DVDs, 8/28.

Dave Kehr in the New York Times on the re-release of the original 3:10 to Yuma: "This is a psychological drama, as intense as a Bergman marital duel, but played out in a forceful exchange of looks and gestures rather than in Bergman's torrents of words.... Here is some marvelous filmmaking in the classical Hollywood manner, without an ounce of waste in it." Also, DW Griffith's True Heart Susie is "one of his most beautiful films, and one of his most rhetorically complex: at once absolutely sincere and a self-tweaking parody of his sentimental streak."

Related: "[Glenn] Ford and Yuma director Delmer Daves had a taut Western run in the 50s, so check out the original and the two that bookended it." Mike Clark in USA Today on Yuma, Jubal and Cowboy via Joe Leydon.

"As wonderful and mature a film as Hannah Takes the Stairs might be, I don't think it would be in the position it is right now had not Joe Swanberg's previous feature LOL provided such a shot in the arm to the festival circuit in 2006," writes David Lowery. "An exuberantly scrappy, handmade little film about being a young dude in this digital age, LOL is - even more so than Hannah - both a product of and herald to its generation." More from Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog.

"This is the way it's done, US-indie-filmmaking-wise: Zoe Cassavetes's Broken English is so far 2007's reigning small Ameri-movie, by simple and lonely virtue of the mature intelligence and respect it pays to its characters and life at large." Also reviewed by Michael Atkinson for IFC News: Buñuel's The Young One "fits thematically right alongside Las Hurdes, Los Olvidados and even chunks of Diary of a Chambermaid, with its vision of humankind living on the level of predatory animals (there's lovely footage of a raccoon eating a chicken alive, amid the doomed tarantulas, crabs, bees and rabbit cadavers). A must-have for Buñuelians, this rarely-seen detour is now officially DVD'd alongside his truly forgettable debut in Mexico (and his first full-on feature), Gran Casino (1947)."

"Inland Empire, a notoriously digital movie because its director was known in previous movies for images that were so filmic, is a commentary not so much on Hollywood (a la Sunset Boulevard) as it is on the process of selection that is editing," writes Nick Rombes. "Or, more precisely: what happens when it is not the director who imposes choices upon a film, but rather a film that imposes its choices upon a director?"

"The Lives of Others aims to flatter its audience - a quality typical for a film whose emotional posturing is only skin deep," writes Rob Humanick.

Phil Hall talks with Jason Carvey about A New Wave for Film Threat.

Brendon Connelly connects the dots.

DVD roundups: Cinema Strikes Back, DVD Talk, Bryant Frazer, Paul Harrill and Susan King in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at August 28, 2007 1:53 PM