The Warner Archive Collection’s first 4K Ultra HD release is a glowing digital restoration of John Ford’s unequalled western classic, considered to also have one of John Wayne’s best performances. The movie is remarkable in that it embraces so many different tones: tragic drama, buffoonish comedy, and a full examination of racial hatred as a…

One of the strangest American films of the ’60s is Leslie Stevens’ occult thriller starring William Shatner — who speaks all his dialogue in Esperanto. A ‘once upon a time’ country has a healing well, but its forest and beaches are overrun by female demons that harvest wicked souls through seduction and murder. The weirdness…

Pairing wine with movies!  See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell.  This week, we celebrate the season with three classic films concerned with Christmas. The Bishop’s Wife has Cary Grant as an angel. I know, I know. Typecasting. It’s mighty handy to have an…

An 1861 plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln is smartly styled as a ‘film noir in costume.’ Southern secessionists want Abe dead, and many in the Union hate him as well; detective Dick Powell races ny train to Baltimore to stem the murdereous conspiracy. The tension now feels topical …. only in the Civil War era…

Panic in Year Zero! Radiance Films Blu-ray – Region B 1962 – 93 Min. Starring Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Mary Mitchel, Frankie Avalon Cinematography by Gilbert Warrenton, Written by Jay Simms Directed by Ray Milland American-International built an exploitation empire on teens, horror, and science fiction—in 1962 they combined those cash cows into one 93…

The Coen brothers’ modern classic adapts Cormac McCarthy’s book about drug violence on the border. Welcome to supply & demand economics at its most basic: human values are absent in a bloody scramble for a cache of drug money. Tommy Lee Jones is the old lawman with a defeatist outlook and Josh Brolin is a…

William Friedkin whips up some terrific action and nasty knife-fighting with solid input from Tommy Lee Jones and Benecio Del Toro. Despite delivering on that promise, the characters and storyline never rise above trite clichés. So this one’s for fans of hairy chases and gritty one-on-one combat. Friedkin’s fast pace is enhanced by the cinematography…

There are plenty of winter-set horror films, and that’s for good reason: if you’re looking to put a chill in the audience, a dark, cold atmosphere has already done half the work for you. Films such as The Blackcoat’s Daughter or John Carpenter’s The Thing make it clear that even if there was no demon…

The Beast with Five Fingers Blu-ray Warner Archive 1946 – 88 Min. Starring Peter Lorre, Robert Alda, Andrea King, J. Carroll Naish Cinematography by Wesley Anderson Written by Curt Siodmak Directed by Robert Florey Long before The Addams Family made disembodied hands a punchline there was The Beast with Five Fingers, W. F. Harvey’s short…

The living dead didn’t hunger for brains back in the 1940s, but they did walk with Frances Dee, elect a King and perform on Broadway. Monogram’s second microbudgeted Zombie opus gives John Carradine one of his first mad doctor roles. The fine actor dignifies inconsequential plot complications, mixing chemicals to create Zombie storm troopers for…

Some Italian thrillers post-1968 became very political. Marco Bellocchio’s outright accusation against the power elite of Milan all but drops the thriller aspect to concentrate on exposing the evil of partisan media manipulation. Sound familiar?  Scheming newspaper editor Gian Maria Volontè leverages a sex murder to smear the left and throw an election. With police…

Abraham Polonsky and Robert Rossen’s ringside classic is a key film noir and a key social issue film; John Garfield and Lilli Palmer make big impressions with the aid of Anne Revere, Canada Lee, Lloyd Gough, William Conrad and Joseph Pevney. James Wong Howe brought a new, raw look to his cinematography of a boxing…

Pairing wine with movies!  See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell.  This week, we hope you don’t have an aversion to clowns. If you do, the wine pairings for these movies should help get you through. Your favorite clown movie may be missing from…

Howard Hawks’ ferocious, never-bettered gangster saga has the best of pre-Code thrills — sex and violence at the service of basic All-American ambition. Paul Muni’s Tony Camonte is a near-Neanderthal egoist crazy about Karen Morley but also his own sister, slinky Ann Dvorak. George Raft has his most famous role and Boris Karloff delights as…

How soon will it be before Quentin Tarantino’s films are considered ‘old man’s movies?’  This time-twisted hit man tale made a big dent in film culture back when The Lion King and Forrest Gump were the biggest hits of the year. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s hit men, Uma Thurman’s coked-up party girl, Bruce…

Competing for gift box attention this holiday is this impressive 4K Ultra HD anniversary release of Christopher Nolan’s intelligent answer to 2001, a cosmic journey literally to the other end of the universe. Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway star in a warm ‘n’ human contemplation of human limits ‘beyond the infinite.’ Nolan gives it his…

The Return of Doctor X Blu-ray Warner Archive 1939 – 62 Min. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Wayne Morris, Dennis Morgan Cinematography by Sidney Hickox Written by Lee Katz Directed by Vincent Sherman Directed by Vincent Sherman with a screenplay by Lee Katz, The Return of Doctor X stars Wayne Morris as Walter Garrett, a reporter investigating the…

Pairing wine with movies!  See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell.  This week, we toast to a little Americana. A trio of great movies that feature the American West, in all its rip-roarin’, six-shootin’, horse ridin’ glory. When I was a kid, my mom…

This Winona Ryder version of Alcott’s venerated page-turner is the most satisfying to date, as adapted by Robin Swicord, directed by Gillian Armstrong and embodied by an ideal cast: Gabriel Byrne, Trini Alvarado, Christian Bale, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon, Eric Stoltz, plus Kirsten Dunst and Samantha Mathis sharing a character between them. The show looks…

Never give up, never surrender!  A comic spoof of Star Trek and Trekkie worship does not sound promising, but this bright and funny space adventure is enlivened by an able cast — Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell and Daryl Mitchell. Especially good are the goofy aliens that need help in…

Top Cat – The Complete Series Blu-ray Warner Archive 1961  Starring Arnold Stang, Maurice Gosfield, Allan Jenkins Written by Kin Platt, Barry Blitzer, Michael Maltese Directed by William Hanna, Joseph Barbera In 1960, cartoon powerhouses William Hanna and Joseph Barbera found remarkable success with The Flintstones, a stone-age parody of Jackie Gleason’s kitchen sink rom-com,…

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving began as one of the parody trailers in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 film, Grindhouse. Epitomizing the “grindhouse” vibe, the trailer looked and sounded low-budget and tasteless, all sex and garish kills, with a closing shot so shocking that it was literally only visible for seconds. In other words, it was…

Here I finally present It’s a Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie, Zabriskie Point, a feature-length essay film that began as an editing mashup, a bit o’ fun with found footage, and ended as a pop meditation on American iconography and mythologies, a cine-exegesis of the American desert through the prism of both culture and counterculture, and a very…