A bigger and brighter film debut couldn’t be imagined … Doris Day became America’s sweetheart in Michael Curtiz’s peppy production, graced with a witty script and several catchy, radio-ready song hits. And the color is better than new in this impressive Blu-ray remastering job — Woody Bredell’s Technicolor hues are literally eye-popping. It’s great fun…
A near-spotless restoration on the 104 year-old adaptation of the Jules Verne classic finally presents it in a form where we can judge its merits. The screenplay is an erratic jumble, imposing serial thrill elements onto an undigested amalgam of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers with its sequel L’Ile mystérieuse. But the physical production…
This marvelous proto-documentary is a cultural travelogue, before such films became a conduit to express social outrage or moral condemnation. To the French filmmakers America in 1960 is still a land of wonders, a bigger-than-life fantasyland, where you can visit a places called Fantasyland and Frontierland and see your culture’s past play out as entertainment….
MGM in 1940 was just the movie factory to turn out a smart, compact version of the Jane Austen novel, with Greer Garson in fine form and Laurence Olivier possibly slumming but also contributing a flawless performance. Robert Z. Leonard’s direction is invisible but does no harm; adaptors Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin telescope events…
“It neutralizes mesons somehow. They’re the atomic glue holding matter together!” For most of the 1950s George Pal’s Martian invasion tale reigned as the top Sci-fi spectacle about an alien invasion. All the money went into the visuals, beautifully turned out by Byron Haskin and Gordon Jennings. Paramount’s much-awaited full restoration job does the picture…
What’s the best Ecological Thriller of all time? Finally available in a good Region A disc is Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz’s thrilling, realistic account of our world turned topsy-turvy, and perhaps plunging into a fiery oblivion. The violent shifts of climate and weather patterns echo today’s global warming chaos. Newspapermen Edward Judd and Leo…
Lindsay Anderson’s third ‘Mick Travis’ movie is a crazy comedy eager to overstep lines of cinematic decorum. Britain in 1982 is a country at war with itself, torn by elitist snobbery and working-class revolt. Union grievances cripple the functioning of a major public hospital, on a day when the Queen is set to visit. A…
The director of this unblinking account of the genocide in Belarus in 1942 and 1943 said that “people in America can’t watch my film. They have thrillers but this is something different.” He certainly got that right. A young farm boy is a witness to and victim of horrendous barbarism inflicted on a civilian population……
Abbott & Costello perform at full strength in this very good, very silly jungle safari comedy. It’s definitely for kids and nostalgic fans — with equal parts slapstick, cornball repetitive vaudeville gags, and Lou Costello’s weirdly endearing infantile schtick. An impressively beautiful restoration has pulled it back from the pit of Public Domain ugliness. Plus…
Bring back the Age of Aquarius! Olive Films returns with the company’s best Signature Edition ever. The show is an excellent choice for a special edition, as seen by the simply terrific interviews in its battery of added value featurettes. Top creative contributors have been tapped for some great memories. Rather than filming a simple…
Vincente Minnelli took time out from expensive MGM shows like Gigi to knock off this tale about the London debutante season, a light-comedy Cinderella story without satire or social comment. Young Sandra Dee and John Saxon come off well, but the show belongs to stars Rex Harrison and especially Kay Kendall, whose comedy timing and…
Bert I. Gordon rides again with an excellent encoding of one of his more popular sci-fi monster-ramas. Pert ‘n’ perky June Kenney is so brave that she keeps going back to ‘that old cave outside of town’ despite not knowing how many giant spiders are on the loose. Teenagers in their thirties and their…
It’s a Larry Blamire film, and it’s composed of entirely NEW and UNIQUE elements: a lonely mansion, strange servants, the reading of the will, weird heirs, death threats, snoopy reporters, a midnight seance, mysterious locked rooms, the clutching hands of a phantom menace, and the ultimate terror, Kogar the mighty ape. All new, right? This…
The beguiling short-story feel of Paul Dano’s intimate family drama makes us share the experience of a teenager whose parents are ‘going through a rough patch’ that may break up the only security he’s known. The performances of Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan and especially young Ed Oxenbould are low-key and high-intelligence; each seems a study…
Will there even be an Olympics in our foreseeable future? Kon Ichikawa’s 1964 masterpiece is still the most spectacular/intimate film about human athletics ever, a celebration of the human body and its abilities. An epic for people that don’t necessarily like sports, it’s less a documentary of the event than a collection of moving impressions….
Don’t call them Bad Movies — when something’s this enjoyable, other verbal put-downs are more appropriate. This low-grade German sexploitation horror pic spent its full budget on its roster of frisky Berlin showgirls. After years of study, experts have finally proven that it was filmed with a camera. Severin’s special edition does justice to a…
Romantic comedies became coy sex chase comedies in the early 1960s, once Doris Day made ‘professional virgin’ a Hollywood career. This mistaken identity/crossed prevarications farce is better than most, thanks to charming performances by Jane Fonda and Rod Taylor, and a fine script by Norman Krasna, from his play. The story doesn’t dance around the…
Mill Creek again dips into exotic Japanese sci-fi fantasy, and this time scores with the desired language choices and subtitle configurations for these spectaculars from the beginning of Toho’s strongest period. The H-Man is a stylish gangster-horror melange about a radioactive slime that cheerfully transforms Guys ‘n’ Dolls into living goo. Then, a Battle in Outer Space…
Today’s noir forecast is vice, kidnapping, murder, suicide, narcotics and a sleazy stolen baby racket! Kino’s third volume of Universal-International pix contains two seldom-screened quality urban noirs. Expect genuine dark themes in these sizable-budget location noirs made before Universal pulled most production back onto its one-size-fits-all backlot sets. Barbara Stanwyck dominates one show, while noir…
This thinking man’s epic got left behind with the demise of Road Show movies, which is a shame. A beautifully made, uncompromised story of warring 17th century Germany, it plays like a fine epic, with great performances. Audiences didn’t want to see Michael Caine as this kind of character in a costume drama that wasn’t…
Talk about a film whose time has come … Paul Mazursky’s ode to womanly liberation takes a sensible, gentle approach. Yes, the husband was a total jerk, and so is the first man Jill Clayburgh’s Erica turns to in need. What’s more important is the feeling of empowerment on the personal intimate level: it’s okay…
John Hughes’ breakthrough writing-directing hit still carries a glow (a very square, safe glow) that defuses its rougher edges, making it one of the best of ’80s Teen comedies. Even the savvy Soraya Roberts cuts it some slack, thanks to the authentic presence and fine performance of Molly Ringwald. Hughes’ amusing script comes up with…
Fritz Lang’s final feature brings his career full circle to the core thriller concepts he pioneered back in 1922: superstitious human nature and sinister technological advances combine to make the 20th century an Age of Terror. Lang reboots his highly cinematic Weimar-era narrative tricks for a film that heralds the beginning of a brave new…
John Cassavetes’ breakthrough picture (filmed in 35mm, wow!) gets the Criterion treatment, with fine new extras that take us back to a moment when the American Independent movement broke through to the big theaters, with bigger stars. It’s 142 minutes of intense improvisation during which Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk challenge, tease and bully…
Skipped this one because it’s by Spielberg? The 9/11- inflected take on H.G. Wells’ classic reproduces thrills from the book not captured in George Pal’s 1953 atom-age update. For this reviewer it was a big surprise — a Tom Cruise movie in which he plays an appropriately terrified character instead of his annoying big star…
Myopic Harry Palmer, the great cook, lover and reluctant spy returns to where his trouble with the British Army began. This time he’s tangled up in a political snarl that might have dire consequences: not only are the Russians involved, ex-Nazis are on the payroll. Israel may have an agent in the field, and not…