CineSavant

Blu-ray The Woman One Longs For It's Marlene Dietrich, before Josef von Sternberg and The Blue Angel -- and much of her mystique is already present. This sophisticated German silent observes a precarious, dangerous love triangle. Two men are entranced by the same woman: one deserts his bride on their wedding night and the other may have killed to possess her....

Blu-ray History is Made at Night 'Unabashed, unfettered romanticism' runs wild in Frank Borzage's golden-age masterpiece of a runaway wife and the crazy Frenchman who pursues her. Long lost to awful, ragged 16mm prints, the newly restored gem will dazzle fans of delirious love stories, where the right people get together despite distance, time, and the interference of jealous husbands, misunderstandings,...

It's another CineSavant Revival Screening of a show not presently available on disc: not an old favorite, but something we admittedly never heard of ... a marvelous 1951 film that's seemingly been hiding under the carpet for sixty years, despite being directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Lloyd Bridges, Dorothy Gish, Carleton Carpenter, Murray Hamilton, Diana Douglas, Anne Francis, Ernest Borgnine and Arthur O'Connell. At first we fear it will be another angry midcentury indictment of free enterprise ... but it becomes something else entirely. The unusual near- neorealist picture was filmed on location in a New Hampshire mill town; it is newly restored and hopefully destined for Blu-ray soon. The Whistle at Eaton Falls The Whistle at Eaton Falls CineSavant Revival Screening Review Not on Home Video 1951 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 96 min. / Richer Than the Earth / Not Yet On Home Video Starring: Lloyd Bridges, Dorothy Gish, Carleton Carpenter, Murray Hamilton, James Westerfield, Lenore Lonergan, Russell Hardie, Helen Shields, Doro Merande, Diana Douglas, Anne...

Blu-ray Escape from Fort Bravo John Sturges' first color western is a tightly organized and unpretentious winner about a stern Union prison warden and a Confederate prisoner teaming up to fight an Apache enemy ... wait, that sounds familiar. William Holden and Eleanor Parker strike sparks out on the ruddy mesas, while Sturges has a field day with the amazing...

Blu-ray The Blue Lamp It's the granddaddy of British cop dramas of the modern era. The most popular English picture of 1950 introduced PC George Dixon, a warm-hearted constable who would become a staple on BBC TV for 21 years. T.E.B. Clarke's screenplay of a murder manhunt is stocked with actors American fans know well -- Dirk Bogarde, Bernard...

Blu-ray Nightmare Alley One of the most glamorous / unsavory films noir ever, this creepy tale of a master con-man undone by warped ambition was planned as a career-altering role for the big star Tyrone Power. Power plumbs the depths of personal degradation in terms that even today skew to the squeamish side of human experience. Almost as...

4k Ultra HD Donnie Darko 4K The 4K Ultra HD crowd has a treat in store, for Donnie Boy is back for theatrical quality home screenings. Richard Kelly's dreamy/morbid teen fantasy has gained in stature in the twenty years (gasp) since the nasty bunny-man 'Frank' raised his ugly chrome head... and young Donald's psychic sci-fi ordeal seems more relevant than ever....

Blu-ray Smile Near the pinnacle of director-driven '70s cinema is this marvelous comedy about a 'American Miss' contest, and the swirl of personalities that come to support, promote and ogle the teen beauties just learning the ropes of the good old U.S. hype machine. Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon and Michael Kidd are just wonderful as the adults...

Blu-ray They Won’t Believe Me Vintage high-end Film Noir from the classic year 1947!   Low Mileage too -- this long cut hasn't been seen since the early laserdisc days.  I didn't know it needed restoring until George Feltenstein talked about it a couple of years ago. It's a domestic noir crossed with Double Indemnity with a little An American...

Region B Blu-ray Columbia Noir #3 Witness six noir heroes, doing what noir heroes do: one crooked gambler, one psycho, another psycho with access to a gun, a dope railroaded into a prison sentence, and an even bigger dope who doesn't realize he's poisoning himself. That's only five, but the sixth is a cop, and not a particularly compromised one, the...

Blu-ray The Night of the Following Day Hubert Cornfield's smoothly directed, moody kidnapping story is mysterious, engaging and well acted, but opts for an anti-thriller vibe with a curiously unsatisfying ending. Was this really the plan, or did the irksomely capricious Marlon Brando just not want to cooperate with the director?   Brando is terrific anyway (and in great shape, too). The...

Blu-ray Broadway Melody of 1940 For his first re-teaming sans Ginger, Fred Astaire hot-foots it to MGM and the waiting tap & sweep partner Eleanor Powell, already a terrific box office draw in her own right. These were the days when the caliber of talent in Hollywood justified the exalted, glamorous aura of star status. The story is a backstage...

Blu-ray Switchblade Sisters The always-dynamic director Jack Hill goes teen-gang wild with this absolutely crazy take on JD pictures, pitched three octaves higher than normal exploitation drama. All the nasty-rasty thrills are here, from an episode of WIP sadism to brutal misogyny to a gang skirmish fought on a roller skating rink. What began as one of those...

Blu-ray Quick Change On the short list of post- classic-era comedies I can see over and over again is this beautifully executed Bill Murray crime comedy, which he co-directed. The fact that its basically silly main joke is whining about New York City doesn't keep it from being hilarious from one end to the other. When it comes...

Blu-ray Fukushima 50 This Japanese docudrama is an excellent primer on the scary near- meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. After the earthquake, a tsunami triggered a 'major nuclear event.' A group of dedicated engineers struggle against odds to regain control. It's another 21st Century disaster writ large -- we applaud the camaraderie and...

Blu-ray The Hot Spot A sizzling neo-noir that should have boosted Dennis Hopper into feature bankability goes a tad slack -- my guess is that Hopper's fine directing instincts got blurred in the editing process. Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, Jennifer Connelly and others are well cast in Charles Williams' hardboiled sex 'n' crime yarn, and the temperature indeed rises...

Blu-ray Defending Your Life Albert Brooks' most entertaining picture is still about modern anxieties, but this time seen through a satirical 'film blanc' filter. Neurotic ad man Daniel has a bad encounter with a bus and finds himself in a bizarre Heavenly Waiting Room for the Afterlife ... except that it's an entirely different system than that of St....

Blu-ray Annie Get Your Gun MGM's old-fashioned Irving Berlin musical has superior songs and powerful performances, especially that of Betty Hutton. She gets plenty loud and rambunctious, but it fits the 'big' Annie Oakley character. And the talented, under-appreciated Howard Keel really fires up the screen with her in songs like 'Anything You Can Do.' The WAC disc contains plenty...

Blu-ray Spacewalker Dmitriy Kiselev's overlooked Russian thriller is an exciting and inspirational true account of the first walk in space by a Soviet cosmonaut -- a mission that nearly became a tragedy. It's almost as emotional an experience as Apollo 13 -- the worthy cosmonauts demonstrate 'the right stuff' under much more trying conditions. The beautifully produced...

Blu-ray Irma Vep Olivier Assayas takes a very different trip into silent movie nostalgia, with a director's ill-fated attempt to remake the 1915 serial Les Vampires. Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung is cast as the erotic rooftop nightcrawler Irma Vep!  We see the state of Paris filmmaking in the mid-90s, with a clueless, frustrated director (Jean-Pierre Léaud)...

Blu-ray The Furies When not making tons of money collaborating with James Stewart, Anthony Mann directed some really grim westerns. This mini-epic spells out the ugly real-life Code of The West: seizing land and establishing private empires. Walter Huston's T.C. Jeffords maintains his sprawling fiefdom through economic tyranny (he prints his own money and expects banks to accept...

Blu-ray The Man in Search of his Murderer The name talent attached makes this late- Weimar thriller a must-see proposition: Billy Wilder, Robert & Curt Siodmak, Franz Waxman. Their dark murder farce resembles what would later become the self-aware Black Comedy. The trouble begins when a suicidal nice guy can't pull the trigger, and hires a crook to do the job for him....

Perdita Durango 4K Perdita Durango 4K Ultra HD What could sear your retinas as thoroughly as forbidden cult cinema in 4K Ultra HD? The unrestrained crime-shock transgressors Perdita and Romero cut a path of lust, cult ritual madness and amoral nastiness across the U.S./Mexico border. Kidnapping, murder and theft are among their printable crimes. Álex de Iglesia's beautifully produced slice of post- Tarantino...

Blu-ray Black Sunday (1977) John Frankenheimer's biggest production since Grand Prix turns the touchy subject of international terrorism into a frightening, outlandish story of a plot to kill thousands of spectators during one of America's defining rituals, the Super Bowl. Black September operative Marthe Keller seduces disturbed Viet vet Bruce Dern into perpetrating the crime; Israeli agent Robert Shaw...

Blu-ray Doctor X It's the disc everyone wants right now -- vintage Hollywood horror fully restored to its original Technicolor luster. A scientific investigation into some grisly Full Moon Murders culminates in a bizarre experiment in a fantastic lab with five potential mad doctors. Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill became horror stars, Lee Tracy provides the sidebar laughs,...

Blu-ray Hercules and the Captive Women This debut feature of muscleman favorite Reg Park is one of the better sword 'n' sandal epics; it has good action and a terrific villainess in Fay Spain. The okay story is Benoit's L'Atlantide, re-shaped to fit the fad for all things Hercules. The Film Detective's disc is the Woolner Bros.' American release, trimmed by...