CineSavant

Region B Blu-ray Columbia Noir #2 This second deluxe set Columbia Noir #2 presents another lineup of thrillers with a fine selection of stars, and directed by some of the better directors of noir. The six titles on view also contain several that are new to Blu-ray. If anything Powerhouse Indicator has upped its game in finding relevant, informative extras. The...

Blu-ray A Tale of Two Cities The tightly-constructed thriller A Tale of Two Cities is possibly the best of David O. Selznick’s high-toned literary adaptations of the 1930s. It compresses and streamlines the majority of Charles Dickens’ complex narrative into just over two hours. W.P. Lipscomb and S.N. Behrman’s screenplay has the emotional bite of a good silent melodrama. Star Ronald...

¡Ai Caramba! The best movie ever made about a killer Spanish Conquistador from beyond the grave (!) is probably the most satisfying of Richard Cunha's monster romps, despite being rudimentary in all respects. The script is dire and the monster just a generic bogeyman, but the actors are pleasant and the locations attractive. The filmmakers had the last laugh anyway, as the plain-wrap show garnered a nationwide theatrical release. The Film Detective wisely brought on Tom Weaver to front the extras, as he had the picture fully documented years ago. Giant from the Unknown It can sound as if it were easy for industry outsiders to make a movie in the 1950s, when the likes of Roger Corman, Bert Gordon and others slapped shows together for as little as thirty thousand dollars. Horror and sci-fi fare was a sure sell, and a number of aspirants wound up with real...

Blu-ray Southland Tales Richard Kelly’s sci-fi epic can’t be slotted into a neat opinion package. For this reviewer, it’s as if I encountered the gargantuan Southland Tales out on the highway and it ran me over. Who would expect this movie to bear that unassuming title?  It belongs on a sequel to Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. Is there...

Blu-ray Room for One More I normally can’t abide what passes today for ‘family values’ movies, as the thoughtful & warm likes of Friendly Persuasion has given way to outright fundamentalist fantasies or Neo-Heimat– style passive propaganda. But many vintage family pictures have drawbacks as well. Classic movies during the Production Code era had a way of evading reality, as...

All hail Blu-ray 3-D ... a format still hanging on as one of the best features of home theater. Budd Boetticher's trim action meller gives us Van Heflin (good) and Julie Adams (respectable) in a Mexican rebellion mini-epic with a backlot feel but rather good 3-D. The 3-D Film Archive's experts have optimized the depth effect and included a colorful, very depth-y Woody Woodpecker cartoon. And Boetticher advocate Jeremy Arnold provides the audio commentary. Wings of the Hawk 3-D The latest entry from the restoration experts at the 3-D Film Archive is Wings of the Hawk. Universal-International’s second 3-D release was also its first ‘widescreen’ movie: studios were adopted the 1:85 aspect ratio very soon after Fox’s game-changing launch of CinemaScope. At this time Universal devoted a big slice of its production schedule to...

Blu-ray Mouchette The first time one sees Robert Bresson speak, we half-expect a depressive character mourning the world’s injustice and misery. Yet in interviews he always seems positively energized by his theories of cinema — that impose rules on moviemaking more severe than the obsessive asceticism of his famous Country Priest. Is Bresson intent on making audiences...

Region B Blu-ray The Bride with White Hair In 17th century China a young boy, Cho I-Hang, is the most promising martial artist in the Wudang Sect’s junior warriors academy. Despite being earmarked to become the future Chieftain of the Eight Great Sects of the Central Plains, the rebellious lad dislikes formal training, preferring instead to sneak out after dark and have adventures...

This 1990 monster romp still feels bright, smart & fresh, a mix of light comedy and old-fashioned scares. The entire show is one long battle against smelly burrowing beasts called 'Graboids.' Desert handymen Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward must work hard to avoid taking their place in the Graboid Food Chain. Ambitious it ain't, but it delivers what monster fans want -- gross-out thrills, excellent effects and solid laughs. Arrow's 4K Ultra HD disc is as sharp as a tack, and a second Blu-ray disc contains an unprecedented volume of featurettes, interviews and production documentation. Tremors 4K Around Christmastime in 1989 there appeared a bus stop poster proclaiming the arrival of what looked like yet another tacky horror item — the artwork for Tremors featured an image of a huge creature reaching up at new victims, swiping the graphic motif from a certain Steven Spielberg hit. I remember a derisive comment on...

Blu-ray The Pajama Game Possibly Doris Day’s best film, The Pajama Game is a delightful George Abbott musical directed by Stanley Donen. In 1956 the lavish but static Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptations were probably more popular, but those pictures have started to creak while Day’s vehicle is still as funny as it is musically memorable. It’s a fine collaboration:...

Blu-ray Essential Film Noir Collection 1 The Australian disc boutique Viavision [Imprint] Blu-ray label taps a number of studio library collections: vintage classics from Sony/Columbia, MGM, Paramount. Their stock in trade are highly collectable special editions, handsomely appointed. Last year they managed the Blu-ray debut of George Pal’s When Worlds Collide and The War of the Worlds, with the second title...

Blu-ray And Hope to Die This movie is for people that like to curl up with an intense crime novel. Around 1987 I met a feature assistant editor at Cannon who loaned me a steady stream of pulp crime novels by James M. Cain and others. One of the best writers he introduced me to was David Goodis. I read...

Giuseppe Tornatore's romantic ode to the movies charmed America, convincing theater-goers that little Italian kids are the cutest in the world. Little Salvatore Cascio grows up in a projection booth under the life-tutelage of kindly Philippe Noiret. Arrow presents the theatrical version of this Best Foreign Picture Oscar winner in 4K Ultra HD. The (greatly) extended version is on a second Blu-ray -- it plays like a different movie entirely. Cinema Paradiso 4K Every so often there comes along a European movie that so captures American audiences, one would think it was tailored for export. Anybody remember 2011’s The Artist, a movie I’d sooner forget?  Then there’s Amélie from 2001, a confection so sweet it turned off many while seducing the entire country. I admit that I’m in...

Blu-ray Three Films by Luis Buñuel Tracking down the films of Luis Buñuel has been an ongoing effort. We were of course shown Un Chien Andalou at film school, and Ensayo de un crimen was one of the first off-campus screenings we were sent to see. We saw prints of Viridiana and Los Olvidados that look much better than what we...

Blu-ray Beach Red This is one movie title that connects to its target genre audience: Beach Red tells viewers exactly what they’ll be getting. It was the end of 1967, the year in which Hollywood action movies seemingly stepped onto a Violence Escalator: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre & The Dirty Dozen (both June), Point Blank & Bonnie...

Blu-ray Captain Newman, M.D. I think I saw maybe twenty minutes of Captain Newman, M.D. on television as a kid, and thought, ‘Why doesn’t anybody remember this movie?’  It’s a curious item that tries to be all things to all people, to hit that magic balance between realism and comedy, with warmth and humanity. When movies of this type...

Region B Blu-ray The Valdez Horses The movie we know as Chino was in the U.K. titled the same as its source story, The Valdez Horses. It’s the first of three movies that Charles Bronson made for the wildcat Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis. They all made money, as Bronson had become a huge European star with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon...

Where Were You in ’62, A.I.P.? American-International likely switched to the Goliath moniker to continue with their ‘Goliath’ series, and also because the name Maciste was unknown in the U.S..  Advisor and researcher Gary Teetzel found more interim titles in the trades. For a while the feature was known as Goliath and the Warriors of Genghis Khan ( ← ). At...

Blu-ray Survivor Ballads: Three Films by Shohei Imamura Films by the Japanese director Shohei Imamura have one thing in common — they’re as provocative as a slap in the face. Our introduction to Imamura’s tales of sex and social injustice was the disturbing Vengeance is Mine, a cold look at a serial killer. Then we saw his ‘thesis thriller’ on military Occupation corruption...

The Train The Train is back, now at popular prices!  The fan base for John Frankenheimer’s incredibly elaborate Occupation thriller is growing exponentially. The railroad and military hardware on view is 100% real, something that CGI-jaded moviegoers appreciate more than ever. Great acting and a terrific storyline propel a tale of sabotage into the top level of...

Blu-ray The Lost Weekend Talk about an artist determined to make good: Billy Wilder arrived in America barely speaking the language but within three years was writing sophisticated screenplays. His partnership with Charles Brackett was mutually beneficial — we wonder what their creative spats might have been like. Can you imagine trying to talk Wilder into an idea he...

Region B Blu-ray Devil in a Blue Dress How could a movie this good not catch on?  Carl Franklin was cheated, Easy Rawlins was cheated and WE were cheated: the 1995 feature film Devil in a Blue Dress, adapted from the first of Walter Mosley’s detective novels, should have been the first chapter in an ongoing series. Denzel Washington is terrific in this...

Blu-ray Hard Eight I never warmed up to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights or his Magnolia, but there’s no denying that the man knows his way around an intense emotional workout. He still directs stacks of short subjects and music videos; of his features I was strongly impressed by the book adaptations There Will Be Blood and Inherent...

Blu-ray Holiday Affair “Baby, you’re just what I want for Christmas” says an alert-looking Robert Mitchum, staring at an image of a kiss-ready Janet Leigh, literally wrapped in cellophane. The pitch doesn’t fit the movie, and we’re told it didn’t bring in the theater patrons either. Too bad, as the Mitchum we discover in Holiday Affair is pleasant...

Blu-ray Moonstruck John Patrick Shanley has a new romantic movie out called Wild Mountain Thyme. I’ve just seen it, and enjoyed it immensely. It’s a perfect date movie, much like this one. Starting with the jolting arrow-in-the-back scene in Five Corners I’ve found almost everything Shanley has done to be a special experience: the stylized fantasy Joe...

Region B Blu-ray Buffalo Bill and the Indians 1976 was a pretty momentous year for America, viewing-wise. We were enjoying Saturday Night Live, cringing at Taxi Driver and already looking forward to sci-fi epics from both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. With the fallout from Watergate and the Vietnam war being over (officially, anyway) our Bicentennial was a rather strange time — what...