CineSavant

4K Ultra HD + Digital Code Dragonslayer 4K Hal Barwood & Matthew Robbins put everything they had into a medieval sword 'n' sorcery epic, filmed in England and finished in California by the best artists at ILM and VCE. It's basic gee-whiz sorcerer- George vs. The Dragon material, but more brutal than expected. Word of mouth about some unnecessarily gory scenes tipped off...

Blu-ray Party Girl ’95 Here's the eager New York independent production that snagged Parker Posey for her first starring role -- as a Manhattan party animal who eventually finds stable footing as a (gasp) librarian. Life is tough when you can't make the rent. This latter-day Holly Golightly has problems with flaky instability, but the guy selling falafel downstairs...

Blu-ray Black Sunday ’77 John Frankenheimer's big-scale terrorism conspiracy tale benefits from the director's no-nonsense attitude to action. Thomas Harris' first novel spins on a 'high concept' gimmick that surely launched a studio bidding war: what if somebody blew up the entire Super Bowl, in mid-game? Robert Shaw, Steven Keats and Marthe Keller play well with the tense effort...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Babylon 4K Is it a train wreck or an unrecognized masterpiece?  Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt topline this enormous, enormously profane epic of silent-era Hollywood -- that immediately earned the scorn of critics decrying it as a gross distortion of historical reality. Word Of Mouth focused on the film's blizzard of gross bodily functions, which surely inspired...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Mildred Pierce 4K 'Washed up' at MGM, Joan Crawford bounced back with one of the smartest, best-judged career rethinks in Hollywood history. As James M. Cain's independent housewife-careerist she soars to heights of California success, only to be brought down by runaway maternal blindness. Michael Curtiz guides a pack of indelibly selfish characters -- Jack Carson's slimy business...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray The Long Wait 4K This Mickey Spillane noir tale has its good points: star Anthony Quinn gives a solid 'tough guy' performance, sizing up a quartet of thrill-crazy Spillane dames that promise no end of trouble. The surprisingly clever script dares to exploit the gimmicks of both amnesia and plastic surgery -- without insulting our intelligence. Peggie Castle is...

All Region Blu-ray Something to Live For Hollywood's postwar shift to social consciousness addressed familiar issues like bigotry and discrimination. On his way to making his gargantuan, serious epics, famed director George Stevens paused for this almost entirely forgotten contemplation of American anxiety in the business rat race, with a side order of alcoholism and potential adultery. Ray Milland is the troubled...

Blu-ray Mississippi Mermaid François Truffaut is back with another Hitchcock-influenced adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich murder thriller, with stars Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo as lovers - criminals - fugitives, and partly filmed in a remote French island in the Indian Ocean. It's a tale of a mail-order bride, larcenous deception, and irrational amor fou run amuck. The...

Third Man on the Mountain CineSavant Revival Screening Review From Newbery Medal to amusement park thrill ride, James Ramsey Ullman’s Banner in the Sky climbed the ladder as deftly as the men who scaled the mountains in his 1955 best seller, a fictionalized account of the first explorer to make it to the top of the Matterhorn. It was rarefied...

Region B Blu-ray Death of a Gunfighter Richard Widmark reportedly used his clout to amp up this revisionist western, but the result seems forced at best, and hampered by Universal's TV-grade production values. The sober screenplay brings in good ideas but the execution can't quite hold its own with the more progressive westerns of the genre-changing years 1968-'69. A cast of familiar...

Blu-ray Obsessed This very traditional chamber murder mystery starring David Farrar and Geraldine Fitzgerald has been beautifully restored by Studiocanal and bears the original U.K. title The Late Edwina Black. When the sickly wife Edwina dies in bed the bitter housekeeper accuses the husband and another very attractive servant; all the Scotland Yard Inspector need do is...

The Lady Is My Wife Wow, a 'new' Sam Peckinpah western!  While we await the rumored Blu-ray of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid to surface (or was Alex Cox misinformed?), correspondent Darren Gross has come across a watchable web encoding of a Peckinpah TV drama that seems to be more or less 'lost.' Good star performances (Jean Simmons, Bradford...

Blu-ray Thrillers from the Vault – 8 Classic Films – Part Two This is part two of a review for Mill Creek Entertainment’s Thrillers from the Vault, 8 Classics Films. Part one can be found here. The Devil Commands is a hell of a title, and it’s a pretty good movie too. Released in 1941, Edward Dmytryk’s spookfest stars Boris Karloff as Julian Blair, a scientist whose...

Blu-ray Thrillers from the Vault – 8 Classic Films In 1934 Boris Karloff was an unhappy actor, he was one of Universal’s most illustrious stars, yet good parts were scarce, and intelligent horror roles like hen’s teeth—the occasional work at other studios was both a boon and a welcome distraction. In 1935 the studio loaned him to Columbia for The Black Room, a blood and...

Region Free Blu-ray The Mountain The French Alps in VistaVision and Technicolor really sell this inspirational thriller. Spencer Tracy stars is the utterly ethical mountaineer, and young Robert Wagner his venal, verminous, just plain no damn good younger brother. Make that MUCH younger. Edward Dmytryk directs for big dimensions and strong emotions, and Paramount's remaster makes the special effects of...

Blu-ray The Green Room François Truffaut goes deep and morbid adapting a Henry James story about a man who chooses to 'devote himself to his beloved dead.' He builds an altar-shrine to a departed bride and comrades that didn't survive the Great War. A sympathetic woman considers aiding him, but his obsession keeps choosing life-negating directions. It's a weird,...

Blu-ray Sci-fi from the Vault: 4 Films Mill Creek's latest disc collection gathers three Columbia Sci-fi faves and throws in a Blu-ray debut for a fourth. It's a good selection: two giant Ray Harryhausen monsters, one marginal bad-taste Sam Katzman zombie epic, and a quirky Lou Costello comedy with Dorothy Provine doing a wholesome take on Allison Hayes' biggest role. Do these...

Blu-ray The House that Screamed What makes Franco-era Spanish horror so horrible?  The unnecessary cruelty and emphatic nastiness, a combination that's led to more than a few essays about political repression. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's shocker puts psycho headmistress Lilli Palmer in charge of a twisted girl's boarding school. Get ready for ice-cold Women-In-Prison intrigues, with macabre carnage for a chaser....

Blu-ray Romeo and Juliet ’68 Franco Zeffirelli apprenticed to Luchino Visconti, stage directed operas and directed several movie hits, the biggest of which was this exuberant, attractive Shakespeare adaptation, filmed like an opera with sumptuous sets and sunswept Italian locations. The novelty for 1968 was casting the Bard's star-crossed young lovers with actual teenagers. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are...

Region Free Blu-ray Carrie (1952) This expensive production was dismissed as a flop, and literary critics scorned it for diluting the famed novel by Theodore Dreiser. But it plays well now: William Wyler gives star Laurence Olivier what may be his best film acting role ever. Jennifer Jones' title part suffers from script changes that censor and sentimentalize Dreiser's intentions,...

Blu-ray If I Were King It's a nearly perfect tale of identity swaps and royal intrigues: Ronald Colman's voice is velvet smooth as the poet-rogue François Villon, who uses his wits when dealing with Basil Rathbone's (very strangely played) Louis XI. The real charm comes with lady-in-waiting Frances Dee (swoon) and the peasant firebrand Ellen Drew (double swoon). And don't...

4K Ultra-HD + Blu-ray Marathon Man 4K William Goldman's international conspiracy thriller provides Dustin Hoffman with an outright 'action man' star vehicle. The public applauded supporting star Laurence Olivier, who with just a few gestures creates a terrifying villain: "Is it safe?"  William Devane and Marthe Keller co-star. We wish Roy Scheider's character could have continued in a series of crime thrillers...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Dazed and Confused 4K "Where were you in '76?" The newest entrant in Criterion's 4K disc club is Richard Linklater's rowdy but affectionate ode to high school nostalgia, Texas-style. It's a Bicentennial summer update of American Graffiti and in just 14 years the entire face of America has changed. Youth idealism is dead and the main rule is to...

Blu-ray Enter Santo: The First Adventures of the Silver-Masked Man To begin to understand the byzantine nature of Mexican culture, look no further than the town of Tulancingo, home to Mesoamerican pyramids built in 1000 B.C. and the statue of El Santo erected in 1985. Born in 1917 in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta was a folk hero whose mythological status was...

Blu-ray Goodbye, Mr. Chips Robert Donat snagged an Oscar for this sentimental crowdpleaser, a Best Picture nominee in Hollywood's 'Golden Year' of 1939. The genteel chemistry between Donat's shy schoolteacher and the charming personality Greer Garson broke hearts, and made Ms. Garson one of MGM's top names for the next decade. It's one of the studio's English productions, filmed...

Region B Blu-ray The Big Gundown Quentin Tarantino crowned Sergio Corbucci as the second-best director of Italian westerns, but our vote goes to Sergio Sollima -- this is the most satisfying Spaghetti oater outside of the Leone corral. In his first starring role, Lee Van Cleef is lawman Jonathan Corbett, who pursues Tomas Milian's killer into Mexico for an American millionaire....