Underdog Warners actress Ida Lupino could hold her head high, turning out pictures like this — a Bette Davis reject that proved a winner. It’s an overachieving backstage musical soaper using some of the studio’s ‘A-minus’ talent. Lupino moves heaven and earth to carve out a starring showbiz career for her younger sister Joan Leslie,…
This New Zealand pirate adventure had bad luck theatrically, but we welcomed its old-fashioned thrills when it appeared on cable TV. It now looks super on widescreen Blu-ray. A young Tommy Lee Jones is Bully Hayes, a South Seas adventurer competing with Michael O’Keefe for the hand of Jenny (sigh) Seagrove. His piratical crew fights…
This impressive import collection of ‘Archers’ pictures is just one classic after another, including three of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpieces. The boxed set also carries good extras, new input from experts plus a selection of the best existing documentaries on P&P. Plus, a couple of the transfers are big improvements on older…
Wonder of wonders — Hammer’s massive boxed sets seem unreasonable until one sees the depth and breadth of the extras. Nigel Kneale’s original ‘organic invasion’ scare show hasn’t lost its power, thanks to Richard Wordsworth’s compelling performance and the dogged intensity of Brian Donlevy. The 4K encoding is superb; they’ve added the U.S. version plus…
Akira Kurosawa’s modern crime masterpiece takes the leap to 4K. It’s a kidnapping tale in a context of social friction — the perpetrator is maddened by the gap between haves and have nots. A superb detective story balances that irony with the commitment of an ethical businessman and a police force we wish we had…
Here we take a ‘Missing on Blu’ Review break thanks to the Public Domain availability of a show we aren’t convinced was ever given a legit disc release, legit as in ‘authorized.’ England’s 1956 Michael Anderson version of George Orwell’s legendary book dropped (mostly) out of sight long ago, and this was the first time…
It’s a chronicle of defeat and doom, hopelessness and horror … yet director Kon Ichikawa turns it into an engrossing experience. Foot soldier Tamura is one of thousands of Japanese troops left behind after military defeats; surrender risks execution by partisan Philippinos, and the alternative is slow starvation in the hills. Desperation and madness take…
Crime movies have grown a lot more vicious since 1971, but few pack the hard crime impact of Mike Hodges’ gangster revenge tale. Michael Caine’s Jack Carter is a London hit man who returns to his roots in Newcastle, to sort out the sudden death of his brother. It leads to the expected trail of…
The blizzard looks real and the big stars are flashy, but Ross Hunter’s 70mm ode to supermarket best sellers still plays like a TV movie. Both airport manager Burt Lancaster and pilot Dean Martin are straying from their marriages, with Jean Seberg (sigh!) and Jacqueline Bisset (wow!). But the direction dotes on cute geriatric stowaway…
Is this the best teleplay ever written by Rod Serling? It’s almost too good, even for him. Van Heflin, Everett Sloane and Ed Begley square off at the center of a business power squeeze, in a business world adopting ruthless new ground rules. Is it all about staying competitive, or is it corporate criminality? It’s…
A striking digital Technicolor restoration brings Ealing Films’ unique costume romance to vivid life. The tragedy of Princess Sophie Dorothea has a fine cast: Stewart Granger, Françoise Rosay, Frederick Valk, Peter Bull, Anthony Quayle, Michael Gough, Megs Jenkins, Miles Malleson, Guy Rolfe — plus superb work from ‘the voice’ Joan Greenwood, and a performance by…
Whoa! We saw this endlessly as kids and pretty much set it aside in favor of later revisionist westerns of the 1950s. Raoul Walsh’s pseudobio of George Armstrong Custer is nevertheless a stunning, action-filled epic with humor, romance and a smashing star performance by Errol Flynn. Olivia de Havilland bounces back as the faithful wife,…
This atom fear thriller grabbed audiences by the Conelrads. Albert Zugsmith spun Cold War hysteria into gold with this cheap but effective exploitation of nuclear war jitters. For once it really happens — ‘unnamed enemies’ overrun America with atom bombs, parachuting troops into cities even as the bombs fall. The absurd script sees excellent work…
Irwin Allen started a franchise with his 1965 TV show: there has even been a second TV series with Parker Posey as Dr. Smith. This very, very expensive 1998 space opera must be the result of millions of hours of digital labor, as the whole thing is a digital effect just as CGI wiped out…
Now back in a dazzling remaster, John Ford’s final feature is a ‘problematic masterpiece.’ The director reaches back to the expressionist 1930s for a grim tale of a Christian mission outpost overrun by savage bandits. His cranky traditionalism in this case sides 100% with core feminist values, thanks to Anne Bancroft’s sterling performance as an…
Aviation buffs will see plenty to admire in Basil Dearden’s drama of events at London’s Heathrow Airport. The show comes off as a low-stress precursor to our Airport, back when the notion of routine air travel was a glamorous and romantic novelty. It also functions as an institutional advert for British aviation and good PR…
Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet shine as Jane Austen heroines that endeavor to maintain their composure while swooning over the highly eligible swains Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Please don’t tell us that nobody got along on this production, because the result seems all so pleasant. Emma Thompson’s adaptation could hardly be improved, and Ang…
William Gibson’s multi-character soap about a psychiatric clinic has a severe case of Caligari Syndrome: the doctors need more counseling than do the patients. Richard Widmark leads an impressive cast (Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Gloria Grahame, Lillian Gish, John Kerr, Susan Strasberg, Oscar Levant, Paul Stewart) as everybody goes crazy over various manias, staff rivalries,…
Cy Endfield’s intense African survival adventure purports to teach lessons about the Territorial Imperative and the easy slide to savagery when civilization is far away. Plane-wreck survivors in a remote African desert must fight the local baboon population for food and water. Stuart Whitman, Stanley Baker and Nigel Davenport are tempted by the female castaway,…
The early pre-Code era yields two star vehicles from the dawn of Sylvia Sidney’s long career. In Confessions of a Co-Ed her college girl falls for Phillips Holmes’ thoughtless student and gets herself ‘in a family way.’ In Ladies of the Big House she and her new husband Gene Raymond are framed by a gangster…
Another reissue disc that we wish were revived in an extras-laden 4K edition. Roman Polanski’s exceedingly rewarding thriller gives us Harrison Ford at his very best as an American doctor trying to recover his wife kidnapped at the outset of their Parisian getaway. Was the appeal more for middle-agers than kids? Not funny enough? Not…
Is it a Gothic fairy tale, a fantastic romance, or a backhanded comment about wounded war veterans? Mutilated flier Robert Young and the ‘unacceptably plain’ (?) Dorothy McGuire find each other in a seaside love nest out of a Harlequin Novel, overcome their self-loathing, and experience a miracle. Why not? The only witnesses are a…
Otto Preminger’s take on the Françoise Sagan’s novel finds the right tone despite the drawback of censorship limitations and Englanders and Americans playing French characters. CinemaScope and Technicolor on Saint-Tropez locations help, but the big plus is the radiant presence of Preminger’s discovery Jean Seberg as Sagan’s amoral heroine Cécile. David Niven is the father…
One of the best-ever documentaries about the making of a movie returns in a fresh 4K restoration, with its feature film clips rendered in full widescreen resolution. New interviews and featurettes are provided by Francis Coppola, and the late Eleanor Coppola is represented with a new documentary piece and encodings of several of her short…
No, it’s not a new disc. This is also not exactly a disc review, but Warner’s reissue allows us to write about Sam Peckinpah’s film for the first time in years. We’re happy to recount the film’s twisted release history, and its path on home video. The point of course, is to encourage Warner Bros….
MGM’s in-house Blu-ray label is back with another worthy remaster: a Mirisch- supervised West German production that leads with a Gene Pitney smash hit single and gives Kirk Douglas another tough-guy attorney to play. A brutal gang rape in Germany puts four U.S. soldiers on trial; to save their lives, Kirk must demolish victim Christine…