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Alfre Woodard, John Benjamin Hickey, Makenzie Leigh, Lewis Pullman, and Jordan Preston Carter in ‘Salem’s Lot’ (Photo by Courtesy of New Line Cinema/Max)

Max’s October 2024 lineup includes a new adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling vampire novel Salem’s Lot and the premiere of the eight-episode comedy series The Franchise starring Himesh Patel. Jordin Sparks hosts and Johnny Weir and Terrell Ferguson judge the new competition series Roller Jam debuting on October 10th. And Dylan O’Brien stars in Caddo Lake, a mystery thriller premiering on October 10th.

The streamer’s October calendar of new series and films also includes the documentaries I Am Not A Monster: The Lois Riess Murders, Louder: The Soundtrack of Change, and Breath of Fire. Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap starring Josh Hartnett makes its streaming premiere on October 25th, and Maxxxine with Mia Goth debuts on October 18th.

The third and final...

The legendary punk god joins us to talk about movies he finds unforgettable. Special appearance by his cat, Moon Unit.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Tapeheads (1988)

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Eli Roth’s trailer commentary

A Face In The Crowd (1957) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Meet John Doe (1941)

Bob Roberts (1992)

Bachelor Party (1984)

Dangerously Close (1986)

Videodrome (1983) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

F/X (1986)

Hot Rods To Hell (1967)

Riot On Sunset Strip (1967)

While The City Sleeps (1956) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Spider-Man (2002)

The Killing (1956) – Michael Lehmann’s trailer commentary

Serpent’s Egg (1977)

The Thin Man (1934)

Meet Nero Wolfe (1936)

The Hidden Eye (1945)

Eyes In The Night (1942)

Sudden Impact (1983) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary

Red Dawn (1984)

Warlock (1989)

The Dead Zone (1983) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

Secret Honor (1984)

The Player (1992) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary,...

Stars: Constance Towers, Antony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey, Patsy Kelly | Written and Directed by Samuel Fuller

The Naked Kiss opens with a fight. And Kelly (Constance Towers) – an experienced escort reclaiming her money from a punter – will never stop fighting. Just for one night it looks like she’s left her worst times behind, as she arrives in Grantville, a small town where no one knows her name. But then she discovers her first customer, Griff (Antony Eisley), is a local policeman. He offers a deal: she can’t operate within the town itself, but he’ll set her up in a brothel outside the limits.

But Kelly is looking for a life more meaningful. So, she finds herself in a hospital for disabled children. She’s a natural. The kids love her. Her colleagues love her. But Griff still can’t trust her – especially when she falls for his enormously wealthy best bud,...

Starring: Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Larry Tucker, Gene Evans, Hari Rhodes, James Best | Written and Directed by Samuel Fuller

The prolific Samuel Fuller carved a niche – or perhaps a gutter – in making exploitation shockers just outside the Hollywood studio system. His had an ability to elevate trash material to something approaching art. Writer and producer on most of his movies, he undoubtedly wielded enough control to be regarded as an auteur.

He also had high-minded ideas. Shock Corridor opens and closes with a quote from the controversial Greek tragedian Euripides: “Whom God wishes to destroy He first makes mad.” Sandwiched between is an absurd thriller, nonsensical and enjoyable and almost certainly allegorical.

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island saw a detective enter a mental asylum to solve a case. Here, the guy going deep is a Pulitzer-pursuing journalist named Johnny (Peter Breck), who’s there to solve the murder of a man named Sloan.

Stage performer and actress Barbara Perry died Sunday from natural causes in Hollywood. She appeared in several films and TV shows including Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964) as well as The Dick Van Dyke Show and most recently, Baskets as well She was 97.

Born in Norfolk, Va. on June 22, 1921, Perry was a performer at a young age when she was a member of-of the children’s ballet of the Met’s corps de ballet, making her big stage debut in Madame Butterfly. She went on to study dance — with a specialty in tap — and performed at the Hollywood Bowl in the 1930s. Her talent for dancing was later on showcased at a variety of nightclubs including the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, the Chez Paris in Chicago, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles and the Café de Paris in London. She also had the honor of opening...

Barbara Perry, an actress and dancer who played the wife of Morey Amsterdam's character on The Dick Van Dyke Show, died Sunday of natural causes in Hollywood, family spokesman David Van Deusen said. She was 97.

Perry also worked on the Samuel Fuller films Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), starred on Broadway with Burgess Meredith and Eddie Foy Jr. and had dozens of TV appearances, including several in the past decade. She played the neighbor Mrs. Douglas on two episodes of How I Met Your Mother and was a gift shop employee on a 2017 installment of Baskets.

On the ...

Barbara Perry, an actress and dancer who played the wife of Morey Amsterdam's character on The Dick Van Dyke Show, died Sunday of natural causes in Hollywood, family spokesman David Van Deusen said. She was 97.

Perry also worked on the Samuel Fuller films Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), starred on Broadway with Burgess Meredith and Eddie Foy Jr. and had dozens of TV appearances, including several in the past decade. She played the neighbor Mrs. Douglas on two episodes of How I Met Your Mother and was a gift shop employee on a 2017 installment of Baskets.

On the ...

Another great Samuel Fuller film on Blu-ray — this one is a crime tale set in downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, that forms an interracial romantic triangle. It’s risky for its year because of the sexual dynamics — a Japanese-American man falls in love with a Caucasian woman. Fuller’s approach is years ahead of its time, even if Columbia’s sales job was a little weird.

The Crimson Kimono

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1959 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 81 min. / Street Date July 18, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Victoria Shaw, Glenn Corbett, James Shigeta, Anna Lee, Paul Dubov, Jaclynne Greene, Neyle Morrow, Gloria Pall, , Barbara Hayden, George Yoshinaga.

Cinematography: Sam Leavitt

Film Editor: Jerome Thoms

Original Music: Harry Sukman

Written, Produced and Directed by Samuel Fuller

“What was his strange appeal for American girls?”

Believe it or not, there was once a time when Samuel Fuller was a fringe figure,...

Although revered as an independent maverick and celebrated for the pronounced strangeness of his 60s classics like Shock Corridor (1963) and the delightfully perverse The Naked Kiss (1964), Samuel Fuller’s most lauded film is his classic noir Pickup on South Street (1953).

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Ricardo Cortez biography 'The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez' – Paramount's 'Latin Lover' threat to a recalcitrant Rudolph Valentino, and a sly, seductive Sam Spade in the original film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon.' 'The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez': Author Dan Van Neste remembers the silent era's 'Latin Lover' & the star of the original 'The Maltese Falcon' At odds with Famous Players-Lasky after the release of the 1922 critical and box office misfire The Young Rajah, Rudolph Valentino demands a fatter weekly paycheck and more control over his movie projects. The studio – a few years later to be reorganized under the name of its distribution arm, Paramount – balks. Valentino goes on a “one-man strike.” In 42nd Street-style, unknown 22-year-old Valentino look-alike contest winner Jacob Krantz of Manhattan steps in, shortly afterwards to become known worldwide as Latin Lover Ricardo Cortez of...

John Gavin, the movie heartthrob who starred in Imitation of Life, Psycho and Thoroughly Modern Millie, has died, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. He was 86.

Gavin, who served as President Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Mexico in the 1980s, died Friday morning, said Budd Burton Mossa, a rep for the actor's wife, actress Constance Towers.

He and Towers, a regular on soap operas and the star of the Sam Fuller experimental films Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, married in September 1974.

Hailed as a second coming of Rock Hudson at Universal Pictures, Gavin played Lana Turner's love interest in...

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.—Flannery O’Connor The mist uncovers Japanese soldiers as well as the grim sight of severed heads by the side of the hot springs where Catholic priests are being tortured. A priest kneels down in horror, almost catatonic, unable to bring himself to believe in the evilness of these men, the men of the Inquisitor. Why are these priests, who came to this “swamp of Japan” to spread the Word of the Lord, suffering so immensely on the hands of these soldiers?To the modern, secular audience, the theme of Silence (2016) is of great irony: the all-powerful Catholic Church, the institution that spread terror across Europe for 700 years with her bonfires and witch hunts and enforcing an almost maddening outlook at faith and personal behavior, comes to an unconquerable land where...

The conflicted Paul Schrader works out some hellacious personal issues, in a feverish tale of a Michigan Calvinist searching for his daughter in the porn jungle of L.A.. A disturbingly dark modern-day cross between The Searchers and Masque of the Red Death, it was meant to be even darker. Hardcore Blu-ray Twilight Time 1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 108 min. / Street Date August, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring George C. Scott, Peter Boyle, Season Hubley, Dick Sargent, Leonard Gaines, David Nichols. Cinematography Michael Chapman Production Designer Paul Sylbert Art Direction Edwin O'Donovan Film Editor Tom Rolf Original Music Jack Nitzsche Produced by Buzz Feitshans, John Milius Written and Directed by Paul Schrader

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I'm not sure that the word 'controversial' has the same meaning it once had. There has to be a consensus on what is 'normal' in society for some topics to become edgy. These...

Mubi is showing Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe (1964) May 7 - June 6 and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) May 8 - June 7, 2016 in the UK.“Yes, it’s a hard day. Goodbye, my friend.”— General Koniev, Fail-Safe“Jack, this is Helen.”— Helen Grady, Fail-SafeTiming was everything during the Cold War. A matter of life and death, democracy or communism, us versus them. And, for true megalomaniacs, my motion picture against your motion picture. In January 1963, Stanley Kubrick filed a lawsuit to halt the production of Fail-Safe, an upcoming adaptation of the recently published novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. A political thriller about nuclear war, it was being directed by Sidney Lumet and starred Henry Fonda. Kubrick’s charge was plagiarism: Fail-Safe, the director claimed, was a copy in all but name of Peter George’s Red Alert, the 1958 novel that...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

John Carpenter‘s Halloween will return to theaters on Thursday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m. local time with an introduction by the director.

Slate‘s David Ehrlich asks if A24 can save the film industry:

When historians of the future try to pinpoint the precise moment that the film industry crawled out of its deathbed and back onto its feet, there’s a good chance they’ll land somewhere in March 2013, when a fledgling distribution company called A24 Films transformed a Harmony Korine movie starring a cornrowed James Franco into a genuine cultural event.

After exploring the evolution of the aspect ratio, watch a video essay on the...

Twilight Time brings Sam Fuller’s exotic 1955 color noir House of Bamboo to Blu-ray, a resplendently colorful film and the first major Us production to film in post-war Japan. While Fuller re-tooled Harry Kleiner’s script for the 1948 film The Street with No Name to meet his own offbeat needs, the film experienced a rather cool reception, garnering praise for Joseph MacDonald’s cinematography (and has since been hailed by sources as some of the best uses of widescreen photography in the history of cinema) but little else. Following on the heels of successful black and white titles like Hell and High Water (1954) and the acclaimed film noir Pickup on South Street (1953), it’s a harder title to classify, featuring Fuller’s usual signature of off-balance touches in a production that now seems ahead of its time (especially compared to something like 1964’s black and white provocation The Naked Kiss...

A photograph of Samuel Fuller in "the shack."

It is always well to remember that documentaries are first of all films like other films, meaning that no less than fictional narrative movies, they too have a narrative shaped by the vision of their maker and are not only about their subjects but also are that vision and the individual elements that make it up. So, in A Fuller Life there are a number of choices that Samantha Fuller as director has made, for example to film in “the shack”—the bungalow her father kept as office and filled with his memorabilia from his days as a crime reporter, an infantryman in WWII, a writer and filmmaker; or to use her “readers” (including both actors—mostly from Fuller’s movies—and some well-chosen directors) dramatically, effectively acting their readings from Fuller’s posthumous autobiography A Third Face; or, very simply, to...

Samuel Fuller didn't do anything halfway, either in his life, or with his movies. His filmography reads like punch after punch of hard-hitting films — "Park Row," "Underworld U.S.A.," "Shock Corridor," "The Naked Kiss," "The Big Red One" — and it was 1982's "White Dog" that got him in particular trouble. The controversial film about dog trained to attack black people unsurprisingly found him at odds with Paramount, so Fuller went into self-imposed exile in France, where among his many activities, he turned to novel writing. It's something he had always done throughout his career, and even you might know his "The Dark Page" though the film version, "Scandal Street" (that was not directed by Fuller). However, "Brainquake," written during his foray abroad, fell through the cracks. The book was released overseas, published only in French and Japanese, and rather remarkably, never saw an English...

One of Hollywood's true maverick filmmakers, Sam Fuller was never a man to shy away from tackling important social and political issues in his films. Famously, he was the first American filmmaker to tackle the Korean War, in The Steel Helmet, mental illness (among other issues) in Shock Corridor, and child abuse in The Naked Kiss. So when Paramount executives Jon Davison and Don Simpson were scrambling to get a bunch of projects through production ahead of an upcoming writers' strike in 1981, who better to take on the long-gestating White Dog than Fuller, hot again after the recent success of The Big Red One.White Dog is adapted from an autobiographical novel written by Romain Gray, which told the story of how he and his...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

After watching John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966) for the first time with this Criterion Blu-ray, I couldn't help but think of several previous Criterion Blu-ray titles that came to mind. Films such as Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success, Roman Polanski's Repulsion and Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. You could even through in the feel of a Samuel Fuller film and even a little of Ingmar Bergman's Persona. For anyone that knows these films, that's pretty high praise and while Seconds may be better than a couple and below the others, the mere fact this film put me in the mood and mindset to even consider the comparisons is enough for me to say you really ought to give this one a look. Based on the novel by David Ely, I can't remember if Seconds ever gives us a definitive date in which it's set, but suffice...

It’s Friday and a long holiday weekend is just around the corner. Why not start it off right with a couple of cool documentaries on a couple of cool directors? After all, the new season “Arrested Development” doesn’t come until Sunday, so you've got some time. First up is a two-part documentary -- nearly 100 minutes total -- on John Cassavetes, “Anything For John.” It features interviews from many key collaborators like his wife/muse Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk and Seymour Cassel and focuses as much on his films as it does on the man himself. It’s a hugely informative film that we’d recommend for both Cassavetes fans and newbies alike. Next is a nearly hour-long documentary -- “The Typewriter, The Rifle and the Movie Camera” -- that focuses on “Shock Corridor” and “The Naked Kiss” director Samuel Fuller. Beginning from his time as a reporter, continuing...

It's that time of year and Barnes and Noble is selling Criterion Collection titles at 50% off (shop here). The problem is, what do you buy? Well, hopefully I can help you with that as I believe there are certain titles from Criterion that are absolute must owns for any cinemaphile and taking into account you are considering buying Criterion Collection titles in the first place, I'm certainly talking to you. So, with that said, let's dive in as I'll give you what I consider to be the top 15 must own Criterion Blu-ray titles as well as a few alternate considerations here and there. 15.) The Thin Red Line Why Should You Buy It? What else is there to expect other than an absolutely gorgeous film from Terrence Malick and that's exactly what you get from The Thin Red Line, but on top of the film you also get a wealth of special features,...

Is there such a thing as a perfect film? Perhaps. You could certainly argue that personal taste plays into the question of perfection too much -- one man's triumph is another's disaster. And even so, there are so many possible things that can go wrong with a film -- one duff performance, one ill-conceived shot, one poorly-written scene -- that it's almost an impossible task. But dammit if we don't consider "Chinatown" to be as close as you can get to being perfect.

Starting with a devilishly complex, yet brilliantly simple script from Robert Towne, still one of the finest ever written, it displays top class at every level, from Roman Polanski directing at his peak (in his last American film), to ace performances from Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and Walter Huston, to Jerry Goldsmith's all-time-great score. It's hard to ask for much more from a film. "Chinatown" was...

Many Texas school districts finished school yesterday, and if you're looking for kid-friendly movies look no further than our recently released 2012 Guide to Free (and Cheap) Summer Movies in Austin. A few updates have been made since the initial publication date, so check back regularly.

The Austin Film Society offers a double dose of former-Austinite writer/directors Jay and Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair, Cyrus) at the Alamo Drafthouse Village with the Duplass-a-Thon on Monday, June 4, beginning with The Do-Deca-Pentathlon at 7 pm and the Duplass Brothers Short Film Showcase at 9 pm. Although Mark Duplass -- seen above in the short film The New Brad -- is busy with other projects, Jay Duplass will be in attendance. J.C. reviewed The Do-Deca-Pentathlon at SXSW and said with this film, "the Duplass brothers continue to prove that their movies are worthy of being paid attention to."

The Paramount Theatre Summer Film Series...

There'll be a party following the single screening of Bad Fever this evening at the Downtown Independent Theater in Los Angeles. Nick Schager, originally for the Voice, now in the La Weekly: "Writer-director Dustin Guy Defa's stark indie trains its character-study gaze on Eddie (Kentucker Audley), a socially dysfunctional 20-something who — while living at home with his dour mom (Annette Wright), hanging out in empty diners and entertaining stand-up comedy dreams by recording anecdotes on cassette — strikes up a random romance with Irene (Eleonore Hendricks), who lives in an abandoned school and has a fondness for kinky videotaping. Eddie and Irene are kindred misfits in search of some direction and contentment, and if Defa's aesthetics are mundane, his leads' performances are not, especially in the case of Audley, whose darting eyes and hushed, stuttering speech express confused longing with transfixing, train-wreck magnetism."

The New Yorker's Richard Brody: "Defa exerts...

Release Date: Dec. 13, 2011

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.99

Studio: Criterion

Tetsuya Watari (r.) gets his point across in Tokyo Drifter.

In the jazzy 1966 Japanese gangster crime film Tokyo Drifter, directed Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill), reformed killer Phoenix Tetsu’s (Tetsuya Watari) attempt to go straight is squashed when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang.

The thriller movie’s onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors reportedly got Suzuki in trouble with the studio heads, who were put off by his anything-goes, in-your-face aesthetic, even though it’s the kind of approach that went on to define much of the over-the-top genre filmmaking that emerged from Japan in the decades to come.

Tokyo Drifter plays as equal parts Russ Meyer (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), Samuel Fuller (The Naked Kiss) and Nagisa Oshima (Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence) — and it’s a wild, wild ride.

Criterion...

We are half-way through 2011. This Tuesday marks the release of the last three June titles that Criterion is releasing: Zazie Dans Le Metro, Black Moon, and People On Sunday. We thought that we’d take some time out of our busy lives to reflect upon the past six months of releases (34 releases, not including the Eclipse sets) from the Criterion Collection, and share our thoughts on our favorite releases.

Top Ten lists are usually formed around the end of the year, but it’s a nice exercise to keep those titles that were released in the first half, so we don’t fall prey to our short attention spans and heap praise on those titles that were released closer to the winter.

When I proposed this assignment to the group, I just asked for their “X” favorite titles of 2011 so far, with very little direction given as to how many to choose,...

This is just the strangest thing. As you all know, Hyman Roth is one of the most iconic characters in the entire Godfather trilogy. A Jewish gangster who serves as one of the most influential people in The Godfather: Part II, he’s not just – as stated above – one of the most iconic characters in the series, but one of the most important. His actions have a very wide ripple effect on Michael Corleone for the rest of his life, and an argument could be made for him as one of the greatest villains in film history.

A big part of that is his portrayal by Lee Strasberg, one that earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Oscars that year (which ended up being won by co-star Robert De Niro). That great performance is done in a very specific, calculated manner by the actor, and it’s difficult...

In Episode 75 of the CriterionCast, Ryan Gallagher, James McCormick, Moises Chiullan, and Travis George are joined by Damon Houx (from Chud, Collider, and Screen Crave), to discuss Samuel Fuller’s 1967 film, Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss.

What do you think of the show? Please send your feedback to criterioncast@gmail.com, call their voice mail line @ 209.877.7335, follow them on twitter @CriterionCast, or comment on their blog, CriterionCast.com.

Thank you again for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave your reviews in iTunes.

Next week on the podcast we’ll be covering Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes.

Shownotes:

00:00 – 00:30 – sneak previews

00:30 – 01:50 – introductions

News:

01:50 – 03:15 – Brazil Blu-ray

03:15 – 7:10 – The Long Good Friday TV Series

07:10 – 12:20 – Time Bandits Reboot

12:20 – 15:50 – Tree Of Life Update / Dinosaurs!

15:54 – 19:50 – April Fools Day / C.H.U.D.

Criterion Collection New Release...

In Episode 74 of the CriterionCast, Ryan Gallagher and James McCormick are joined by Moises Chiullan (from Badass Digest), as well as their old co-host, Travis George, to discuss Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 film, Le Samourai.

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology—maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece Le Samouraï defines cool.

What do you think of the show? Please send your feedback to criterioncast@gmail.com, call their voice mail line @ 209.877.7335, follow them on twitter @CriterionCast, or comment on their blog, http://CriterionCast.com.

Thank you again for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave your reviews in iTunes.

Next week on the podcast we’ll be covering Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss.

Shownotes:

00:...

The Criterion Collection is known as the most prestigious video-distribution company, releasing “important classic and contemporary films” to cinema aficionados. Created in 1984 by Janus Films and the Voyager Company, The Criterion Collection now has 562 titles under it’s belt. This week The company is releasing new versions of Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor packed with special features and beautiful DVD cover art by comic book illustrator Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Wilson).

Take a look at the new Criterion movie posters below (some of which were created for screenings at last year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival).

Check out ComicsAlliance to see more.

Shock Corridor by Daniel Clowes

Brute Force by Scott Morse (created for All Tomorrow's Parties) Read More: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/01/31/criterion-collection-comic-books-artists/#ixzz1CeRd3GCG

The Naked Kiss by Daniel Clowes

Sweet Smell of Success by Sean Phillips. Check out a neat behind-the-scenes...

Filed under: Features, DVDs

From ComicsAlliance: This week marks the release of the Criterion versions of "The Naked Kiss" and "Shock Corridor," two gritty, Samuel Fuller pulp classics chock-full of special features -- including the stark, moody DVD cover by Daniel Clowes ("Ghost World," "Wilson"). Of course, the Criterion Collection is no stranger to gorgeous, illustrated covers courtesy of comic book industry luminaries, including everyone from Sean Phillips and Jaime Hernandez to Kate Beaton and Francesco Francavilla.

Indeed, a large portion of the Criterion Collection's success can be attributed to the company's unique sense of cover design. (The in-house style is so ubiquitous, it's become the subject of hilarious parody.) While the Collection employs a wide variety of talented illustrators, comic book creators have supplied some truly memorable gems.

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I watched six movies this week, but of the bunch I'm only going to tell you about one here. One of them was Criterion's Blu-ray of Broadcast News, which I've already started working on my review, I also watched Cedar Rapids and The Eagle, but they don't come out for a few weeks so I'll be reviewing those at that point. I also saw The Mechanic and The Rite, but you already have my opinion of those two. So that leaves me with just one...

I can, however, tell you what is currently in my "To Watch" pile from Netflix, that includes Sam Fuller's The Big Red One, Peter Weir's Witness and John Huston's Prizzi's Honor. So if you wanted to add those to your lists we can discuss them next week, for now, here's what else I watched...

The Steel Helmet (1951) Quick Thoughts: Yet another Sam Fuller...

By the time Samuel Fuller had made his first film, he'd been a copy boy, fought in the second world war, written a number of pulp novels and screenplays and worked as a crime reporter. His directorial debut, I Shot Jesse James [1] (1949), was already informed by a lifetime's worth of real world experience. His films are personal -- even autobiographical -- and his storytelling is aggressive. His themes are often presented in an austere nature and his imagery can be heavy handed (White Dog [2]), but his earnestness leaves me smiling rather than cringing. It makes sense that Criterion would re-release two Samuel Fuller classics, The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor, on the same day with matching cover artwork (provided by Ghost World author/illustrator Daniel Clowes). The films share a deep rooted pulp narrative that examines two of cinema's most prototypical social outcasts: hookers and schitzos. The Naked Kiss Directed...

“He wanted that to be like a screaming headline in a newspaper,” Constance Towers, the female lead of Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss says of the latter’s opening scene, which finds her character attacking the camera with her purse shortly before losing a wig that hides her baldness. Fuller took a job as a copyboy at age 12 and started reporting on New York crime at 17. He eventually left the newspapers to become a screenwriter, soldier, pulp novelist, and director. But the newspapers never left him. Fuller loved a shocking headline and a well-told ...

Well, I'm down to only needing to see Wings (the first Best Picture Oscar winner) and Cavalcade (the 1934 Best Picture Oscar winner) and I will have seen them all. Next up, watching all of the Best Picture nominees... a task that is certain to take me even longer.

For any of you that may be interested in watching all of the Best Picture Oscar winners next month on Turner Classic Movies you will be able to knock a Ton of them out in only one month as they have their 31 Days of Oscar marathon. I know it's where I will be seeing several I haven't seen including the two I mentioned above, both of which aren't available on DVD. Wings shows on February 6 and Cavalcade shows on February 9. Just thought I'd let you know.

How Green was My Valley (1941) Quick Thoughts: It's the film that beat Citizen Kane for Best...

DVD Playhouse: January 2011

By

Allen Gardner

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (20th Century Fox) Sequel to the seminal 1980s film catches up with a weathered, but still determined Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas, who seems to savor every syllable of Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff’s screenplay) just out of jail and back on the comeback trail. In attempting to repair his relationship with his estranged daughter (Carey Mulligan), Gekko forges a reluctant alliance with her fiancé (Shia Labeouf), himself an ambitious young turk who finds himself seduced by Gekko’s silver tongue and promise of riches. Lifeless film is further evidence of director Oliver Stone’s decline. Once America’s most exciting filmmaker, Stone hasn’t delivered a film with any teeth since 1995’s Nixon. Labeouf and Mulligan generate no sparks on-screen, and the story feels forced from the protracted opening to the final, Disney-esque denouement. Only a brief cameo by Charlie Sheen,...

Updated through 1/20.

"Criterion's new editions of Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (64) form a sort diptych portrait of Fuller's transition from a career forged partly within the studios to one of arduous independence," writes Josef Braun. "Low-budget, sparely furnished, continuity-negligent and starkly illuminated — with photography from the great Stanley Cortez, who shot The Magnificent Ambersons (42) and The Night of the Hunter (55) — these movies prowled the greasy peripheries of American life for tales of murder and prostitution, corrupt public services and pedophilia, incest and repressed rage. The discs feature numerous terrific supplements, including an episode of The South Bank Show that finds its featured guest Fuller in top-form, but their most inspired elements are the illustrations that adorn their packaging and screen menus, courtesy of Daniel Clowes, author of the graphic novels Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (93), Ghost World (97), and David Boring (00). Enveloping these movies in Clowes's art enables...

This Week in DVD & Blu-ray is a column that compiles all the latest info regarding new DVD and Blu-ray releases, sales, and exclusive deals from stores including Target, Best Buy and Fry’s. Buried Buried is everything that a single-location thriller about a man trapped in a coffin possibly could've been. It is economic, minimalist filmmaking at its finest. Where other filmmakers might look to this sort of concept to ease the burden of budgetary restrictions, director Rodrigo Cortés takes the opposite approach, employing the most challenging—and creatively satisfying—use of negative space, close-ups, alternating hues, and whirling camera movements at his disposal, all of which skillfully coalesce to deliver a constant sense of discomfort, dread, anxiety and claustrophobia. As the oxygen level and cell phone battery life depletes, the tension continues to increase, the viewer never granted a moment's rest from being stuck in that coffin right alongside Ryan Reynolds.

I have had my introduction to the films of Samuel Fuller... and I want more. However, the wanting I'm experiencing has little to do with the films on Criterion's two recently released Blu-rays for Fuller's Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss as much as it has to do with the selection of special features available on these two discs. Limited as they may be, the selection of interviews, short films and documentaries available across these two discs paint the picture of an artist of a bygone era. As director Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas) says in one of them (from a 1983 interview), "The B-picture is finished. For ten, fifteen years already. It doesn't exist anymore, and Sam's whole work was inside that genre. Sam never made a film that took more than four weeks to shoot and cost more than a million-and-a-half."

I've chosen to review these two releases together because...

Rodrio Cortes’ Buried and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Jack Goes Boating picked a good week to release on Blu-ray. Both screened last year at the Sundance Film Festival which kicks off its 2011 fest in just two days. Criterion connoisseurs will be happy, as Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor also release today. After the jump, check out our Blu-ray reviews of Buried, The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, and Death Race 2.

Read more on New on Blu: Buried, The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, Death Race 2, Animal Kingdom, and more…...

Welcome back to Killer Film’s New Release Tuesday for January 18th! Before we get to these releases, let us remind you By ordering through our site, you not only get the best deals around from Amazon, but this one little click will help us out at no extra cost to you! It’s what keeps us killer!

Buried

Believe the hype. It’s tense, claustrophobic, and damn good. It’s the type of thriller Hitchcock would have loved to do. (Formats: Blu-ray/DVD) Jon says: Buy Donny says: Buy

Takers

On paper, here’s a rather standard issue heist film. That’s pretty much it, but when seen, there’s great performances – especially from Hayden Christensen (yeah, I just said that) and Idris Elba – and a really great midday heist sequence. Plus, Stephen King had it as his number 5 film of 2010! (Formats: Blu-ray/DVD) Jon says: Rent Donny says:...

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Buried Lionsgate is going the "single serve" route with Buried, offering it only in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack as I'm sure all studios are now hoping consumers begin adopting Blu-ray over DVD. I haven't yet rewatched this film, but I did enjoy it in the theater and wonder how it will play at home. I can only assume the best way is to turn the lights off completely and crank up the sound. However, I'm not sure if this is a film I want to return to. After all, who wants to watch a film about a guy trapped in a box multiple times? Animal Kingdom I have been meaning to rewatch this one for a while now. I wasn't as enamored with it my first time around as everyone else, but the more I thought about it...

A look at what's new on DVD today:

"Buried"

Directed by Rodrigo Cortes

Released by Lionsgate

"Paper Man"

Directed by Kieran and Michele Mulroney

Released by Mpi Home Video

While one can't feel too badly for the future "Green Lantern" star and People's sexiest man alive, Ryan Reynolds' two stabs at glory outside the beaten path went largely unseen, which is particularly a shame in the case of Rodrigo Cortes' "Buried," the thriller where Reynolds has no acting partner but a cell phone as a military contractor who finds himself trapped in a coffin with no knowledge of how or why he got there. A success at Sundance, Lionsgate scrapped expansion plans for the film when it didn't do well in limited release, so home video will be the first chance for many to catch it. Still, that was a considerably bigger success than "Paper Man," which snuck in...

Hey Fiends! Happy Monday! Got another list of flicks on the format of your choice.

Roger Corman’s Cult Classics Triple Feature (Attack of the Crab Monsters / War of the Satellites / Not of This Earth)

Format: DVD

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Three Films Produced And Directed By Honorary Academy Award Recipient And King Of B-Movies, Roger Corman: With All New Film Transfers From The Negative!

In Attack Of The Crab Monsters, a group of scientists become marooned on an island while investigating the disappearance of researchers who were looking into atomic activity in the Pacific. They quickly fall prey to giant, mutant crustaceans that have the ability to absorb the minds of their prey. Starring Russell Johnson (Gilligans Island), Richard Garland and Mel Welles (Little Shop Of Horrors).

An alien comes to Earth, masquerading as a human, to scout our planet for a new blood source in Not Of This Earth. He needs...

0:00 - Intro 10:40 - Headlines: New Photos from Spider-Man, Captain America, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Alien Prequel Becomes Prometheus Starring Noomi Rapace, James Cameron Disses the Battleship Movie 36:35 - Review: The Green Hornet 1:33:15 - Other Stuff We Watched: Bullitt, The French Connection, Saturday Night Live, Winter Wipeout, Cyrus, Beer League, Parks and Recreation, I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale, Alien, The Naked Kiss, Talhotblond, Freakonomics, Vacancy, Pandorum, Piranha, The Dilemma, Cropsey, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Archer, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Treasure Hunter 2:17:50 - Junk Mail: Retail-iation, Captain Canuck, Blu-ray Loading Screens, The Mist in Black and White and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Woody Allen, The Chaser and Unhappy Endings, Film Junk Dream and Name That Movie 2:48:40 - This Week's DVD Releases 2:51:25 - Outro » Download the MP3 (80 Mb) [1] » View the show notes [2] » Vote for us on Podcast Alley!

Your Weekly Source for Blu-Ray and DVD Release News

Perhaps the most anticipated release this week is Rodrigo Cortes’ Buried, a groundbreaking indie thriller starring Ryan Reynolds who wakes up to find himself buried alive, but much more is at play in this ingenious film. David Michod’s Animal Kingdom — about a 17-year old coping with life in a criminal family – was also a festival favorite on the indie scene; Freakonomics is an anthology from six innovative documentary filmmakers that explores the hidden side of everything; and two classics from director Samuel Fuller — Naked Kiss, a film noir about a prostitute who finds redemption; and Shock Corridor, about a journalist who commits himself to a mental institution to solve a strange murder — get the Blu-Ray treatment from Criterion Collection.

Blu-Ray for Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011 Animal Kingdom (2010) Army Of Crime (2010) Buried (2010) Death Race 2: Blu-Ray/DVD Combo Pack (2011) Down Terrace (2010) Freakonomics (2010) Lebanon...

I started a spreadsheet this year to track all of the movies I watch. This includes just watching a movie out of the blue, at a screening, for DVD/Blu-ray review, etc. I've never done this before, but I've been wondering recently just how many movies I actually watch each year. So far, after 15 days I've watched 20 movies in 2011. In honesty, the number shocked me at first, but the more I thought about it I really don't think a day goes by that I don't watch a movie.

A movie usually serves as my night cap once the day is done and I'm ready to call it quits. I may not finish it that night, but by the end of the next day it's done. So the fact I've already seen five more movies in 2011 than there have been days isn't as surprising as it may seem. After all, it is my job.

By Raymond Benson

By Raymond Benson

Director Samuel Fuller is a controversial figure in American cinema history. Audiences either love him or hate him, and there is usually no in-between. Incorporating a style that is often over-the-top, no matter what the genre or story might be, Fuller’s films are very much in your face. Outspoken, opinionated, and an auteur who wasn’t afraid to stand on a soapbox and shout to the masses what he felt was injustice, bigotry, or hypocrisy, Fuller belongs in the camp of directors who attempted social change but never achieved popular success doing it. Today he is revered as a cult figure by such filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Tim Robbins (all who appear in the documentary, The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera, a bonus feature on the Shock Corridor DVD). One can certainly see Fuller’s influences...

The autobiographies of Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray are two of the most passionate, heartbreaking and instructive books about filmmaking ever written. Ray is best known for directing James Dean's iconic performance in Rebel Without a Cause. Fuller made some of the greatest genre movies of the '50s and '60s including The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor. Both novels are compulsively readable, with enough filmmaking advice to replace an entire year of film school and enough insight into both filmmakers' lives and struggles to captivate even the most casual cinephile.