What a great way to encounter such an unusual masterpiece — Akira Kurosawa reenergized his creative career with this ambitious, uncompromised historical epic, filmed for Mosfilm on location in the wilds of far-East Siberia. A local woodsman becomes a guide for a Russian survey team, and a great friendship is formed. It’s like nothing Kurosawa…
Welcome to 1968, and a burst of creative direction from one of the greatest film artists of the 20th century, Jack Cardiff. An attempt to make pop star Marianne Faithful into a cinematic sex symbol is an uphill struggle, even with Alain Delon playing opposite. Psychedelic effects are poured over a tale of desire that…
All those British crime films once deemed undesirable for the National Image are beginning to get the attention they deserve. This story of a single day in a working class section of London has plenty of criminal activity but blends it in with the everyday crimes of desperation and boredom. The Sandigate girls are flirting…
A 4K Steelbook! Haven’t seen this show lately, and discovered that it holds up remarkably well. Mr. QT’s sophomore outing made an indelible mark on American movies — the darling of hipster crime filmmaking dazzled viewers with showcase set-piece scenes, entertainingly profane dialogue and ultra-hip inside-out time-shuffling narrative tricks. Add to that genuine star turns,…
Robert Benton and Paul Newman’s show-biz detective tale is one of the best-looking thrillers of 1998. With its star lineup of Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Reese Witherspoon, Stockard Channing and James Garner, its the equivalent of a dog-eared comfy mystery paperback. The classic themes and stylistics are here, but in a new Hollywood where movie…
It’s Labor vs. Capital, in basic terms! Sean Connery is the tough, embittered miner looking to strike back against the bosses, and Richard Harris the underdog who sees a way out by becoming an agent provocateur for the Pinkertons. An admirable true-life history lesson, Walter Bernstein & Martin Ritt’s downer of a drama didn’t grab…
Only once in a generation do we behold a classic such as this! The ’embiggened’ adventures of Nancy Archer lack technical sophistication, but good direction and a very direct story — female revenge writ large — grab us every time. Let the absurdities pile up, because Allison Hayes cuts a mean fifty-foot figure in that…
To the short list of ‘classic’ nuclear horror on Blu-ray we can now add the one that hits closest to home. Lynne Littman’s harrowing film stays small-scale and Big Emotion, enduring a slow extermination for an innocent family. A little California town loses contact with the rest of the world, and hope fades as the…
John Sturges’ Road Show comedy western has more in common with 1941 than The Magnificent Seven, but Kino has MGM’s new remaster and the visual result is spectacular. The Ultra Panavision 70 epic is still a favorite of fans of out-of-control Hollywood filmmaking. Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton, Pamela Tiffin and a huge cast…
Quentin Tarantino’s first feature may not be to all tastes, but it is an admirable feat of commercial filmmaking — what other director has broken into the front rank with such panache? The fifth time through, the splintered, elliptical structure still impresses, and there’s always something new to see in the performances of Harvey…
The Black Vampire! The most impressive Spanish-language noir restoration yet, Román Viñoly Barreto’s superior serial murder thriller hails from 1953 Argentina. It re-interprets Fritz Lang’s “M” from a different, more emotionally engaging perspective: star Olga Zubarry’s nightclub singer hesitates to tell what she knows about a child-killer, because she might lose custody of her own…
This mid-60s detective story has the right ingredients — a good mystery and interesting characters. David Jannsen gets to play a ‘Bosch’- style lone wolf investigator given a public thrashing for a ‘mistake’ that he knows was no mistake at all. Can a ‘bad cop’ redeem himself? The parade of mid-level guest stars — Stefanie…
Hungry for those wet Parisian streets, the city lights, and cadavres en lambeaux in the pale moonlight? Enter three highly atmospheric, star-studded Crime Noirs, one of which is a stealth classic of Gallic Pulp. Stars Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, and Annie Girardot bring the tales of à…
The New York Underground invaded the mainstream with Robert Downey Sr.’s completely irreverent Madison Avenue satire, in which a token black executive takes over an Ad agency, renames it ‘Truth and Soul’ and goes on a mad reign of creative terror. Arnold Johnson, Stan Gottlieb, Allen Garfield, and Antonio Fargas star in a farce that…
Robert Aldrich gives the Cavalry Western a rough going-over in this brutal, unforgiving horror-western. Burt Lancaster gets in a fine late-career action turn as well. The pursuit of an Apache raiding party becomes guerrilla war in the desert, the kind of conflict that cements racial hatred forever. Aldrich and Alan Sharp’s answer to the ‘mud…
Newly remastered in 4K! Bruce Dern’s (literally) tree-hugging forest ranger Freeman Lowell commits space piracy to save the trees, dude, and becomes lost in space with only Huey, Dewey and Louie for companionship. The only soul back on Earth who seems to care is Joan Baez. Douglas Trumbull’s technically-accomplished first feature film does 2001 on…
The first movie to directly confront McCarthyism! Or so said the editorials touting this ‘Long-Awaited Screen Event’ in which ‘Bette Davis Hits the Screen in a Cyclone of Dramatic Fury!’ The storm of the title was based on a real activist in Oklahoma who lost her job for promoting equal rights. Bette’s polite librarian is…
Bertrand Blier’s edgy romp about a pair of ne’er-do-well petty-crooks will go too far for many viewers — they’re antisocially chauvinistic in some really outrageous ways. Are they jolly adventurers or just terminally obnoxious? The twisted social comedy really needs its talented cast: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, and a very…
Elvis Presley’s handlers found the formula that would keep his stardom solvent through the 1960s in this well-confected, calculatedly vacant star vehicle that EVERYBODY liked and enjoyed in 1961. The coolest celeb in America ended up in some of the squarest, least-hip films of the era. Why do we like it so? Cutting through the…
Pixar’s save-the-world eco-epic actually begins with the world destroyed, before a pair of cute robots help put it back together again. Andrew Stanton’s animated comedy finds hope and cheer in a post-apocalyptic scenario, a tall order for any speculative science fiction tale. Meet WALL•E, the nuts ‘n’ bolts super-janitor, and EVE, the sleek next-generation seeker…
Rarovideo is back, with an excellent Italo war drama that finds humanist values in an appalling situation: a young Italian lieutenant is tasked with distributing 12 Athenian prostitutes to garrisons on the road back to Italy, to ‘service’ the troops. It’s a mixed group — a couple of the women have signed up to avoid…
Powerhouse Indicator’s first foray into the Universal library yields six noir thrillers, all crime-related and all different: the list introduces us to scheming businessmen, venal confidence crooks, black-market racketeers, a femme fatale, a gangster deportee and baby stealers. The B&W features are enriched with some of the best actors of the postwar years, and the…
Yet another 3-D Blu-ray treat — the 3-D Film Archive restores a rare English production, an international crime tale in 3-D. Dennis O’Keefe’s T-Man helps Scotland Yard track down a gang of smugglers that kidnaps and murders to force an Atom scientist to perfect his manufacturing formula for synthetic diamonds. You know, just like the…
Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer hit the big screen early in the 3-D craze, in a much tamed-down adaptation. The camera legend John Alton handled the lighting and likely called the shots on the camera setups as well. As a detective noir it’s definitely flat-footed, with a bum script, weak direction and a miscast Biff Elliot…
Dore Schary’s post-MGM personal production is a class act in every respect — Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan and Myrna Loy are well cast in a story of intimate emotional cruelty. It’s from a play derived from Nathanael West’s soul-crushing novella, and despite the talent involved, it can’t shake the feeling of an overheated TV drama….
Another classic-era Eurohorror title has surfaced on Blu-ray. Straight from the exploitation trenches of postwar Germany, this elusive opus jangles plenty of nerves with its tale of mad surgery and crazy transplants. Partly a girlie show — most every scene involves some form of disrobing — it’s nevertheless an intriguing horror cocktail with top production…