This one’s a keeper, a film that generates a meaningful emotional charge. Ian McKellen and director Bill Condon re-team for an intensely felt portrait of Sherlock Holmes in his sunset years, holding on to his intellectual capacities as he reappraises a tragic case from years before. Laura Linney is his housekeeper, who fears Holmes is…

Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing costar in a worthwhile horror attraction — and for once even share some scenes. Amicus gives us five tales of the uncanny, each with a clever twist or sting in its tail. Creepy mountebank Cushing deals the Tarot cards that spell out the grim fates in store; Chris Lee is…

Edward Dmytryk’s big-scale cattle empire saga sees paterfamilias Spencer Tracy drive away his sons and bull his way into a modern civil dispute that can’t be resolved with force. Robert Wagner is the loyal son and Richard Widmark the resentful son impatient for Dad to cash in his chips. Fox’s early CinemaScope and stereophonic sound…

Michael Curtiz’s wartime tale of Devil’s Island convict Humphrey Bogart fighting to get back and defend France has a still-controversial scene of violence. The convoluted storyline nests enough flashbacks-within-flashbacks to confuse any viewer, and packs the screen with every actor on the Warner lot who can handle a foreign accent. With Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet,…

Carl Franklin scored with this exciting adapation of Walter Mosley’s first ‘Easy’ Rawlins detective tale, starring a terrific Denzel Washington as the South Central resident who takes up snoop work to pay the mortgage. Don Cheadle steals the show as Easy’s loose-cannon pal from Texas, Mouse Alexander; this really should have been the beginning of…

A classy crime thriller, with edgy suspense and twists that can’t be predicted.  Mike Hodges directs Paul Mayersberg’s script about a frustrated writer who returns to casino work to find material for a book.  A young Clive Owen shines as the rakish but sensible roulette & blackjack dealer, who documents his own criminal activities. Croupier Blu-ray Hen’s…

Sam Fuller’s superior western classic stars Rod Steiger, Brian Keith, Charles Bronson and Sarita Montiel, and takes on a tall stack of potent issues. A Reb sharpshooter denies the South’s defeat, and goes west to join the Sioux nation where he can continue his war against the Yankees. This spin on ‘The Man Without a Country’…

Tom DiCillo’s satire about the pitfalls of low budget filmmaking is less farce than it is a loving valentine to the difficult task of getting something relevant on film. Steve Buscemi is the frustrated director, Catherine Keener the insecure actress, and Peter Dinklage the little person not pleased that he’s been hired to play a…

Ambiguous Ave.?  Bizarro Blvd.?  David Lynch’s major mystery movie is back looking better than ever in a 4K transfer. Criterion’s presentation accompanies it with a stack of interesting interviews with Lynch, Naomi Watts, Laura Herring plus other actors and crew people. The movie began, it seems, as sort of a non-spinoff spinoff of Twin Peaks….

The catalyst behind Ulli Lommel’s perverse horror masterpiece might be writer-actor-art director Kurt Raab. He’s almost too convincing as Fritz Haarmann, an infamous real-life serial killer of young men who masks his abominable activities behind a snitch relationship with the police. He’s an obscene cross between Peter Lorre’s child-murderer and the ghoul Nosferatu. Tenderness of…

Don’t Wait!  Put on the mask, NOW!   The legendary 1961 spook-show classic has been restored and adapted to a better 3-D system than used for its original release.  A psychiatrist possessed by a Mayan ritual mask is compelled to enter a fantastic hell zone each time he wears the scary thing.  Kino packs the…

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni star in a serious drama about two outsiders in Mussolini’s Rome of 1938, an ordinary housewife and a political undesirable. They have a lot in common, as it turns out. Writer-director Ettore Scola condemnation of an oppressive authoritarian state, addresses the most basic human rights violations. A Special Day Blu-ray The…

(Region B)   Akira Kurosawa’s unquestioned top rank classic remains a fascinating study of truth and justice. A forest encounter left a man murdered and his wife raped. Or did something entirely different happen? The witnesses Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Machiko Kyo give radically differing testimony. This UK edition offers a full commentary by…

The gaudy MGM musical bio gets one last go-round, gathering an all-star cast to illustrate the songbook of composer Sigmund Romberg. Gene Kelly dances with his brother Fred, and Cyd Charisse does a hot number with James Mitchell, while star José Ferrer goes on stage to perform with his wife Rosemary Clooney. Deep in My Heart…

Yet another European art film director tries his hand at cerebral Sci-fi. Alain Resnais’ openly experimental movie uses a generic time travel framework to, what else, explore the phenomenon of memory. Suicidal melancholic Claude Rich is projected back exactly one year, for exactly one minute. What could go wrong? Je t’aime, je t’aime Blu-ray Kino…

It’s just like the film industry, I tell ya!  Director Jules Dassin teams with writer A.I. Bezzerides for one of filmdom’s strongest slams at the free market system. Trucker Richard Conte fights back when cheated and robbed by Lee J. Cobb’s racketeering produce czar. Thieves’ Highway Region B Blu-ray + PAL DVD Arrow Video (UK) 1949 / B&W…

Vincent Price’s diabolical surgeon produces a new breed of supermen, except that his latest ‘composite’ creation is also a serial-killing vampire. While the mayhem keeps the cops busy,  the conspiracy spreads to a foreign dictatorship, where another composite is consolidating power through high-level murders. British agent Christopher Lee is ferreting out the conspiracy– or is…

He’s back and he’s funnier than ever. The mischievous, cagey entertainer William Claude Dukenfield starred in some of the best comedies ever. This five-disc DVD set contains eighteen of his best, all the way from Million Dollar Legs in 1932 to Never Give a Sucker an Even Break in 1941. And we get to see…

We’ve already got a fine domestic disc with both versions of John Ford’s fine Henry Fonda western. This Region B UK release duplicates that arrangement with different extras, and throws in a fine HD transfer of an earlier Allan Dwan version of the same story — with strong similarities — called Frontier Marshal. It stars…

José Ferrer stars in his second dramatic feature as director, teamed with newcomer Gena Rowlands as a married working couple. Ferrer’s executive assistant isn’t on the list of those invited to meet the new corporate bosses, which everyone knows means he’s a dead employee walking. Things are looking darkest just as his loving wife is…

Meet Indominus Rex, a designer dinosaur with the brain of Hannibal Lecter and a cloaking device like Predator!  Steven Spielberg steps back and lets a pro team put together the most-likely-to-earn-billions entry imaginable for the Jurassic Park franchise, where dinosaurs love to eat people, but not cute kids or privileged heroes. The special effects are…

David Cronenberg swaps his  venereal ick-monsters for Samantha Eggar’s mater furiosa,  an annihilating female who commits her killings as would the villain of a Greek tragedy — through her offspring. Oliver Reed is the new-age guru of ‘Psychoplasmics,’ who teaches Eggar to direct her rage in an utterly unique way. The disturbing concept sounds less preposterous…

In honor of Halloween, I once again have a special essay-article up, and this time I can name the contributor. Randall William Cook rates special celebrity status around DVD Savant despite being a friend from way, way back. I hope he’s writing a book about his career, because his Hollywood experiences range far afield, from UCLA…

I’ll trade you two RKOs for two Warners’, an even swap!  This quartet of movie-magic wonderments offers a graduate course on old-school film effects wizardry at its best. Willis O’Brien passes the baton to disciple Ray Harryhausen, who dazzles us with his own effects magic for the first ’50s giant monster epic. And the best…

What makes a Ghost Story scary? This classic was almost too artistic for the Japanese. Masaki Kobayashi’s four stories of terror work their spells through intensely beautiful images — weirdly painted skies, strange mists — and a Toru Takemitsu audio track that incorporates strange sounds as spooky musical punctuation. Viewers never forget the Woman of…

  Writer Jesse Andrews and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon overturn the formula for the modern teen comedy: they lay on the quirky storytelling and goofy movie parodies, but also give us characters that are reasonably human and complex. We’re soon invested in a warm and rewarding drama. Young actors Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler and Olivia Cooke…