Shaft’s Big Score! / Shaft in Africa Blu ray Warner Archive 1972, 1973 / 2.35 : 1 / 104, 112 Min. Starring Richard Roundtree, Vonetta McGee, Frank Finley Directed by Gordon Parks, John Guillermin Released in 1971 during a notoriously divisive presidential campaign, Shaft was both a middle finger to the powers that be and…

Jumpin’ gingivitis!  Vicious microbes from space threaten the world and our only hope is a team of scientists in an underground lab in Nevada. But the sneaky germ from the cosmos is a-mutatin’ faster than a mess o’ jackrabbits, into a form that doesn’t just kill people, it consumes our flesh, too! No, it’s not…

All the world loves Jackie Chan, whose cinematic action pictures bridge the gap between silent-era virtuosity and slick modernity. As light comedy entertainment these first two Police Story smash ‘n’ bash epics of eye-popping jeopardy are suitable as ‘family entertainment’ as well. Jackie is a marvelous hero, while Maggie Cheung is an old fashioned girl…

This favorite animal film takes a half-step sideways out of the cute animal subgenre: the delightful Mij is no super-otter, just an ordinary playful garden-variety otter, as an Otter oughta be. (cough) Champion mellow English couple Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers have put together a film guaranteed to lower your blood pressure. But see it…

Fantômas – Three Film Collection Blu ray Kino Lorber 1964, 1965, 1967 / 2.35 : 1 / 322 Min. Starring Jean Marais, Louis de Funès, Mylène Demongeot Directed by André Hunebelle Eighteen years after playing the duel roles of an aristocratic monster and his swashbuckling adversary in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Jean Marais got…

Princess Mononoke Blu ray Shout! Factory 1997 / 1.85 : 1 / 133 Min. Starring Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki Hayao Miyazaki spent much of his early career as an artist and animator on children’s fare like Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon and Puss in Boots, each as energetic as a school recess…

Twilight Time goes for a Blu-ray upgrade of the western remake with the all-star cast. Forget that there was ever a John Ford or a John Wayne and it’s a perfectly presentable wild west story, but the mileage may vary for classic western fans inclined to make comparisons to the 1939 classic. Top billing goes…

CineSavant obsesses over yet another obscure bit of cinematic sociology: a glossy pre-Code MGM melodrama about mothers and war, which half-debates issues like pacifism, the losses of world war one, military vigilance, cowardice, chemical WMDs and foolish idealism! But don’t worry, the title statement is the ultimate answer to everything. Oh, it’s also political sci-fi:…

Freshly divorced from American-International Pictures, Roger Corman leaps into the filmic mainstream with a fairly large-scale World War One aviation picture. He competes with the big studios but retains his nonconformist attitude: his retelling of the story of the Red Baron fixates on the theme of the death of chivalry in combat. For his star…

It’s the brightest debut feature of 1970, and perhaps the warmest movie ever about the American race divide. Hal Ashby and Bill Gunn’s work is inspired: rich boy Beau Bridges buys a slum tenement and launches a wonderful ensemble comedy-drama in confrontation with the fantastic quartet of actresses — Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey…

Clever plotting goes into overdrive for this light-comedy proto-paranoid film noir about a magazine publishing empire so organized that it seems a sci-fi invention from the future. Ray Milland’s charismatic fall guy finds himself embroiled in a murder plot filled with false identities, and a manhunt that he must supervise… to catch himself. Maybe Robert…

The House of the Seven Gables Blu ray Kino Lorber 1940 / 1:33:1 / 89 Min. Starring Margaret Lindsay, Vincent Price, George Sanders Written by Lester Cole Cinematography by Milton R. Krasner Directed by Joe May In 1940’s The House of the Seven Gables, Margaret Lindsay transforms from sunny romantic to stone-faced recluse in the blink…

Why do crime caper films have so much appeal?  Are we all closet criminals, eager to watch less timid souls risk life and limb to get the big payout and live happily ever after?   Peter Yates’ stylish re-telling of England’s Great Train Robbery makes for an excitingly detailed, nonsense-free heist straight from real life,…

Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with an assessment of an obscure period chiller expertly assembled by Shen Hsiang Yu. One of the Shaw Brothers’ early attempts at screen horror, this superior gothic romance with a supernatural twist failed to find an audience upon its initial domestic release — a circumstance that led to the studio…

“You crazy rat you croaked him!”  Yes, you’ve probably heard better hardboiled dialogue, but this British imitation of American gangster pictures takes the cake for screwy line deliveries. It’s derived from a book and play that’s already derived from a salacious William Faulkner story. Jack La Rue and Linden Travers try to make a kidnapper-rapist…

Haters gonna hate, and yeah, some folks will take, and have taken, their devotion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to ridiculous lengths, in the same way that just about every pop culture phenomenon since Beatlemania has inspired people to do. But the likelihood is, if you’ve ever felt any kind of investment, however intermittent or…

MGM’s gigantic silent sci-fi extravaganza took three years to make, by which time the talkies arrived and everything went to pieces. Lionel Barrymore emotes (EMOTES!) in his early sound footage, and terrific effects take us to the bottom of the ocean where monsters and a race of Donald Duck creatures menace our heroic adventurers. And…

The Nightcomers Blu ray Kino Lorber 1971 / 1:85:1 / 96 Min. Starring Marlon Brando, Stephanie Beacham Written by Michael Hastings Cinematography by Robert Paynter Directed by Michael Winner Between 1944 and 1992 Jack Clayton directed just nine movies but they included some of the most elegant yet clear-eyed films to come out of post-war…

I don’t know if Garland fans still go around chanting ‘Judy Judy Judy’ at her every appearance, but they do have a timeless song ‘n’ dance number to celebrate here. Her last MGM movie is only a so-so vehicle but Gene Kelly and the studio’s top music & dance talent work hard to put it…

The prize for best direction of 1991 ought to have gone to Alex Cox, whose visual economy in this show is to be applauded. Cox’s camera is fluid, expressive yet technically invisible and unencumbered with fancy tricks: the frame never goes static, yet the film has only a couple of hundred cuts! Filmed in Spanish…

The Strange Door Blu Ray Kino Lorber 1951 / 1:33:1 / 81 Min. Starring Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Sally Forrest Written by Jerry Sackheim Cinematography by Irving Glassberg Directed by Joseph Pevney Charles Laughton is a vengeful aristocrat with a secret in the cellar and Boris Karloff is the family servant who holds the key…

Gill(ian) Armstrong’s breakthrough feature does a leapfrog over stories like Little Women, with heroines that prevail even when adhering to the Meek Sex role of their time. Judy Davis’s Sybylla Melvin knows that she’s a freckle-faced pain in the neck: despite being proud that she’s attracted the local male catch, her every sinew is committed…

There’s no movie quite like Robert Rossen’s adaptation of the J.R. Salamanca book: mental illness and disturbance is neither simplified nor jammed into a preconceived pattern. There is a strong mythical element to Jean Seberg’s enigmatic Lilith, who at times seems the breathing incarnation of elemental human forces — I would imagine the Greeks believed…

Ah, yes — it’s a hot day in 1954, so what could be better than a cool movie theater projecting beautiful Italian scenery onto an Eee-Nor-Mous CinemaScope screen, with Frank Sinatra warbling an Oscar-winning tune. The simple escapism of Fox’s ‘three girls find love’ epic makes Rome look like a welcoming haven for carefree Americans…

Red Skelton Whistling Collection DVD Warner Archive 1941, 42, 43 / 1:33:1 / 78, 74, 87 Min. Starring Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford Written by Robert MacGunigle, Nat Perrin Cinematography by Sidney Wagner, Clyde De Vinnam, Lester White Directed by S. Sylvan Simon One night in 1950 during an especially frenetic episode of The Colgate Comedy…

What does the American dream mean to you? Hardworking folk just want the job and the house and the family as promised in the ‘old’ Contract With America that began to slip out of reach in the 1970s. To examine the social absurdities at the tacky end of the consumer divide, Bo Goldman and Jonathan…