‘Mad Max’ in 4K is our Pick of the Week

Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for November 24th, 2020! This week’s home video selection includes the complete...

9h

The Ending of ‘Citizen Kane’ Remains a Vicious Revenge Against a Tyrant

Ending Explained is a recurring series in which we explore the finales, secrets, and themes of interesting movies and shows, both new and old. This time, in preparation for David Fincher’s upcoming Mank, we return to the Citizen Kane ending and discuss how one word can summarize a man’s existence. Few human beings have received as vicious and delightful...

12h

‘The Croods: A New Age’ is Bananas

“Oh my gosh, that’s so weird!” my son would shout at the screen literally every two minutes. Don’t worry, we were watching a screener of DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods: A New Age at home. Not that I like there to be talking during the movie even in my own living room, but his reaction was valid. This movie is nuts. Or, more appropriate since the...

15h

Fade Into You: The Psychological Reckoning of Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Persona’

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video that contextualizes the importance of ‘Persona’ in the career of Ingmar Bergman. Cinema in the 1960s was a rug pull. A combination of factors, chiefly counterculture movements and post-war disillusionment,...

21h

31 Things We Learned from Michael Mann’s ‘Collateral’ Commentary

Welcome to Commentary Commentary, where we sit and listen to filmmakers talk about their work, then share the most interesting parts. In this edition, Rob Hunter finally gets off his ass and watches Michael Mann’s Collateral... and then rewatching it immediately after with the commentary track on. I’m not sure why I’ve taken sixteen years to watch...

1d

‘Happiest Season’ is Both a Progressive Rom-Com and Generic Holiday Fare

Romantic comedies set around the holidays, Christmas in particular, are pretty much a staple in Hollywood. People falling in love, oddball family drama, clumsy misunderstandings, and happy resolutions just in time for Christmas morning are all expected in the most colorfully lit of rom-com subgenres. Also expected? A heterosexual couple at the heart...

1d

‘The Christmas Chronicles 2’ Brings Cheer by Any Means Necessary

Because 2020 is not 2018, The Christmas Chronicles 2 hits a little differently than its predecessor. Two years ago, we thought we were in the thick of it, but little did we know how much funkier and complicated our lives could become. What was once a quaint, silly treat is now a life preserver buoying us toward a hopefully brighter future. ‘Tis the...

1d

Fritz Lang’s ‘M’ and the Aesthetics of Justice

Welcome to The Noirvember Files, a new series dropping the spotlight on essential film noir selections. The titles celebrated here exemplify the style and substance of cinema’s grimiest, most-relatable underbelly. In this entry, we explore Fritz Lang’s terrifying, gritty 1931 manhunt thriller, M. Children disappearing off the streets of Berlin, parents...

1d

FX’s ‘Black Narcissus’ Miniseries Fails to Find Relevance in 2020

Rebellious nuns, the suppression of desire, and a history of evil at a hilltop palace. Add these three things together and you get the story of Black Narcissus. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 feature adaptation of Rumer Godden’s novel is an emblematic piece of filmmaking with incredible cinematography by Jack Cardiff topped off with...

2d

‘Fatman’ is Low-Key Fun and a Bloody Holiday Treat

1988’s Scrooged is a gleefully dark and wild adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic Christmas tale (before it chickens out at the end), and it opens with a fake television ad for a movie called The Night the Reindeer Died. The film teases a terrorist assault on Santa’s workshop complete with automatic weapons and elves in distress, and it’s only taken...

2d