Recent Posts

Walking Tall (1973) This is the movie Stallone (with the exception of First Blood) tried to make for 30 years, never succeeding. It has got his dose of corn, but less of what I expected and the action scenes, without special effects, still hold well (the woman shot in the face and the other killed in the car especially). Sure, Baker ends up resembling the character he probably inspired (Halloween's Jason) always resurrecting from most incredible killing attempts,  but it is never boring. 7/10

Somebody should make a film about the epic adventures of GBU getting incorrect home release throughout history.

And that film should have the best color grading ever and no extended/shortened cut.

We all agree. But a release with uncrushed blacks is not on offer. Until the film gets a new scan (2031?), we are stuck with what's available. If the colors have been corrected, as Harris's review suggests, this probably will be the best-looking home release for some time to come.

"All Good Now" 2010, rate 6/10.  Based on the Durst murder/disappearance.  Kirsten Dunst was good, so was Ryan Gosling.

I do.

Agree crushed blacks are no good.

Robert Harris: "If you don't mind losing shadow detail"

I do.

Crossfire (1947) - 5/10. Beats me why some people like this film. It's just a lot of talk, and not very interesting talk at that. Robert Ryan gives a great performance, of course, but he isn't playing a very interesting character. There are no interesting characters in the film at all; even Mitchum here is just a collection of surly lines. Some say this is a film noir, but it's really just a civics lesson told by typically anodyne Robert Young. The new blu-ray, though, sure looks nice.

The civics speech by Young may be the one bad part of the movie. This is an 8/10

Robert Harris: "If you don't mind losing shadow detail, I believe this is the best the film has looked on home video."

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/threads/a-few-words-about-tm-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-in-4k-uhd-blu-ray.371814/

Crossfire (1947) - 5/10. Beats me why some people like this film. It's just a lot of talk, and not very interesting talk at that. Robert Ryan gives a great performance, of course, but he isn't playing a very interesting character. There are no interesting characters in the film at all; even Mitchum here is just a collection of surly lines. Some say this is a film noir, but it's really just a civics lesson told by typically anodyne Robert Young. The new blu-ray, though, sure looks nice.

Fitzcarraldo (1982) - 7/10. Not my favorite Herzog, so it sat in the BFI box from 2014 unwatched until now. But after the harrowing experience of Nosferatu in Venice, I wanted to see something with Kinski that was reasonably good. I'm still rather indifferent to this title--the pulling-the-steamship-over-the-mountain sequence is cool, but the film takes forever to get there--but this time I really appreciated the beauty of every frame. Man, talk about a well-lit film. In the 70s and early 80s Herzog used two photographers as his principal cameramen: Thomas Mauch (Aguirre) and Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein (Heart of Glass; Nosferatu). I'd been thinking that Schmidt-Reitwein was the better of the two, but this film is credited to Mauch and it looks superb. Lots of natural lighting and never any unmotivated artificial illumination.  I guess this is one of those films that work best playing in the background while you get on with other things. Every once in a while you can look up and suddenly see something beautiful.