CineSavant

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...

THE INVISIBLE MAN APPEARS / THE INVISIBLE MAN VS. THE HUMAN FLY Founded in 1942, Daiei Films appealed to the hearts and minds of movie-goers with a remarkably diverse catalog. Movies like Akira Kurosawa’s enigmatic Rashomon and Koji Shima’s apocalyptic Warning from Space were emblematic of the studio’s output—high art or low, Daiei took the same discerning approach to their productions, no matter the subject matter. At...

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...

Blu-ray Secrets and Lies Director Mike Leigh's social-personal observations of life as it is lived in the U.K. always get to me -- this one may simply be a more realistic soap opera, but it's so good that one pays no attention to technical matters, who the actors are or when they are 'acting' ... it just 'is,' and...

3-D Blu-ray Dynasty 3-D 3-D goes Kung-Fu in Super-Touch!   The 3-D Film Archive restores a Far East oddity from the year of Star Wars, an all-action sword, fist and supernatural magic combat spectacle. The big battles play like choreographed dance numbers, but with sound effects and screams taking the place of music. The disc's 3-D extras are of...

Gorath It's another CineSavant review of a movie largely unavailable, especially the original Japanese version. This third Ishirô Honda / Eiji Tsuburaya outer space action epic is probably the best Toho science fiction feature ever, an Astral Collision tale in which the drama and characters are as compelling as the special effects. Nothing can stop a...

Isle of the Dead The Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin produced several versions of Isle of the Dead in the late 1800’s—none of them suggested a typical tourist attraction but more than a few artists used that gloomy seascape as a port of inspiration; Rachmaninov composed a symphony, Dalí produced a surrealist tribute, and Strindberg sketched the fragments of a...

The Bad News Bears W.C. Fields’ final screen appearance was a brief walk-on in Sensations of 1945, an overloaded variety show that barely found time for the great man. As usual Fields had the last laugh—thanks to his life-long aversion to authority, the comedian enjoyed a brief renaissance in the 70’s when his films were showcased at revival houses...

Blu-ray Journeys through French Cinema Bertrand Tavernier breaks the barrier between fans of European movies and 101 classic French pictures that most of us have never gotten a peek at. The key to this eight-hour film clip excerpt round-up is the hosting-curatorship of Tavernier -- the fascinating miniseries has plenty to offer both fans that have never seen an old...

Blu-ray Five The first post-nuclear science fiction thriller is a grim & gripping end-of-the-world tale with rough content for its year. Arch Oboler's best movie watches as five motley survivors discover that their pre-apocalyptic prejudices have survived as well, precipitating a savage struggle in the shadow of doom. The filming was an artistic collaboration with established film...

Region Free Blu-ray Arizona Colt Lee Broughton returns with a review of Michele Lupo's fine-looking Spaghetti Western, Arizona Colt. Giuliano Gemma stars as the eponymous anti-hero-cum-bounty killer who goes head-to-head with Fernando Sancho's villainous Mexican bandit. The show's collateral damage comes in the shapely form of fan favourite Rosalba Neri while its highly reluctant love interest is played by none...

Blu-ray Crossfire Hollywood learns to imbed a social message into a crime thriller. John Paxton's adaptation of Richard Brooks' neat murder tale is solid noir because it sheds light on the malaise of returning soldiers. No parades and confetti here: Robert Ryan is the hateful bigot but the other characters live amid equally shadowy values -- laid-back...

Blu-ray Nosferatu in Venice This obscure Italian horror has Christopher Plummer, Donald Pleasence and atmospheric locations -- and a making of story that Severin tells in full unexpurgated detail. Never released in an English- language territory, Augusto Caminito's brooding shocker had four directors. Its commercial chances were derailed by its deranged star, Klaus Kinski, who poses well, molests his...

Blu-ray Battle Hymn This dubious mix of war combat and faith-based inspiration is as well directed as any of Douglas Sirk's films, even if literally every scene seems to be saying the wrong thing. Combat pilot Col. Dean Hess helped found and publicize a major orphanage in South Korea, but as personified by a pious Rock Hudson his...

Twentieth Century All the world’s a stage and that includes the Twentieth Century, a deluxe passenger train transformed into an itinerant theater thanks to the first class talent in first class, Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. The story of a has-been director conniving to get back on Broadway with the help of a former protege, Howard Hawks’...

Blu-ray The Bridges at Toko-Ri The most glamorous movie about the Korean War experience lauds the bravery of Navy aviators while spelling out the downside of fighting an unpopular war. William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March and Mickey Rooney turn in sharp performances, and Charles McGraw gets his best character part as a no-nonsense flight commander. Paramount's special effects department...

Blu-ray The Criminal Code Howard Hawks' early sound picture is a worthy prison drama -- with top performances from Walter Huston and Boris Karloff, both just as their film careers began to take off. Huston shows the screen how a stage actor can take command: his DA-turned warden character is corrupt yet retains his air of authority. Karloff's convict...

Blu-ray Damn Yankees A musical that charms even audiences that don't like musicals, this adaptation of a big 1955 Broadway hit is noted for capturing much of the original's power and brilliance -- more legendary stage performances should be filmed like this, immortalizing theater history that otherwise disappears into the ether. Gwen Verdon, Ray Walston, Russ Brown and...