CineSavant

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...

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 The Blood Beast Terror A serene British countryside is rocked by a series of brutal murders with a common thread; each victim has been mutilated and drained of their blood. All eyes are on a nearby university and its resident eccentric, the mysterious Dr. Mallinger, an entomologist with a fascination for Death’s-head moths. His daughter Clare shares his interests but her...

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...

Blu-ray Great Expectations David Lean and Noël Coward made four films together in the space of just three years—it was one of the most consequential collaborations in British cinema with Lean, a former editor, finding his footing as director alongside the accomplished Coward, one of England’s preeminent “show-biz hyphenates.” By 1946 Lean was ready to part ways and...

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...

Blu-ray + DVD El vampiro negro The Black Vampire!  The most impressive Spanish-language noir restoration yet, Román Viñoly Barreto's superior serial murder thriller hails from 1953 Argentina. It re-interprets Fritz Lang's "M" from a different, more emotionally engaging perspective: star Olga Zubarry's nightclub singer hesitates to tell what she knows about a child-killer, because she might lose custody of her own...

Region Free Blu-ray Warning Shot This mid-60s detective story has the right ingredients -- a good mystery and interesting characters. David Jannsen gets to play a 'Bosch'- style lone wolf investigator given a public thrashing for a 'mistake' that he knows was no mistake at all. Can a 'bad cop' redeem himself?  The parade of mid-level guest stars -- Stefanie...

Blu-ray French Noir Collection Hungry for those wet Parisian streets, the city lights, and cadavres en lambeaux in the pale moonlight? Enter three highly atmospheric, star-studded Crime Noirs, one of which is a stealth classic of Gallic Pulp. Stars Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, and Annie Girardot bring the tales of à...

Region Free Blu-ray Putney Swope The New York Underground invaded the mainstream with Robert Downey Sr.'s completely irreverent Madison Avenue satire, in which a token black executive takes over an Ad agency, renames it 'Truth and Soul' and goes on a mad reign of creative terror. Arnold Johnson, Stan Gottlieb, Allen Garfield, and Antonio Fargas star in a farce that...

Blu-ray Ulzana’s Raid Robert Aldrich gives the Cavalry Western a rough going-over in this brutal, unforgiving horror-western. Burt Lancaster gets in a fine late-career action turn as well. The pursuit of an Apache raiding party becomes guerrilla war in the desert, the kind of conflict that cements racial hatred forever. Aldrich and Alan Sharp's answer to the 'mud...

4K Ultra HD Silent Running 4K Newly remastered in 4K! Bruce Dern's (literally) tree-hugging forest ranger Freeman Lowell commits space piracy to save the trees, dude, and becomes lost in space with only Huey, Dewey and Louie for companionship. The only soul back on Earth who seems to care is Joan Baez. Douglas Trumbull's technically-accomplished first feature film does 2001 on...

Blu-ray The Count Yorga Collection An aristocratic bloodsucker from the old country is the main attraction of Bob Kelljan’s Count Yorga, Vampire, but what drives the movie is an actual motor, a 1969 Volkswagen bus with a blood red trim. That amiable vehicle, the stoner’s favorite mode of transportation, is front and center in several pivotal scenes (Yorga even hitches...

Blu-ray Storm Center The first movie to directly confront McCarthyism!  Or so said the editorials touting this 'Long-Awaited Screen Event' in which 'Bette Davis Hits the Screen in a Cyclone of Dramatic Fury!'  The storm of the title was based on a real activist in Oklahoma who lost her job for promoting equal rights. Bette's polite librarian is...

Blu-ray Going Places Bertrand Blier's edgy romp about a pair of ne'er-do-well petty-crooks will go too far for many viewers -- they're antisocially chauvinistic in some really outrageous ways. Are they jolly adventurers or just terminally obnoxious?  The twisted social comedy really needs its talented cast: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, and a very...

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Blue Hawaii 4K Elvis Presley's handlers found the formula that would keep his stardom solvent through the 1960s in this well-confected, calculatedly vacant star vehicle that EVERYBODY liked and enjoyed in 1961. The coolest celeb in America ended up in some of the squarest, least-hip films of the era. Why do we like it so?  Cutting through the...