CineSavant

Blu-ray A Rage to Live It's a hot soap from '65, when movies promised raging passion but delivered cheap teases and hypocritical judgments. It's Suzanne Pleshette's only starring role, but it doesn't exploit her bright personality, her sense of humor. John O'Hara's tale hasn't much pity for a promiscuous young wife who breaks the rules. Does nymphomania make her a...

Blu-ray The Lady from Shanghai To those who know him, Michael O’Hara “… has got a lot of blarney in him.” That also applies to Orson Welles, the man who created that smooth-talking Irishman and plays him in The Lady from Shanghai, a labyrinthine guessing-game written and directed by Welles in 1946. Welles’s enigmatic co-stars include Everett Sloane as Arthur Bannister,...

Blu-ray The Bride Wore Black François Truffaut's ode to Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich is an ice-cold femme revenge tale. Jeanne Moreau exacts retribution from five men who made her a widow on her wedding day. Truffaut winds it as tightly as a mousetrap, leaving Ms. Moreau's psychology a mystery -- feminists can debate whether the film is misogynistic. Raoul Coutard's...

Blu-ray Rancho Notorious We love this Fritz Lang western even though it's not particularly good; only in hindsight do we realize that the brilliant director's intentions may have been compromised. High-key lighting does Marlene Dietrich no favors, but she scores good scenes performing with Arthur Kennedy (revenged crazed cowpoke) and Mel Ferrer (tranquilized gunslinger). Lang fans will be...

Blu-ray Marco Polo ’62 You can't argue with disc collectors eager to rediscover movies they loved at age 10, in terrific kiddie matinees. Cowboy star Rory Calhoun makes a perfectly fine Italian vagabond ladies' man for this very un-serious 'oriental' adventure, and Yôko Tani is the requisite princess who needs kissing lessons. Tim Lucas's welcome, info-packed commentary satisfies our...

Blu-ray Monsieur Hire Highest honors go to this stylish, cinematically refined adaptation of a George Simenon thriller. Michel Blanc becomes a person of interest for a murder investigation mainly because he's disliked and anti-social; Sandrine Bonnaire is the neighbor that he peeps at nightly, to stir his secret passion. Director Patrice Leconte directs with almost perfect control, turning...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Death Wish, 4K Locked and loaded with a decent screenplay, Michael Winner and Charles Bronson acquit themselves well in this brutal 1974 hit that launched a decade's worth of nasty vigilante movies. The lynch-mob formula presents crimes so awful that the audience demands violent retribution. The shock is that this incitement to 'fight back' is not direct right-wing...

Blu-ray The Asphyx Awkwardly plotted but chilling just the same, this beautifully-filmed tale of Victorian experimentation with death has nightmarish qualities that won't go away. Class actors Robert Stephens, Robert Powell & Jane Lapotaire bring believability to a deadly-serious idea that scores the 'phantom-trapping' concept years before Ghostbusters. The cinematographer was Freddie Young; both versions are included, along...

Blu-ray Pretty Baby Brooke Shields became a star and attracted mild controversy in this show, director Louis Malle's first American production. Co-writer & producer Polly Platt and cinematographer Sven Nykvist collaborated on Malle's fascinating look at life in a New Orleans brothel early in the 20th century. Prostitute Susan Sarandon raises two children in the upscale bawdy house,...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray The Italian Job 4K Michael Caine's heist comedy has been rated one of the top UK movies ever. It's a flip Swingin' England slapstick thriller, lavishly produced and with an emphasis on fancy cars. Caine is a cockney crook with an insane scheme to steal millions in Red Chinese gold in Turin. Slick stuntwork combines with 'Team Brit' humor...

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 The Avengers: The Emma Peel Collection (1965-1967) Though remembered for its idiosyncratic humor, The Avengers made its debut in 1961 as a no-nonsense crime drama. Ian Hendry starred as David Keel, a doctor turned detective, while Patrick MacNee haunted the sidelines as an inscrutable investigator named John Steed. Shot in black and white under grey English skies, the show was unmistakably a product...

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...

Blu-ray The Night of the Iguana T. Lawrence Shannon looks more like a dock worker than a clergyman but to the women in his congregation he’s as soulful as one of Raphael’s angels. The problem is that this particular angel’s wings have been clipped. Shannon’s faith isn’t the only thing he’s struggling with; his wandering eye and freethinking ways suggest a...

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...