CineSavant

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray 3 Days of the Condor 4K Ruthless spy thrills, big-star glitz plus pretensions of political importance: Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway find career-sustaining momentum in this slick, top-talent espionage tale on the fashionable end of post- Watergate paranoia. It's a box office winner for director Sydney Pollack, who gives the show his special energy -- he was Robert Redford's most consistent...

Blu-ray The Trollenberg Terror (Import) The old TV Guide blurb nailed it: "Hidden in a radioactive cloud, a creature from outer space awaits its next victim." CineSavant braves the freezing heights of the Trollenberg to wildly over-analyze this curiously fascinating bit of Brit Sci-fi, made on the cheap yet an over-achiever for imaginative suspense and jolting Jump Scares. Forrest Tucker...

Blu-ray Wichita "Anything Goes in Wichita!"  In the second half of his starring career Joel McCrea turned to westerns, favoring 'kinder and gentler' scripts when possible. This civilized telling of part of the Wyatt Earp story was McCrea's first collaboration with producer Walter Mirisch. It's an Allied Artists 'A' picture right down the line, and a special...

Blu-ray Borsalino Jacques Deray's Yankee-style Buddy picture was a smash in France, with its stellar pairing of Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The expensive epic is a gangster picture suitable for James Cagney, but set in 1930 Marseille and stressing elaborate period costumes, automobiles and fancy décor. Our boys take turns admiring the attractive female stars, punching...

Blu-ray The Long Voyage Home This 2016 restoration helps Eugene O'Neill's seagoing story retake its place as one of John Ford's most accomplished pictures. John Wayne stars as part of an ensemble -- Ford's direction and Gregg Toland's cinematography are the stars. A crew of ordinary merchant seaman must sail into wartime waters. O'Neill provides the ironic character studies, and...

Blu-ray Blonde Ice All hail the lowly output of Hollywood's Poverty Row, where mediocrity ruled and good work was rarely rewarded. This potboiler about an avaricious slayer of 'inconvenient' suitors is memorable for its low-rent charm and rather vague performances -- although glamorous leading lady Leslie Brooks is quite capable with both gun and knife. We celebrate this...

Blu-ray Cimarron (1931) "Terrific as all Creation!"  Wesley Ruggles's film adaptation of Edna Ferber's epic novel won the Oscar for Best Picture, helping to establish the RKO studio. Noble Richard Dix and beautiful Irene Dunne's complex characters span 40 years of Oklahoma history -- the oil wells arrive, the wild west fades, and Dix's heroic Yancey Cravat never...

4K Ultra-HD + Blu-ray To Live and Die in L.A. 4K A William Friedkin fan favorite reaches 4K -- the reputation of this thriller has risen over the years, along with the career of its cultured villain, Willem Dafoe. On the trail of a murderous counterfeiter, William Petersen's elite Secret Service agent goes rogue, running wild and putting lives at risk. His callous use of informants...

Blu-ray Is Paris Burning? They said 'We'll always have Paris,' but for three weeks in 1944 the survival of the City of Light was in grave doubt. This gigantic all-star national epic didn't please everyone yet will dazzle viewers willing to accept the city itself as the star. Working from a screenplay by two Americans, director René Clément shows...

4K Ultra HD + Digital Code Rio Bravo 4K Everyone's favorite gun-down & sing-along John Wayne western is also Howard Hawks' cagy comeback in an industry that had left him behind. Hawks stitched together favorite 'pieces' of his 1940s hits and imposed the structure of an impromptu TV sitcom. Accompanying the box office powerhouse Wayne is a comedian-crooner still proving his worth as an...

Blu-ray Force of Evil Abraham Polonsky's ode to corruption in the American success story is one of film noir's most artistic achievements as well as John Garfield's best film. It's realistic in tone, yet its dialogues are stylized almost to the level of poetry. A hotshot lawyer goes too far while lobbying for a 'slightly illegal' racket. Blinded by...

Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher. "Pure western heaven" is the catchphrase for Budd Boetticher's perfectly-scaled ruminations on ethics and actions in an imperfect wilderness. The five RANdolph-brOWN features here present Randolph Scott's range rider as an icon of masculine nobility. The new 4K encodings transport home theaters to a lost era of horse-opera charm, with dramas that reward adult attention. And don't forget, no cowboy star rides a horse better than Randy. The Ranown Westerns 4K The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 1186 1957-1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen & 1:85 widescreen / 307 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 18, 2023 / 149.95 Starring: Randolph Scott Leading Ladies: Maureen O’Sullivan, Karen Steele (2), Valerie...

Blu-ray The Anderson Tapes Sidney Lumet directs his first on-location New York crime picture, giving the escapist heist thriller a taste of paranoid cinema to come. Released after ten years in stir, thief Sean Connery launches into an immediate raid on a swank 5th Avenue apartment building, not realizing that a Brave New Surveillance World is watching and recording...

Unman, Wittering and Zigo Unman, Wittering and Zigo Blu-ray Arrow Video 1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 102 min. / Street Date August 22, 2023 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95 Starring: David Hemmings, Douglas Wilmer, Tony Haygarth, Carolyn Seymour, Hamilton Dyce, Barbara Lott, Donald Gee, David Jackson, Hubert Rees, David Auker, Michael Kitschen, Tom Owen, Michael...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams 4K As his career wound down Akira Kurosawa found new champions among Hollywood's young 'film student' generation, several of whom helped him secure financing for important film projects. Warner Brothers backed this utterly personal film of poetic expression, containing several 'short stories' illustrated with fanciful visuals. Kurosawa's 'dreams' include a mythical fable, a haunted tale of...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Roman Holiday 4K William Wyler's perennial charmer is 100% undiluted entertainment: Gregory Peck and the new star Audrey Hepburn share a Roman fairy tale that's also a tourist's dream. A runaway Princess takes in the town like a galavanting Cinderella, not realizing that she's being set up for an image-damaging photojournalism exposé. The show is a hands-down joy...

Blu-ray Helen of Troy Robert Wise's Italy-filmed epic looks better than ever on Blu, showcasing a fine cast and imaginative special effects. It's a straight telling of Homer's The Iliad with just a drop of Cold War attitude -- this time the Greeks are the unreasonable aggressors. Neither Rossana Podestà nor Jacques Sernas excited the critics of '56, but...

Blu-ray Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round James Coburn's starring film career began with projects he deemed 'far-out' -- and writer-director Bernard Girard promptly hooked him on this eccentric thriller about an infallibly seductive con-man. It's a low-key, non-violent puzzle picture about a perfect heist, and also a guessing game that skips from San Francisco to Denver to Boston to Los Angeles,...

4K Ultra HD + Digital Code East of Eden 4K Elia Kazan hits 4K with an extras-lean but visually stunning edition of this early CinemaScope feature, now rated 'PG.'  It's James Dean's first and best starring role, and with Kazan in charge the actors push the 'drama' accelerator to the floor. It still holds up, with top-billed Julie Harris doing everything Dean does, but effortlessly...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Time Bandits 4K Terry Gilliam's fantasy epic is back in the super 4K Ultra HD format, which makes his achievement look all the more spectacular. Two hours of unceasing visual miracles, delightful personalities and wickedly civilized humor begin when a pack of cosmic workers purloin a celestial map and become time-traveling thieves. A young hero joins them and...

Region B Blu-ray Night Has a Thousand Eyes 'Fate' is a frequent player in classic noir, but this spooky 1948 charmer crosses noir atmosphere with a semi-supernatural vibe -- enforced by a top performance from Edward G. Robinson, plus the eerie presence of Gail Russell,  She Who Possesses the Saddest Eyes in Hollywood. A showbiz mentalist suddenly experiences foreshadowings of deaths to come,...

Blu-ray Tom Mix Cowboy Double Bill Sky High + The Big Diamond Robbery.  The top cowboy star of the silent era and his wonder horse Tony were once the idol of a million kids -- and now they're back again in remastered editions. SKY HIGH is mostly filmed around, over and deep inside the Grand Canyon -- in 1922. THE BIG...

Blu-ray The Bridges at Toko-Ri A domestic Blu-ray arrives of Mark Robson's Korean War rumination, from the pen of James Michener and fleshed out 100% by Paramount's crack visual effects team. Superstar leads William Holden and Grace Kelly illustrate a hard lesson of modern warfare -- even in 'asymmetrical' high-tech combat there is no guarantee of survival. Charles McGraw, Fredric...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Gorgo 4K We can hardly believe this -- a nearly perfect 4K encoding of this all-time favorite monster epic has arrived, with only a few weeks' notice. The sharp, brightly colored image finally reflects Freddie Young's rich textures, returning the word 'artful' to writer-director-designer Eugène Lourié's family-friendly yarn about a city-smashing 'Irish sea fairie.' Talk about childhood...

Blu-ray The Servant Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter shake up the notion of English propriety, as butler Dirk Bogarde 'invades and subverts' the life of his employer James Fox, through subtle psychological manipulation and the seductive power of his supposed 'sister,' a very young Sarah Miles. Wendy Craig is the confused fiancé in this serious, sinister and fascinating...

Blu-ray Land of the Pharaohs Howard Hawks presents ancient history as a lavish spectacle: tens of thousands of extras build a giant pyramid on the extra-wide CinemaScope screen, aided by the excitement and mysticism of Dimitri Tiomkin's exotic music score. So convincing is the recreation, we almost believe the tomb-sealing sci-fi mechanics that shift stone blocks weighing tons, in just...