Month: November 2019

Five years ago, I covered the theatrical release of "Ernest & Celestine," and fell deeply in love with the modest feature, adoring its sense of humor and richly define characters. The production was gorgeously animated as well, doing something special with a limited budget and position outside the Hollywood animation machine. Co-director Benjamin Renner returns (joined by Patrick Imbert) with "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales," which offers an anthology take on colorful shenanigans involving anthropomorphic animals. While gentleness has been dialed down some, Renner retains his sense of humor, delivering a more cartoon-style romp with three different stories of farmyard creature concern, sold with strong artistry and performances, giving the co-helmer another delightful offering with a sly sense of French humor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1984's "The Passing" is a patchwork quilt production from co-writer/director/star John Huckert. Here was a young man determined to making his helming dreams a reality, and beginning in the mid-1970s, he elected to develop his first short into a feature, hoping to expand on a sci-fi idea wrapped up tight in themes of friendship and mortality. Dealing with countless issues, including the death of one of his actors, Huckert still managed to craft something worth releasing, delivering a supremely strange viewing experience with "The Passing." Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The vampire movie certainly needs a shake-up every now and then, keeping the subgenre fresh when staleness is so much easier for many filmmakers. With "Night Owl," writer/director Jeffrey Arsenault tries to make his mark on the legacy, arranging his own bloodsucker saga on the streets of New York City, following a troubled young man who's been cursed for decades, growing weary of the life he's known for a long time. "Night Owl" has a concept and a distinct setting in 1989 NYC, where the sounds of the city are changing over to the 1990s, and the streets are still littered with filth and horrors, permitting vampirism to thrive. What Arsenault doesn't have is timing, with the picture enduring more than a few complete stops as the helmer (making his feature-length debut) tries to figure out editing rhythms and performance tempos. There's no ambitious scale here, just low-budget events that teeter on the edge of randomness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While developing his skills as an irreverent moviemaker with an interest in experimental film, Robert Downey hit a special creative peak with 1969's "Putney Swope." While it's a comedy, interested in giving viewers a full sense of the absurd and the silly, the feature isn't a simple joke-a-minute experience, going above and beyond mere bits to challenge the world of marketing in the 1960s, also focusing on shifting racial attitudes of the decade. Downey does some serious barnstorming with the picture, which is all over the place, yet somehow doesn't feel chaotic, showing immense playfulness while remaining sharp, picking up on distinct personalities and corporate buffoonery while Downey conducts a bizarre cinematic symphony of impulsiveness, idiocy, and condemnation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To quote Oliver Stone's "JFK," 1983's "Taking Tiger Mountain" is an "A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma." Up is down, left is right in the picture, which only provides a vague sense of storytelling as it attempts to become the most esoteric endeavor of the 1980s. However, the actual effort can't compete with the saga of its creation, where director Tom Huckabee acquired an entire film shoot from 1973 (under the care of helmer Kent Smith), taking footage that wasn't assembled and featured no sound, gifting himself an editorial challenge to make something out of the initial work, which starred Bill Paxton, making his screen debut. It was a puzzle turned into a…well, a larger puzzle, as Huckabee elected to transform the B&W movie into a futureworld thriller, with only sound design and a few additional shots to help manipulate the initial footage into something baffling yet driven by a singular artistic vision. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com