CineSavant

Blu-ray 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) “Universal has a sensationally effective two hour feature… at once educational, scenic and melodramatic, not to mention its value as a film spectacle, and its heretofore untried novelty of showing innumerable scenes underwater.” That’s how the December 29, 1916 Variety review judged 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a movie that premiered in the middle of...

Blu-ray America as Seen by a Frenchman The ‘Frenchman’ of the title is the prolific filmmaker François Reichenbach. Although not part of the cinéma vérité movement, his documentaries haven’t dated because his ethic was simply to show things as they are. He doesn’t overly hard-agenda commentary or shape his visuals to fit a pre-set storyline. They say nobody sees a country better...

Region Free Blu-ray A Bullet for the President In 1881, President James A. Garfield (Van Johnson) journeys from Washington to give a speech in Dallas, Texas despite being warned by his top secret service operative, Arthur McDonald (Warren Vanders), that intelligence suggests that extreme danger awaits him there. As his open-topped carriage approaches an overpass in the city, the President is assassinated. Conflicting...

Blu-ray Pride and Prejudice (1940) I have yet to see a really bad version of Pride and Prejudice; I remember liking the 1995 TV series. 2005’s version suffered only from Kiera Knightley’s shark-like smile and a smothering overlay of picture postcard visuals. Actually, although it also toys with the concept, 2012’s miniseries Death Comes to Pemberley is a good bet...

Blu-ray The War of the Worlds Is George Pal’s The War of the Worlds ready to thrill again, or after forty years of George Lucas ray-zapping and spaceship-zooming, will a new generation of movie fans deem it a fossil?  Veteran director Byron Haskin certainly gave the show everything he had, and the snappy screenplay moves the story forward like a house...

Blu-ray The Day the Earth Caught Fire Adult science fiction thrills don’t get better than this top-ten genre classic from the ‘ban the bomb’ years of the late 1950s and early ’60s, when hundreds of of thermonuclear bombs were tested. An ecological apocalypse is caused not by an atomic war but by atomic testing itself. It’s the anti- Susan Sontag Sci-fi story:...

Region B Blu-ray Britannia Hospital Talk about a movie years before its time — Britannia Hospital is right in tune with our world of 2020, where everything seems to be dysfunctional and society is in total rebellion. But Lindsay Anderson had the misfortune to complete his film right in the middle of Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands War crisis, which generated a...

Blu-ray Come and See “If I am to treat this film with all gravity, then nobody will want to see this film.” Soviet director Elem Klimov set out to tell the truth about wartime atrocities that in 1985 were a full forty years in the past. In an interview, his brother German Klimov says that the movie was made...

Blu-ray Africa Screams I can’t say that I was one of the zillion ’50s kids that were avid fans of The Three Stooges and Abbott & Costello. The Stooges’ short subjects seen at kiddie matinees just seemed bizarre. I don’t know what possessed my parents to take me to Lou Costello’s final film The 30 Foot Bride of...

Bring back the Age of Aquarius! Olive Films returns with the company's best Signature Edition ever. The show is an excellent choice for a special edition, as seen by the simply terrific interviews in its battery of added value featurettes. Top creative contributors have been tapped for some great memories. Rather than filming a simple adaptation, Milos Forman reinterprets the hit show, allowing Twyla Tharp's choreographic genius to soak into most every scene -- the result is a marvelous melding of theatrical and cinematic effects. Hair Until I saw the excellent extras on this Olive Signature edition I thought, ‘what’s wrong with the existing Blu-ray of Hair?‘  When I wrote my first review in 2011, several knowledgeable fans of the play and movie wrote in to tell me more about it. Tony Dale made me aware of two-score talents that came...

Blu-ray The Reluctant Debutante Not often mentioned as a highlight of Vincente Minnelli’s career, The Reluctant Debutante is enjoyable now for the comedy playing of Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall. Harrison hadn’t been a popular film star in America for years, but producer Pandro S. Berman caught him between triumphal runs of his biggest career success, the stage musical...

Blu-ray The Spider Our attitude toward Bert I. Gordon has softened over the years, as we return to his films more often than we might admit. Even among their low-budget ‘fifties peers they have humbling weaknesses. Gordon imitates rather than innovates — three of his pictures are simply about men grown to giant-size. His screenplays are slack and...

Blu-ray Dark and Stormy Night They warned us, but we didn’t listen. After our notorious review of Larry Blamire’s movie parody/homage epics Trail of the Screaming Forehead and The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, overwhelming public demand forces us to examine an altogether different Blamire item that arrived between those two horror-fantasy takeoffs, 2009’s Dark and Stormy Night. If you liked...

Blu-ray Wildlife The beguiling short-story feel of Paul Dano's intimate family drama makes us share the experience of a teenager whose parents are 'going through a rough patch' that may break up the only security he's known. The performances of Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan and especially young Ed Oxenbould are low-key and high-intelligence; each seems a study...

Will there even be an Olympics in our foreseeable future? Kon Ichikawa's 1964 masterpiece is still the most spectacular/intimate film about human athletics ever, a celebration of the human body and its abilities. An epic for people that don't necessarily like sports, it's less a documentary of the event than a collection of moving impressions. Who knew that sports could be so emotional? Criterion's 4K restoration disc is a beauty. Tokyo Olympiad Japan made preparations for years to host its proud 1964 Olympics. As I just reported last week, an outer space movie filmed five years earlier used a newly-built stadium to serve as a futuristic space center. As part of the planning to shape the Olympics into an advertisement for Japan as a major international player,...

Region B Blu-ray The Specialists A legendary hard man and sharpshooter, Hud (Johnny Hallyday), returns to his hometown of Blackstone in order to investigate and seek vengeance for the murder of his brother, Charlie. Word is that Charlie was lynched because he stole and hid the cash that he was transporting on behalf of Virginia Pollicut (Francoise Fabian), the owner...

Blu-ray Horrors of Spider Island Don't call them Bad Movies -- when something's this enjoyable, other verbal put-downs are more appropriate. This low-grade German sexploitation horror pic spent its full budget on its roster of frisky Berlin showgirls. After years of study, experts have finally proven that it was filmed with a camera. Severin's special edition does justice to a...

Blu-ray Sunday in New York Romantic comedies became coy sex chase comedies in the early 1960s, once Doris Day made 'professional virgin' a Hollywood career. This mistaken identity/crossed prevarications farce is better than most, thanks to charming performances by Jane Fonda and Rod Taylor, and a fine script by Norman Krasna, from his play. The story doesn't dance around the...

Blu-ray Toho Sci-Fi Double Bill Here’s how a fan of Japanese sci-fi shows his age: between the ages of eight and eleven I saw The Mysterians, Gigantis: The Fire Monster, Battle in Outer Space and King Kong vs. Godzilla new in theaters, and loved them dearly. For me the charm of Toho fantasy lasted until 1965 or so. Becoming ‘grown...

Blu-ray Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema III Today's noir forecast is vice, kidnapping, murder, suicide, narcotics and a sleazy stolen baby racket!  Kino's third volume of Universal-International pix contains two seldom-screened quality urban noirs. Expect genuine dark themes in these sizable-budget location noirs made before Universal pulled most production back onto its one-size-fits-all backlot sets. Barbara Stanwyck dominates one show, while noir...

Blu-ray The Last Valley This thinking man's epic got left behind with the demise of Road Show movies, which is a shame. A beautifully made, uncompromised story of warring 17th century Germany, it plays like a fine epic, with great performances. Audiences didn't want to see Michael Caine as this kind of character in a costume drama that wasn't...

Blu-ray An Unmarried Woman Talk about a film whose time has come ... Paul Mazursky's ode to womanly liberation takes a sensible, gentle approach. Yes, the husband was a total jerk, and so is the first man Jill Clayburgh's Erica turns to in need. What's more important is the feeling of empowerment on the personal intimate level: it's okay...

Special Collector's Edition Blu-ray Sixteen Candles John Hughes' breakthrough writing-directing hit still carries a glow (a very square, safe glow) that defuses its rougher edges, making it one of the best of '80s Teen comedies. Even the savvy Soraya Roberts cuts it some slack, thanks to the authentic presence and fine performance of Molly Ringwald. Hughes' amusing script comes up with...

Region B Blu-ray The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse Fritz Lang's final feature brings his career full circle to the core thriller concepts he pioneered back in 1922: superstitious human nature and sinister technological advances combine to make the 20th century an Age of Terror. Lang reboots his highly cinematic Weimar-era narrative tricks for a film that heralds the beginning of a brave new...

Blu-ray Husbands John Cassavetes' breakthrough picture (filmed in 35mm, wow!) gets the Criterion treatment, with fine new extras that take us back to a moment when the American Independent movement broke through to the big theaters, with bigger stars. It's 142 minutes of intense improvisation during which Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk challenge, tease and bully...

4K Ultra-HD + Blu-ray + Digital War of the Worlds 4K Ultra HD Skipped this one because it's by Spielberg?  The 9/11- inflected take on H.G. Wells' classic reproduces thrills from the book not captured in George Pal's 1953 atom-age update. For this reviewer it was a big surprise -- a Tom Cruise movie in which he plays an appropriately terrified character instead of his annoying big star...