Videoheaven Review — Nostalgic but Strangely Cynical

Videoheaven Review: Alex Ross Perry’s Whirlwind Tour Through the Golden Age of the Video Store

In Videoheaven, Blockbuster––to take after Thom Andersen––plays itself. Now deep in a pop-cultural-scholarship phase inaugurated by his last feature Pavements, Alex Ross Perry has made a generous, absorbing three-hour essay film-cum-documentary on nothing else but video-rental stores, those fabled and most benign of places. That is the loveably niche subject, but like the best examples of those brick-and-mortar venues, it contains multitudes: cl…

Three Great Things: Alex Ross Perry

Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the July 2 release of writer-director Alex Ross Perry’ s epic new documentary Videoheaven, a three-hour paean to video stores narrated by Maya Hawke, longtime Talkhouse contributor and NYC indie stalwart Perry shared some of the things he loves the most. — N.D.Baking with Yeast One thing I do that has become very important to me is …

Videoheaven Review — Nostalgic but Strangely Cynical

Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith are just a couple of the famous filmmakers for whom the video store served as an unofficial “film school.” Another unlikely auteur from that pack, Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell), has returned to his video store days with his latest documentary, Videoheaven, which offers a look back at the role that the space played in our cinematic society. Videoheaven Review Videoheaven is inspired by Daniel Herbert’s 2014 book Vi…