“Racial Tolerance: It’s Good for America AND good for Criminals!”  Harry Belafonte’s second production is a noir keeper, thanks to a top-flight cast and sharp direction by Robert Wise. The big heist is on, but Robert Ryan’s anger management problem all but assures doom and disaster. It’s Wise’s last gritty action picture before moving up…

Call him strange, but CineSavant is fascinated by ‘women’s films’ that advance a consensus role template for American women. Then they ask questions like, “Is Hilda Crane a . . . TRAMP?”  Ladies attending these films may have sought to stir up fantasies with a racy romantic adventure — but not too racy. What a…

The Little Song ‘n’ Dance Show that Could, this over-achieving Jack Cummings production is a bright exception to the dull waning days of the MGM musical, due to many factors but especially Michael Kidd’s athletic choreography. And it’s been restored in both of its simultaneously-filmed versions, flat-widescreen and CinemaScope. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Two-…

Pictures like Midnight Cowboy pulled everyone my age group into the movies, while the entire older generation likely stopped going to movies altogether. John Schlesinger’s masterpiece can boast a number of firsts, and deserves the high praise it receives from every angle — this was the epitome of progressive filmmaking circa 1969. Midnight Cowboy Blu-ray…

Luis Buñuel’s filmic obsessions steered toward the anarchistic, the anti-clerical and anti-bourgeois, with a surreal spin. All of his films are political, but three features in the 1950s cast a harsh eye on the subject of revolution itself, with surprising results. This beautiful color show is a worthy jungle adventure tale shot through with Buñuel’s…

Renato Polselli’s vampire rally ups the on-screen babe count first and provides horror thrills second, yet Ernesto Gastaldi’s screenplay introduces an interesting wrinkle or two to the bloodsucking genre. This new bilingual release is a good presentation of what for American chiller fans has been a long-absent title. The Vampire and the Ballerina Blu-ray Scream…

Bid welcome to five westerns guaranteed to make one fall in love with the genre all over again. Each stars the ultra-virtuous man of the West Randolph Scott, pitted against some of the most colorful antagonists on the range: Richard Boone, Lee Van Cleef, Claude Akins. Indicator’s extras constitute the best collection of research materials…

It’s a road picture, a spy chase and an oddball romance all in one. A casual highway hitch-hike leads to intrigues with shady doctors, guided missile secrets and espionage intrigues. Possible escaped nut case Ruth Roman enlists nice guy Sterling Hayden’s help, and before you can say Alfred Hitchcock they’re handcuffed together and on the…

Teutonic art writ large and loud: Arnolf Fanck’s first big ‘mountain’ classic wow’ed them back in 1926, with its massive vistas and death-defying feats of mountaineering, all sworn to be authentic. More importantly, Fanck and his diva Leni Riefenstahl invest their images with the sense of mythic, spiritual kitsch grandeur that became an aesthetic blueprint…

The Bloodthirsty Trilogy Blu ray Arrow Films 1970 – 1974 /2:35 / Street Date May 22, 2018 Starring Yukiko Kobayashi, Chôei Takahashi, Toshio Kurosawa Cinematography by Kazutami Hara, Rokurô Nishigaki Written by Ei Ogawa, Hiroshi Nagano Directed by Michio Yamamoto Hell-raising vampires invade the normally serene confines of  Japanese cinema in three elegant 70’s shockers…

Is this the filmic birth of both the wartime OSS and the SuperSpy genre? State department diplomat trainee Joel McCrea weds refugee Brenda Marshall, not realizing that she has gained her freedom by volunteering to become a Nazi spy. Released just as WW2 broke out but filmed and produced earlier, Warners’ production faced stiff political…

Yes, we’ve all lived before.  When I come back I don’t care who I am as long as I’m in the 1%. When Michael Sarrazin reaches into a previous life his big sacrifice is to abandon the gorgeous Cornelia Sharpe for the gorgeous Jennifer O’Neill, arousing the suspicions of his wife in his previous life,…

The Warner Archive comes through with a film noir gem that still has the power to make one’s skin crawl, as a pair of circus sharpshooters go on the lam, using their skills to pull off cheap robberies. The clammy feeling of being cut off from society, having no place to go, is expressed in…

Sergio Leone’s breakthrough international sensation has returned, in a 4K restoration from Italy that’s bound to continue the controversy over odd choices of color. In every other aspect this umpteenth edition of the first murderous adventure of The Man With No Name is the best yet, with a clean image and good new extras. A…

The frights of Horror Hotel are back in an improved presentation in this 2018 Limited Edition. Set in New England but filmed in Old England, this creepy shocker is a favorite not just for the presence of Christopher Lee, but also the wonderfully mortiferous Patricia Jessel and the cadaverous Valentine Dyall. The City of the…

The late Jacques Rivette knocks us silly with a breathtaking meditation on what it means to be an artist, and what art demands of those that believe in it. A woman roped into posing nude for a famed but insecure painter, undergoes several intense days of compliant collaboration. Rivette’s unforced style gives the impression of…

A Study in Terror Blu ray Mill Creek Entertainment 1966 /1:85 / Street Date April 3, 2018 Starring John Neville, Donald Houston, Anthony Quayle Cinematography by Desmond Dickinson Written by Donald Ford, Derek Ford Directed by James Hill From master criminals like Professor Moriarty to Sebastian Moran, Sherlock Holmes faced his fair share of danger…

Columbia sets Jacques Demy loose on the streets of Los Angeles in the pivotal year of 1968. Although it puts a coda on the French director’s bundle of romantic films, with his special philosophical approach to Love, this starring picture for Anouk Aimée and Gary Lockwood doesn’t quite catch fire in the same way. If…

The Cinerama wonder movies were all but extinct fifteen years ago, un-preserved, un-projectable in their original 3-panel splendor, and largely forgotten. Countless hours of labor and research have now brought them all back to life on Blu-ray in the wraparound simulation ‘Smilebox’ format. These latest (and last?) discs properly restore two early releases, the show…

Plenty of films considered politically beyond the pale have been locked up, for reasons good and bad. A German filmmaker born decades after WW2 offers a documentary about the controversy over ‘sensitive’ Nazi films, the propaganda features that encouraged racial hatred and offered lies to support the Third Reich’s oppressive policies. We can easily visualize…

Robert Bloch and Milton Subotsky may have helped to codify the Giallo in this murder thriller but the results are not up to even the shaky standards of Amicus. That said, horror fans are going to flock to get their hands on a big color & ‘scope release that’s gone missing for decades. It’s a…

Guilt, gloom, weird nightmares of death and persecution — and romance? The wondrous Gail Russell brings a spark of life into Frank Borzage’s weird expressionist masterpiece produced at the seldom-artistic Republic Studio. The bitter, despairing Dane Clark has just committed what a jury will likely call first degree murder. But the night can offer atonement…

Joe Blu ray Olive Films 1970 /1:85 / Street Date April 24, 2018 Starring Peter Boyle, Susan Sarandon Cinematography by John Avildsen Written by Norman Wexler Directed by John Avildsen Galvanized by Martin Luther King’s assassination, an army of protestors descended upon 1968’s Democratic convention then playing out on Chicago’s south side. They were greeted by…

Let’s go back to 1959, when just implying that two teenagers might have first-hand knowledge of sex is socially unacceptable dynamite. This adapted play about an unwanted teen pregnancy is actually quite good, thanks to fine performances by Carol Lynley and Brandon De Wilde, who convince as cherubic high schoolers ‘too young to know the…

Steven Spielberg’s excellent Pentagon Papers exposé thriller comes straight from the facts. If the project wasn’t begun in 2014 we’d think it was a direct response to today’s attacks on the news media. We’ll take it as that anyway. It’s a fine performing showcase for Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, and the direction creates exciting…

John Landis made his first dent in Hollywood with this hilarious parody of Z-grade monster movies, and it was big enough to launch a film career. The kudos go to Landis’ comic monkey-man performance, wearing a Schockthropus ape suit by the 20 year-old self-taught makeup whiz Rick Baker. Only monster movie fans will understand, but…