CineSavant

Blu-ray 4K Serpico 4K 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 splendor, the image reflected a uniquely 70’s phenomenon shared by that same year’s Godspell and Jesus Christ, Superstar: the saintly hippie. Based on Peter Maas’ biography,...

Blu-ray + DVD The Big Trail 70mm 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...

Blu-ray If I Had a Million John Doe hits the jackpot in Paramount’s If I Had a Million, an indispensable piece of Americana produced in the midst of the Great Depression. The film represents some of the era’s finest directors and actors in a series of short films both comic and tragic—times being what they were, the comedy and tragedy are...

Notre-Dame de Paris 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...

Blu-ray Never Say Die 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 is tied to June Marko, an Olympian sharp-shooter, possibly homicidal, and definitely money hungry. Mickey is stalked by Henry Munch, a clodhopper who’s more interested...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Deep Impact 4K 🎶  "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...

Blu-ray Silent Avant-Garde 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,...

Blu-ray Border Incident 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...

4K Ultra HD 12 Angry Men 4K 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...

Blu-ray Backtrack 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...

Blu-ray The Assassination Bureau 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...

Blu-ray Danza Macabra Vol 1 The Italian Gothic Collection 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...

Blu-ray They Came To Cordura 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...

Region Free Blu-ray The Shiver of the Vampires 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...

Blu-ray Hell is for Heroes 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....

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray The Seventh Seal 4K 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...

Blu-ray The Assassin of the Tsar 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....

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Star Trek The Next Generation 4-Movie Collection 4K The four The Next Generation feature films under the Rick Berman flag maintain the character fun of the TV series while working awfully hard to deliver high-quality space opera for the 1990s. Fans get what they want, plus at times a decent sense of humor. An obvious mission was to extend the characters of Jean-Luc...

Blu-ray Counsellor at Law William Wyler's breakthrough movie gives John Barrymore one of his better sound-era dramatic roles, in a strong, incisive pre-Code adapted from Elmer Rice's play set in a high-powered New York Law office. Attorney George Simon has done well by defending the rich, and eases his conscience by helping people from his roots down on Second...

Blu-ray Asphalt One of the last of the classic Weimar silents, Joe May's melodrama is only partly expressionist; Günther Rittau's terrific camerawork tells a 'street' story of crime and sex with minimal dialogue. Gustav Fröhlich is the green Berlin street cop and Betty Amman the vamp who sullies his badge; the story takes place in 24 hours...

DVD Martin Roumagnac Something of a missing link in the filmography of Marlene Dietrich, this immediate postwar French production pairs her with one of her great amours, Jean Gabin. Almost forgotten now, it has qualities other Dietrich films don't, starting with her taking a character role rather than one that plays off her glamorous silver screen image. It's...

Region Free Blu-ray Resurrection Daniel Petrie and Ellen Burstyn's excellent film elevates a genre we normally disdain -- the Ethereal Cereal do-you-believe Spiritual Awakening picture. Call this one intelligent, thoughtful, insightful, respectful and emotionally extra-effective. It pushes all the right buttons and finds a conclusion that doesn't make us roll our eyes. Burstyn's commitment, Petrie's direction and the input...

Blu-ray No Man Is an Island Here's a hard-to-see WW2 real-life drama that holds up rather well. Jeffrey Hunter plays radioman George Tweed, the lone U.S. sailor holdout when Guam Island was taken by the Japanese right after Pearl Harbor. The production is modest but the story is told with a winning honesty -- it's a basic survival tale that avoids...

Blu-ray Chilly Scenes of Winter We never miss an opportunity to see John Heard perform. A 'difficult' movie that nonetheless made its mark, Joan Micklin Silver's adaptation of Ann Beattie's novel looks at modern romance through a realistic lens, relatable to young adults in the late 1970s: people are problematic constructs with built-in barriers to Happily Ever After outcomes. John...

Region B Blu-ray State of the Union Frank Capra's big push to reestablish his exalted pre-war reputation saw him applying 'Capracorn' to a Pulitzer-winning Broadway comedy-drama about modern politics. Airplane industrialist Spencer Tracy is groomed to run for the White House by newspaper czar Angela Lansbury and political kingmaker Adolphe Menjou. Tracy's wife Katharine Hepburn frets to see her husband become a...

Blu-ray The Prince and the Showgirl What a difference a digital remaster makes!  Marilyn Monroe's self-produced English comedy leaps back to life with a new restoration of Jack Cardiff's stunning color cinematography. Monroe's a delight co-starring with Laurence Olivier, amid the stuffy formal-dress diplomacy and giddy midnight seductions. Adapted from a formal stage play, the farce of manners is far more...