First of all, huge thanks goes to AIM Publicity who made sure I received a review copy of this release, so that I could bring you my thoughts. Those guys work tirelessly to ensure small reviewers like me don’t miss out on some of the biggest releases, and I’m eternally grateful 🙏
📀 COSA NOSTRA Box Set (2023)
📀 From the Back & Special Features
Blu-ray Limited Edition Box Set. Three films by Damiano Damiani – THE DAY OF THE OWL, THE CASE IS CLOSED: FORGET IT, and HOW TO KILL A JUDGE.
• 2K restorations of each film presented with Italian and English audio, and two new cuts of THE DAY OF THE OWL.
• New interviews with Franco Nero on each film.
• Archival Making-Of Documentaries.
• IDENTITY CRIME-SIS: A featurette on the Italian crime genre formation by filmmaker Mike Malloy.
• CASTING COBB: A visual essay on the legendary actor.
• Archival interview with Claudia Cardinale.
• ITALY’S CINEMATIC CIVIL CONSCIENCE: A visual essay on the director by Italian cinema expert Rachael Nisbet.
• Interview with Damiani expert Alberto Pezzotta who discusses his contribution to the crime genre.
• LESSONS IN VIOLENCE: A visual essay on HOW TO KILL A JUDGE by David Cairns.
• Trailers
• New and improved English and SDH subtitles.
• Reversible sleeves for each film.
• Limited Edition 120-page book featuring new and archival writing by leading experts.
📀 Thoughts
Radiance Films, led faultlessly by Fran Simeoni, have quickly established themselves as being one of the UK’s best and most reliable boutique labels. The freedom that they’ve had to handpick, lovingly restore, and release classic movies from around the world has been a joy to watch. In fact, its due to Radiance and their release of little known movies that I’ve found a few gems that have quickly entered my top 20 movies of all time list. A very impressive start to a label that wasn’t even in existence a couple of years ago.
Now, as far as this release goes, I’m not going to lie; I’d never seen any of these movies before. That’s not to say that I’m not an admirer of Italian crime cinema. I just had never got around to watching these three because they were so difficult to get a hold of. That’s the beauty of boutique labels; they find obscure masterpieces and bring them to the masses and make them accessible once again.
All three of these movies had me gripped right from the start. I found myself switching between the Italian and English audio for a short time before settling on the Italian with English subs. I appreciate having the choice to watch in English, but I much prefer to watch movies in the way (and the language) that they were originally made.
The audio was clear and crisp. None of the hissing or crackling that you’d expect from movies of this genre and from that time period. You can tell some hard work has gone into cleaning up the sound, and your ears will be thankful of this fact. The mix is great, with subtle increases in volume here and there that are hardly noticeable.
Visually, these movies look stunning. That’s literally all I can say. The fine layer of grain will excite the purists who want to see as much detail as possible, and with it only being a fine layer of grain, it shouldn’t trigger those of you who don’t enjoy a grain overload when it comes to your movies. Again, you can tell that painstaking work has gone into these restorations and the incredible results are clear to see!
All in all, this is probably the best release Radiance have made thus far. It will certainly be their most sought after once reviews and word of mouth pick up pace. If I were you I wouldn’t hesitate in picking up this release, or better yet, preordering it. Because this won’t be available for long. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending time deciding whether to buy a release, only for it to go out of stock or out of print. Do yourselves a favour, don’t debate with yourself whether to buy this 5-star release. Just do it, and thank me later.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The COSTA NOSTRA box set is available to preorder NOW, with a release date of Monday July 24th scheduled. Available in all the usual places; Amazon, HMV, etc.
Movie_Fan_Mike 