CineSavant

Blu-ray Scarface (1932) Still the fiercest and most cinematic of the first wave of gangster classics, Howards Hughes and Hawks's pre-Code rule-breaker was the one that brought down the ban on 'glamorous' gangster movies. In this case classic hardly means dated: the cars and clothes are vintage but the sex and violence are sizzling hot. Paul Muni is...

The Yearling Based on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s 1938 novel, The Yearling revels in the solitary adventures of Jody Baxter, a boy whose untamed nature is reflected in his Deep South stomping grounds, Florida’s “Big Scrub.” Director Clarence Brown and a raft of MGM’s finest cinematographers cruised the backwaters and swamplands to capture the sensual pleasures of the...

Blu-ray To New Shores & La Habanera Douglas Sirk proves his mettle as a consummate romantic storyteller in these part-musical melodramas from the peak of his career in Germany. They cemented stardom for Zarah Leander, a beauty who could have been an international success had the timing and politics been different. Both pictures send their heroines on far-flung adventures. In To New...

Blu-ray Fast Times at Ridgemont High "Learn it. Know it. Live it!" The best-remembered teen comedy of the '80s is also an insightful and unabashed look at real attitudes, behaviors and motivations of young people learning to deal with adult issues. Beyond the hilarious Sean Penn and the luscious Phoebe Cates lies a talented squad of notables and stars-to-be like Jennifer...

Blu-ray Hellfighters "Two smoldering women made all the danger worthwhile!"... heck, we didn't even see 'em catch fire. John Wayne is charismatic and Andrew V. McLaglen's direction is decent for once in this formulaic 'easy listening' pot-boiler from the Wayne school of laid-back '60s entertainment. After winning the Vietnam War, our intrepid action man extinguishes 101 out-of-control...

Blu-ray + DVD Blood of the Vampire The man with eyebrows that can kill!  Not really, but that's the impression given by the poster illustration. The Baker/Berman producing team gave their Hammer/Terence Fisher imitation a decent production -- good color, autopsy-grade gore, female victims in low-cut gowns -- but neither Jimmy Sangster's script nor the flat direction bring it to life. Donald...

Blu-ray Giants and Toys Brilliant filmmaking from Japan: Yasuzô Masumura's film all but screams in protest, that unfettered consumer capitalism is cannibalism, plain and simple. In the radical director's scathing, savage satire, Tokyo's desperate advertising 'Mad Men' create a fresh new star celebrity to promote their product, only for the warfare of cutthroat competition to shatter careers, fortunes and...

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....

It Happened Tomorrow René Clair takes a trip through The Twilight Zone in It Happened Tomorrow, the story of a reporter’s perilous adventure with a different kind of time machine. Like Clair’s I Married a Witch and The Ghost Goes West, this 1944 fantasy is lighter than air but its feet are planted firmly on the ground. Dick...

The Producers At his most unrestrained, Mel Brooks would have made Voltaire blush. Would such uninhibited comedy survive under the gaze of today’s self-appointed blacklisters? The answer can be found in the success of that very uninhibited Amazon darling—not to mention Academy-approved—Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, the film documents the latest diplomatic outreach of Kazakhstan’s...

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,...

The Whistle at Eaton Falls It's another CineSavant Revival Screening Review 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...

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...

THE DUNGEON OF ANDY MILLIGAN COLLECTION “I should have killed Andy.” – Jimmy McDonough In 1987 Andy Milligan was working on his latest film, a bloody revenge saga with a Frankenstein theme called Monstrosity. His biographer Jimmy McDonough was by his side, working the clapper, absorbing Milligan’s abuse, and taking notes on the final years of the director, still a poisonous...

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...