Free Republic

Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead is an interesting yarn featuring some tight writing and fine performances from an ensemble of very good thespians. It also sports a really good 4K HDR transfer that makes it even better. The Western drama stars Sharon Stone (who also co-produced), Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio. All are, or were, gunslingers who congregate in a nondescript one-horse town called Redemption for a gunfighting competition in which all comers shoot it out with whoever challenges them, the winner taking home a huge pot (well, chest) of money. Stone is a woman bent...

Going all the way back to the days when Fritz Lang had to flee Germany after Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels figured out that Lang's "Dr. Mabuse" thrillers were crammed with all sorts of not-entirely-hidden cautionary warnings about the evil, malevolent tyrant who was about to transform Germany into a truly evil empire, horror films have had a justified reputation for ruffling our feathers, for stoking our most unruly, subconscious urges and fears. In horror films, there is always more to the images than meets the eye. That goes double for the slyly evocative one-sheet for "Drag Me to Hell," the...