Josef Krebs

Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Sawdust and Tinsel
Josef Krebs  |  Feb 15, 2019  |  1 comments
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Albert (Åke Grönberg), the aging owner and ringmaster of an impoverished travelling circus, takes the troupe to his home town in order to visit his estranged wife and sons with the hope of returning to the safe, bourgeois family nest. In reaction, his jealous young lover (the gorgeous Harriet Andersson), a horseback rider, allows a charismatic actor to seduce her.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Andrei Rublev
Josef Krebs  |  Dec 14, 2018  |  0 comments
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Set in the early 1400s, Russian writer-director Andrei Tarkovsky’s greatest masterpiece depicts the life of the famous icon painter, Andrei Rublev. But it also keeps everyday village existence, extraordinary events, and medieval Russian history moving from background to foreground in an episodic narrative tapestry. Princes and religion rule every aspect of Russian life, with motivation for actions stemming from belief in God (or the retribution of the church), subservience, and fear of the merciless Tartar invaders. Faith and art are put to the test in this overflowing epic as the painter travels through the decades of his time.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Tree Of Life
Josef Krebs  |  Nov 30, 2018  |  0 comments
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Writer-director Terrence Malick’s remarkable, poetic The Tree of Life tells the story of a family in 1950s Texas and the impact that losing a son has on them. Using a stream-of-consciousness flow of images and sounds, the film authentically captures a childhood remembered by centering on the lyrical day-to-day, moment-by-moment experiences of the two surviving young brothers. The film examines, from many angles, the questioning of God and the meaning to life in an evolutionary sense. Relationships with Him are expressed in whispered voiceovers and through a long sequence that visualizes the creation of the world.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Josef Krebs  |  Oct 12, 2018  |  2 comments
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This indie revelation explores sexuality, relationships, and the way that both interact with technology. Therapy doesn’t seem to be opening uptight housewife Ann to her feelings; it takes videotaped erotic confessions for her to overcome her inhibitions. Meanwhile, Ann’s sister and husband are deceiving her with a steamy affair and endless lies. Eventually, a candid, oddball drifter comes to visit and uses his video project to untangle the tape tying up this dysfunctional family.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Foreigner
Josef Krebs  |  May 25, 2018  |  0 comments
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The Foreigner, a superior action-thriller from Martin Campbell, the director of two of the best Bond outings ever—Casino Royale and GoldenEye—not only delivers both excitement and dramatic complexity but offers a surprisingly moving performance from its star, Jackie Chan. Presented in a Blu-ray of impressive picture and sound quality, it makes for memorable home theater.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Geostorm
Josef Krebs  |  May 18, 2018  |  4 comments
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Facing their own complete extinction due to extreme storms that are destroying whole cities, the world finally comes together, sending 17 teams of scientists and engineers to create a system, a series of satellites all controlled by a giant space station that can use an assortment of devices—super lasers, thermal missiles, freezing beams, etc.—to stabilize the weather. Naturally, someone’s gonna try to seize control of Dutchboy, as the system is known, and weaponize it to make himself president of an all-powerful country that will destroy its enemies and rule the planet.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Young Mr. Lincoln
Josef Krebs  |  Apr 06, 2018  |  0 comments
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Young Mr. Lincoln is a biography that avoids dramatizing any major achievements or historical events that make up a person’s destiny. Instead, they are alluded to by visual metaphor, audio clues, or pieces of Civil War music. At a local fair, we see Lincoln judging a pie contest, having to choose between a Georgia peach and an American apple pie, winning a logsplitting competition by dividing the body in two, and helping a tugof-war team succeed by hitching their end of the rope to a wagon; all subtly stand in for Lincoln’s moral struggles with slavery, justice and rule of law, and the coming Civil War.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Maurice
Josef Krebs  |  Feb 02, 2018  |  0 comments
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Based the novel by E. M. Forster, Maurice is a groundbreaking room with a different view, projecting as much romance, passion, and class consciousness as producer Ismael Merchant and screenwriter-director James Ivory brought to their earlier hit adaptation of another Forster novel. In 1909, a student at Cambridge, Clive, urges college colleague Maurice to embrace the love of male physical beauty as described in classical literature and accept their mutual platonic love.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Big Sick
Josef Krebs  |  Jan 26, 2018  |  0 comments
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Shot on a budget of $5 million, acquired for $12 million, and promoted with a $20-million marketing budget, The Big Sick grossed $50 million worldwide and claimed much acclaim. For me, The Big Sick initially came across as The Big Suck, but on a second, more sobering screening, it made sense, building from the characters’ youthful shallowness to emotional growth into something like near-human depth.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Collateral Beauty
Josef Krebs  |  Nov 10, 2017  |  0 comments
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This being the third film in a row I’ve reviewed on Blu-ray in which a man’s life is destroyed by the death of a child and the loss of a wife (alongside Manchester by the Sea and Nocturnal Animals) leads me to suspect that a strong sense of loss is vibrating through our national zeitgeist despite the blessings of unsocial media. Collateral Beauty, a feel-good downer (a romtrage, if you will), is a parable filled with It’s a Wonderful Life–like whimsy concerning a grieving advertising executive, Howard (Will Smith), who, two years on from the loss of his daughter, is writing letters to Time, Death, and Love to voice his complaints and express his trauma.
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