Audie Murphy Collection Blu ray Kino Lorber 1952, 1958, 1959 / 242 min. Starring Audie Murphy, Stephen McNally, Walter Matthau, Charles Drake Cinematography by Irving Glassberg, Harold Lipstein Directed by Don Siegel, Jesse Hibbs, Jack Arnold “My temper was explosive… perhaps I was trying to level with my fists what I assumed fate had put…
A major silent film find: recently rediscovered and restored, this much-sought Austrian satire offers historical insight on antisemitism in 1920s Europe, and by extension today’s anti-immigrant politics. A fictitious city decides that the solution to its ills is to expel its Jewish population. That exact premise would in just a few years become political reality…
Still one of Tracy and Hepburn’s best, this follow-up to Adam’s Rib works on all levels. It rings the feminist rights gong just hard enough, and drums the notion that women deserve a chance to achieve their potential without sex discrimination getting in the way. Katharine Hepburn is at her most attractive when being athletic….
Late great visual stylist Joel Schumacher’s death-defying science fiction thriller Flatliners (1990) turns 30 today. It’s a classic, positively Frankenstein-ian examination of ambitious innovators prioritizing their careers in science over their own safety. Five enterprising Chicago medical students push themselves beyond the normal confines of mortality in a series of “flatlining” experiments, wherein one student…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, movies by Monty Python’s Flying Circus are featured, with appropriate wine pairings. Feel free to have some Spam if you like. We need to have some guilty pleasures during a pandemic….
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves Blu ray Kino Lorber 1944/ 87 min. Starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall Cinematography by George Robinson Directed by Arthur Lubin Thanks to George Robinson’s Technicolor photography and Vera West’s kaleidoscopic costumes, death and destruction look pretty as a picture in 1944’s Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Director Arthur Lubin’s…
An artist’s life is always more than their ‘published’ works, but that this massive ‘Agnés in a box’ comes close to being the last word on an impressive filmmaker sometimes dubbed The Mother of the French New Wave. It certainly is as comprehensive and complete as possible when it comes to her films. So far…
Grab some popcorn and pull up a chair, it’s a moral imperative that we celebrate the 35th birthday of Martha Coolidge’s science whiz classic Real Genius! The wise-cracking Val Kilmer starrer, which details the adventures of a group of brilliant physics undergrads at the fictional Pacific Tech University (clearly a stand-in for Caltech), stands as…
Never heard of Wake Island? Its fall terrified Americans at Christmas of 1941. The war’s just begun, we’re definitely not winning, and the assignment was to make a movie about a tragic defeat that might be the first of many tragic defeats to come. Paramount’s careful morale-builder doesn’t exaggerate or sentimentalize the brutal fall…
Luchino Visconti’s handsome final feature adapts a classic Italian novel about an arrogant aristocrat whose selfish double-standard philosophy causes ruin and misery. The 19th century villas and ornate costumes dazzle, but the depressingly fated story will be tough going for sensitive audiences. This new disc encoding highlights the intoxicating atmosphere, and the intense performances of…
Good Old Tony Curtis! We could always depend on Tony for a sly, ingratiating smile, charm that ranged from candid-sweet to barracuda insincerity, and a desire to please that never quit. Some of his best work came while schmoozing and nice-nice clawing his way to the top, where he epitomized the glamorous movie star with…
Slave of the Cannibal God Blu ray Code Red 1978/ 99 min. Starring Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach Cinematography by Giancarlo Ferrando Directed by Sergio Martino At the same moment the Korean War was ending and Eisenhower entered the White House, illustrator Samson Pollen found his niche; illuminating the fever dreams of suburban dads for action…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, Billy Wilder movies, one… two… three of them, with appropriate wine pairings. 1961’s One Two Three saw James Cagney playing the head of Coca Cola’s Berlin office. If I were in…
Here’s a story about a different kind of ‘lockdown.’ This near-perfect Americana drama might be the real pinnacle of Sissy Spacek’s wonderful career. The no-baloney tale of rural life on the Texas coastline during WW2 is packed with strong emotions and solid sentiment. Wartime hardship and catch-as-catch-can romance strike an uneasy balance with more threatening…
Severin’s extravagant four-film six-disc The Complete Umberto Lenzi / Carroll Baker Giallo Collection is a luxurious trip into sexy, violent Italo thrill territory. CineSavant concentrates on the first Lenzi-Baker collaboration, a truly nasty bit of misanthropy that bridges the gap between standard ‘Lady In Peril’ fare and the full-bore giallos that would soon become the norm….
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, a look at some award-winning movies. If you are reading outside, please keep your mask on. Intense laughter can really send those COVID germs a-flying. There are still more than six…
The Lady Eve Blu ray Criterion 1941/ 94 min. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, William Demarest Cinematography by Victor Milner Directed by Preston Sturges In The Lady Eve a wealthy ophiologist named Charlie Pike and a sexy card shark named Jean Harrington fall in love. It’s a rapid-fire romance fueled by equal portions of love and lust…
We love Cassandra Peterson, a smart woman who made a go of horror host work in the tough Los Angeles TV market, long after the short-lived Vampira and just a few years after the passing of Sinister Seymour. After Elvira’s Movie Macabre she got to make this lively comedy feature, and thus planted her stake…
“One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach … All the damn vampires.” -Grandpa (Barnard Hughes), The Lost Boys I respectfully disagree with Grandpa’s sentiment. My favorite part about watching the faux coastal fantasia of Santa Carla is all the damn vampires. Despite being very much a time capsule capturing a certain…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, a look at Media Darkness – what makes news, what makes entertainment and what’s the diff? Brought to you by White Ford Bronco Wine. Keep your mask on. It muffles your…
Howard Franklin’s absorbing tale of the New York underworld is told from the point of view of a night-prowling shutterbug who documents life on the streets, from the swanky nightclubs to gangland killings on the cold sidewalks. Joe Pesci has his most endearing role in a part suggested by the famous photographer Weegee, a small…
A bigger and brighter film debut couldn’t be imagined … Doris Day became America’s sweetheart in Michael Curtiz’s peppy production, graced with a witty script and several catchy, radio-ready song hits. And the color is better than new in this impressive Blu-ray remastering job — Woody Bredell’s Technicolor hues are literally eye-popping. It’s great fun…
A near-spotless restoration on the 104 year-old adaptation of the Jules Verne classic finally presents it in a form where we can judge its merits. The screenplay is an erratic jumble, imposing serial thrill elements onto an undigested amalgam of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers with its sequel L’Ile mystérieuse. But the physical production…
This marvelous proto-documentary is a cultural travelogue, before such films became a conduit to express social outrage or moral condemnation. To the French filmmakers America in 1960 is still a land of wonders, a bigger-than-life fantasyland, where you can visit a places called Fantasyland and Frontierland and see your culture’s past play out as entertainment….
Guest reviewer Lee Broughton tackles Tonino Valerii’s Spaghetti Western-cum-political conspiracy thriller. By brazenly transposing key aspects of John F. Kennedy’s assassination onto the assassination of James A. Garfield in 1881, Valerii gives both western and conspiracy film fans much food for thought. A career best performance by Giuliano Gemma, repurposed sets from Once Upon a…