A review should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. With that in mind, let’s start smack-bang in the middle of the extras for Radiance’s Histoire(s) du cinéma Blu-Ray, with 2×50 Years of French Cinema. A 1995 collaboration between Godard and his partner […]
Reviews
Treasures from the Golestan Film Studio (1961-1974): the union that birthed Iranian cinema
They’ll never make me believe physical media is dead when packages like this exist. Specifically, I mean packages where the extras justify the price of the entire set on their own. The Golestan Film Studio was an independent studio established by Ebrahim Golestan in Shah-era Iran, one of the earliest […]
Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998): review 1B – the history(s)
Among the many extras on discs two and three of Radiance Films’s Blu-Ray of Jean-Luc Godard’s Historie(s) du cinéma, there is a whole feature-length film. Chosen Moments from Histoire(s) du cinéma is exactly what it sounds like, a 2001 compression of the eight episodes into an eighty-minute film. Very good […]
Fall 2 (2026) Does What It Says On The Tin, For Better or Worse
It’s the question on everyone’s minds whenever a suspenseful thriller gets a sequel: how will you engineer the same suspense without it coming across as completely contrived? How will you make sure that the people of Amity Island will ignore Chief Brody’s concerns yet again when another shark comes to […]
Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998): review 1A – the stories
Jean-Luc Godard’s Historie(s) du cinéma, released on Blu-Ray in a limited edition extras-packed set by Radiance, is many things, but one of the things it isn’t is a history of cinema. The title is one of the bilingual puns Godard always delighted in, not least because they exclude monoglots from […]
The Ritual (1977): protested, lost and found, an incendiary Indian debut
It sounds like a horror movie, but it isn’t – well, not in a genre sense. The new Blu-Ray from Second Run is a film whose restoration was partly the work of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, partly the work of George Lucas’s Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation and partly the result […]
Joe (1970) A Misunderstood Message Movie
Coming to Blu-ray this week via the Transmission/Radiance label is Joe, a corrosive satire on the generational conflict in late 1960s/early 70s America. Written by Norman Wexler (Serpico, Saturday Night Fever) and directed by John G. Avildsen (Rocky, The Karate Kid), the film stars Peter Boyle as the eponymous Joe, […]
World Noir Vol. 5 – Post War Italy in Crisis (1946, 1950 & 1951)
A friend of mine, who is becoming an avid film fan and physical media collector, was asking me about Radiance Films. He said that their stuff always looked good but he had next to no knowledge about any of it. This is where my face lit up. That’s the beauty […]
Holy Days (2026) Your Granny’s Feel-Good Movie of the Year
Directed by Nathalie Boltt and adapted from the novel by Joy Cowley, Holy Days is positioning itself as your granny’s feel-good movie of the year. It’s a broad and syrupy comedy-drama from New Zealand that tells the story of Brian (Elijah Tamati), an indigenous boy who’s been struggling after his […]
Vampire’s Kiss (1988) The Patient Zero of Nicolas Cage Performances
What would us cinephiles do without Nicolas Cage in the world? Internet discussions about the man who successfully shook off the reputation of coming from the Coppola family by simply picking whatever project he felt like (some good and plenty bad), tend to forget that he’s a very strong and […]