MGM’s show is a surprising powerhouse musical bio about the personality clash between an ambitious singer and the powerful enabler who wants her in his bed. Doris Day and James Cagney are at their best in an only slightly compromised telling of the real-life showbiz relationship of ‘twenties star Ruth Etting and the domineering mobster…
Elfin Rita Tushingham makes a smash film debut as Shelagh Delaney’s dispirited working class teen, on her own in Manchester and unprepared for the harsh truths of life. It’s one of the best of the British New Wave. A Taste of Honey Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 829 1961 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 100…
The character setup in this classy noir potboiler couldn’t be better, with Ida Lupino a sensation as the mountain lodge chanteuse who knows her way around men. For its first two acts the show is all but perfect. Road House Blu-ray KL Studio Classics 1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. /…
‘Worst Movie Ever?’ No way. But neither is Wayne Berwick and comic Jackie Vernon’s tacky cannibalism tale a piece of art. When I say it’s interesting, it’s more as a study item than entertainment. Bad movie — but a terrific restoration! Microwave Massacre Blu-ray + DVD Arrow Video 1983 / Color / 1:85 widescreen…
When Fritz Lang began in film he was a better writer than director. This lavish two-part thriller sees him concocting a multi-genre mashup, shoehorning cowboy action thrills and an exotic lost Incan civilization into dagger-and-poison serial skullduggery. The Spiders Blu-ray Kino Classics 1919 / B&W / 1:33 flat / 173 min. / Street Date…
Hollywood’s most elegantly natural, defiantly independent actress comes alive in a film biography about her personal life, using inside family testimony, rare film and her diaries. Sweden’s Ingrid seems more radiant than ever. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 82228 2015 / B&W-Color / 1:78 widescreen / 114 min. / Jag…
Hissable villain Bela Lugosi is in denial — no, actually star Edmund Lowe is in the Nile, deep-sixed in a sunken sarcophagus. Lugosi’s up top trying to get his art deco death ray in running order — opposed only by some nubile babes and a Great White Hypnotist from the Swami school of mind control….
Radical changes were required to adapt Lillian Hellman’s Broadway play for post-Code Hollywood, to eradicate a theme that in 1934 was entirely taboo. But were audiences really unaware of the subject matter switch? William Wyler excels with this bowdlerized, yet curiously near-perfect, story about the power of scandal. These Three DVD-R The Warner Archive…
Japanese art filmmaking writ large by director Hiroshi Teshigahara: a strange allegorical fantasy about a man imprisoned in a sand pit, and compelled to make a primitive living with the woman who lives there. Perhaps it’s about marriage… Woman in the Dunes Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 394 1964 / B&W / 1:33 full frame /…
Death doesn’t take a holiday in this, the granddaddy of movies about the woeful duties of the Grim Reaper. Fritz Lang’s heavy-duty Expressionist fable is as German as they get — a morbid folk tale with an emotionally powerful finish. Destiny Blu-ray Kino Classics 1921 / B&W / 1:33 flat / 98 min. / Street…
It’s arrived — thanks in part to a successful Kickstarter campaign, this nearly comprehensive compendium of American ‘Race Films’ is here in a deluxe Blu-ray presentation. Pioneers of African-American Cinema Blu-ray Kino Classics 1915-1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 952 min. / Street Date July 26, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber /…
Costa-Gavras sets his focus on right-wing political terror in the American heartland, where FBI agent Debra Winger finds farmer Tom Berenger at the head of a clan of murderous white supremacists. Our friends and neighbors! Betrayed Blu-ray Olive Films 1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 127 min. / Street Date April 19, 2016 /…
A Taiwanese wuxia masterpiece from director King Hu: three hours of suspense, visual beauty and amazing action scenes. A beautiful mystery woman captivates an artist-scholar. He who happily becomes her strategist in a battle to hold off an army… partly with ghost illusions. A Touch of Zen Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 825 1971 / Color…
Liz Taylor scorches the screen (as least as much as it could be scorched in 1958) in a watered-down yet still potent Tennessee Williams adaptation. Paul Newman gets his Brando act together, and the rest of the show is stolen by ‘Big Daddy’ Burl Ives. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection…
The new branded line Shout Selects chooses Buckaroo for special-special edition treatment, with a long making-of docu just like the ones from the heyday of DVD. And this oddest of oddball sci-fi pictures has a backstory worth documenting. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension Blu-ray Shout Select 1984 / Color / 2:35…
Wonderful isn’t a good enough word to describe this joyful, funny and visually intoxicating Alice Faye musical by Busby Berkeley. Decades later it became part of a big Camp revival, but the real draw is still the Benny Goodman swing music, delightful performers like Carmen Miranda, and Berkeley’s bizarre Technicolor visions. The Gang’s All Here…
Alain Resnais’ deceptively conventional drama is really about interpersonal dynamics: lives lived in the here and now are really anchored in events and concerns from the past, that bleed into the present. Delphine Seyrig’s antique dealer invites an old beau to visit, but instead of clarity and direction finds just more personal confusion. Muriel, ou…
Joseph Losey didn’t normally make trendy, lighthearted genre films, and in this SuperSpy epic we find out why — the impressive production and great music don’t compensate for a lack of pace and dynamism, not to mention a narrow sense of humor. Yet it’s a lounge classic, and a perverse favorite of spy movie fans….
This early John Wayne oater displays the natural star quality and winning personality that sustained him through the 1930s — it’s a naïve, charming western that features some of The Duke’s closest early associates. ‘Neath Arizona Skies Blu-ray Olive Films 1934 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 52 min. / Street Date July 19,…
Rita Hayworth in 3-D, in a hot story that was acceptable for 1925 and 1932, but too racy for repressed 1953. On a tropical island, a prostitute cabaret singer battles a fiery preacher missionary inspector for her freedom. Hayworth is dynamite, and it takes all of her talent to keep the show afloat, with so…
Flamboyant artist Ken Russell was eventually sidelined for what the industry calls ‘excess,’ but he was a genuine artist, as indicated by this, his last American film. Absolutely beyond the pale in terms of polite viewing, it’s by turns awkward and insightful, profane… and more profane. Crimes of Passion Blu-ray + DVD Arrow Video (UK)…
Mad doctors! Mortiferous maidens! Horrifying hallucinations! A key early Euro-horror and one of the very first in color, this French-Italian production is a medical horrorshow crossed with a folk tale — its centerpiece is a vintage carillon attraction in an old mill; creepy Scilla Gabel is the minatory seducer who bridges the gap between life…
This almost completely forgotten ’50s western couldn’t compete with the big productions, but it has a good cast — James Arness, Robert J. Wilke, Emile Meyer, Harry Carey Jr. Plus early work by writer Burt Kennedy, and the debuts of actress Angie Dickinson and director Andrew V. McLaglen. Gun the Man Down Blu-ray Olive Films…
It’s in glorious Technicolor Metrocolor, CinemaScope and StereoPhonic Sound! Fred Astaire’s final MGM musical gives him Cyd Charisse and a Cole Porter score, plus some nice Hermes Pan choreography. The script and Rouben Mamoulian’s direction aren’t the best, but the combined magic of the musical and dancing talent saves the day. Silk Stockings Blu-ray Warner…
What’s this? John Ford’s last silent western is as exciting and entertaining as his later classics. A trio of horse thieves turn noble when given the responsibility of a young woman lost on the prairie; Ford gives the show comedy, drama and spectacle. 3 Bad Men Blu-ray KL Studio Classics 1926 / B&W / 1:33…
The first and most powerful Holocaust reassessment extends the horror with the assertion that, in 1955, its reality is already fading from the world memory. Alain Resnais uses the form of the art movie and his own essay-film innovations to communicate the yawning wound in the human consciousness. Night and Fog Blu-ray The Criterion Collection…