René Laloux’s marvelous animated Sci-fi tale is still in a class of its own, mainly because its imaginative- creative level is so high. Who would have thought that limited animation could look this good? The designs are by the impressive artist Roland Topor. Fantastic Planet Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 820 1973 / Color / 1:66…
Hammer hits one out of the park with this ‘ripping good’ Sherlock Holmes tale, tilted heavily toward gothic mystery and horror. Peter Cushing and André Morell excel in heroic roles, while Christopher Lee doesn’t have to play a monster, just a coward. Terence Fisher’s directing skill is at its height. The Hound of the Baskervilles…
A mad extortionist is blowing up rollercoaster rides. Put-upon George Segal must stop him because we all know that time, the tide and roller coasters wait for no man. Producer Jennings Lang’s by-the-numbers suspense thriller is light on suspense and thrills, but the cast is good and the screenplay at least partly intelligent. And hey…
It’s the time-honored tale of the cuckolded lover, his heartless woman and ‘the other guy,’ told in terms that Émile Zola would endorse. Jean Renoir’s first full-length talkie is a little masterpiece of social observation and indifference to sentimental niceties. Michel Simon is terrific as the clerk who has a tough time with illicit love….
The Nazis can’t even keep the National Socialist propaganda out of a simple science fiction fable. Hans Albers is the Aryan King Midas as a scientist, and gorgeous Brigitte Helm the Englishwoman who thinks he’s peachy keen. The climax is pure Sci-Fi heaven, an unstable ‘Atomic Fracturing’ installation, wa-ay deep down in a mineshaft under…
Ivan Tors and Curt Siodmak ‘borrow’ nine minutes of dynamite special effects from an obscure-because-suppressed German sci-fi picture, write a new script, and come up with an eccentric thriller where atom scientists behave like G-Men crossed with Albert Einstein. The challenge? To make a faceless unstable atomic isotope into a worthy science fiction ‘monster.’ The…
Dirty cops were a movie vogue in 1954, and Edmond O’Brien scores as a real dastard in this overachieving United Artists thriller. Dreamboat starlet Marla English is the reason O’Brien’s detective kills for cash, and then keeps killing to stay ahead of his colleagues. And all to buy a crummy house in the suburbs —…
John Ford’s best war movie does a flip-flop on the propaganda norm. It’s about men that must hold the line in defeat and retreat, that are ordered to lay down a sacrifice play while someone else gets to hit the home runs. Robert Montgomery, John Wayne and Donna Reed are excellent, as is the recreation…
Criterion’s special edition of Stanley Kubrick’s doomsday comedy is more powerful than ever in a 4K remaster; and it even comes with a top-secret mission profile package and a partial-contents survival kit. A Kubrick fan can have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop…
Norway gets the old-fashioned disaster film genre up on its feet again with a well-made, scary story set in a Northern fjord, where a devastating tsunami is a genuine threat. Fine acting by fresh faces helps as well — with no BS or hype to get in the way, we find ourselves as anxious as…
Sally Field bounces back in this story of mismatched love – or a romantic delusion… that is 3/4 charm and 1/4 wishful thinking. The May-October romance isn’t an outright farce like Harold and Maude, so a few of the comic situations are somewhat wince-inducing. Or am I just feeling my own ‘October’ discomfort? Field fans…
Here’s a sterling example of what Hollywood excelled at back in the golden age: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains and Edward Everett Horton star in possibly the most magical of movies known as Film Blanc. A cosmic goof leaves a man with fifty years yet to live without a body — so heavenly troubleshooters…
Michelangelo Antonioni’s pre-international breakthrough drama is as good as anything he’s done, a flawlessly acted and directed story of complex relationships — that include his ‘career’ themes before the existential funk set in. It’s one of the best-blocked dramatic films ever… the direction is masterful. Le amiche Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 817 1955 / B&W…
John Ford puts a Technicolor sheen on Monument Valley in this second cavalry picture with John Wayne, who does some of his most professional acting work. Joanne Dru plays coy, while the real star is rodeo wizard Ben Johnson and the dazzling cinematography of Winton C. Hoch. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon Blu-ray Warner Archive…
Marleen Gorris’ sightly absurdist, slightly magic realist movie about a strong woman who takes charge in a rural Dutch community is a fable about a kind of matriarchal utopia — where decisions are made with patience and understanding, the weak are protected and women aren’t abused. It’s an Oscar winner for Best Foreign film —…
I guess Howard Hughes had a soft spot for Minnesota Nazis. William Cameron Menzies directs a Cold War thriller about an insidious germ warfare conspiracy, an early paranoid suspense tale with apocalyptic consequences. But the story behind the movie’s making — and then remaking — is even more fantastic. The Whip Hand DVD-R The Warner…
Robert Mitchum all but snoozes through this promising war-espionage thriller that pits lazy Gestapo agents against clueless partisans in occupied Greece. It’s got great locations and a good cast, but director Robert Aldrich seems off his feed — there’s not a lot of excitement to be had. The Angry Hills DVD-R The Warner Archive Collection…
That naughty boy Federico Fellini goes all out with this essay-hallucination about women, a surreal odyssey that hurls Marcello Mastroianni into a world in which women are no longer putting up with male nonsense. It’s an honest (if still somewhat sexist) effort by an artist acknowledging illusions and pleasures that he knows are infantile. City…
Robert Altman’s murder tale reeks of insider access and Hollywood hipster BS; its main claim to greatness is its fifty-plus star cameos. It may no longer seem as smart as it looked in 1992, but they don’t make ’em any slicker than this. The Player Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 812 1992 / Color /1:85 widescreen…
This breakout hit comedy western gave a lift to star Jane Fonda and especially to Lee Marvin, in an unexpected comedy role that won him a Best Acting Oscar. Lee characteristically said that he owed half of the award to ‘some horse out in the valley somewhere.’ Cat Ballou Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1965…
Not funny enough, or too hip for the house? I found the Coen Bros.’ send-up of old-fashioned movie madness good fun, with some great new actors. If you like droll comedy combined with spot-on recreations of old movie genres, this show can’t lose. And there has to be somebody out there who wants to see…
Bogie’s back and Bacall’s got him! Or, at least she’s got his voice, and a bundle of bandages. A David Goodis hardboiled crime tale becomes an absurd pile of coincidences and accidental relationships, all wrapped up (literally) in a giant plastic-surgery gimmick. Bogart and his new bride Bacall are charming, but there’s a show -stealer…
3-D IMAX goes back to outer space for a repeat of some space shuttle material and an extended CGI look at how a Martian landing might be accomplished. It’s a grab bag of film sources, and only partly in original 3-D material. Shout! presents it in both 4K Ultra-HD and Blu-ray 3-D, but so far…
This four-feature set is the weirdest cinematic treasure box of the year, a sort of anti-matter film school. Three of the films are derived from a single Yugoslavian picture rejected by Roger Corman. His acolytes Jack Hill and Stephanie Rothman proceeded to add serial killings, supernatural hauntings, a goofy vampire, and an ending that could…
What in the world — an A + top-rank film noir gem hiding under the radar, and rescued (most literally) by the Film Noir Foundation. Ann Sheridan and Dennis O’Keefe trade dialogue as good as any in a film from 1950 — it’s a thriller with a cynical worldview yet a sentimental personal outlook. Woman…
Clark Gable is still sufficiently frisky in this late career western to attract four well-chosen frontier women — who in this case happen to be a quartet of robbers’ wives, sitting on a rumored mountain of ill-gotten gains. Raoul Walsh abets the comedy-drama, as Gable’s fox-in-a-henhouse tries to determine which hen can lead him to…