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 examine a trio of “lost indies” with funny man Patton Oswalt. I am happy to see Patton Oswalt as a TFH guru. I have always thought he was a funny…
Viavision Imprint’s 4th Noir collection is here, with two core examples of the classic style, one solid gangster film, an adventure-intrigue tale set in South Africa and two psychological ‘woman in peril’ thrillers. The male leads Burt Lancaster, Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart and Robert Ryan must contend with heroines Corrine Calvet, Jan Sterling, Phyllis Calvert…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, our attention goes to three films that were spawned by the devil, or someone with similar tastes. The Vigil is a 2019 horror film which whips up all kinds of bad…
Serpico Blu-ray 4K KL Studio Classics 1973 / 1.85:1 Starring Al Pacino, John Randolph, Tony Roberts Written by Waldo Salt, Norman Wexler Directed by Sidney Lumet Paramount’s posters for Serpico resembled ads for the Fillmore East or the Whisky a Go Go—and that was the point. Featuring a kaleidoscopic Al Pacino in all his multi-colored…
CineSavant takes a break to catch up with a ‘Wonder Movie of the Ages’ — from 93 years ago. Raoul Walsh led an enormous company all over the West to film an immense wagon train epic — in a short-lived 70mm film process called Grandeur. The vistas of pioneer action are staggering, and so is…
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 examine three films which rest on the masterful scripts that were written for them. We are in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America, and whether you carry a sign…
If I Had a Million Blu-ray KL Studio Classics 1932 / B&W / 1.33: 1 Starring Wynne Gibson, W.C. Fields, Charles Laughton Written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Oliver Garrett Directed by Norman Taurog, Norman Z. McLeod, Ernst Lubitsch John Doe hits the jackpot in Paramount’s If I Had a Million, an indispensable piece of Americana…
Last month, it appears that domestic film fans were looking for a little vicarious adventure to liven up their couch surfing. That would explain why the latest JustWatch top 10 chart, which tracks the most-searched for titles on the go-to website for all your streaming needs, is jam-packed with fun fare. Among the titles listed,…
Another CineSavant Revival Screening Review, or in other words, it’s not yet officially available for English-language viewers. This French The Hunchback of Notre Dame may not be the cinematic masterpiece that is RKO’s 1939 version, but it has a literate script, good production values, color and CinemaScope — and doesn’t mar the Victor Hugo original…
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 examine three films which feature some winged wonders of horror – Flying Monsters – with an appropriate wine pairing for each. The Flying Serpent took off in 1946 as the…
Never Say Die Blu-ray KL Classics 1939 / B&W / 1.33: 1 Starring Bob Hope, Martha Raye Written by Preston Sturges Directed by Elliot Nugent Hold hands, you lovebirds, all four of you. Bob Hope and Martha Raye play John Kidley and Mickey Hawkins, both very rich and each engaged to the wrong person. Kidley…
🎶 “Have you heard . . . about the stars? . . . Ju-pi-ter could collide with Mars . . .” 🎶 A comet is on a collision course with Earth, a saga experienced through a TV Network, the teenager who first discovered the astral threat, and the team of astronauts dispatched on a deep…
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 examine three fantasy films that take us to their own special worlds. Prehistoric Women is a 1967 British film which debuted in the US, but it didn’t hit movie screens…
CineSavant dips into film school heaven with Bruce Posner’s new collection of experimental art pix spanning a hundred years of cinematic impishness. The Dadaists and Cubists are here — Léger, Man Ray, Duchamp — plus camera geniuses, cinematic theorists and others wishing to make a splash in museum showings. Featured are works by Orson Welles,…
The first MGM film from the noir team of Anthony Mann / John Alton is a crime exposé of the migrant farmworker issue. Ricardo Montalban is excellent as a Mexican immigration cop, and co-star George Murphy makes a traumatic impression in one of the most sadistic scenes in classic film noir. Hardcore noir addresses a…
The Sidney Lumet classic graduates to the 4K bracket, with a new transfer. Pictures like this taught a generation of American kids that our system of justice was alive and vital — even if Reginald Rose’s tense drama suggests that twelve inconvenienced jurors can also behave like a Lynch Mob. Star Henry Fonda continued his…
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 examine three films which always turn up in discussions of the greatest of all time. In case you don’t get enough exposure to feelings of entitlement in your average day,…
Dennis Hopper’s self-indulgent romantic hit man thriller is too interested in modern art and cinematic detours to give its own storyline a fair shake. The supporting cast and celebrity walk-ons are fun; star Jodie Foster does the heavy lifting with a difficult character to play. Kino’s disc has both versions — the theatrical cut is…
Pitched somewhere between spy thrills, camp satire and art nouveau nostalgia, Basil Dearden’s assassination adventure didn’t launch a comic book fantasy phase, even if it resembles the graphic-novel thrillers that now dominate the movies. Diana Rigg and Oliver Reed do their utmost to elevate the joky script, and almost succeed . . . and plenty…
Severin’s latest deluxe collector’s box gathers a quartet of ‘Gothic holdovers,’ Italo productions that persist with spooky castles, strange noblemen and aggressively passionate leading ladies. They range from the B&W ’60s to the more permissive screens of the early ’70s, when contemporary-set Giallos took over. The group includes an oddity, a rarity and a garish…
We finally caught up with this bold yet misconceived Robert Rossen drama, a desert trek in which Army major Gary Cooper must deal with 5 mutinous Medal of Honor nominees. It’s a lengthy discourse on bravery versus cowardice, held together by the fine actors Rita Hayworth, Van Heflin, Tab Hunter and Richard Conte. A lot…
A Jean Rollin film scores a first 4K disc release before Bava, Franju or Fisher; we review the Blu-ray edition. Once again dipping into free-form softcore Ero-horror, the French filmmaker imposes his improvisatory style on a fairly conventional vampire story, embracing the lesbian trends of the day (night). Should we be surprised that Rollin is…
A gritty combat drama with Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Harry Guardino? Why wasn’t this on Blu ten years ago? Don Siegel directs an entertaining ‘infantry squad in trouble’ thriller with his expected hard-edged, unsentimental attitude. Bob Newhart excels via an audience-pleasing comic bit but Bobby Darin’s co-starring position is diminished by the aggressive McQueen….
This Ingmar Bergman masterpiece still works, and its profundity is only part of the bargain. Max von Sydow is the returning knight who discovers that ‘you can’t go home again,’ especially not when the Plague is loose. Existense is chaotic on all levels in this corner of the medieval world; our knight must play a…
Get set for another intriguing Russian import from Deaf Crocodile Films. Karen Shakhnazarov’s tale interweaves history with our essential human identity: if the truth of past events remains hidden, how can we know who we are? Star Malcolm McDowell is Timofeyev, an asylum inmate convinced that he’s killed two Tsars, at different times in history….