Joaquim Pedro de Andrade: The Complete Films (Blu-ray) <small>by Justin Remer</small><hr /> The Collection: <small>NOTE: The images accompanying this review are promotional stills that do not represent the quality of the Blu-ray under review.</small> Brazil's Cinema Novo movement, like many of the New Waves that swept through international cinema during the '60s, was an intense intellectual reaction against the commercial moviemaking of the day. Cinema Novo is looser, smarter, more political, and crazier than what came before in Brazil. But for whatever reason, Cinema Novo hasn't been as enthusiastically distributed in the U.S., as compared to the Japanese, French, or even Czechoslovak output from this era. That makes Kino's 3-disc Blu-ray set, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade: The Complete Films, a rare treat. Andrade is one of t...Read the entire review »

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Blu-ray) <small>by Adam Tyner</small><hr /> Hey, I know things don't look great right now. Rockwell Hunter (Tony Randall) is, after all, the lowest man on the totem pole at La Salle Jr., Raskin, Pooley, & Crocket, and with a corporate name that obnoxious, you probably don't need me to tell you that this Madison Ave. firm is in advertising. The big man in the corner office (John Williams) barely knows he exists. Rock's having a tough enough time as it is scraping together the cash he needs to offer his fianc&#233;e Jenny (Betsy Drake) the life she deserves. And it's about to get a whole lot tougher, since the word around the water cooler &ndash; or, well, the harder stuff that Henry (Henry Jones) is prone to drinking &ndash; is that the firm is on the brink of going under. ...Read the entire review »

Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (Blu-ray) <small>by Stuart Galbraith IV</small><hr /> Released nine months after director Robert Altman's game-changing MASH (1970), Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came is a strange relic of a movie that must have seemed awfully out-of-step with the times even when it was brand-new. A satire about the strained relationship between soldiers at a military base and the local community nearby, the picture is conventionally made and plodding, unimaginatively directed by Hy Averback, a former radio and TV actor who later worked steadily directing series television. The screenplay, by Hal Captain (who did no other films) and another onetime actor, Don McGuire, seems to be aiming for a tone and pacing similar to Norman Jewison's commercially and critically successful The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), to the point of casting one of that film's stars, Brian Keith, as one of the leads. In other respects, Suppose ...Read the entire review »