Here’s something I never expected to see: I ran to the blaxploitation attraction Willie Dynamite because I like actress Diana Sands, and it’s her last picture in a too-short career. But the main character on view, a gaudy fur-wearing pimp, is played by none other than Roscoe Orman, well known to a couple of generations…

Jane Russell heats up an Arizona mining town but she’s just trying to help her new husband with his ethnic identity issues, Jeff Chandler. Superb color cinematography (forget the B&W photos here) and beautiful desert locations help, but the real appeal is seeing Russell and gorgeous co-star Mara Corday in all their glory. Foxfire Blu-ray…

For directing skill and sensual sophistication this psychologically intense murder tale equals or betters the most sophisticated American noirs. Julien Duvivier gives us Michel Simon as Monsieur Hire, a strange man loathed by his neighbors. Entranced by the woman he spies through his bedroom window, Hire doesn’t realize that she’s helping to frame him for…

Just when we thought the world was doomed by the rejection of scientific rationalism, this lecture docu about the theories and discoveries of researcher Lynn Margulis gives us hope again. Formerly denounced as a scientific radical, Margulis’ ideas supplant the established ‘Neo-Darwinism’ notion of natural selection through competition, with the idea of cooperation on the…

Secret agent Michael Caine must take on both the kidnappers of his son and his own suspect Army Intelligence colleagues in Don Siegel’s efficiently filmed, curiously tame suspense thriller. Delphine Seyrig is enticing and Donald Pleasance an unlikeable security bureaucrat, while the capable Janet Suzman and John Vernon fill out a top-flight cast that performs…

CineSavant 2018 Favored Disc Roundup Savant picks The Most Impressive Blu-rays and DVDs of 2018   Welcome again to the most self-indulgent list of 2018, accompanied by personal photos of limited interest!  *  The CineSavant brain trust once again convenes to peruse a year’s worth of Blu-ray releases, searching for the wisdom to cull out…

A movie for people who don’t normally like costume dramas about kings and queens, this adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s play is great entertainment from head to toe. Richard Burton gives one of his better late-career performances, and Geneviève Bujold is a dynamo in a tiny package. It’s an impressive portrait of male power run amuck….

Alfred Hitchcock’s nearly perfect romantic spy thriller teams Cary Grant with Ingrid Bergman to yield just what audiences wanted in 1946, an adult drama with menacing political themes… and an unusually adult approach to a perverse sex relationship! Notorious Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 137 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 101 min. /…

How to shake up a mid-sixties slump at Hammer Films? It’s back to basics time, with Christopher Lee returning in a most unusual way, because there wasn’t much left of him at the finish of his first outing as the number one supernatural public enemy. Terence Fisher is also back, enlivening the third film in…

Though long embraced by parents as family-friendly safe zones, Disney’s live action films were just as often called out for their squeaky clean posturing and regressive world views. Fair enough – but as Noah Cross growled, “Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough” – and a good number of those mild-mannered…

Nicholas Ray’s CinemaScope detour into outlaw Americana is yet another sincere artistic effort muffled by studio interference. Ray sought to examine a legend in terms of folklore and celebrity. Fox just wanted a cheap remake of its 1939 hit and undermined the director all the way. It’s a potentially great film marred by clumsy reshoots…

Grand action entertainment bursts forth on the high seas, showing us how much production value Golden Hollywood could lavish on an exciting, artful swashbuckler. Errol Flynn is at his glorious best, backed by greats like Flora Robson, Henry Daniell and Claude Rains in fine form. The special effects and full-sized ship sets impress in ways…

Hollywood’s most tragic ‘mangled masterpiece’ gets a new lease on life with this special edition of what could have been Orson Welles’ greatest film, had RKO not intentionally destroyed it to sully the stature of the unlucky Boy Genius. The movie can’t be reconstructed but its reputation can be restored — the story of the…

True Stories Blu ray Criterion 1986 / 1.85:1 / 89 Min. / Street Date – November 27, 2018 Starring David Byrne, John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz, Pops Staples Cinematography by Ed Lachman Directed by David Byrne A concert film filmed over four nights at the Pantages Theater in 1983, Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense has the…

Duck and Cover!  And while you’re down there, enjoy a Flaming Atomic Cocktail!  Loader, Rafferty & Rafferty’s influential documentary-satire uses authentic ’50s films and songs to illuminate the lies and myths about Cold War civil defense. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be like children in the face of a horror being characterized as an inconvenience…

It’s tendon-biting combat, with guns, trains, planes, chainsaws, and an indestructible all-terrain vehicle (that still couldn’t stand the potholes in the street of Los Angeles)!  Rod Taylor, Jim Brown and Yvette Mimieux blast their way through one of the roughest of the ’60s action spectacles, as mercenaries on a mission of mercy that’s really a…

No 1960s film student had more on the ball than Brian De Palma, who enlisted a smart group of collaborators to pull together his voyeuristic student-filmmaking, Alfred Hitchcock-worshiping early experimental pictures. In these three early features we can feel the director being influenced in multiple directions — do ensemble comedy and Godard-esque minimalism have a…

Ingmar Bergman’s ‘sad comedy’ finds desperation and adultery in his favorite milieu, the theater. He also gets to contrast the self-important thespians with those dubious circus nomads, even as both groups are shunned by civilian society.   Sawdust and Tinsel Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 412 1953 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 92 min. /…

Before TV movies were dissed with the phrase ‘disease of the month,’ this 1973 film surprised and moved audiences with the realistic story of a young mother facing a fatal illness. It’s directed by the great Joseph Sargent and graced with the music of John Denver, but its impact rests upon the remarkable, affecting performance…

Mamie Van Doren Film Noir Collection Blu ray KL Studio Classics 1957 – 1959 / 1.75:1, 1.85:1, / 216 Min. / Street Date – November 20, 2018 Starring Mamie Van Doren, Anne Bancroft, Lee Van Cleef, Lex Barker Cinematography by Stanley Cortez, William Margulies Directed by Howard Koch, Edward Cahn Mamie Van Doren, née Joan…

The best of all Hammer horror pictures finally comes to Region A Blu-ray, with a bright transfer made to look like original Technicolor prints. This is where Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing came into their own as international stars, as the undead Count Dracula and the no-nonsense vampire killer Van Helsing. It’s the bridge between…

Intrepid soldiers and scientists battle a bloodsucking alien invader at the top of the world!  The Warner Archive Collection releases Howard Hawks’ incomparable Science Fiction thriller, a long-desired favorite. Long handicapped by missing scenes, this RKO classic is intact once again, complete with its nerve-rattling bombastic Dimitri Tiomkin music score. The Thing from Another World…

It’s here, the second half of the science fiction TV series from the 1960s, restored and remastered. It’s really only half a season and the creative team has been swapped out, but several gems are every bit as good as episodes from year one. Plus acting disc producer David J. Schow ladles on the extras…

Robert Heinlein’s frighteningly brilliant sci-fi horror concept spawned an entire generation of biological invasions from outer space. Stuart Orme’s faithful, authorized adaptation has a lot going for it, including sensationally good, gloppy special makeup effects, and a commanding performance from a dour, authoritative Donald Sutherland. The Puppet Masters Blu-ray KL Studio Classics 1994 / Color…

Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with more vintage Spaghetti Westerns. Prolific Italo western star Anthony Steffen shoots first in Alberto Cardone’s gothic vengeance drama Blood at Sundown, and plays the revenge game straight up in Mario Caiano’s A Coffin for the Sheriff. The double bill disc also features appearances by genre stalwarts Gianni Garko, Erika…

Adolfas Mekas made his mark in American independent filmmaking with this avant-garde comedy that shook up film festivals circa 1963. Although it is said to have inspired Andy Warhol, it’s its own animal entirely, eighty minutes of cinematic frivolity that’s too sincere to be a parody of the filmic conventions it so happily celebrates. Hallelujah…