CineSavant

Blu-ray Operation Kid Brother -- German Import At the ragged end of the SuperSpy craze came this ingenious Italo 007 wannabe, so desperate for a James Bond connection that it recruited Sean Connery's brother Neil ... whose character is supposed to be the brother of the world's most fabulous spy. Actors from the official 007 series -- Daniela Bianchi, Adolfo Celi --...

Blu-ray, 13 Washington Square -- Silent The double standard strikes again. Reviewer Denise Morrison takes on this late-era silent, a frisky comedy of manners circling around an elopement across class lines. Count on a meddling mother, her goofy maid and the involvement of a clever thief to complicate the romantic confusion. Stars Alice Joyce, Jean Hersholt and Zasu Pitts guarantee the...

Blu-ray The First Deadly Sin Frank Sinatra's final starring performance in a feature is an interesting, low-key tale of a retirement-age detective hunting a serial killer while dealing with a sobering personal problem, the failing health of his wife. Faye Dunaway plays her decidedly unglamorous role in a hospital bed. Focusing on an odd murder weapon, Sinatra seems intrigued by...

Blu-ray The Lost Patrol No women here, just a gritty, doom-laden ordeal in the desert. John Ford took Victor McLaglen and Boris Karloff to Yuma, Arizona for what in 1934 was a nail-biting meat grinder of suspense: lost in the sands of Iraq, British riflemen are cut down by unseen Arab enemies, one by one. All hold out as...

Blu-ray Coup de torchon 'Clean Slate' French director Bertrand Tavernier relocates Texan Jim Thompson's acid-pulp thriller "Pop. 1280" to French colonial Africa just before WW2. Philippe Noiret embodies one of the coldest killers ever to stain a movie screen, a lawman who is also a functioning madman -- and has a rational argument for every one of his murders. Isabelle Huppert,...

Blu-ray Sergeant Rutledge We never pass up a John Ford western, even if this story of a military trial is not one of the best. Yet Sgt. Braxton Rutledge IS the mighty Woody Strode. We see him in gallant action (mostly subduing Apache enemies) and then playing a noble martyr at his own trial for rape and murder....

Blu-ray The Wings of Eagles John Ford indulges his reverence for the U.S. Navy in this semi-comic biography of a buddy who was a Naval aviation pioneer and a Hollywood screenwriter. It's broadly overdone but a nostalgic favorite for many, with Dan Dailey overselling the sentiment and John Wayne playing without his toupee. But what 'fifties kid doesn't remember the...

Blu-ray, Le Joli Mai The Lovely Month of May Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme follow the 'Direct Cinema' ethos in their inspired 2.5 hour portrait of Paris during a specific month in 1962. The observations and interviews elicit the full range of the French experience with questions as simple as, "are you happy?" and "what worries you?"  It's fascinating and beautiful to see, a...

Blu-ray Machine-Gun Kelly Import Disc This German import disc gives us an excellent-quality HD copy of Roger Corman's first gangster picture. In it Corman gave Charles Bronson his first starring feature, playing a psychotic killer. Bad-tempered Chuck is backed by plenty of screen talent -- Susan Cabot, Morey Amsterdam, Richard Devon, Jack Lambert and Barboura Morris. Our quibble is with...

Blu-ray The Love Trap -- Silent Silent Star Laura La Plante steps into the limelight. The daughter of a Hollywood extra started as a child actress and became Universal's main leading lady in the silents. This William Wyler show isn't about trapping a man -- Wyler generates sympathy for the problems of a woman beset by social rules that give the advantage to predatory men. Made in 1929, it's a part-talkie: at the third act, people start talking away, and not only to microphones hidden in bushes. Laura's leading man is none other than Neil Hamilton. Reviewer Denise Morrison weighs in with the CineSavant coverage.

Blu-ray French Dressing Wow! Maybe you're a Ken Russell fan, primed and ready to see his notorious The Devils?  Um, here's a slight substitution. The wild-man director's first theatrical feature is a notorious flop. Funny isn't everything, because there's plenty for the Russell faithful to appreciate, starting with the cult status of his top 3 cast members, James...

Blu-ray The Human Comedy It's ground zero for MGM 'tradition of quality' wholesomeness -- and a great picture about wartime emotions, even if the sentiment meter is set 10 degrees in the red. I don't know of a better Mickey Rooney performance -- the drama may dip into bathos, but he never does. The story is by William Saroyan...

4K Ultra HD Blu-ray + Digital Scary Movie (2026) After a 13-year break, the ultimate 21st-century horror parody franchise is back! The sixth installment in the Scary Movie saga gets into the re-equel game with the appropriately titled Scary Movie. Some familiar creative faces have reassumed control of the storytelling this time around. Marlon, Shawn, Keenen Ivory, and Craig Wayans are back at it...

4K UHD + Blu-ray Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me 4K UHD David Lynch's 1992 prequel to the tv series Twin Peaks has received a 4K Criterion upgrade, which will be good news for his legions of fans and film lovers in general. The harrowing tale of the last week of Laura Palmer's life is much darker and bleaker than the show's beloved blend of weirdness and...

Blu-ray Star Trek The Original Series 60th Anniversary The mighty Star Trek franchise is still a big deal in fan circles, which will make this 60th Anniversary disc set a desirable item for the curious. Six decades later, Roddenberry's idealistic space odyssey presents a winning stack of attitudes, some progressive and other dated. It doesn't matter, as we still love the personality dynamics...

4K Ultra HD + Region B Blu-ray The Hot Spot 4K UHD Dennis Hopper's Texas neo-noir is a sultry sizzler, long on atmosphere and rather poky in the pace department. Ladies' man Don Johnson drifts into a Texas burg and commences romancing both Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen. But who is seducing whom and for what underhanded reason?  Throw in a bank robbery and a couple of...

4K Ultra HD Troy 4K They say You Can't Go Homer again, but it's no problem making a slam-bang fantasy Iliad tuned to the star chemistry of Brad Pitt and the new (in 2003) ability to fill the screen with thousands of Greeks battling with sword 'n' shield. David Benioff's script is intelligent and the dialogue isn't bad; Pitt swings...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray The Saragossa Manuscript 4K Is it surreal, or psychedelic?  The source novel dates from 1813. This mind-blowing exercise in narrative puzzle-making is a classic with unique qualities, and its Polish director Wojciech Has is a genius. Investigating a strange book found on a Spanish battlefield, soldier Zbigniew Cybulski is plunged into a fantasy vs reality labyrinth that darn near...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Out of the Past 4K UHD At the peak of the style called film noir are a few classics that approach perfection, and Jacques Tourneur's supremely poetic film is certainly in the top ten. Daniel Mainwaring's pulp novel has plenty of macabre twists but the adaptation benefits from the electric charge generated by Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Her fugitive is...

Hell’s Highway The True Story of Highway Safety Films Two decades later, this daring documentary is still the only authoritative reportage on a near-taboo subject: the gross and gory graphic auto accident movies once shown to high schoolers with the idea of scaring them into driving more safely. Filmmaker Bret Wood has reconstructed and partly revised the docu, which tells the full story of...

Criterion - 4K Blu-ray Hud – 4K 4K Much of the glamour of Western movies lies in their lack of glamour. Often filmed in black and white against some of America’s most desolate landscapes, horse operas have traditionally made their dramatic points with barren but beautiful visuals. Thanks to Paul Newman’s profile and James Wong Howe’s cinematography, the western achieved its beau ideal...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Spike of Bensonhurst 4K UHD Paul Morrissey wrote and directed this sprawling, comic/serious neighborhood saga that scrambles ethnic identities, lopsided honor codes and the twisted 'normality' of mob rule in the borough of Brooklyn. Do we like our hero Spike?  He's an arrogant, entitled Italian-American, macho to the core. He impregnates both of his girlfriends, Maria Pitillo and Talisa Soto....

4K Ultra HD Forbidden Planet 4K UHD Robby the Robot is back, this time in 4K UHD. Arrow Video's 4K restoration brings back the full early width of CinemaScope, along with re-created 'Perspecta' stereophonic sound. Hollywood's one full-out attempt to depict an intergalactic Sci-fi future is a smashing success that relies on complex ideas as well as spaceships and monsters. It's also...

Separate Blu-ray releases Silent Gloria Swanson Times Two Reviewer Denise Morrison is back with another silent movie on disc, or actually, two separate releases starring the huge silent star Gloria Swanson. One is hard to find and was mastered/restored from surviving 16mm prints; the other is beautifully preserved in original 35mm. Both were produced and directed by Allan Dwan. They're actually older releases,...

Blu-ray All Through the Night We've rediscovered a new favorite from the Warner corral, a bright action comedy that raised spirits when America needed it most, fewer than 60 days after Pearl Harbor. It's an all-star comic delight, acted stylishly by Humphrey Bogart and directed smartly by Vincent Sherman. With the congressional Isolationists finally backing down, Hollywood hit the fascists...

Region B Blu-ray Madhouse UK correspondent Lee Broughton returns with a review of Vincent Price's final film for American-International Pictures. Behind-the-scenes tussles amongst its producers and a series of hasty re-writes found director Jim Clark delivering a film that employed the aesthetics of gothic horror alongside slasher film tropes in a sometimes slightly incongruent manner. The results may be...