and preserve them, they fell into...

Videophiled International: ‘L’Inhumaine’ from France, two Fritz Lang silent classics, three from the Taviani Brothers

by Sean Axmaker | Mar 3, 2016 | Home Viewing, What's Hot

The 1923 French feature L’Inhumaine (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray), which translates to The Inhuman Woman, is not exactly about a femme fatale, though singer and social diva Claire Lescot (played by real-life opera star Georgette Leblanc) does enjoy the power she...

Videophiled Classics: ‘Fantomas’ – Cinema’s original supervillain

by Sean Axmaker | Jan 7, 2016 | Home Viewing, What's Hot

Fantômas (Kino Classics, Blu-ray) – There may be no more creatively energetic, playfully inventive and entertaining surreal filmmaking in the years 1913 and 1914 than the five wicked short features of Louis Feuillade’s serialized adaptations of the pulp adventures of...