CineSavant

Blu-ray Penelope What can one say about a comedy that just limps along, even when an attractive cast does fine work every step of the way?  Even the bit parts are creatively cast in this odd romp infected with a really bad case of The Cutes. Natalie Wood is at her best, but in service of dumb...

Blu-ray Tobruk Rock Hudson's small budget big-explosion war movie applies decent production values and decent direction to a good idea, but substitutes some weak double-crosses for a real screen story. Hudson and his co-producer Gene Corman toss in a fine stack of quality actors... who don't do much more than dodge tanks, flame throwers, and big explosions....

Blu-ray Gregory’s Girl From the director of the beloved Local Hero: 'Pure Simple Joy' is an apt way to describe this deceptively meek, completely endearing Scottish film with a universal theme about adolescence and the reality of teen love. John Hughes' teen pix do not hold a candle to the innocent charm found here. The gawky yet boundlessly...

Night Tide During the early fifties, an anxious era that leaned on fanciful songs like Faraway Places, Beyond the Sea and Robert Maxwell’s Ebb Tide, Curtis Harrington wrote a similarly dreamy fable called The Girl from Beneath the Sea. The 34 year old director’s script was finally produced in 1960 and premiered as Night Tide at the Spoleto Film Festival...

Blu-ray House by the River One of Fritz Lang's least-known thrillers had aspects that appealed to him, and he certainly applied his personal viewpoint and visual talents. It's a period Gothic with women in corsets, about a deranged writer who lets his desires get out of hand. It may be actor Louis Hayward's best work. Jane Wyatt is the suffering...

Blu-ray Fail Safe The world trembles on the brink, and liberals are in charge!  The nicest President you ever met gives the Soviet Premier an offer anybody could refuse, while technical glitches, not crazy people or radical politics, are blamed for starting WW3. Sidney Lumet's taut, scary armageddon-outta-here thriller was weighed in the balance against a certain Stanley...

Blu-ray Tunes of Glory Some critics wondered if Alec Guinness and John Mills should have swapped roles for this adaptation of James Kennaway's incisive novel about popularity vs. discipline in the command structure of a Scots army brigade. Ronald Neame's direction is exemplary, showcasing the powerhouse performances yet avoiding theatrical flourishes. And the movie introduces Susannah York as well....

Blu-ray The War Lord One of the more satisfying costume adventures of the 'sixties is also one of its star's best vehicles. Charlton Heston was born to play bigger-than-life historical types, and his Norman knight in this film has the benefit of an intelligent screenplay and a terrific supporting ensemble. This hero's armor doesn't shine -- he's more than...

Blu-ray Black Angel This unassuming noir classic can boast a strong creative pedigree and an unusual ending... which I'll not spoil. Dan Duryea is the confused pianist helping June Vincent clear her husband of a murder charge, by infiltrating the nightclub of suspicious Peter Lorre. The outline sticks close to Cornell Woolrich's story source, and Roy William Neill...

Blu-ray The Titfield Thunderbolt Toot Toot!  The Little Engine that Could becomes a tale of the little town that could, when their tiny rail service is discontinued. A crackerjack cast of Ealing regulars -- Stanley Holloway, Naunton Wayne, John Gregson -- band together to take over the little spur line and keep it running. We get to see a...

Blu-ray Young Winston Epics -- everybody wants to make them but the studios are naturally wary. Richard Attenborough's ode to the youthful ambitions of Sir Winston Churchill was a big hit in England but didn't make a dent here. Although a dead ringer for the young Winston, Simon Ward didn't take off as a star either, leaving Anne...

Blu-ray Cimarron (1960) Once upon a time, MGM launched a big spectacle Western remake with the top star Glenn Ford and the bright import Maria Schell -- and then second-guessed the whole production, cutting back on everything so severely that director Anthony Mann ankled the set for Spain and El Cid. The storytelling is a mess -- after...

Viy Anything can happen in a horror movie and that was one of the reasons despots from Stalin to Khrushchev banned the genre from their homeland for the better part of a century. Education and propaganda, not cheeky attacks on the status quo were the prime directives of Soviet cinema – yet one so-called horror film...

Blu-ray The Leech Woman Why do we like horror and monster movies that routinely get labeled as 'bad?'  Because many of them have great story ideas and look at the world from odd, warped viewpoints. Back when 'warped' wasn't a prerequisite for ALL filmed entertainment (my exaggeration) this murderous rejuvenation tale could be appreciated as something unusual, even quirky....

Blu-ray The Slasher – ‘Cosh Boy’ He's mean, he's nasty, he carries a razor and he's dating your sister! Cosh Boy was front & center in 1953 debates about 'what's wrong with the British cinema.' It holds up well, if not as PC social comment, then as solid exploitation fare, with our verminous hero putting the moves on tough-but-vulnerable local girl...

Cobra Woman In the early 40’s Universal Pictures was still best known for its shadowy black and white horror shows. That all changed in 1944 when the studio produced the kind of candy-colored dreamland not seen since Dorothy woke up to Oz. The movie was Robert Siodmak’s Cobra Woman starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall and studio stalwart...

Blu-ray Passport to Pimlico Much of Ealing Studios' core appeal begins right here, with T.E.B. Clarke's astute look at the character of pragmatic, energetic Londoners, who in this fantasy face an outrageous situation with spirit, pluck, and a determination not to be cheated. What happens when a few square blocks of London discover that they're no longer even part...

Blu-ray Dr. Cyclops It may be a little creaky, but Dr. Cyclops is a genuine classic of the imagination, from a time long before pulp fantasy dominated Hollywood filmmaking. For 1940 audiences this must have felt like a strange dream. Five humans are miniaturized and terrorized by Albert Dekker's Dr. Thorkel, a card-carrying mad scientist. Held firm by...

Blu-ray The Fugitive Kind Marlon Brando is back in an adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play Orpheus Descending. The cameraman is Boris Kaufman and the director is Sidney Lumet; Marlon's a classic tomcat drifter in a dangerous parish, who attracts two women. Acting styles mesh, or mix without blending -- Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward each get opportunities to shine....

4K UltraHD + Blu-ray + Digital Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Two givens for Los Angeles living in 1969: perpetual driving around listening to the radio, and stereo cartridge needles dropping onto record grooves. Those things were the basics of our existence!  CineSavant closes out his pre-Christmas cheer with his favorite picture of '19. It's possibly Quentin Tarantino's best. Yes, yes I know it has that...

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital The Cotton Club Encore They say you Can't Go Home Again, but Francis Coppola has pulled a real magic trick -- his 1984 gangland musical ended up heavily compromised by outright racism producers that didn't like the half of the story that favored a black show-biz drama. All the gangster action has been retained in this impressive Encore recut,...

The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh One part Walt Disney, one part Patrick McGoohan – a bittersweet recipe if ever there was one. The notoriously brusque Irishman was immune to the crowd-pleasing sentimentality that shaped Disney’s empire yet he headlined two of that studio’s most appealing entertainments, The Three Lives of Thomasina and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. An esoteric feline...

Blu-ray Brother Can You Spare a Dime? Back in the early 1970s I was crazy about Depression-Era Warner Bros. movies, that weren't being shown on TV or anywhere else. In that climate of deprivation, a documentary that used movie film clips from the period felt extremely fresh and new. Philippe Mora's picture sees 1930s America through the movies, through music, and the...

Blu-ray + DVD Trapped (1949) Noir Nirvana isn't found amid literary swells and hoity-toity art connoisseurs -- but in the trenches of humble Eagle-Lion Films, where Richard Fleischer, Lloyd Bridges and a hotter-than-hot Barbara Payton steamed up the streets of Los Angeles circa 1949. The Film Noir Foundation experts give us an expertly curated slice of hardboiled crime -- Eddie...

The Pumpkin Eater In the fall of ‘64, while Hollywood was gently satirizing the battle of the sexes with Send Me No Flowers and What a Way to Go!, Europe was at work in the trenches, peppering art houses with piercing dramas like François Truffaut‘s The Soft Skin and André Cayatte’s dual release, Anatomy of a Marriage: My Nights...

Blu-ray The Anne Bancroft Collection Remember those DVD collections organized by star, that combined favorite actors' big movies with good titles you might not have seen?  Shout Select has gone that route in honor of the great Anne Bancroft, collecting eight titles in one box. They span the years 1952 to 1989 ... and are sourced from multiple studios and...