DVD review – Film Journey

World on a Wire (1973)

May 14, 2010 Doug Cummings DVD review

One of the most exciting DVD releases of the year occurs Monday in the UK, when World on a Wire arrives as a two-disc edition from Second Sight. The cult science fiction TV movie by Rainer Werner Fassbinder had scarcely been seen since its 1973 broadcast, but a new restoration wowed critics at the Berlin film festival and MoMA earlier this year. The film deserves to enter the pantheon of great SF movies.

It’s a close adaptation of Daniel Galouye’s 1964 Counterfeit World, a virtual reality novel years ahead of its time; although human connections to machines and alternate …

Earth (1930)

April 12, 2010 Doug Cummings DVD review

Mr. Bongo Films in the UK is releasing a DVD of Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) “fully restored and in its full-length version” next month, and it’s a beauty to behold. Appreciating a silent film sometimes requires that we adjust our modern reflexes to engage it on its own terms, but this monumental and passionate work is one of the exceptions, the last and most poetic entry of Dovzhenko’s loose silent trilogy about the violent social forces sweeping through peasant Ukrainian lives in the first decade of the Soviet Union. Rhapsodic and intensely lyrical, the film dramatizes the deep tensions that …

Best Films of 2009…and the Decade

March 2, 2010 Doug Cummings DVD review, Film review

The current issue of Film Comment has been on news stands for a few weeks, and it includes best-of-the-year and best-of-the-decade polls to which I was invited to contribute. I moved to Los Angeles in 2001 and starting blogging in 2003, so in many ways, pondering the decade has encouraged me to reappraise my writing here (though by no means have I written about every film I watched!), which has proven to be an enjoyable exercise.

The categories and numbers of titles requested were limiting, of course, but even restricting myself to one film per director (preventing a pile up …

Armand Gatti and L’Enclos (1961)

May 27, 2009 Doug Cummings Commentary, DVD review

“When I studied, I met a filmmaker who decided for me, in a way , what I was going to become. It was Armand Gatti who brought us together.” –Jean-Pierre Dardenne at his 2009 Cannes masterclass

“Film is a system that allows Godard to be a novelist, Gatti to make theater, and me to make essays.” –Chris Marker

The name Armand Gatti hovers in the background of many filmmakers today. One of the most acclaimed theater writer/directors of the 20th century, Gatti was originally a member of the informal Left Bank group of filmmakers that included Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, …

The Dardennes and Lorna’s Silence

May 21, 2009 Doug Cummings DVD review

If last week seemed like a windfall for Chris Marker, this week the torch has been passed to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Tuesday at Cannes, the Belgian filmmakers gave a truly fascinating two-hour masterclass that is already available online, which features extended discussions of key scenes in each of their films. The brothers’ filmography–including many of their rarely seen documentaries–is also screening at the Harvard Film Archive beginning this week, and the program begins at the Walter Reade Theater the following week.

In the US, Sony Classics isn’t releasing the Dardennes’ 2008 film, Lorna’s Silence, until August, but …

A Grin Without a Cat (1977, 1993)

May 12, 2009 Doug Cummings DVD review

Last week, Icarus Films released the latest DVD in their excellent Chris Marker series, A Grin Without a Cat (originally released in 1977 but shortened with an added coda in ’93). Not only is this one of his most acclaimed documentaries, summarizing the decade of the New Left worldwide as well as his own globetrotting SLON collective filmmaking period, the DVD also comes amid a flurry of new Marker events:

• Cannes Classics has announced it’s debuting a new and restored print of Far from Vietnam (1967), the protest film Marker organized and edited with contributions by Joris Ivens, Claude …