Original Cinemaniac

Author Archive: Dennis Dermody

This Property is Condemned

            Out now from Imprint is a stunning-looking Blu-ray of an oddball 1966 Tennessee Williams adaptation, This Property is Condemned, starring Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Kate Reid, Charles Bronson and Mary Badham. Studios at the time were strip-mining anything Tennessee Williams,…
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An Officer and a Spy

            Roman Polanski’s mesmerizing, exquisitely told account of the notorious “Dreyfus Affair” in France in 1894 when a 35-year-old Jewish French artillery officer- Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel)- was wrongfully accused of treason, stripped of his rank and exiled to solitary confinement…
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The Big Heat

            Pauline Kael described Fritz Lang’s 1953 film The Big Heat as “A definitive film noir…it’s designed in light and shadows, and its underworld atmosphere glistens with the possibilities of sadism.” Criterion has just put out a stunning 4K UHD Blu-ray…
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New Extremity Collection

            New Extremity Collection (Volume One) (Umbrella) A 4-disc Blu-ray box set of some cinematic highlights from the genre of films christened “New French Extremity,” reveling in brutality, sex and violence. There is a sensational book: “Films of the New French…
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