David Hinton’s documentary celebration of the ‘Archers’ team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is a feature-length rumination filtered through Martin Scorsese’s narration, emphasizing his first awakening to the Power of Film. The collaboration was so rich and the films so impressive that it takes over two hours just for a cursory pass through the…
George Stevens’ back-from-the-war masterpiece honors family vaues and stability with the near-reverent story of a Norwegian immigrant family subsisting in San Francisco of 1910. The filmmaking is fastidious and the performances exemplary — Irene Dunne is the Hanson matriarch, young Barbara Bel Geddes the teenager who wants to write, and Oscar Homolka the overbearing Uncle…
Roman Polanski’s twisted ‘apartment horror’ creepshow melds supernatural and psychological possession — a meek clerk finds himself being possessed by the previous occupant of his apartment: a woman who committed suicide. It might be all in his mind, but the spook-show trimmings are compelling too: the new tenant plays his cross-dressing new role to the…
The Bat Blu-ray Undercrank Productions 1926 / 86 min Starring Emily Fitzroy, Jack Pickford, Louise Fazenda Written by Roland West Photographed by Arthur Edeson and Gregg Toland Directed by Roland West Films produced in the silent era were triumphs of artistic ingenuity—though they lacked even the rudimentary tools of contemporary filmmaking, no Steadicam or drone…
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 pair wines with three films about women in various kinds of danger. In Kinky Friedman’s detective novels, he and his posse had a code to use in instances when one…
This collector’s box of Columbia odds ‘n’ ends has a couple of movies that are only marginal horror, but all have at least one or two horror elements. A gangster picture with Boris Karloff dips into mad doctor territory, and the mad scientist in an aviation thriller has cooked up an anti-aircraft death ray. Peter…
Director G.W. Pabst imported the notorious Hollywood showgirl Louise Brooks to Germany, to star in one of the greatest of Weimar-Era films. Brooks’ Lulu is the equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, a revelatory performance in a play adaptation that upends Victorian conventions: female sexuality is for once not demonized for ‘loosing evils on…
Repo Man 4K ULTRA HD + Blu-ray Criterion 1984 / 91 min Starring Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracy Walter Written by Alex Cox Photographed by Robbie Muller Directed by Alex Cox Repo Man is the work of a bartender with a metaphysical bent, conjuring up strange brews and even stranger stories. Alex Cox is…
Keeping relations good with the U.S. and NATO may have doomed Helmut Käutner’s grim tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany. The story is a sordid swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all of them down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S. airmen…
Lesser-Known Halloween Horror Film Suggestions Every year around this time media of all sorts try to get into the Halloween spirit and either posts lists of films to watch or programs a slate of scary fare. This is all well and good – the more Halloween stuff the better – but in general these lists…
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 have wine pairings for three films that are into recycling. Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within is a 2010 remake of the 2007 original. It’s a Brazilian action film, which…
It’s the WW2 spy thriller that everyone once assumed Orson Welles directed without credit. Director Norman Foster does good things with Eric Ambler’s tale of an American cornered by Nazi killers; Joseph Cotten co-wrote as well as starred and Dolores Del Río and Orson provide fine supporting performances. Welles’ problems at RKO surely contributed to…
How can a silent film seem such a modern conception? Kino reissues the 2014 restoration of Robert Weine’s horror landmark in 4K Ultra HD, with a choice of music soundtracks. The sleepwalking Cesare’s hypnotic abduction of Lil Dagover is still a grabber, and the nightmarish images don’t diminish in impact. It’s an incredible kickoff to…
Two of legendary Val Lewton’s greatest achievements make it to 4K Ultra HD. In Jacques Tourneur’s film the Gothic romance goes Voodoo on a West Indies plantation, with a side tragedy of slave misery. Scandal can’t hide, especially when the cheating wife falls into a catatonic ‘zombie’ state. It’s guilt, duty, and ‘shame and sorrow…
Halloween ’24 is looking good, as we chalk another genre landmark onto the list of excellent special edition discs. Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava’s thriller is the initial foray into Italo horror, a meeting of Gothic notions and modern medical chills. Gianna Maria Canale is the ravishing Duchess whose beauty is preserved through sordid science;…
Inquiring minds want to know. That’s why we people-watch. Why else would we care about what other people are doing, except to satisfy our own curiosity? When I see a bottle of wine in someone’s shopping cart, I’m curious about it. I crane my neck to see what wine this person is buying. I spin…
It’s a dive into an intoxicating, anarchic slice of the 20th-century, the brief era that was Weimar Germany. The society still reels from crushing defeat and dark political forces are gearing up for a malign future. Berlin’s nightlife churns with experimental art, debauched revelry and untempered vice. Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer and Achim von Borries’…
Sure, it’s a TV landmark. To liberals it is a dream vision of how responsible government, run by practical idealists, ought to work. The show’s seven years of rational ups and downs were aired mostly during the Bush administration, and still managed to hold out hope for America. It’s a crowning achievement for creator Aaron…
The Ladykillers 4K ULTRA HD + Blu-ray Kino Lorber 1955 / 91 min / 1.37:1 & 1.66:1 Starring Alec Guinness, Katie Johnson, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers Written by Alexander Mackendrick, William Rose Photographed by Otto Heller Directed by Alexander Mackendrick British comedy has always depended on an understated quality, and nothing was as understated as…
The Warner Archive’s latest MGM Technicolor bon-bon is this strained musical bio — Mickey Rooney as Lorenz Hart? — that nevertheless can boast an impressive revue lineup of performances: Judy Garland, Betty Garrett, Lena Horne, Mickey Rooney, Mel Tormé et al. The showstopper is one of Gene Kelly’s earliest ‘music ballet’ extravaganzas — he dances…
There’s been somewhat of a vogue for dialogue-free genre films in the past decade, including titles such as John Woo’s Silent Night, No One Will Save You, Boy Kills World and, of course, A Quiet Place. These movies eschew language to focus on pure visual cinema, hearkening back to silent film and the primacy of…
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 have wine pairings for a trio of films featuring everyone’s favorite Babs. Up the Sandbox, released toward the end of 1972, had Barbara Streisand as a New York City housewife…
Corporate culture had been around for years when the ‘Office Hell’ genre arrived, and this sleek fable from cubicle-land is both one of the best and one of the least seen. The much abused office temps Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach don’t have the luxury of cubicles, or even desks of…
No sooner do we dig up an old review for this horror masterpiece, than StudioCanal remasters it with a 4K scan and Kino adds some quality extras — just in time to start off the CineSavant Halloween season. College professor Peter Wyngarde refuses to believe that his missus Janet Blair has secured his high academic…
Jackie Chan’s legendary ‘Project A’ pictures reach 4K in a boxed set as lavish as home video can get. Chan’s pals Sammo Hung and Biao Yuen, and the amazing Chan Stunt Team assemble two of the most frenetic, athletic & death-defying comic action thrillers ever; the first is a Marines-vs-pirates epic and the second a…