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Lone Star
Mudbound and Lone Star on UK Criterion Blu-ray/UHD in February
news | 24 November 2023
Spirit Entertainment has announced the Criterion Collection UK releases for February 2024 as Dee Rees's uniquely American tragedy Mudbound, and John Sayles' sprawling neowestern mystery, Lone Star.
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The Signalman in Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume Two
Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume Two
blu-ray review | 24 November 2023
Featuring the final five films in the first run of the BBC's end-of-year supernatural tales, the BFI's Blu-ray release of Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume Two offers a significant upgrade on the previous DVD releases of these films. Slarek looks cautiously over his shoulder and gets nervous about an indistinct shape he saw lurking in the shadows.
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News story
24 Nov
2023
Phil Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers on 4K UHD in February
One of the finest remakes of a science fiction classic, Phil Kaufman's 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams, is coming to Limited Edition UHD and Blu-ray from Arrow Video in February.

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23 Nov
2023
The Creator
23 Seconds to Eternity is a compilation of the films made by Bill Butt for the audiovisual duo of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, variously known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords and The KLF. Released in dual-format (Blu-ray and DVD) by the BFI, it is reviewed by Gary Couzens.

News story
16 Nov
2023
Yakuza thrillers, Chuck Norris and 4K Kubrick from Eureka in February
Eureka! has revealed its February release slate, which includes Sonny Chiba duo Yakuza Wolf 1 and 2, Check Norris kung-fu actioner Slaughter in San Francisco, Stanley Kubrick's anti-war masterpiece Paths of Glory on 4K UHD, and a reissue of three films by Andrzej Żuławski.

News story
16 Nov
2023
RoboDoc – The Creation of RoboCop documentary on Blu-ray December
Following its exclusive time on the Icon Fim Channel, the four-part documentary RoboDoc – The Creation of RoboCop will be released on 2-disc Special Edition Blu-Ray, with Digital release following in January from Kaleidoscope.

15 Nov
2023
23 Seconds to Eternity
23 Seconds to Eternity is a compilation of the films made by Bill Butt for the audiovisual duo of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, variously known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords and The KLF. Released in dual-format (Blu-ray and DVD) by the BFI, it is reviewed by Gary Couzens.

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13 Nov
2023
Fascination
After a few years directing pornographic films to pay the bills, Jean Rollin was back in his comfort zone in 1979 with the visually and subtextually charged low-budget surrealistic horror tale, Fascination. A mesmerised Slarek walks where thoughtless men should fear to tread on Indicator’s impeccable 4K UHD release.

News story
10 Nov
2023
Two recent Japanese films on Third Window disc & digital in the new year
Third Window Films have announced the new year release of two recent Japanese films of note on disc and digital, with Reiki Tsuno's debut feature Mad Cats coming in January, and the latest from Junta Yamaguchi, River, in February.

News story
10 Nov
2023
World Noir Vol. 1 three-film Blu-ray box set from Radiance in December
Three examples of noir cinema from around the globe – Koreyoshi Kurahara's I Am Waiting, Edouard Molinaro's Witness in the City and Pietro Germi's The Facts of Murder – have been brought together in a Blu-ray box set for release in December by Radiance Films.

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8 Oct
2023
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Forest Whitaker plays a solitary and anonymous mob hitman who lives by the code of the samurai and finds himself hunted by his employers in Jim Jarmusch’s inventive and winningly offbeat 1999 crime drama. Slarek sips some sake and revisits and enduring favourite on a new UHD/Blu-ray combo from Studiocanal.

News story
8 Nov
2023
Bluebeard's Castle on Blu-ray in November and streaming in December
A lost masterpiece from acclaimed director Michael Powell, a stunning adaptation of Béla Bartok's expressionist opera, restored by the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation, which is coming to Blu-ray this month and streaming in December.

5 Nov
2023
From Beijing with Love
James Bond Parodies were not new when directors Stephen Chow and Lee Lik-chi threw their creative hats into the ring, but few others are as daftly inventive as the rich brew of gags and violent action served up by their 1994 From Beijing with Love. Slarek pours a dry martini and toasts some imaginative tomfoolery on Eureka’s recently released Blu-ray.

News story
30 Oct
2023
Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume 2 on Blu-ray in November
The BFI is releasing a second set of the BBC's beloved Ghost Stories for Christmas on Blu-ray in November, featuring five films originally screened in the mid-1970s, each with new commentaries and other supporting features.

29 Oct
2023
Universal Noir #2
Indicator’s second Universal Noir box set features six movies from the 1940s that may stretch the definition of the term noir a little, but still deliver in (Sam) Spades as entertainment. Slarek emerges from a fortnight of dark dramas, fine audio commentaries and fascinating special features, genuinely enriched and wiser for the experience.

News story
27 Oct
2023
Landmark horror Carrie comes to 4K UHD from Arrow in January
The film that helped launched Stephen King as the premiere American horror author and Brian De Palma as a director to be reckoned with, the 1976 Carrie is coming to Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow in January.

News story
26 Oct
2023
La Bamba & Thelma and Louise on from Criterion UK in January
The January 2024 UK releases from the Criterion Collection and Signature Entertainment have been confirmed as Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba on Blu-ray, and Ridley Scott’s pop-culture landmark Thelma & Louise on Blu-ray and 4K UHD.

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24 Oct
2023
Three Films by Yasujirō Ozu
This BFI Blu-ray set presents three films from the great Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, from the silent gangster movie Dragnet Girl, to the family dramas Record of a Tenement Gentleman and A Hen in the Wind. Review by Gary Couzens.

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23 Oct
2023
BFI London Film Festival dispatch #5
Jerry Whyte compares the two searing satires that bookended this year's London Film Festival. Daniel Kaluuya & Kibwe Tavares' dystopian drama The Kitchen revels in the resistance of the underprivileged to gentrification while Emerald Fennell's Saltburn takes a pop at the oblivious overprivileged. We are invited to take sides.

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16 Oct
2023
BFI London Film Festival dispatch #4
That They May Face the Rising Sun is a lyrically potent, life-affirming gem. It transports us to the stunning beauty of rural Ireland and invites us to ponder life's many meanings as we unwind. Jerry Whyte is grateful to Irish maestro Pat Collins for providing us with sustaining food for thought and a much-needed breath of fresh air.

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15 Oct
2023
BFI London Film Festival dispatch #3
In his second, illness-delayed dispatch from this year’s London Film Festival, Slarek goes forward and backward in time with two science-fiction tinted debut features, Michael Lukk Litwak’s Molli and Max in the Future and Pablo Chea’s Croma Kid.

12 Oct
2023
Girlfriends
In 1979 in the US, I first saw Claudia Weill's Girlfriends and was staggered by the performance of its leading lady, Melanie Mayron. She was about as authentic a character I had, up to that point, seen on screen. Released on Blu-ray three years ago, Camus is just as entranced, if not more so, by Girlfriends today…

11 Oct
2023
Short Sharp Shocks Volume 3
The BFI’s third Short Sharp Shocks compilation is a two-disc Blu-ray edition containing ten films both short to very short. Reviewed by Gary Couzens.

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10 Oct
2023
BFI London Film Festival dispatch #2
50 years after the ‘other 9/11’ (the CIA-backed Pinochet coup that toppled Salvador Allende’s government), Chilean cinema continues to challenge organised forgetting. Felipe Carmona’s Penal Cordillera focuses on five of the Generalissimo’s henchmen as they await trial for crimes against humanity. Jerry Whyte is aghast and impressed, again.

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6 Oct
2023
BFI London Film Festival dispatch #1
We’ve started late on this year’s London Film Festival, and in his first dispatch, Slarek looks at two excellent, film-related documentaries, Lebanese director Cyril Aris’s Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, and London-based Iranian filmmaker Ehsan Khoshbakht’s Celluloid Underground.

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5 Oct
2023
Touch of Evil
In 1958, Orson Welles had editorial control of his brilliant 1958 noir thriller Touch of Evil taken away from him, and 40 years later his version was reconstructed and has now been released in 4K on 2-disc UHD set by Eureka as part of the Masters of Cinema series. Slarek takes a gleeful dive into what is easily one of the best disc releases of 2023 so far.

28 Sep
2023
Lorenza Mazzetti Collection
Lorenza Mazzetti was an Italian woman in London and a key part of the Free Cinema movement with her short feature Together. The BFI's Blu-ray Lorenza Mazzetti Collection includes this, her two previous films, and a documentary about her. Reviewed by Gary Couzens.

28 Sep
2023
No Bears, and the cinema of Jafar Panahi
Having been banned from making films for 20 years by the Iranian authorities, director Jafar Panahi keeps finding ways of doing it anyway. His latest, No Bears, so impressed SilverBlueSnow that he not only chose to review the Picture House Blu-ray, but take a trip back through all of the Jafar films available on disc.

27 Sep
2023
Targets
The lives of an ageing and world-weary horror star and a young man young man on a motiveless killing spree are set to collide in director Peter Bogdanovich's astonishing 1968 first feature, Targets. Slarek puts a favourite film in his critical crosshairs on a superbly featured new Blu-ray from the BFI.

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22 Sep
2023
The Wicker Man
The godfather of folk horror movies, screenwriter Anthony Shaffer and director Robin Hardy’s 1973 masterpiece The Wicker Man has been restored in 4K and is being released on UHD in a 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition by Studiocanal. Slarek and Camus dance around the maypole for a fabulous new release of a favourite film.