CineSavant

Region A + B Blu-ray Big Time Gambling Boss What a discovery . . . I'm glad this was recommended to me. Kôsaku Yamashita's powerful 1968  drama belongs to the semi-chivalrous 'honor and code' yakuza tradition. Crime clan blood brothers Kôji Tsuruta and Tomisaburô Wakayama are good men caught between conflicting loyalties to family, friends, and the yakuza credo. Clashes of honor lead to...

Blu-ray Imitation of Life ’34 John M. Stahl's superior melodrama is a focus point for the study of African-Americans in Hollywood. Businesswoman Claudette Colbert a housekeeper Louise Beavers raise their daughters together for a story that expresses the racial divide in simple terms. Determined to pass for white, Beavers' daughter Fredi Washington rejects her mother outright. The tale of motherly...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code Cloverfield 4K We're happy to report that this Goddard - Abrams - Reeves monster thriller holds up, when most everything else from the years of shaky-cam nausea and 'found footage' boredom disappoints. The 'found' video recording of the end of NYC is more than a gimmick, and it brings the panic for a you-are-there night of mayhem,...

Blu-ray Pork Chop Hill Hollywood finally decided to get serious about the Korean War debacle with a pro-Army, anti-politics battle epic that blames our own negotiators as much as the enemy. Director Lewis Milestone and star Gregory Peck lead a full company of favorite actors in a gritty story of ugly combat in absurd conditions: die taking territory today,...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Last Night in Soho 4K Have a yen for the music, style and glamour of '60s Swinging London?  Edgar Wright's hybrid time capsule / music extravaganza / horror thriller is an audiovisual delight from one end to the other. Young women from different decades seek to conquer London by different means -- they meet as soul twins in a ghost...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 4K Terry Gilliam's grandest, most joyful fantasy is still a marvel, a fully adult adventure that will equally spark younger imaginations. Creative tricks and eye-popping Italo designs bring us a magical, satirical world of absurd wars, sultan's hareems and a flight of fancy to the moon. John Neville's ideal Baron is abetted by spunky Sarah Polley...

Region B Blu-ray The Working Class Goes to Heaven A big welcome to the new disc company Radiance!  This first CineSavant Radiance review is a knockout political drama from Italy's Elio Petri, with one of the best performances ever by Gian-Maria Volontè. Model factory machinist Lulù Massa offends his peers on the assembly line with his individualistic egotism. An injury on the job makes him...

Region Free Blu-ray The Eagle Has Landed Director John Sturges' final feature is a handsome production that fumbles and stumbles in unexpected ways. Michael Caine and especially Donald Sutherland lead an impossible commando mission to kidnap Winston Churchill right from English soil. Tom Mankiewicz's dialogue is witty but the tone is all over the place. We don't know whether it's the script,...

Blu-ray The Dunwich Horror Arrow swings into 2023 with a disc of a horror thriller 'with issues' -- but appointing it with intriguing extras. Sandra Dee gets her perky nose all tangled up in an inter-dimensional conspiracy run by sneaky occultist Dean Stockwell -- and we know that it's all going to lead to a sacrificial altar. Roger Corman...

Region Free Blu-ray Burn! (Queimada) This Region-Free import gives us both versions of Gillo Pontecorvo's fictional tale of colonial misdeeds that sums up old Europe's attitude toward the New World. Marlon Brando's agent provocateur and freebooting soldier of fortune foments revolution against the Portuguese and then hires out to reverse everything he's done for English interests. The big scale production...

Blu-ray Sergeant Ryker Lee Marvin, Vera Miles and Bradford Dillman shine a military courtroom drama, a TV movie released as a theatrical feature five years later (pretty sneaky, Universal). It's small-scale but effective, with strong performances and a reasonably credible storyline. Marvin's Ryker is on trial for his life, with the entire U.S. Army convinced that he's a...

Blu-ray Three Films by Mai Zetterling The ex- movie star Mai Zetterling found more satisfaction in directing. In interviews she denied that she is an intellectual, but more intelligent films about male-female emotional politics are hard to come by. Unusually frank and intense, these dramas for the 1960s art film circuit pack a visceral impact -- the extreme situations and content...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray The Taking of Pelham One Two Three 4K A superb thriller is now better than ever on 4K. We've always known why it rewards viewings: it's both thrilling and funny. When Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam and Hector Elizondo hijack a subway train, Walter Matthau must scramble to collect a ransom while trying to figure out how they'll make their escape. Peter Stone's dialogue...

Directed by Roland Joffé Directors interested in important, ambitious subject matter didn't all go extinct with the rise of the Star Wars Generation. Roland Joffé's first four features are powerful pictures that tell truths that we ought not to forget, with a couple of Award-winning gems right up front. The star power is here as well -- Robert De...

Blu-ray Invaders from Mars The disc of the year has finally arrived and it's 1000% worth the wait. William Cameron Menzies' flight into schoolboy paranoia now really looks like it ought to hang in the Louvre; the entire show is inspired Modern Art. When Martians conduct a brain-snatching takeover of Middle America little David MacLean must save the day,...

Region B Blu-ray Remember the Night Mitchell Leisen's great Christmas-time tale has a brilliant screenplay by Preston Sturges and letter-perfect performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, threading the needle between light cynicism and well-earned sentiment. Sturges' celebration of 'country values' is sincere and heartfelt, as is his affection for the supporting cast. The presentation includes two radio broadcasts plus a...

Blu-ray Dersu Uzala What a great way to encounter such an unusual masterpiece -- Akira Kurosawa reenergized his creative career with this ambitious, uncompromised historical epic, filmed for Mosfilm on location in the wilds of far-East Siberia. A local woodsman becomes a guide for a Russian survey team, and a great friendship is formed. It's like nothing Kurosawa...

Blu-ray The Girl on a Motorcycle Welcome to 1968, and a burst of creative direction from one of the greatest film artists of the 20th century, Jack Cardiff. An attempt to make pop star Marianne Faithful into a cinematic sex symbol is an uphill struggle, even with Alain Delon playing opposite. Psychedelic effects are poured over a tale of desire that...

Blu-ray It Always Rains on Sunday All those British crime films once deemed undesirable for the National Image are beginning to get the attention they deserve. This story of a single day in a working class section of London has plenty of criminal activity but blends it in with the everyday crimes of desperation and boredom. The Sandigate girls are flirting...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code Pulp Fiction 4K A 4K Steelbook!  Haven't seen this show lately, and discovered that it holds up remarkably well. Mr. QT's sophomore outing made an indelible mark on American movies -- the darling of hipster crime filmmaking dazzled viewers with showcase set-piece scenes, entertainingly profane dialogue and ultra-hip inside-out time-shuffling narrative tricks. Add to that genuine star turns,...

Blu-ray Twilight Robert Benton and Paul Newman's show-biz detective tale is one of the best-looking thrillers of 1998. With its star lineup of Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Reese Witherspoon, Stockard Channing and James Garner, its the equivalent of a dog-eared comfy mystery paperback. The classic themes and stylistics are here, but in a new Hollywood where movie...

Blu-ray The Molly Maguires It's Labor vs. Capital, in basic terms!  Sean Connery is the tough, embittered miner looking to strike back against the bosses, and Richard Harris the underdog who sees a way out by becoming an agent provocateur for the Pinkertons. An admirable true-life history lesson, Walter Bernstein & Martin Ritt's downer of a drama didn't grab...

Blu-ray Attack of the 50 Foot Woman Only once in a generation do we behold a classic such as this!  The 'embiggened' adventures of Nancy Archer lack technical sophistication, but good direction and a very direct story -- female revenge writ large -- grab us every time. Let the absurdities pile up, because Allison Hayes cuts a mean fifty-foot figure in that...

Blu-ray Testament To the short list of 'classic' nuclear horror on Blu-ray we can now add the one that hits closest to home. Lynne Littman's harrowing film stays small-scale and Big Emotion, enduring a slow extermination for an innocent family. A little California town loses contact with the rest of the world, and hope fades as the...

Blu-ray The Hallelujah Trail John Sturges' Road Show comedy western has more in common with 1941 than The Magnificent Seven, but Kino has MGM's new remaster and the visual result is spectacular. The Ultra Panavision 70 epic is still a favorite of fans of out-of-control Hollywood filmmaking. Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton, Pamela Tiffin and a huge cast...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Reservoir Dogs 4K Quentin Tarantino's first feature may not be to all tastes, but it is an admirable feat of commercial filmmaking -- what other director has broken into the front rank with such panache?   The fifth time through, the splintered, elliptical structure still impresses, and there's always something new to see in the performances of Harvey...