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…

  The true breakdown of society appears to have begun in Australia around 1979, when George Miller made this berserk extrapolation of every toxic futurist prediction on the books. Out on the open road the only thing saving society from horrifying motorized gang violence is a corps of equally crazed patrolmen in their interceptor vehicles….

Amazon Women on the Moon Blu ray  Kino Lorber 1987 / 85 Min. / 1:85 Starring Lots of Actors Cinematography by Daniel Pearl Directed by Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, Robert K. Weiss Mark Twain said “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” That…

  Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with an assessment of Robert Englund’s offbeat video rental store favourite 976-EVIL. Satanic panic ensues when two teenage cousins are foolish enough to start using an automated telephone “horrorscope” service. Dialling 666 just might be granting the pair a direct line to the Devil himself and there’s bound to…

  Join Joe Friday and Frank Smith as they make a case against the rotten gangland crooks that moiderized Dub Taylor with a shotgun, point blank! See detectives loiter about while smart remarks and BIG music stings provide the excitement! The big-screen version of the hit TV show has a surfeit of guest crooks, unhappy…

  Region B Blu-ray-capable noir fans have a formidable six-pack of noir crime pictures on tap: a WW2 espionage thriller, two caper pix and the show that launched the notion of a hit man who’s both charismatic and psychopathic. The list of leading actors is stellar as well: Glenn Ford, Kim Novak, Eli Wallach, Brian…

  Finally, a horror shocker that needs to make no excuses! Harry Kümel’s interpretation of the Elizabeth Báthory legend excels in all departments and succeeds in each of its aims. Erotic Eurohorror meets Sternbergian visual decadence, making a vivid (and bloody) statement about classic screen exoticism. Given the full glamour treatment, silky Delphine Seyrig is…

  This bizarre, creepy and maudit masterpiece of silent expressionist horror is an independent 1950s production that never had a chance commercially. Butchered by a second distributor, its ignominious fate was to wind up as a movie-within-a-movie footnote for Steve McQueen. Cohen/BFI’s ‘rescue’ remastering of John Parker’s picture does some things great — we never…

The Fu Manchu Cycle—1965-1969 Blu ray  Powerhouse Indicator 1965 – 1969 / 96, 93, 91, 94, 92 min. / 2:33:1, 1:85, 1:66 Starring Christoper Lee, Tsai Chin Cinematography by Ernest Steward, John Von Kotze, Manuel Merino Directed by Don Sharp, Jeremy Summers, Jesús Franco Arthur Henry Ward was born in Birmingham in 1883—at the age…

  French filmmaker Alain Jessua comes up with a commercial thriller with a science-fiction, medical horror twist. Alain Delon and Annie Girardot don’t shy away from some matter-of-fact nude scenes, that serve a legit dramatic purpose. Outside France the sex content was almost the only angle exploited. Beneath the glamour and intrigues at a chic…