RKO polished Robert Mitchum’s post- pot bust image with this swell-guy romantic Christmas tale, placing him opposite the drop-dead desirable Janet Leigh. All the penniless Mitchum must do is win over Leigh’s son, get around her fiance Wendell Corey, and then make her forget her dead soldier husband. Plus keep up the Christmas spirit….

  Criterion refreshes a bona fide classic with a new remaster and makes their release especially attractive with some well-chosen extras that give us first-person input from writer John Patrick Shanley and star Cher. The show isn’t technically a holiday movie but it plays really well at family gatherings. Heck, even Cher says ‘she can…

  Do audiences ever ask for a History Lesson?  Robert Altman gives them a smart, if diffuse, image of America as a showbiz invention, commercialized and packaged. Paul Newman is the prepackaged white hero surrounded by a jolly circus; Buffalo Bill’s trick seems to be to get his colleagues, the dispossessed minorities and especially the…

  Guest reviewer Matt Rovner delves into the cultural riches of ethnic films specially made for speakers of the Yiddish language. Some were filmed in Poland and others in New Jersey (according to Edgar Ulmer!)… and if they seem obscure they’re nevertheless culturally significant as a record of a language that’s fast disappearing. Among the…

  Robert Aldrich promised no-holds barred rough-tough dramas, and his first two Associates & Aldrich productions certainly hit hard. This play adaptation shows its director’s strength (no-flinching full shock impact) and weakness (theatrical overplaying) in full measure, but the unrestrained performances of Jack Palance and Eddie Albert are unforgettable. The main event can’t have pleased…

  This adapted Broadway play may be considered minor John Ford moviemaking, and some sources say he had to drop out before he could film very much of it. But what’s on the screen pleased audiences primed for the first wave of WW2 nostalgia. The story of cargo officer Henry Fonda’s one-man war against his…

  Lee Broughton returns with a review of a mammoth limited edition box set dedicated to George A. Romero’s gut-wrenching zombie apocalypse opus, the first sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Fine performances from a quartet of unfamiliar lead actors, hordes of malevolent zombies convincingly brought to life by hundreds of local volunteers, groundbreaking…

  More Keaton is always a good thing — fans of The General and The Cameraman will find plenty to enjoy in these two classics. Buster befriends a cow ( ! ) in Go West and conquers several sports in College. Cohen’s Buster Keaton Collection series is up to Volume 4, with both shows featuring…

Fear No Evil / Ritual of Evil Blu ray  Kino Lorber 1969, 1970 / 196 Min. / 1:33.1 Starring Louis Jourdan, Wilfred Hyde-White, Bradford Dillman Cinematography by Andrew J. McIntyre, Lionel Lindon Directed by Paul Wendkos, Robert Day Just as she hops into bed with Charles Aznavour in Shoot the Piano Player, Michèle Mercier exclaims,…

  Criterion lets out the stops to celebrate a filmmaker long due for some victory laps — Claudia Weill’s endearing drama takes on the subject of a modern woman trying to be independent but human in the tough art world of New York. The Movies was a hard field to crack as well. Criterion says…

  Double your Diabolik and double your pleasure! … this Australian import chases a domestic disc onto the market after only a few months, but of course comes with irresistible new extras to tempt collectors and completists. Mario Bava’s funny, dynamic action thriller was the first feature to really capture the graphic art ‘feeling’ of…

  Talk about the Lost Arts — Animation of various kinds, even stop-motion, is now a major part of filmmaking entertainment. But back in the 1940s the wonder man for ‘how’d they do that’ Technicolor marvels was George Pal, a grateful displaced European who made marvelous ‘trickfilm’ animations using little wooden puppets with hundreds of…

  In 2001 I wrote, ‘Someday I’ll get to see a good copy of Robert Aldrich’s great movie Apache.’ Kino’s excellent new Blu-ray of a recent MGM remaster brings back the color and the correct screen shape, and even cleans up some wicked frame damage that’s been there for sixty years. The athletic Burt Lancaster…

  CineSavant’s hands-down favorite holiday film, this Ernst Lubitsch classic radiates human kindness in all directions. Nobody is perfect: misunderstandings benign and profound are the gentle impetus for a sweet story that will renew one’s belief that people are basically good. It’s James Stewart’s best pre-war performance, as he fits his character so perfectly; as…

  Hammer’s first color Gothic horror show recovers its charnel house luster in the WAC’s ambitious ‘surprise’ restoration. The severed heads and Peter Cushing’s blood-smeared costumes are back to their crimson best again, and with the improved image Terence Fisher’s taut direction really grabs us, extracting maximum impact from Jimmy Sangster’s ‘did you see that?’…

  Several atom-fear exposés bravely ‘told the truth’ about the madness of the nuclear standoff. They didn’t get more liberal-precious than this uncompromising, difficult-to-watch ordeal based on a true incident. When an Imminent Attack alarm sends a tiny elementary school into a panic, Frank and Eleanor Perry pull no punches, finding the worst possible outcome…

  The new [Imprint] label turns its attention to the Sam Peckinpah favorite, the almost-classic that suffered a number of setbacks — a studio regime change, impractical remote locations, the wrong producer — and a director with zero diplomatic skills, who couldn’t finish his script and fought political battles when his movie needed his full…

The Irishman Blu ray  Criterion 2019 / 209 Min. / 1:85.1 Starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino Cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto Directed by Martin Scorsese Brotherhood, betrayal, bloodshed… memories are made of this. And these days memories are Frank Sheeran’s only companions. He was a man who engaged in crimes at the behest…

  John Schlesinger’s adaptation of Nathanael West’s novel is one of the best ‘Hollywood on Hollywood’ pictures ever, even if it soaks everything about The Golden Age of Tinseltown in an acid bath of cynicism. The perverse dystopia of dreams and vice is beautifully rendered in every respect, and culminates in a finale that caught…

  Dino De Laurentiis took a lot of flack for his underwhelming remake of the incomparable 1933 horror classic, which he promoted into a monster-sized hit. Nothing could eclipse the original but the good casting still appeals. An honest ad campaign would have leaned on two points:  SEE Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin carry an…

  Now for a real treat for musical fans, a core MGM dazzler with top stars, fully restored and looking incredibly good. Vincente Minnelli’s snappy, funny 1948 show isn’t ranked among producer Arthur Freed’s best but it ought to be. Silly farce gets a high-toned, technically amazing workout as Judy Garland’s demure señorita secretly lusts…

  Bruce Dern is on a life-saving mission! After killing John Wayne in The Cowboys but before trying to massacre the Super Bowl in Black Sunday, his forest ranger Freeman Lowell committed space piracy to save the trees, man!  The only one back on Earth who seems to care is Joan Baez. Douglas Trumbull’s technically-accomplished…

  When Hollywood from time to time reinvented the western the results were sometimes sensationally good, as attested to by this superior neglected classic. We’d call it the first psychological western if the term weren’t so limiting. Gregory Peck once again proves how good he can be when well cast and he’s surrounded by fine…

  No, it’s not the story of the 18th President of the United States. Kirk Douglas must have been a big hit in Rome, starring in one of the first and best of the Italo epic ‘classics’ years before musclemen cornered the market. Homer’s tale of the husband who took ten years to come back…

The Wonders of Aladdin Blu ray  Kino Lorber 1961 / 93 Min. / 2:35.1 Starring Donald O’Connor, Vittorio De Sica Cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli Directed by Henry Levin Henry Levin was a more than reliable director of Hollywood entertainments, most notably the unassailable widescreen thrills of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Donald…

  It’s pretty scary to think that as late as 1940 both Washington and the American public were sharply divided over Nazi Germany. Poland had been overrun and France was about to fall, but MGM waited until June of that year to release this softened adaptation of a novel written as a warning to the…