Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, we have the Oscar nominated Nightmare Alley hitting shelves, along with the 4K version of the Oscar winning The Godfather trilogy. In addition to those major Academy Award related titles, we also have a Criterion Collection releasee to look at. It’s a small, yet very high quality, slate, to be sure. Read on for more…
Nightmare Alley
Guillermo del Toro‘s latest scored a few Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, despite a winding path through the precursors. Nightmare Alley is a true film noir, as only del Toro could do it, and the more you focus on that, as opposed to its awards prospects, the more likely you are to enjoy it. I spoke to composer Nathan Johnson (here) and Oscar nominated cinematographer Dan Laustsen (here) about the movie, and both conversations were utterly fascinating. This is also some of what I had to say about the flick in my review:
Nightmare Alley represents an epic take on film noir. For some, the bigger, the better. For others, it will seem like an odd marriage. Luckily, in del Toro’s hands, you’re never going to be left in the lurch. An exploration of the monster within us, it’s as bleak a record of humanity as he’s ever attempted, but full of style and his signature playfulness. The less you look at it as prestige and the more you look at it as true noir, the better it will work for you.
The Godfather Trilogy (in 4K)
What else can you say about The Godfather trilogy that hasn’t already been said ten times over? Exactly. Now that the franchise is hitting 4K, it’s the definitive version to take in, done under the supervision of director Francis Ford Coppola. Especially if you don’t own these classics (well, at least the first two parts), this is a perfect opportunity to rectify that oversight.
Dexter: New Blood (TV)
Dr. Death (TV)
Game 6 (first time on Blu-ray)
La Llorona
The Flight of the Phoenix
From The Criterion Collection: “A downed airplane is a motley group of men’s only protection from the relentless desert sun, in this psychologically charged disaster epic, one of the all-time great survival movies. James Stewart is the veteran pilot whose Benghazi-bound plane—carrying passengers played by an unshaven ensemble of screen icons including Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Ian Bannen, Dan Duryea, Peter Finch, and George Kennedy—crash-lands in the remote Sahara. As tensions simmer among the survivors, they find themselves forced to trust a coldly logical engineer (Hardy Krüger) whose plan to get them out may just be crazy enough to work—or could kill them all. Directed with characteristic punch by Hollywood iconoclast Robert Aldrich, The Flight of the Phoenix balances adventure with human drama as it conducts a surprising and complex examination of authority, honor, and camaraderie among desperate men.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
Comments
Loading…