Josef Krebs

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Sullivan’s Travels
Josef Krebs  |  Jul 16, 2015
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Written and directed by silly-but-serious cynical genius Preston Sturges, Sullivan’s Travels starts out with a dark and gloomy film-within-a-film showing two figures battling on a train crossing a bridge, symbolizing labor grappling with management to their mutual destruction. But as soon as we get out of the screening room, things lighten up both visually and in mood, the movie becoming a bright, witty slapstick satire on Hollywood and a pretentious, self-important director, Sullivan (Joel McCrea). This auteur wants to make a sociologically and artistically meritorious picture with messages about grim death, war, and the suffering of the unemployed during The Great Depression but, coming from a privileged background, he knows nothing about trouble. So he decides to go looking for it by dressing as a hobo and drifting across America.
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Other Tech
The /Empire Strikes Back/ director: Irvin Kershner
Josef Krebs  |  Sep 30, 2004

[This is an extended version of the interview that appeared in the October 2004 Sound & Vision to accompany Carrie Fisher's exclusive interview with George Lucas.]

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Assassin
Josef Krebs  |  Jun 10, 2016
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In 8th century China, the Tang dynasty, in decline, had built garrisons at the frontiers of its empire, but a hundred years later, some of those militarized provinces chose independence from the emperor. Weibo is the strongest, so a lovely assassin is sent to kill the head of its clan, Lord Tian. Made by Taiwanese writer-director Hsiao-Hsien Hou, The Assassin’s gorgeous, static imagery and characters, glacially slow-moving camera, and mood-filled silences are matched by the mysteries of the story that are only very gradually revealed, all of which evoke the poetic films of the great Andrei Tarkovsky.
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Blu-ray Player Reviews
The Banshees of Inisherin
Josef Krebs  |  May 12, 2023
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Nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Directing, and Best Original Screenplay, as well as nods to each of the four leading actors, The Banshees of Inisherin tells a simple tale of a man living in a tiny island community off the coast of Ireland who is devastated on hearing that his lifelong friend no longer likes him and doesn’t want to waste any more time talking to him.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Big Sick
Josef Krebs  |  Jan 26, 2018
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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
The Bourne Trilogy
Josef Krebs  |  Mar 02, 2009
Universal
Movies •••½Picture •••• Sound ••••½Extras •••
Jason Bourne: not only a cool-soundi
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Dark Knight
Josef Krebs  |  Dec 08, 2008
Warner
Movie •••• Picture ••••½Sound ••••• Extras ••••
Terrorism, torture, intrusive surveillance, and a
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Elephant Man
Josef Krebs  |  Jan 08, 2021
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Director David Lynch's film tells of Joseph Merrick, whose terrible deformities to head, limbs, and skin led to him being called the Elephant Man. It begins with Merrick's nightmare of his mother being attacked by elephants—supposedly the cause of Merrick's condition—in smeary, scary, surreal images as disturbing as those from Lynch's earlier fatherhood paranoia party film, Eraserhead.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The End of the Tour
Josef Krebs  |  Mar 18, 2016
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The End of the Tour is like My Dinner with Andre but without the dinner or Andre. Yes, it does consist of one long conversation, but unlike Wallace Shaun and Andre Gregory’s fine feast of fascinating, erudite, intellectual spouting, with ideas crashing one upon another, the characters here are remarkable in their compelling ordinariness and awkwardness. It tells of a five-day interview of celebrated novelist David Foster Wallace by rookie Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky on a road book tour following the 1996 publication of Wallace’s groundbreaking novel, Infinite Jest, which wowed a generation with its brilliant virtuosity.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Equalizer
Josef Krebs  |  Apr 24, 2015
Like a big, wet, dumb, dopey dog jumping all over you, The Equalizer hits with home theater power that thumps you in the chest if not the heart. An ex-CIA operative has taken on a new identity, living in obscurity, working in a Home Depot, helping people with their self-esteem issues whenever he can, whether they need to lose weight, get an education, or stop being a corrupt cop. However, when faced with a teenager’s plight of enslavement by brutal sex traffickers, he’s forced back into using his main skillset—terminating roomfuls of bad guys with extreme swiftness and minimal prejudice.
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