Quentin Tarantino’s first feature may not be to all tastes, but it is an admirable feat of commercial filmmaking — what other director has broken into the front rank with such panache? The fifth time through, the splintered, elliptical structure still impresses, and there’s always something new to see in the performances of Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, and Steve Buscemi. The (rather bargain-priced) 4K disc set has everything — two formats, a digital code and those deleted scenes to ponder. And a Pulp Fiction 4K is due in just a week or so.
Reservoir Dogs 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital
Lionsgate
1992 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / 30th Anniversary Edition / Street Date November 15, 2022 / Available from Amazon / 22.99
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Randy Brooks, Kirk Baltz, Eddie Bunker, Quentin Tarantino.
Cinematography: Andrzej Sekula
Production Designer: David Wasco
Film Editor: Sally Menke
Dedicatees: Timothy Carey,...
Reservoir Dogs 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital
Lionsgate
1992 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / 30th Anniversary Edition / Street Date November 15, 2022 / Available from Amazon / 22.99
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Randy Brooks, Kirk Baltz, Eddie Bunker, Quentin Tarantino.
Cinematography: Andrzej Sekula
Production Designer: David Wasco
Film Editor: Sally Menke
Dedicatees: Timothy Carey,...
- 11/26/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
This picture looks as modern and radical as anything from Italy in the 1960s, yet it’s a tough-talking take on hardboiled crime caper fiction. In three pictures Stanley Kubrick went from amateur to contender: now he has a like-minded producer, a top-flight cast, and the help of the legendary pulp author Jim Thompson. Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards peg the cynical film noir style, and Kubrick maintains the source book’s splintered chronology for the tense racetrack heist. All Hollywood took notice — at least that part of the industry looking out for daring, progressive storytelling. Now in 4K, Kubrick’s superb B&w images look better than ever.
The Killing
4K Ultra HD
Kl Studio Classics
1956 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date July 26, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95
Starring: Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen,...
The Killing
4K Ultra HD
Kl Studio Classics
1956 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date July 26, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95
Starring: Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen,...
- 7/30/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
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By Fred Blosser
We moviegoers are a caring, law-abiding community, or at least we’re assumed to be, but regardless of how timid or tender-hearted we are, producers know that we’re usually pushovers for movies about Big Heists. As long as the crime is perpetrated against an institution like a bank, a multinational corporation, or a casino, and no person is threatened or injured, the protagonists’ antisocial behavior becomes an abstraction. We’re free, vicariously, to admire their ingenuity and tenacity as they carry out their complicated scheme. But what if the story is based on a big payout that directly endangers an innocent person? Then it becomes harder to sell the concept as escapist entertainment, as journeyman filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and Hubert Cornfield discovered in the mid-1950s, when they both became interested, independently, in a 1953 novel by Lionel White.
By Fred Blosser
We moviegoers are a caring, law-abiding community, or at least we’re assumed to be, but regardless of how timid or tender-hearted we are, producers know that we’re usually pushovers for movies about Big Heists. As long as the crime is perpetrated against an institution like a bank, a multinational corporation, or a casino, and no person is threatened or injured, the protagonists’ antisocial behavior becomes an abstraction. We’re free, vicariously, to admire their ingenuity and tenacity as they carry out their complicated scheme. But what if the story is based on a big payout that directly endangers an innocent person? Then it becomes harder to sell the concept as escapist entertainment, as journeyman filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and Hubert Cornfield discovered in the mid-1950s, when they both became interested, independently, in a 1953 novel by Lionel White.
- 5/22/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Hubert Cornfield’s smoothly directed, moody kidnapping story is mysterious, engaging and well acted, but opts for an anti-thriller vibe with a curiously unsatisfying ending. Was this really the plan, or did the irksomely capricious Marlon Brando just not want to cooperate with the director? Brando is terrific anyway. The well-cast Rita Moreno, Richard Boone and Pamela Franklin are short-changed by directorial and editorial decisions that don’t give us enough of a purchase on the characters. The overcast weather on the French coast is a plus, but not the director’s choice of a downbeat, arty finish.
The Night of the Following Day
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date May 25, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Marlon Brando, Richard Boone, Rita Moreno, Pamela Franklin,
Jess Hahn, Gérard Buhr, Hugues Wanner, Jacques Marin, Al Lettieri.
Cinematography: Willy Kurant
Film Editor: Gordon Pilkington
Art Direction Jean Boulet
Original...
The Night of the Following Day
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date May 25, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Marlon Brando, Richard Boone, Rita Moreno, Pamela Franklin,
Jess Hahn, Gérard Buhr, Hugues Wanner, Jacques Marin, Al Lettieri.
Cinematography: Willy Kurant
Film Editor: Gordon Pilkington
Art Direction Jean Boulet
Original...
- 5/1/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Mubi's retrospective For Ever Godard is showing from November 12, 2017 - January 16, 2018 in the United States.Jean-Luc Godard is a difficult filmmaker to pin down because while his thematic concerns as an artist have remained more or less consistent over the last seven decades, his form is ever-shifting. His filmography is impossible to view in a vacuum, as his work strives to reflect on the constantly evolving cinema culture that surrounds it: Godard always works with the newest filmmaking technologies available, and his films have become increasingly abstracted and opaque as the wider culture of moving images has become increasingly fragmented. Rather than working to maintain an illusion of diegetic truth, Godard’s work as always foreground its status as a manufactured product—of technology, of an industry, of on-set conditions and of an individual’s imagination. Mubi’S Godard retrospective exemplifies the depth and range of Godard’s career as...
- 11/19/2017
- MUBI
Coleen Gray in 'The Sleeping City' with Richard Conte. Coleen Gray after Fox: B Westerns and films noirs (See previous post: “Coleen Gray Actress: From Red River to Film Noir 'Good Girls'.”) Regarding the demise of her Fox career (the year after her divorce from Rod Amateau), Coleen Gray would recall for Confessions of a Scream Queen author Matt Beckoff: I thought that was the end of the world and that I was a total failure. I was a mass of insecurity and depended on agents. … Whether it was an 'A' picture or a 'B' picture didn't bother me. It could be a Western movie, a sci-fi film. A job was a job. You did the best with the script that you had. Fox had dropped Gray at a time of dramatic upheavals in the American film industry: fast-dwindling box office receipts as a result of competition from television,...
- 10/15/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The Conversation is a new feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their second piece, they will discuss Stanley Kubrick’s film The Killing (1956).
Drew’s Take
Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) is not my favorite work by the visionary director. In fact, the film probably wouldn’t even make it onto a list of my top five Kubrick films. Yet, with a career that included such amazing films as Paths of Glory (1957),Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964),2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barry Lyndon (1975), and The Shining (1980), that’s not an indication that The Killing is a film of poor quality but an indication that Kubrick’s body of work comes the closest to cinematic perfection than any director I can think of. Thus, while The Killing...
Drew’s Take
Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) is not my favorite work by the visionary director. In fact, the film probably wouldn’t even make it onto a list of my top five Kubrick films. Yet, with a career that included such amazing films as Paths of Glory (1957),Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964),2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barry Lyndon (1975), and The Shining (1980), that’s not an indication that The Killing is a film of poor quality but an indication that Kubrick’s body of work comes the closest to cinematic perfection than any director I can think of. Thus, while The Killing...
- 2/7/2015
- by Landon Palmer
- SoundOnSight
Thanks to Criterion, Stanley Kubrick's The Seafarers is now the only film from the iconic director not available on Blu-ray. Criterion recently brought Kubrick's Paths of Glory to beautiful high-definition and now the director's 1956 heist feature, The Killing, arrives with a special inclusion, the helmer's 1955 feature Killer's Kiss. Releasing The Killing is one thing and should be enough to get you to buy this title, but the fact it also includes Killer's Kiss pretty much means any Kubrick fan simply has to buy it. I'm sorry, but those are the rules.
The screenplay was co-written by Kubrick with dialogue by pulp novelist Jim Thompson (though Thompson would later claim he wrote most of the film, a spat that almost ended their relationship), The Killing is based on "Clean Break" by Lionel White. The story is told using a fractured narrative, following the planning of a racetrack robbery. Throughout the film's brisk,...
The screenplay was co-written by Kubrick with dialogue by pulp novelist Jim Thompson (though Thompson would later claim he wrote most of the film, a spat that almost ended their relationship), The Killing is based on "Clean Break" by Lionel White. The story is told using a fractured narrative, following the planning of a racetrack robbery. Throughout the film's brisk,...
- 9/27/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
"Often unfairly dismissed as a minor prelude to Stanley Kubrick's work from his attention-demanding antiwar indictment Paths of Glory onwards, 1956's The Killing finds the master imposing Big Direction on Small Ideas," argues Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "Instead of the headier themes associated with Kubrick — nuclear war, Vietnam, extraterrestrial monoliths — here is an 84-minute noir, adapted from a Lionel White novel by expert nihilist Jim Thompson, confined to the bare minimum of sets and a few street exteriors. The dialogue has Thompson's characteristic mean-spirited tone: when Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) tells her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) about her meek husband George's (Elisha Cook Jr) upcoming involvement in a robbery, he scoffs. 'That meatball?' Sherry corrects him: 'A meatball with gravy.'"
"The first product of the reportedly strained, multi-film collaboration between Kubrick and Thompson, their incendiary script for The Killing remains cinematic legend, lightning trapped in...
"The first product of the reportedly strained, multi-film collaboration between Kubrick and Thompson, their incendiary script for The Killing remains cinematic legend, lightning trapped in...
- 8/19/2011
- MUBI
by Vadim Rizov
Often unfairly dismissed as a minor prelude to Stanley Kubrick's work from his attention-demanding antiwar indictment Paths of Glory onwards, 1956's The Killing finds the master imposing Big Direction on Small Ideas. Instead of the headier themes associated with Kubrick—nuclear war, Vietnam, extraterrestrial monoliths—here is an 84-minute noir, adapted from a Lionel White novel by expert nihilist Jim Thompson, confined to the bare minimum of sets and a few street exteriors. The dialogue has Thompson's characteristic mean-spirited tone: when Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) tells her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) about her meek husband George's (Elisha Cook Jr.) upcoming involvement in a robbery, he scoffs. "That meatball?" Sherry corrects him: "A meatball with gravy."
George has been recruited by Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) for a racetrack robbery timed to the minute; narrator Art Gilmore (a veteran TV/radio announcer and voice-over artist who voiced Fdr,...
Often unfairly dismissed as a minor prelude to Stanley Kubrick's work from his attention-demanding antiwar indictment Paths of Glory onwards, 1956's The Killing finds the master imposing Big Direction on Small Ideas. Instead of the headier themes associated with Kubrick—nuclear war, Vietnam, extraterrestrial monoliths—here is an 84-minute noir, adapted from a Lionel White novel by expert nihilist Jim Thompson, confined to the bare minimum of sets and a few street exteriors. The dialogue has Thompson's characteristic mean-spirited tone: when Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) tells her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) about her meek husband George's (Elisha Cook Jr.) upcoming involvement in a robbery, he scoffs. "That meatball?" Sherry corrects him: "A meatball with gravy."
George has been recruited by Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) for a racetrack robbery timed to the minute; narrator Art Gilmore (a veteran TV/radio announcer and voice-over artist who voiced Fdr,...
- 8/16/2011
- GreenCine Daily
It’s extremely difficult to type the words “my favorite Kubrick film” because I honestly feel I could put that down while writing about any of them. But what I can say about Stanley Kubrick’s Hollywood calling card The Killing is it’s the one film of his that I’m most nostalgic about.
Film noir. Jim Thompson’s words. Sterling Hayden’s “when men were men” bravado. The contract studio picture was on the way out and the New Hollywood of Bogdanovich, Ashby and Nichols were breaking down the doors.
But before that (and likely escalating the emergence of New Hollywood) there was Kubrick. Then 28 and coming from New York’s beatnik era having just made a twisted romance drama Killer’s Kiss (which he shot with no sound and dubbed the dialogue in post) in 1955, one year later he would team with indie producer James B. Harris...
Film noir. Jim Thompson’s words. Sterling Hayden’s “when men were men” bravado. The contract studio picture was on the way out and the New Hollywood of Bogdanovich, Ashby and Nichols were breaking down the doors.
But before that (and likely escalating the emergence of New Hollywood) there was Kubrick. Then 28 and coming from New York’s beatnik era having just made a twisted romance drama Killer’s Kiss (which he shot with no sound and dubbed the dialogue in post) in 1955, one year later he would team with indie producer James B. Harris...
- 8/16/2011
- by Jason Guerrasio
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
For a self-described "reactionary" filmmaker, Monte Hellman is remarkably forward-thinking. Road to Nowhere (reviewed here), his first feature since 1989, is a film shot digitally that's partly about cinema in the digital age; from its very first shot—where a character pops a DVD-r with the film's title on it into a laptop—on, Road to Nowhere is a film about the slipperiness of digitally created, manipulated and viewed images. Written by longtime Hellman collaborator Steve Gaydos, it stars Shannyn Sossammon as Laurel, an inexperienced actress who is cast in a true crime drama also called Road to Nowhere (directed by one “Mitchell Haven” and written by one “Stephen Gates”); in this film-within-a-film, Laurel plays femme-fatale-ish Velma Duran, though the whole thing is ambiguous enough (in terms of structure, characterization, aesthetics, etc.) that at least one character begins to suspect that Laurel and Duran are in fact the same person.
Hellman is erudite and easygoing.
Hellman is erudite and easygoing.
- 7/26/2011
- MUBI
In the Criterion Collection’s newsletters are subtle hints at a possible release from them, teasing their fans, and in their newest one, The Killing (1956) could be next.
The film was an early work of Stanley Kubrick, long Oop on DVD (the being from MGM), from author Lionel White. Set in the film noir style, the plots follows a crooks plan and execute a daring racetrack robbery. During its initial release, it was well-received, yet failed to make money at the box office.
No word on if this is confirmed, or if it would received a full Criterion treatment or an Eclipse release, but if anyone’s going to tackle Kubrick’s early work, it’s Criterion.
Source: Criterion Cast...
The film was an early work of Stanley Kubrick, long Oop on DVD (the being from MGM), from author Lionel White. Set in the film noir style, the plots follows a crooks plan and execute a daring racetrack robbery. During its initial release, it was well-received, yet failed to make money at the box office.
No word on if this is confirmed, or if it would received a full Criterion treatment or an Eclipse release, but if anyone’s going to tackle Kubrick’s early work, it’s Criterion.
Source: Criterion Cast...
- 3/18/2011
- by Jon Peters
- Killer Films
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