Meet Indominus Rex, a designer dinosaur with the brain of Hannibal Lecter and a cloaking device like Predator! Steven Spielberg steps back and lets a pro team put together the most-likely-to-earn-billions entry imaginable for the Jurassic Park franchise, where dinosaurs love to eat people, but not cute kids or privileged heroes. The special effects are…
David Cronenberg swaps his venereal ick-monsters for Samantha Eggar’s mater furiosa, an annihilating female who commits her killings as would the villain of a Greek tragedy — through her offspring. Oliver Reed is the new-age guru of ‘Psychoplasmics,’ who teaches Eggar to direct her rage in an utterly unique way. The disturbing concept sounds less preposterous…
In honor of Halloween, I once again have a special essay-article up, and this time I can name the contributor. Randall William Cook rates special celebrity status around DVD Savant despite being a friend from way, way back. I hope he’s writing a book about his career, because his Hollywood experiences range far afield, from UCLA…
I’ll trade you two RKOs for two Warners’, an even swap! This quartet of movie-magic wonderments offers a graduate course on old-school film effects wizardry at its best. Willis O’Brien passes the baton to disciple Ray Harryhausen, who dazzles us with his own effects magic for the first ’50s giant monster epic. And the best…
What makes a Ghost Story scary? This classic was almost too artistic for the Japanese. Masaki Kobayashi’s four stories of terror work their spells through intensely beautiful images — weirdly painted skies, strange mists — and a Toru Takemitsu audio track that incorporates strange sounds as spooky musical punctuation. Viewers never forget the Woman of…
Writer Jesse Andrews and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon overturn the formula for the modern teen comedy: they lay on the quirky storytelling and goofy movie parodies, but also give us characters that are reasonably human and complex. We’re soon invested in a warm and rewarding drama. Young actors Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler and Olivia Cooke…
Most of us love the Trumbo-Douglas-Kubrick thinking man’s leftist gladiator epic, and after several iffy disc presentations this exacting digital restoration follows through on the photochemical reconstruction done 25 years ago. It looks incredibly good, almost too good to be a Blu-ray. Kirk contributes a new featurette interview, telling us that this is the show…
We still love John Ford’s bitter-sentimental look back at the lost Myth of the West. John Wayne and James Stewart are at least thirty years too old for their roles, but everything seems to be happening in a foggy reverie, so what’s the difference, Pilgrim? Great comedy and Lee Marvin’s marvelous villain, plus the assertive…
The miniseries saga of Don, Betty, Roger, Joan, Peggy and Bert deserved a terrific finish, and at the end of seven plus one seasons, creator Matthew Weiner delivers in fine style. The agency undergoes a major transformation, but each of our favorites moves on to a thoughtful, better-than-acceptable resolution — all except for Don. He…
Curious about all those Region B Hammer Blu-rays from overseas, the ones requiring a region-free player? As a public service, Savant has solicited an expert opinion (you’ll have to take my word for that) of a film restoration/transfer specialist who is also an informed fan of the filmic output of the little horror studio at…
The masterful political documentaries of Chilean Guzmán, constitute a national epic for a beloved country traumatized for trying something new within a hostile political environment. How can one keep the memory of a national betrayal alive, after being forced into exile by a military dictator? How can the memory of a great national leader…
Director Brad Bird and his co-writer Damon Lindelof take on a daring, ambitious science fiction project: chosen ‘dreamers’ are given glimpses of a gleaming Future City on the Horizon that exists in a parallel dimension of possibility. It’s a chase film, a touchstone ‘Sense of Wonder’ epic and a wholly original visual extravaganza. The spacey…
Michael Winner is the bad-taste choice to give The Exorcist a run for its money in the faux-religious horror shocker sweepstakes, and the brave actress Cristina Raines leads an impressive supporting cast as the unfortunate suicide attemptee chosen to be the new Gatekeeper for the portal to Hell. Don’t expect to see a Keymaster, but…
Ready for something actually relaxing? Perhaps the Merchant Ivory team’s most gentle and pleasant film, this comedy of English manners at home in Surrey and abroad in Italy is a visual and dramatic delight. Society more or less prevents Helena Bonham Carter’s opinionated young woman from experiencing the full glory of Florence, but a frowned-on…
California’s entire earthquake fault line goes haywire, with 9-point-plus shocks on the Jerry Lee Lewis Rigor Mortis scale! The geological wipeouts include Boulder Dam, downtown Los Angeles and most of the San Francisco peninsula. This expensive-looking Dwayne Johnson disaster spectacle looks sensationally good, with excellent 3-D effects and nearly wall-to-wall fun effects work, even if…
Warners answers the call for Hammer horror with four nifty thrillers starring the great Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The transfers are immaculate — Technicolor was never richer than this. The only drawback is that Chris Lee’s Dracula has so few lines of dialogue. On hi-def, Cushing’s Frankenstein movie is a major re-discovery as well. Horror Classics: Four Chilling Movies from…
G.W. Pabst’s silent German classic is intact, restored and looking great. Louise Brooks is the virginal innocent betrayed on every level of the sexual double standard. Brooks is nothing less than amazing, with a performance that doesn’t date, and Pabst only has to show how things are to make a statement about societal hypocrisy. German cinema…
Ready for more Anthony Mann? This light comedy thriller / borderline noir leans on amnesia for a plot hook and to motivate an all-night prowl on the streets of Los Angeles the RKO back lot. Tom Conway and Ann Rutherford star, but the real thrill is in the secondary female leads — Jean Brooks from the…
Welcome to the weird, irresistible world of Republic Serials, an art form with rules of content and conduct that resemble no other movies, nor any reality we know. “The Phantom Ruler” has plans for world conquest, so get ready for a punch-out every five minutes and a terrific Lydecker miniature special effect in almost every…
Get your beret and warm up the espresso! Some of the most famous deep-dish art film is here — in HD — from attempts to translate various art ‘isms’ to the screen, to graphics-oriented abstractions, to ‘city symphonies’ to the dream visions of Maya Deren and beyond. The careful remasters reproduce proper projection speeds and original music….
Take a trip into political art history: the state-run East German film company DEFA uses the experiences of Communist artists to promote the party line and educate young people on the sacrifices of the past. Some of the personal stories are incredible, and the art covered is indeed very impressive — writers, illustrators, a…
Scream favorites Vincent Price and Christopher Lee become tangled in an African curse, grave robbing, a premature burial and a clutch of throat-slashings — yet the two stars have no real scenes together. Steve Haberman’s well-researched and insightful commentary tells the story of Gordon Hessler’s first production for the English arm of American-International Pictures, a…
The latest release of Lon Chaney’s most famous silent classic is a Blu-ray, which allows us to marvel at at the actor’s artistry in a beautifully tinted HD image. Erik the Phantom is one of the two or three greatest fantasy makeup performances of all time. The release has three separate encodings, of different…
What would seem the perfect project for tough-guy director Robert Aldrich still commands a high reputation with some. Ambitious top-dog hobo Lee Marvin squares off against Ernest Borgnine’s nearly demonic railroad conductor who routinely murders bums that dare to hitch a ride. The mayhem culminates in a battle on a moving flat car, between Ernie’s…
The advertising promised a surfeit of sleaze — but the film is a superior thriller about a real-life, low-rent serial killers from back in the late 1940s. Tony Lo Bianco and the great Shirley Stoler are Ray and Martha, mixed-up lovers running a Merry Widow racket through the personals ads in romance magazines. Leonard Kastle’s…
Techno-thriller fans have been waiting a long time for a good disc of action ace John Sturges’ sci-fi espionage suspenser. George Maharis, Richard Basehart, Anne Francis and Dana Andrews must stop a madman who has snatched a full set of deadly bio-warfare viruses from a super-secret government lab. Each flask can wipe out an entire…