DVD Reviews

This 2-disc DVD set from the National Film Preservation Foundation and Image Entertainment covers an era of filmmaking that is almost lost to authentic recall; an era when individual artists were able to make f...

A ten-feature box-set from the Slovak Film Institute has Peter Hourigan delightedly continuing his exploration of the cultural heritage of a national cinema that has been widely overlooked since the division of Czechoslovakia.

A Backstory Thursday 27 March 1969 was an iconic day in the evolution of the modern Australian cinema. In Melbourne, at the Forum Cinema, Tim Burstall’s Two Thousand Weeks had its world première. In Brisban...

Peter Hourigan offers an appreciative evaluation of these two silent-era classics recently released on DVD by Flicker Alley.

Richard Armstrong takes a look at this historically significant DVD compilation from the British Film Institute.

In 1952, non-Anglo-Saxon migrants were such a strange phenomenon that the Australian Government’s Film Division, Department of the Interior, for the Department of Immigration felt the need to sponsor a feat...

By the mid-1960s, two near-down-and-outs came together. One was Michael Powell. Despite having made (many with Emeric Pressburger) some of the greatest – and best-loved - British films of the 1940s (The Lif...

The survival rate of films made before 1950 is at such a low percentage that any effort to locate and restore our cinematic heritage is commendable. Thus, the new three-disc DVD set from Flicker Alley, Saved Fr...

A vehicle crawls along a road that cuts across a brown and dusty landscape, where an African-American youngster tends an ailing horse. Three shiftless white men gather on a porch, talking of wasting time, waiti...

Review of the recent DVD release of Richard Roxburgh’s début feature, an adaptation of Raimond Gaita’s acclaimed memoirs about his father.

After six months in India you’re not even quite sure that two plus two is four. – Louis Malle (1) In 1967, Louis Malle was established as a major international filmmaker, a decade after his first fiction film...

Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954 is a laudable, curious and at times frustrating collection of French and mostly American experimental films made across a 25-year-period. It is a sequel of kinds to ...

The posthumous international triumph of Mikio Naruse is one of the most unique corrections in film history. - Phillip Lopate, quoted in the booklet accompanying the Criterion release of Naruse’s When a Woman A...

I am a Negro. Paul Robeson began his 1958 book, Here I Stand (1), with that simple but absolutely unambiguous declaration. Concert singer, actor, All-American footballer, political activist, yes, but for Robes...

In the course of Gérard Courant’s hugely engaging 2001 documentary portrait of Luc Moullet, L’Homme des roubines (The Man of the Badlands), Moullet approvingly cites Howard Hawks’ opinion that a filmmaker shoul...

Dust Devil – The Final Cut DVD: Subversive Cinema (USA). Language: English. Ratio: 16x9 widescreen. Length: 01:08:00. Colour. Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo. Extras: Full-length Director’s Commentary, Dust D...

Six years ago, in the pages of this journal, former director of the Melbourne International Film Festival Geoff Gardner described the DVD distribution of Jean-Luc Godard’s films as both “spotty and, really, rat...

At this hour the melancholy intelligence of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, President of the U.S., at Fords Theater was brought to this office. - District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department Blotter, ...

DVD: Lusomundo (Portugal). Language: Portuguese with English Subtitles. Ratio: 16:9. Length: 101.00. Region: 2. Having played successfully at countless festivals – it was nominated for Discovery of the Y...

The decade around 1920 in Swedish cinema is almost always called its First Golden Age, a period dominated by two directors, Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjöström. Both were directing films by 1912 and, within abo...

DVD: Geneon Entertainment (Japan). Language: Japanese with English Subtitles. Ratio: 4:1. Length: 79.00. Region: 2. * * * When discussed in the West, the term “anime” is frequently used simply as a genre ...

The striking series of DVD releases from Masters of Cinema celebrates an eclectic mix of directors and genres. Cinéphiles should rejoice that there are now such accessible and essential titles providing extende...

Five disc DVD: Volume I: The Ties That Bind (1984, 55 mins, black and white, 16mm, sound), The Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire, Too (1993, 55 mins, colour, video, sound); Volume II: Damned If You Don’t (1987, 42 ...

Everyone has a desert island list of films that are still out of reach for personal perusal but fortunately we have the major oeuvre of the clowns of the silent cinema period on DVD. The features and short ...

Joseph Francis “Buster” Keaton is one of those filmmakers whose work made such an enormous impact on screen comedy, every aspect of his cinematic contribution is worth examining. His first silent films as appre...

DVD: Toho Company Ltd and Magnolia (USA). Language: Japanese with English and Spanish subtitles. Ratio: 1.85:1. Length: 1:18:00. Colour. Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Extras: Includes a “Making of Pulse” featurette...

I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is composed of truths that become lies, mythology of lies that become truths. One characteristic of our age is that it creates instant myths in every field....

DVD: BFI (UK). No: BFIVD717. Language: English. Ratio: 4:3. Length: 7:55:00. Black and white. Extras: Small is Beautiful documentary; additional shorts; 40-page booklet. Region: 2. * * * The late-1950s were...

DVD: Optimum (UK). No: OPTD0256. Language: English. Ratio: 1.85:1. Length: 1:39:00. Colour. Extras: two featurettes; trailer. Region: 2. * * * Longing to believe that in a world fractured by strife ther...

Budd Boetticher directed more than 40 features in a career that is still largely known only by the most dedicated film scholars and Western buffs. Poorly represented on VHS at the height of that format, his fil...

In the 6 January 1920 issue of Exhibitor’s Trade Review, screen actress Olive Thomas gleefully announced during an interview that she had a movie projector in her home where she would run some of the latest mov...

1. Breaking the Bresson ice Accent Film Entertainment is the first Australian company to release the works of Robert Bresson on DVD. The three films are Pickpocket (1959), Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (incorrectly...

There is much to admire about the silent cinema artistry and poetic beauty of director Louis Feuillade and the man who remade one of his classic films, Georges Franju.

The singular vision of polish director Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 film is examined, and found to be as powerful as ever.

Brian celebrates the DVD release of what he regards as one of the finest documentaries ever made.