Journeys Through French Cinema (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Not long before director Bertrand Tavernier's death just last month, he left cinephiles the invaluable My Journey Through French Cinema ( Voyage Ã* travers le cinéma français, 2016), a marvelous three-and-a-half-hour documentary so good that he followed it up with an even longer eight-hour series, Journeys Through French Cinema ( Voyages Ã* travers le cinéma français, 2017-18), his final credit. Both are now available in the U.S., on Blu-ray from the Cohen Media Group. The second series itself is wonderful. Cohen's presentation is another matter, problematic and ultimately quite frustrating. To begin with, the two completely different shows confusingly have almost identical cover art, but the bigger problem involves the English subtitling. The original French version identifies clips via text in the bottom right-hand corner of the image with the movie's title, ...Read the entire review »

September 30, 1955 (Blu-ray) by Ryan Keefer The Movie: It's been more than 65 years and James Dean's tragic death at 24 remains a moment in time for a lot of people who weren't alive when he was born, much less when he passed. It was such a shock to people that movies have been made, at least two that I'm aware of, and we'll take a peek at September 30, 1955, not the only one based on fictional emotions on a nonfictional event. Written and directed by James Bridges (The China Syndrome), the film looks at Dean's death and its impact in a small Arkansas town; the film's protagonist Jimmy J. (Richard Thomas, Taking Woodstock) takes Dean's death the hardest, and trying to process it with his friends; Billie Jean (Lisa Blount, An Officer and a Gentle...Read the entire review »