24 Hour Party People (Blu-ray) <small>by Oktay Ege Kozak</small><hr /> The Movie: The story of Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan) and his Factory Records, which brought Manchester-based punk and new wave to the foreground while eventually giving birth to rave culture, is one of such chaos and irreverence, that only such a chaotic and irreverent film could have done it justice. Michael Winterbottom's trademark self-aware approach to docu-comedy enmeshed with a raw, in-your-face execution certainly isn't a universal crowd pleaser, but the niche audience who's into the emergence of this particular music should be satisfied with the half self-aggrandizing, half self-parody style that matches the music and the scene it depicts. Coogan plays Wilson, an abrasive personality who's either merely annoying or the worst person on Earth depending on who you ask, as an offshoot of Alan Partridge. Like Partridge, Wilson thinks entirely too highly of himself, his narcissism...Read the entire review »

Warlock (Blu-ray) <small>by Stuart Galbraith IV</small><hr /> An unusual, adult Western, Warlock (1959), like the recently-reviewed Bandolero!, is a kind of transitional film between classical Hollywood Westerns and the darker, revisionist ones that would take hold during the 1960s. Screenwriter Robert Alan Arthur, adapting Oakley Hall's 1958 novel, was at the time primarily associated with live television drama, and his script for Warlock is both innovative yet self-consciously arty, particularly in some of the stylized dialogue. It's an intriguing picture with much to recommend it, but certain aspects don't really work. Cinesavant's rave review makes a convincing case for Warlock as a first-rate Western; I'm less impressed by certain aspects of the film, while acknowledging that it has many fine moments and is nothing if not ambitious. Read the entire review »

Japon: Criterion Collection (Blu-ray) <small>by Justin Remer</small><hr /> <bThe Movie: Jap n is the 2002 debut feature of director Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven, Post Tenebras Lux). It's a bold film, sometimes beautiful, and undeniably pretentious. In interviews, Reygadas claimed Andrei Tarkovsky and Werner Herzog as inspirations; he learned well, although Jap n's contemplative tracking shots and anthropological interludes feel more labored-over than the more organically engrossing efforts of his forebears. The narrative of Jap n is simple. Alejandro Ferretis is an artist who feels he has lost his way in the ci...Read the entire review »