CineSavant

Blu-ray Come and See The director of this unblinking account of the genocide in Belarus in 1942 and 1943 said that "people in America can't watch my film. They have thrillers but this is something different." He certainly got that right. A young farm boy is a witness to and victim of horrendous barbarism inflicted on a civilian population......

Blu-ray Africa Screams Abbott & Costello perform at full strength in this very good, very silly jungle safari comedy. It's definitely for kids and nostalgic fans -- with equal parts slapstick, cornball repetitive vaudeville gags, and Lou Costello's weirdly endearing infantile schtick. An impressively beautiful restoration has pulled it back from the pit of Public Domain ugliness. Plus...

Blu-ray Hair 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...

Blu-ray The Reluctant Debutante Vincente Minnelli took time out from expensive MGM shows like Gigi to knock off this tale about the London debutante season, a light-comedy Cinderella story without satire or social comment. Young Sandra Dee and John Saxon come off well, but the show belongs to stars Rex Harrison and especially Kay Kendall, whose comedy timing and...

Blu-ray The Spider Bert I. Gordon rides again with an excellent encoding of one of his more popular sci-fi monster-ramas.  Pert 'n' perky June Kenney is so brave that she keeps going back to 'that old cave outside of town' despite not knowing how many giant spiders are on the loose. Teenagers in their thirties and their bebop-crazy...

Blu-ray Dark and Stormy Night It's a Larry Blamire film, and it's composed of entirely NEW and UNIQUE elements: a lonely mansion, strange servants, the reading of the will, weird heirs, death threats, snoopy reporters, a midnight seance, mysterious locked rooms, the clutching hands of a phantom menace, and the ultimate terror, Kogar the mighty ape. All new, right?  This...

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...

Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection The titles grab you by the collar like a desperate carny barker – Psycho A Go-Go, Blood of Ghastly Horror, Satan’s Sadists – thensomething for the raincoat crowd – Girls For Rent, Nurses For Sale, The Naughty Stewardesses. The rant turns political, incendiary: Black Heat, Mean Mother, Black Samurai. His last gasp – Cinderella 2000,...

Blu-ray Tokyo Olympiad 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....

Region B Blu-ray The Specialists Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with a review of a previously hard to find Gallic Spaghetti Western. Filmed in the Dolomites mountain range and primarily existing as a vehicle for the French rock 'n' roll singer Johnny Hallyday, this might well be Corbucci's best looking Western. The respected French actresses Francoise Fabian and Sylvie Fennec...

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 Mill Creek again dips into exotic Japanese sci-fi fantasy, and this time scores with the desired language choices and subtitle configurations for these spectaculars from the beginning of Toho's strongest period. The H-Man is a stylish gangster-horror melange about a radioactive slime that cheerfully transforms Guys 'n' Dolls into living goo. Then, a Battle in Outer Space...

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...

Alice in Wonderland Written by Harvey Kurtzman with art by Jack Davis, Mad‘s 1954 parody of Alice in Wonderland stands as a succinct critique of Paramount Pictures’s 1933 adaptation. The film stars crowd pleasing performers like Cary Grant and W.C. Fields yet manages to be one of the most uniquely disturbing studio pictures ever made. Directed by Norman...

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...

Blu-ray Disc Funeral in Berlin Myopic Harry Palmer, the great cook, lover and reluctant spy returns to where his trouble with the British Army began. This time he's tangled up in a political snarl that might have dire consequences: not only are the Russians involved, ex-Nazis are on the payroll. Israel may have an agent in the field, and not...

Blu-ray Inside Daisy Clover It's a Hollywood rags-to-riches tale seen as a cruel coming-of-age story -- when Natalie Wood's feisty street kid becomes a child star, she learns that tinsel town is not only fake, but oppressively evil as well. Cut off from her dotty mom (Ruth Gordon) and surrounded by the sinister minions of studio head Swan (Christopher...

Blu-ray Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema II Although only one of these 1950s B&W thrillers falls within a mile of a hard definition of film noir, all give us glamorous actresses in interesting roles. Claudette Colbert takes her turn at playing a nun, Merle Oberon tries a femme fatale role on for size and Hedy Lamarr does very well for herself as...

Blu-ray Danger: Diabolik Oh Joy, Oh Rapture!  Mario Bava's comic book thriller makes the jump to Blu-ray in fine shape, with knockout visuals and eye-popping color. John Philip Law, Marisa Mell, Terry-Thomas and the late Michel Piccoli are all irreplaceable in this one-of-a-kind show. Bava's film translates action comic fantasy into cinematic terms, pictorial appeal and dynamism intact....

Destry Rides Again America’s favorite boy next door meets the Weimar Republic’s preeminent vamp in George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again. James Stewart plays Tom Destry, the self-effacing straight-shooter who cleans up a lawless backwater burg without firing a shot – almost. Marlene Dietrich is Frenchy, a world-weary chanteuse who rules the roost at the town’s only waterhole, the...