The Cranes are Flying (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV The Soviet-made The Cranes Are Flying (???????, 1957) is one of those great foreign films that seem to exist in a bubble. Director Mikhail Kalatozov is not a "name" director, though his later I Am Cuba (1964) was rediscovered years after it was made, and his last film, The Red Tent (1969), a Soviet-Italian co-production featured western stars like Sean Connery, Claudia Cardinale, and Peter Finch. Other great Soviet films preceded and followed it, but none like this one. During the late-1950s, the only Soviet films shown in the west were Sergei Eisenstein's and a few others of the silent/early-talkie era; a few travelogues filmed in Kinopanorama (the Soviet's answer to Cinerama) were exhibited, and a jumble of Soviet-made fairy tales and science fiction movies were dubbed and reworked for release in America in theaters and on television. The Cranes Are Flying, on th...Read the entire review »

Onward by Ryan Keefer The Movie: In a recent review I talked about checking out a recent release through a streaming service and it wound up being a good experience. But it was a soft-spoken release that was done through Kino. But now we are talking about Onward, a film that my family was set to see in the theater in March before we decided to cancel due to Coronavirus concerns, and then school cancelled and staying at home became the norm. So bless up to Disney+ and their decision to bring it out to their service, and in HDR to boot! What a country! Dan Scanlon, Jason Headley and Keith Bunin co-wrote the film, and Scanlon directed the film, another in a long line of Pixar releases from the Pixar veteran. Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland, Spider Man: Homecoming) is an elf who just turned 16, and lives with his mother (Julia Louis ...Read the entire review »