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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Cold in July
Based on the novella by Joe Lansdale, Cold in July is an exceptional 2014 crime drama film directed by Jim Mickle. With its ’80s setting, striking visuals, revisionist narrative, and dark tone,...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Joe (2013)
While I’ve enjoyed quite a few films that Nicolas Cage has been in (notably Face/Off, Leaving Las Vegas, Bringing out the Dead, Raising Arizona, The Rock, Red Rock West, Windtalkers, and Bad...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: The Addiction
Abel Ferrara’s 1995 film The Addiction is a philosophical and metaphorical revisionist take on conventional vampire themes and style. Gone are the ridiculous glittering vampires and even the glamorous...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: The Woodsman
I was writing a horror short story about a young boy lost in the woods that attempted to blur the line between reality and fiction (tentatively titled ‘The Woodsman’) when I came across the excellent...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Nightcrawler
Jake Gyllenhaal has been on a roll lately, delivering some of his best performances in films such as End of Watch and Prisoners in recent times. Add 2014’s Nightcrawler to the list, in which he plays...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Joy Division (2007)
Coming out the same year as the excellent fictionalised account Control but enjoying its BBC premiere just now, the 2007 documentary Joy Division is the essential documentary that examines the...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Song of the Sea
2014’s Song of the Sea is a beautiful Irish animated film that appreciates both classical hand-drawn animation and Irish folklore while recognising issues such as lack of spirituality and...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Mommy (2014)
Xavier Dolan’s (Laurence Anyways) fifth film Mommy is a brilliant French-Canadian film from one of the scene’s most promising new talents. It’s about a single mother whose violent and emotionally...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Mad Max: Fury Road
Yes, Mad Max: Fury Road is as good as everyone says it is. Perhaps even better! No, you don’t need to watch the original trilogy beforehand, but it wouldn’t hurt, especially The Road Warrior (my...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Thomas Vinterberg’s (The Hunt) adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Far from the Madding Crowd is absolutely enchanting, a delight of the senses, and an emotional journey. I decided to read the...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: What We Do in the Shadows
‘Vakey, vakey, Petyr!’ Hats off to my amazing girlfriend Daisy for getting me into this! In the frenzy of recent vampire films such as Let the Right One In, the Twilight series , and more, What We Do...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: The Witch
Let’s face it, the Puritans are/were pretty awful. As Ronald Hutton says, they ruined all our fun. Robert Eggers’ excellent debut film The Witch features a Puritan family in seventeenth-century...
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DVD Pick of the Month: The Call of the Wild (2007)
Ron Lamothe’s film The Call of the Wild (2007) is an extraordinary documentary that primarily focusses on the ill-fated quest of Chris McCandless (also subject of Sean Penn’s film Into the Wild, my...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: The Salvation
While it doesn’t really offer the Western genre anything new, who really cares? Kristian Levring’s excellent revisionist Western The Salvation, starring Mads Mikkelsen, the always charming Eva Green,...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Into the Inferno
Werner Herzog’s latest 2016 documentary Into the Inferno is a fiery delight. It comes nearly in tandem with his also excellent Lo and Behold! Reveries of a Connected World, which is about the wonders...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Hard Boiled
Yippee ki yay! ‘Tis the season for Die Hard, folks. But what’s ‘better than a dozen Die Hards’? Well, it’s John Woo’s 1992 film Hard Boiled (not a film about eggs), and this is saying a lot because...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Bad Boys (1983)
Not to be confused with the Will Smith/Martin Lawrence buddy cop Bad Boys series (‘Point Break or Bad Boys II?’), Rick Rosenthal’s 1983 Bad Boys tells a much darker tale. Sean Penn stars as Mick...
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Runstedler’s Pick of the Month: T2: Trainspotting
Not to be confused with the also excellent T2: Judgement Day (one of the best sci-fi films of all time and James Cameron’s finest hour), T2: Trainspotting 2 is well worth the wait and delivers the...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Police Story (1985)
This is arguably Jackie Chan’s best action movie, and certainly one of the best action movies of all time. I think what really propels this one among Chan’s other films is its sheer audacity: consider...
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Runstedler’s DVD Pick of the Month: Tess of the D’Urbervilles (2008)
The enchanting Gemma Arterton stars as Tess in the excellent 2008 BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s masterpiece Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which is near perfect. Arterton is amazing as Tess: immensely...
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