Le notti bianche

Luchino Visconti’s Le notti bianche [White Nights], from 1957, comes to Blu-ray from Radiance. Gary Couzens waits by a bridge.

Frank Beyer’s Holocaust themed Jakob the Liar on Eureka Blu-ray in February

Eureka Entertainment are to release Frank Beyer’s acclaimed holocaust drama Jakob the Liar, the only East German film ever to be Oscar nominated, on Blu-ray in February.

recent reviews and articles

Rio Lobo

A Union colonel teams up with two former Confederate officers in post-Civil War Texas to battle a crooked landowner and the corrupt lawmen in his pay in Rio Lobo, director Howard Hawks’ nostalgic second reworking of his 1959 Rio Bravo. Slarek slips into the saddle for Hawks’ final film, newly released on Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label.

The House of Mirth

Terence Davies’s The House of Mirth, from Edith Wharton’s novel, starring Gillian Anderson, arrives on Blu-ray from the BFI as part of their retrospective in the month of what would have been Davies’s eightieth birthday. Gary Couzens heads off to New York City in the Gilded Age.

Priest

Written by Jimmy McGovern and directed by Antonia Bird, the controversial drama Priest is released by the BFI on Blu-ray. Review by Gary Couzens.

Death Carries a Cane [Passi di danza su una lama di rasoio]

A woman witnesses a murder, and the hunt begins for a serial killer in director Maurizio Pradeaux’s 1973 giallo, Death Carries a Cane. Genre fan Gort is in two minds about a lesser seen work whose logic and storytelling issues are balanced out by its dark pleasures, and it looks very nice on Indicator’s new UHD.

Pocket Money

François Truffaut’s ode to childhood, Pocket Money [L’argent de poche], comes to Blu-ray from Radiance. Review by Gary Couzens.

Eyes Without a Face

A brilliant but obsessed surgeon goes to extreme lengths to aid his injured daughter in Eyes Without a Face, Georges Franju’s 1960 noir and horror-laced gem of French cinéma fantastique. In a review seriously delayed by work on the new site, Slarek recalls his first encounter with this personal favourite and enjoys its new UHD incarnation from the BFI.