The love for Fritz Lang doesn’t quit!  As Lang’s biographers point out, his American films consistently focus on moral and psychological questions in crime. Lang saw murder as more than a dramatic tool as he probed for weaknesses in the legal system. His final American pictures — two separate disc releases — make excellent use…

Does every great actress see Joan of Arc as the ultimate serious role? Ingrid Bergman ran into serious career trouble while this picture was still in release. Its cast and credits are packed with star talent — is it a misunderstood classic with a great central performance? Ms. Bergman was so enamored with the character…

“Grand Hotel. Nazis come. Nazis go. Nothing ever happens.” That’s a paraphrase from 1932’s Grand Hotel, indicating that the hallowed halls once occupied by Greta Garbo are now overrun with Warner Bros. contract players. As defeat looms, German officers, crooks, fugitives and ordinary citizens fumble for a way to survive. Writer and fervent anti-fascist Alvah…

An Actor’s Revenge Blu ray Criterion 1963 / Color / 2.39:1 / 113 Min. / Street Date February 20, 2018 Starring Kazuo Hasegawa Cinematography by Setsuo Kobayashi Written by Daisuke Itô, Teinosuke Kinugasa Edited by Shigeo Nishida Directed by Kon Ichikawa From Twelfth Night to Homicidal, casting calls for cross-dressers are a Hollywood tradition. The…

Joseph Wambaugh’s breakthrough novel went through a blender to fit George C. Scott into the narrative, but it’s still a great cop show with terrific work from Stacy Keach and Scott Wilson, not to mention Jane Alexander and Rosalind Cash. The pro-cop agenda has a definite tone of personal experience, and the grim finish is…

Wow! Prime stop-motion animation from the heyday of monstrous science fiction, in a new restoration that puts a brilliant shine on those creepy crawly critters. Richard Denning fights giant arachnids while Mara (swoon) Corday frets and wrings her hands, waiting for the next kissing scene. The new scan clears up a lot of flaws, and…

Forget All Singing! – All Dancing!  Tonight’s bill of fare is wall-to-wall high grade crime action. Roy Scheider leads a great cast in an all-New Yawk tale of gangsters, kidnapping and betrayal. The police tactics of Scheider’s special felony crime squad would today land them all in jail, but they’re all stand-up guys. And buckle…

A Trip to the Moon Blu ray Flicker Alley 1902 / 1:33 / 15 Min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 Starring Georges Méliès Cinematography by Théophile Michault, Lucien Tainguy Written by Georges Méliès Edited by Georges Méliès Produced and directed by Georges Méliès In the fall of 1886 the magician Georges Méliès was filming…

Few latecomer ’60s spy movies were big successes. This amusing Brit effort sank without a trace, perhaps taking with it the career of the talented Tom Courtenay as a leading man. The comic tale pits an underachieving, cheeky London lad against an intelligence conspiracy that wouldn’t be doing anybody much harm — if they didn’t…

Classic Midnite Cult movies were a mini-phenomenon chosen by the public, created by word of mouth approval. Frank Henenlotter’s wild ‘n’ weird ‘separated at birth’ story is a thematic mashup of horror ideas plunked down in the middle of America’s sleaze capital, 42nd street in the early 1980s. The audience-pleasing telepathic siblings Duane and Belial…

Sam Fuller turns the crime film inside-out with this tale of on infiltrator taking down the syndicate. Vengeful Cliff Robertson uses both the mob and the cops to wipe out the hoods that killed his dad, with the help of two women, one of them a hooker with a heart of gold. The show feels…

Guest reviewer Lee Broughton assesses the Armenian director Sergei Parajanov’s poetic and metaphor-filled biopic about his countryman Sayat Nova, the Armenian poet-troubadour. This new disc edition offers both versions of the picture, Parajanov’s original and the Soviet-approved version cut by seven minutes. As we learn, if a Soviet film director found favor internationally, they often…

Finally — a satisfying home video edition of Ken Russell’s absorbing, argument-starting classic, in which D. H. Lawrence’s quartet of bohemians attempt to live out their progressive theories about love and sex. The intellectual arguments may be cold but the characters are warm and vivid. Exceptional performing from all — Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson, Oliver…

Remembered as a briefly hot quasi- avant-garde title, then a cult item, Slava Tsukerman’s brightly colored movie is said to capture a New York fashion ‘n’ drugs scene that could be called Neon Punk. It certainly extended model Anne Carlisle’s fifteen minutes of fame. Oh . . . technically it’s also a Science Fiction movie….

Do we sometimes ‘grow into’ movies? This one now plays like a minor masterpiece. ‘Seventies auteur Robert Altman proves himself an expert practitioner of psychological hallucinations, in an intense tale of a schizophrenic children’s author who can’t keep her husband and two (imagined?) lovers sorted out. It’s one of the best, and best-looking puzzle pictures…

Wow — somebody took their sweet time about it, but we finally have a quality Blu-ray set of an entire generation’s favorite Sci-fi / monster TV show, an attraction that lit up our humdrum lives with anticipation in the Fall of ’63. Respected stars and good writers contributed to a weird-oh winner that can boast…

The Passion of Joan of Arc Blu ray Criterion 1928 / 1:33 / 81 Min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 Starring Renée Jeanne Falconetti, Eugene Silvain Cinematography by Rudolph Maté Written by Joseph Delteil, Carl Dreyer Music by Richard Einhorn, Will Gregory, Adrian Utley Edited by Carl Dreyer, Marguerite Beaugé Produced and directed by…

Before Vincent Price haunted houses, he chalked up plenty of experience as a Broadway star and a versatile character actor. This superb Joseph L. Mankiewicz gothic romance assigns him major leading man duty as a ‘dark and troubled’ soul — the kind that intimidates cowering leading ladies. With typical good humor, Price called it the first…

‘Harper Days Are Here Again,’ reads the advertising tag line for this worthy follow-up to Paul Newman’s first outing as Ross Macdonald’s jaded private eye. The movie is certainly worthy, but how did the producers let the terrific song Killing Me Softly with His Song get away? The Drowning Pool Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1976…

Make room for a genuine rarity, come back from the cinema graveyard in excellent condition: a lavish color musical extravaganza from 1930 that’s been effectively MIA for generations. Universal undertook a daunting restoration of this ‘revue-‘ style spectacle, which includes a full presentation of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in its original orchestration.   King…

We may not have film of the legendary actresses Lily Langtree or Sara Bernhardt to enjoy, but now we can see the famed Anna Pavlova dance and act, in an epic-length revolutionary saga inspired by a Grand Opera. In conjunction with the BFI and the New York Public Library, The Milestone Cinematheque gives us the…

Secure one major book with a serious subject, sign up a wagonload of stars (including a legend or two) and make sure every cookie-cutter character repeatedly explains themselves to the camera in close-up. That formula worked well for Stanley Kramer in 1965; his film hasn’t much of a reputation but the cast is gold. A…

With nearly two years of worthy Blu ray releases under their belt, ranging from traditional favorites like To Sir With Love to rare essentials like Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater, it can be said that UK’s Indicator has finally shed their rookie status. Their newest effort is Hammer Volume Two: Criminal Intent, a well-programmed package…

Guest reviewer Lee Broughton offers a look at writer-director Derek Nguyen’s intriguing debut feature, a finely observed supernatural gothic chiller-cum-illicit period love story, set on a French plantation in Vietnam towards the end of the First Indochina War. It’s also a spooky melodrama with a difference. As such, this well-acted, handsomely staged and stylishly shot…

Director Jim McBride puts retro magic into a rock ‘n’ roll bio about a big talent who was probably more fun on stage than in person. Dennis Quaid hits the right note of insanity for his portrayal of Jerry Lee Lewis’s rise to fame and fortune. Winona Ryder’s hilarious, almost scary bobby-sox Lolita becomes Jerry’s…

More mysterious than ever, Sergio Leone’s ode to (condemnation of?) revolution is said to be the centerpiece of his three ‘Once Upon a Time’ movies linking western violence to the modern age of brutal politics and ruthless gangsterism. Crudeness rubs shoulders with sad and beautiful images as Leone takes on a theme he claimed not…