Since he first delighted audiences and divided critics with his stylized, idiosyncratic first feature, Strictly Ballroom, writer/ director Baz Luhrmann has gone on to make Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge - each more ambitious, more stylized, and more dividing of critics than the last. Each has also had greater success at the box office and in accumulating awards both in the U.S.
Criterion's 1999 DVD edition of The Seventh Seal is a favorite partly because of its wonderfully substantial extras. Now the company has upped the ante by releasing Ingmar Bergman's 1957 black-and-white classic on a stunning Blu-ray Disc and adding to those extras, all now in high-def.
Call me crazy, but I couldn't help seeing Coraline as an indictment of capitalism. I'm referring to the part of capitalism that, with its eye-popping advertising, promises everything you thought would make you happy but actually offers a mostly gray, overworked existence in which you're a slave to the computer, you have no time for your family, and your soul is not your own.