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4 days ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
Entertaining Mr. Sloane Severin Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970) is a British comedy directed by Douglas Hickox. What matters is the angle through which it’s presented in the extras festooning the new Blu-ray from Severin Films. Nowadays, this campy collision of swinging Swinging Sixties London, the sexual revolution, and cinema’s loosening censorship is perceived as a Joe Orton film.
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2 weeks ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
The Tom Tyler Silent Film Collection Undercrank Who was Tom Tyler? This forgotten matinee hero, known mainly for B westerns and serials, receives a bout of resurrection in The Tom Tyler Silent Film Collection, newly on DVD and Blu-ray from Undercrank Productions. According to the bonus slideshow on the disc, Tom Tyler was born Vincent Markowski to parents who immigrated from Lithuania. Does this mean he was Jewish? If so, he wouldn’t be the first or last to create all-American WASP iconography.
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1 month ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
The Bermuda Triangle Kino Lorber Does anyone still follow the hocus pocus about the Bermuda Triangle? Maybe you do, or maybe it’s all Greek (or Atlantean) to you, but you’ll gain a little insight and a lot of nonsense on this far-reaching phenomenon in Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray of a 1979 “documentary”. As a concept, the alleged triangular stretch of ocean between Bermuda, Florida, and Puerto Rico is a vortex that, like a black hole, pulls a vast array of paranormal tropes into its maw.
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1 month ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIX Kino Lorber All the films in Kino Lorber’s three-disc box Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIX are highly visual and suspenseful treats. We’re going to focus on the often overlooked gem, Mitchell Leisen’s fascinating and fabulous No Man of Her Own (1950), inspired by Cornell Woolrich’s noir premise that happiness is always just beyond reach.
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1 month ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
Behind the Door / Below the Surface Fllicker Alley Seafaring tales of gruesome revenge and underwater redemption mark a double feature of silent melodramas on Blu-ray from Flicker Alley. Behind the Door / Below the Surface combines two silent films directed by the forgotten Irvin V. Willat and starring Hobart Bosworth, an actor-producer of tremendous importance in the development of the Hollywood industry.
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2 months ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
Performance Criterion “I am a bit old-fashioned,” says Chas (James Fox). He’s a vicious enforcer for a London gangster who, after killing a man, pretends to be a juggler named Johnny Dean and inveigles his way into the huge bohemian Notting Hill mansion of Turner (Mick Jagger), a retired rock star. Chas describes the milieu to a friend over the phone: “What a freak show. On the left, you know. I tell you it’s terrible. It’s a right piss-hole.
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2 months ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
New Directors/New Films is one of the most venerable events in America’s film scene. Founded in 1972, the annual showcase at New York’s Museum of Modern Art is a one-stop shop for fresh voices that have been making the rounds of the world’s film festivals. The 54th incarnation runs from 2 to 13 April 2025 and presents 24 features plus two programs of short films. Made within the last couple of years, the features are usually the first or second films by young filmmakers.
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2 months ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
Orca: The Killer Whale Kino Lorber Michael Anderson’s Orca: The Killer Whale (1977), now on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, is one of those cursed 1970s projects that aren’t nearly so bad as their flop reputations would have you believe. Its producers seem to have shot themselves in the foot, or rather, speared themselves in the fin. Orca: The Killer Whale opens with a vision of paradise.
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2 months ago | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
The Mask of Satan Severin Severin Films’ Blu-ray of Lamberto Bava’s The Mask of Satan (1990) is a revelation for fans of Italian Gothic horror, not least because virtually nobody’s ever seen it. The opening scene of The Mask of Satan presents a helicopter dropping off a group of expendable young ninnies to go skiing in the Alps. To Simon Boswell’s pulsing rock score, they swerve and slalom into a cavern or crevasse that suddenly opens beneath them.
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Feb 4, 2025 | 
popmatters.com | Michael Barrett
The Beast Within Kino Lorber The cover of Philippe Mora’s The Beast Within (1982), now on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, looks like a werewolf movie. Mora would later direct werewolf movies, but this horror movie presents a different type of creature, one that represents a very long arm of justice or corruption in the American South. The Beast Within opens with large letters proclaiming “Mississippi 1964”, and a billboard says we’re in Niobe, “The Heart of Dixie”.
