DVD Reviews - R-Z

Read a review of True Grit on DVD and find out why this Coen Brothers' film seems destined to become a classic.

Co-written and directed by Luchino Visconti (The Leopard, Death in Venice), the Italian-language Senso (1954) is a beautiful, lush Technicolor film.

Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 'Tetro' is an idiosyncratic, resolutely un-Hollywood film. Coppola deliberately gives his story implausible twists and over-the-top theatricality as he works some of the same psychological territory as Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams.

Co-written and directed by Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You for Smoking), Up in the Air (2009) is quite contemporary in some ways, while in others it is reminiscent of older films like Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960). George Clooney is superb playing Up in the Air's protagonist, and he and his two costars, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, all received Academy Award nominations for their performa…

In 1940s Italy, filmmakers began making gritty movies in a style that has had enormous impact on filmmaking all over the world. One of the pioneers of the movement, which became known as Italian neorealism, was director Roberto Rossellini. Three of his movies are usually cited by scholars as key exemplars of the style: Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1948). Collectivel…

Sugar is an atypical baseball movie, but it's also a peculiar immigrant's story, and above all, it's the tale of a young man struggling to find his place in the world.

Writer-director Cary Fukunaga makes an impressive feature film debut with the Spanish-language Sin Nombre, which won awards at Sundance for direction and cinematography.

Russell Crowe gives a strong performance as the scruffy hero in State of Play, and he is ably supported by a topnotch cast that includes Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Robin Wright Penn and Jeff Daniels.

Based on a true story, The Soloist (2009) is a showcase for the acting of Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx.

The film is adapted from the most acclaimed of graphic novels and is not nearly as good as its source material.

DVD review, including a review of the movie, DVD details and bonus materials.

Nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film, Waltz With Bashir (2008) played theatrically in the United States in Hebrew with English subtitles.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio give superb performances as a troubled married couple with children in Revolutionary Road (2008), a cautionary tale of conformity and alienation directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty).

Kate Winslet won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Reader (2008), and the film was nominated for four additional Oscars.

Based on a true story, Valkyrie (2008) centers on a plot to assassinate Hitler. Read a review of Valkyrie on DVD.

You can tell Wendy and Lucy (2008) isn't going to be an ordinary movie from the very first shot. It just shows a railroad yard with a train lumbering through, but it's moody and arresting.

Mickey Rourke creates an unforgettable character in The Wrestler, a haunting drama that takes place at the bottom end of the world of professional wrestling, a bizarre form of showbiz combined with athletics.

Winner of eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire (2008) dazzles the viewer with exotic locations, exuberant filmmaking, Bollywood music and a rags-to-riches story with a feel-good ending.

Egocentric, audacious, morose, funny, exasperating, inventive, unsatisfying, poignant and pretentious are some of the words that spring to mind in attempting to describe Synecdoche, New York.

Josh Brolin gives a fine performance in the title role in W., a biopic about George W. Bush written by Stanley Weiser and directed by Oliver Stone.

Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall are actors who are easy on the eyes, and writer-director Woody Allen uses them well in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a highly entertaining rumination on the theme of romantic attraction.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a film containing over 50 musical numbers, such as "Depraved Heart Murder at Sanatorium Square," "Happiness Is Not a Warm Scalpel" and "Bloodbath!" The movie has high production values and a strong cast.

I've always loved the classic American movie Roman Holiday (1953), which stars Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. The film is a delightful romantic comedy that offers a rare combination of charismatic actors, elegant direction (by the distinguished William Wyler), and charming locations (in Rome).

Sunset Boulevard, which takes a sardonic look at the film industry, is one of the masterworks of world cinema. Co-written and directed by the great Billy Wilder, the movie is an unusual mix of black comedy and film noir.

Starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window (1954) is a suspenseful murder mystery, but it's also a humorous rumination on the relationships between men and women.

Vertigo is a haunting, unsettling, twisted love story that involves deception, murder and two accidental deaths. The movie features exceptional performances by stars James Stewart and Kim Novak, and it has one of the great scores, composed by Bernard Herrmann.

A review three of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest movies. But this is not a collection — each title was released separately as a two-disc DVD set.

Find out more about the enchanting classic animated movie Sleeping Beauty (1959).

Words like garish and tawdry come to mind when thinking about Touch of Evil (1958), which was written and directed by Orson Welles and starred him along with Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh. But Welles' mastery of visual artistry, sparkling dialogue, compelling characters and labyrinthine plot make this one of the great all-time films.

Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson and Laura Dern give excellent performances in Recount, an engrossing docudrama about the 2000 American presidential election that Al Gore lost to George W. Bush. The movie originally aired on HBO on May 25, 2008.

Vampyr was released, and it is a one-of-a-kind vampire movie that constantly confounds viewer expectations.

In 2006 the Rolling Stones gave a concert at New York City's Beacon Theatre, and Martin Scorsese was there to make a rollicking, good-time film version.

The French-language Wild Reeds (1994) brilliantly captures what it feels like to be an adolescent on the cusp of adulthood. The young people depicted here are earnest, and they are struggling to achieve greater maturity.

Under the Same Moon (2007), alternately titled La Misma luna, is an emotionally engaging Spanish-language movie about a nine-year-old Mexican boy attempting to reunite with his mother in the United States.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo is a haunting, unsettling, twisted love story that involves deception, murder and two accidental deaths.

Produced, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Youth Without Youth is an adventurous film exploring multiple dimensions of human consciousness.

If you've ever felt there can be something magical about reading a literary novel, you'll probably want to see Starting Out in the Evening. It's a fascinating character study of a retired academic and all-but-forgotten novelist whose health is failing.

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood was nominated for a total of eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Read a review of There Will Be Blood on DVD.

Depp has given brilliant film performances over the years, and he turns in yet another as Sweeney Todd, the throat-slashing mass murderer.

Summer Palace is a Mandarin-language film about a willful, passionate young woman grappling with her feelings toward a man she falls madly in love with. A talented and appealing actress named Lei Hao gives an outstanding performance in the role of the central character.

The plot of this film is a streamlined and tweaked version of the one in Shakespeare's Macbeth, but the two works are otherwise markedly dissimilar. One striking difference is that Kurosawa discards virtually all of the Bard's poetic language.

Sunshine is set in 2057 when the sun is putting out less and less heat, causing Earth to become colder and colder.

Healthcare is a topic that is dry at best and unpleasant at worst, yet in Sicko, Michael Moore has created a film on the subject that is witty and thought-provoking. The movie is flat-out agitprop, but it isn't boring.

In Talk to Me, director Kasi Lemmons successfully navigates some tricky changes in emotional tone and gets powerhouse performances from Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

The plot of Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957) is a streamlined and tweaked version of the one in Shakespeare's Macbeth. The movie contains a stunning combination of music, sound effects and richly textured visual imagery.

The Threepenny Opera was a big hit on the Berlin stage, and in 1930 the process of adapting it for the screen began. The movie version, which was released in 1931, is a masterpiece.

Winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a powerful drama set during the Irish War of Independence and the almost-immediately-following Irish Civil War.

Taxi Driver is one of the best films ever made, and it's on many top 100 all-time lists. It's a well-made Hollywood studio movie, yet it has the feel of a European-style personal film.

Zodiac tells a long, intricate, sprawling, messy story. Based on Robert Graysmith's true crime books, Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked the movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.

I thoroughly enjoyed Power of Art, which felt to me more like a dynamic college-level lecture series than a documentary. The series mixes art photography, location shooting, and dramatizations with Schama's lectures. His intelligence and insight were what made the series sparkle for me.

A review of Raging Bull on DVD.

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Reds (1981) was co-written, directed and produced by Warren Beatty, who also plays the male lead. Read a review of the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD.

Ingmar Bergman proclaimed that Fanny & Alexander (1984) would be the last film he ever directed, but years later he changed his mind. The result was Saraband (2003), a movie made for Swedish television that I consider to be outstanding. Read a review of Saraband on DVD.

A review of Schindler's List on DVD.

A review of School of Rock on DVD.

A review of Seabiscuit on DVD.

Ivana Redwine reviews Seven Samurai on DVD.

A DVD review of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 masterpiece of world cinema Seven Samurai.

Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone give splendid performances in Sexy Beast, an unconventional, character-driven gangster drama. Read a review of the movie Sexy Beast on DVD.

A review of this movie on DVD.

Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, and Clive Owen are among the many well-known actors appearing in "Sin City" (2005), a pulpy, noirish movie adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novels. Read a full-length review of Sin City on DVD.

This is one of the best-loved of all films, and it's long been one of my favorites. The movie has received a lot of critical acclaim as well.

This movie is very lightweight. Still, I found this film both romantic and laugh-out-loud funny.

I noticed that Spellbound (2002) was one of the nominees at the 2003 Academy Awards for Best Documentary, and I saw the rave reviews it was getting.

Read a review of the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD.

A review of Syriana on DVD.

I got quite a few big laughs out of this comedy whose characters are puppets.

Read a review of this satirical look at cigarette-related issues on DVD.

I got quite a few big laughs out of the raunchy, but sweet, comedy, Read a DVD review of The 40-Year-Old Virgin Widescreen Unrated Edition.

Truffaut's The 400 Blows is a lyrical and accessible movie that appears on most lists of great films. Read a review of this movie on DVD.

A review of the Criterion Collection DVD.

The Blues Brothers is a 1980 comedy starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd that has become part of American pop culture consciousness. For me, it's the music that gives the movie its exuberance. Read a review of this movie on DVD.

A review of Syriana on DVD.

I enjoyed this movie as a slick, smart entertainment, but I didn't make much of a connection with it emotionally. Read a review of The Constant Gardener on DVD.

The Da Vinci Code is an entertaining movie for those intrigued by its ideas, and I wasn't bored for a moment by this film based on Dan Brown's novel.

This boxed set deepened my appreciation of Lean's ability to create movies of epic grandeur.

When I reflect on all the movies and television programs I've viewed at home over the years, the DVD version of The Decalogue ranks high among the very best.

The Deer Hunter is a powerful drama starring Robert De Niro. The movie was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won five, including Best Picture. Read a review of The Deer Hunter on DVD.

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers is not as deep or resonant as some of his other movies, but I nonetheless found it reasonably entertaining. I was impressed by the film's beautiful visual style.

I can certainly see why this movie won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Read a review of this collection on DVD.

A combination docudrama and travelogue, the Spanish-language Motorcycle Diaries chronicles a long, unhurried, circuitous trip from Buenos Aires to Venezuela that Guevara took when he was in his early twenties. Read more...

I found this great American classic film as moving as ever when I watched on DVD.

I enjoyed The Illusionist because it is a well-acted, well-crafted movie. But the film never pulled me in emotionally. On the basis of the combination of the bonus materials and the entertainment value of the feature film, I recommend this DVD. Find out more in this full-length DVD review of The Illusionist.

Read a full-length review of The Jerk 26th Anniversary Edition DVD.

Ivana Redwine reviews Luchino Visconti's masterpiece The Leopard.

Read a review of this movie on DVD.

Ingmar Bergman directed a 1975 made-for-television version of Mozart's The Magic Flute that I rate among the very best of the filmed operas. Read more...

Denzel Washington stars in The Manchurian Candidate, a political thriller directed by Jonathan Demme. This is an update of the famous 1962 film of the same name that starred Frank Sinatra and was directed by John Frankenheimer.

A review of The Matador on DVD.

Although the movie drew me in slowly, by the end I was carried away by the high level of craft, including the strong performances by the lead actors, the superb cinematography and music, and the emotional power of the story. Read more...

A review of The New World on DVD.

I would describe the movie The Notebook as an unabashedly romantic tale about love, memories, and death. Read more...

Read a review of this movie on DVD.

A review of The Passenger on DVD.

Read a review of this movie on DVD

When the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's blockbuster stage musical finally came out in 2004, roughly two-thirds of the reviews were negative, and I never got around to seeing it on the big screen. But Phantom has been released on DVD, and although it was with trepidation that I sat down to watch it, I have to say I ended up thoroughly enjoying myself.

There are certain films I like to renew my acquaintance with every few years, and one of these is The Philadelphia Story, which stars Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart.

The Pianist eschews easy emotional connections and refuses to oversimplify, and I think it is one of the most powerful Holocaust films ever made.

Read a review of the DVD set.

"The River" is an English-language Technicolor film that was directed and co-written by the legendary Jean Renoir. While I don't think this movie reaches the level of Renoir's great French-language films "Grand Illusion" and "The Rules of the Game," I nonetheless consider it a splendid cinematic achievement. Read a review of "The River" on DVD.

Cineastes rejoice! Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939), one of the greatest movies ever made, is finally available on DVD! And Criterion Collection has produced a two-disc set containing the film that I would say is probably the best DVD version I have seen so far of any classic movie.

Read a review of The Sound of Music on DVD.

I was flying economy class on a ten-hour flight when The Terminal was shown, and what a welcome diversion it turned out to be. Now DreamWorks has released this comedy on DVD, and when I watched it at home, I enjoyed it even more. Read more...

Ivana Redwine reviews this unusual film noir.

A review of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada on DVD.

A DVD review of this iconic movie and an in-depth look at what's on the DVD set.

A review of The World's Fastest Indian on DVD.

As much as I liked Thirteen, it's far from a perfect film. I give it high marks for theme and setting, but the narrative feels like a series of vignettes strung together.

Before the Star Wars films and American Graffiti made George Lucas famous, he co-wrote and directed an excellent movie titled THX 1138 (1971) starring Robert Duvall.

Universal in theme, humanistic, and accessible, Tokyo Story is one of the greatest masterpieces of world cinema. To my mind, this movie's incredible power comes from its seeming simplicity, which allows emotions to build slowly and subtly, much as they do in real life.

Ivana Redwine reviews of Transamerica on DVD.

A review of this movie on DVD.

Tsotsi is the gritty tale of a brutish young hoodlum finding his humanity because of a chance encounter with a baby. Read a DVD review of Tsotsi.

A review of this movie on DVD.

This is one of the most powerful you-are-there films ever made. But it is heartbreaking, and there's no question that for many viewers, it is too harrowing. Read a full-length review of United 93 on DVD.

A review of Ushpizin on DVD.

Ivana Redwine reviews Vanilla Sky on DVD.

Vanya on 42nd Street is a richly textured, beautifully acted study of human nature and subtle, complex family dynamics.

Venus starts out darkly comic, then moves into pathos and finally comes back with an upbeat ending. The tonal transitions are daunting, and they are not always handled smoothly. Read a review of Venus on DVD.

Vera Drake is a powerful British drama that was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. As far as I am concerned, the movie was one of 2004's best. Read more...

Volver is one of the best ensemble pieces you'll ever see. In addition, this movie is a highly original work that is perfectly accessible to mainstream audiences. Read a review of Volver on DVD.

Ivana Redwine reviews Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit on DVD.

X2 is the sequel to X-Men (2000), and all the main stars return, including Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos.

Yi Yi is a humanistic Mandarin-language movie featuring great visual beauty, narrative complexity and convincing ensemble acting. Read a review of Yi Yi on DVD.

Young Mr. Lincoln is a lyrical, poetic and satisfyingly cinematic biopic about Abraham Lincoln as a young adult. Read a review of this movie on DVD.

A review of this TV series on DVD.

A review of this movie on DVD.

The Road (2009) is a powerful father-son tale and contains one of the best performances by a child actor ever captured on film. The movie is a bleak post-apocalyptic drama faithfully adapted from Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize and was an Oprah Winfrey selection.

Shutter Island DVD review, including a review of Shutter Island the movie, DVD details and bonus materials. Read Ivana Redwine's review of Shutter Island DVD.

The White Ribbon DVD review.

A review of the movie 'Solitary Man' on DVD. 'Solitary Man' DVD review, including a review of 'Solitary Man' the movie, DVD details and bonus materials. Read Ivana Redwine's review of the 'Solitary Man' DVD.

DVD Review: The Secret in Their Eyes, An Entertaining, Oscar-Winning Detective Story From Argentina

Winter's Bone DVD review, including a review of Winter's Bone the movie, DVD details and bonus materials. Read Ivana Redwine's review of the Winter's Bone DVD.

Jesse Eisenberg gives a superb performance as a fictionalized version of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, a riveting film that picks up on the zeitgeist of the early 21st century.

Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, Somewhere was written and directed by Sofia Coppola. It is far removed from mainstream Hollywood movies and is much closer in spirit to European classics that young American adults used to go see in art houses. Somewhere is low-keyed to the point where those who don't like it characterize it as inert. But...

Rabbit Hole was adapted from David Lindsay-Abaire's play that won the Pulitzer Prize. Find out more in this review of Rabbit Hole on DVD.

Vittorio De Sica's 'Shoeshine' is one of the earliest movies of the Italian neorealist. Ivana Redwine reviews 'Shoeshine' on DVD.

Source Code DVD review, including a review of Source Code the movie, DVD details and bonus materials. Read Ivana Redwine's review of Source Code DVD.