Kino Lorber
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Wings of the Hawk, The Parallax View, Smooth Talk: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Director Budd Boetticher made dozens of movies ranging from romantic comedies and noirs to science fiction and prison pictures, but he’s long been known primarily for the seven Westerns he made with Randolph Scott between 1956 and 1960. While those films are all terrific and worthy of the praise bestowed upon them by the likes of Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, their canonization has kept many other worthwhile Boetticher works from discovery. I’ve always been partial to the movies he made as a contract director at Universal in 1952 and 1953, a period during which he made a […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 5, 2021 -
Rambo: Last Blood and Play Misty for Me: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo series is one of the more durable franchises in American cinema, which is somewhat surprising given that it didn’t really find its voice until its fourth installment and began with a film that didn’t lend itself to sequels at all. First Blood, which Ted Kotcheff directed from a script by Stallone, Michael Kozoll and William Sackheim in 1982, is a stand-alone action classic, an elegant and austere survival film in which Vietnam vet John Rambo takes on the town that wronged him without killing a single person. Stallone made up for First Blood’s low body count with […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 30, 2020 -
Christ Stopped at Eboli, Lucio Fulci in 4K and Abel Ferrara’s Tommaso: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
When Francesco Rosi adapted artist and activist Carlo Levi’s 1945 memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli for Italian television in 1979, contemporary observers of the director probably saw it as a strange choice. Rosi had made his name with searing, forcefully immediate studies of Italian society and politics like Salvatore Giuliano and Hands Over the City; Levi’s book about his banishment to an isolated rural town during the reign of Mussolini was as modest and personal as Rosi’s earlier films were sweeping and elaborate. Yet the memoir had in fact been a dream project of Rosi’s for decades, and the four-part, […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 11, 2020 -
Are Virtual Theaters Here to Stay?
When Toby Leonard, programming director at Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre, returned to the space for the first time since the COVID-19 shutdown began, a six-foot cardboard display for Never Rarely Sometimes Always struck his eye. Eliza Hittman’s film was four days into the first week of a planned platform release before it was pulled from theatrical exhibition and hadn’t yet made it to the Belcourt, but its physical teaser remained. “How many of these things were there and how many did they send around the country?,” Leonard wondered. Then he took it down. As exhibitors and distributors initially adjusted to no theatrical releases for […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 18, 2020 -
Jim Hemphill’s Best Blu-rays of 2016
To finish off 2016, I’d like to round up some of the year’s best Blu-ray releases that I didn’t get a chance to cover in my weekly column. It was an exceptional year for physical media thanks to labels like Criterion, Twilight Time, Arrow, Kino Lorber, and Olive, all of which continue to license neglected titles from studio vaults and give them the first-class treatments they deserve. While the list below barely scratches the surface of the efforts of these companies and others, it contains what I consider to be the most essential discs of the year — movies that […]
by Jim Hemphill on Dec 30, 2016 -
Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers Aims to Showcase the Golden Age of Women Directors
In early 2015, Kino Lorber mounted a successful crowd-funding campaign for Pioneers of African-American Cinema. The campaign raised over $53,000, far surpassing its original $35,000 goal. Now Kino Lorber is hoping to repeat that success with its new Kickstarter campaign for their upcoming release Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers. So far, they’ve raised more than $20,000 towards the $44,000 goal. “You wouldn’t know it looking back at the last 90 years of film history, but at one time, it was not uncommon to have women behind the camera in Hollywood,” says writer-director Ileana Douglas in the campaign video (above). Presented in association with the […]
by Paula Bernstein on Oct 24, 2016 -
YORGOS LANTHIMOS’ “ALPS” GOES TO KINO LORBER
Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Alps, the follow-up to his Oscar-nominated cult hit Dogtooth. According to indieWIRE, the film will be released in the spring of 2012. Kino also released Dogtooth in the States. The fourth feature by Lathimos, Alps follows an unusual group who offers grieving family members the opportunity to have their troupe reenact and continue the lives of deceased loved ones. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won Best Screenplay, and the Toronto International Film Festival. It will screen next at AFI Fest in L.A. If we […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Oct 17, 2011
