Like so many collectors, special CineSavant reviewer ‘B’ has been waiting forever for a decent disc of Frank and Eleanor Perry’s hard-to-forget 1969 film about three restless, careless teenagers idly summering on Fire Island. Beautifully restored on Blu-ray by The Warner Archive, it is back in circulation as few of us have seen it, in…
King Creole – 4K 1958 – 115 Min. – 1.78:1 Kino Lorber – 4K Blu-ray Starring Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones, Dolores Hart Written by Herbert Baker, Michael V. Gazzo Directed by Michael Curtiz If you’ve never seen a movie or read a book, you might be surprised by the twists and turns of King Creole,…
Wonder of wonders — restored to HD, Warners’ ode to high art generates big magic through Shakepeare’s giddy romantic comedy. Newcomer Olivia de Havilland romps with Dick Powell, Ross Alexander and Jean Muir, while James Cagney, Joe E. Brown, Frank McHugh and Co. clown it up like happy idiots. Backed by the music of Mendelssohn,…
Jack Nicholson’s second breakthrough film and the first to show his dramatic range is Bob Rafelson and Carole Eastman’s portrait of an unsettled drifter. Bobby Dupea is described by Criterion as an alienated & irresponsible cad — but one caught between a heritage in the arts and a trailer park working man’s life. It’s a…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, a trio of Shakespeare movies. You didn’t know they had movies back then, did you? A wine pairing will be given for each. From 1996, we have Looking for Richard….
Severin Slays with disc virtuosity … by reaching into the BBC archives for a 4K remaster of Peter Watkins’ searing ‘documentary’ of nuclear war in England’s County Kent. With minimal resources and maximum creativity, Watkins’ atomic horrorshow was deemed excellent yet was banned from the airwaves, starting a censorship controversy that still hasn’t cooled down….
For his third feature film Fred Zinnemann scored big with a grim story of Nazi terror that finally took note of the Concentration Camps, if not the full immensity of their horror. Spencer Tracy’s everyman fugitive one of seven escapees, and the people he meets and things he sees would send any war industry worker…
Sony surprises us with another fine 4K upgrade for an unheralded classic in the Columbia library. It’s a shipwreck survival tale that challenges ship’s officer Tyrone Power with a series of impossible decisions. The most important is a heartbreaker: everyone will drown if the 9-person lifeboat continues to carry the 26 people presently clinging to…
This early starring feature for Jean-Paul Belmondo co-stars him with Christine Kaufmann in an episodic crime tale. One friend tries to spring another from prison, while contending with gangsters on his home turf. It’s uneven but has many excellent scenes, especially a midsection filmed in le taule. Also starring Michel Constantine and Béatrice Altariba, and…
