CineSavant

Region-Free Blu-ray Mediabook Major Dundee (import) Sam Peckinpah's 'Mangled Masterpiece' gets a new lease on life with this Austrian import, which corrects all the things that bugged me about Twilight Time's impressive Blu-ray back in 2013. This is the first time that the original uncut Preview-International version of Major Dundee has come to Blu-ray with its original soundtrack intact. The Two-Disc...

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Downton Abbey Ah yes, we have a winner for the best 'Comfort Food Movie' of them all. When a trailer for this show popped up at a screening of The Farewell back in August, I heard gasps of excitement from the (slightly older-skewing) audience, as if everyone's favorite relatives were coming back to town. Loyal fans of...

Blu-ray Christmas in July At least the title SOUNDS Christmas-themed! Preston Sturges' sweet trifle is as simple as a sit-com mix-up, but the charm is in the lovable characters (the core of Sturges' formidable stock company) and the sincerity of all concerned. Ellen Drew is the most deserving fiancé ever to pine for a wedding ring, and Dick Powell...

Blu-ray The Story of Temple Drake The most notorious pre-Code shocker comes to Criterion -- and proves to be a superior drama with a mature outlook on the political issues around women's sexuality and personal freedom. Taken from a raw novel by William Faulkner, this tale of rape and terror stars Miriam Hopkins in one of the bravest, best performances of...

Abbott & Costello – The Complete Universal Pictures Collection Two footloose Jersey boys with no particular place to go, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello finally found themselves – literally and figuratively – on the burlesque stage. Their act, equal parts smart talk and ancient slapstick, was honed alongside curvy chorus girls and tassel-twirlers but it took a lady of a decidedly different stature to...

Blu-ray The Beast with a Million Eyes Once again CineSavant becomes intrigued by a minor genre opus normally dismissed in a sentence or two; this Roger Corman production may fall short of his other early efforts because it tried to be too cerebral  and then ran afoul of the Hollywood Guilds. David Kramarsky is listed as director but it's hard to know...

Blu-ray Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic At the end of his career, Fritz Lang returned to Germany and a producer who gave him a big budget to remake a silent classic in color, with an international cast and locations in remote India, including a palace never seen in a movie before. The two-movie, 200-minute epic was chopped in half for America...

Blu-ray Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut's quirky sci-fi novels didn't always adapt well to film, but George Roy Hill's 1972 effort is a faithful winner. The filmmaking craft used to 'unstick' Billy Pilgrim in time is nothing short of brilliant, highlighting the camera talent of Miroslav Ondricek and the editing skill of Dede Allen. The book even has a...

Blu-ray Until the End of the World An amazing Blu-ray year is now capped by a genuine favorite, rescued by its filmmaker and set aside for almost twenty years. Wim Wenders was forced to drastically shorten what he hoped would be his greatest success, following Wings of Desire. But he cleverly saved his 4.5-hour uncut version, which is making its Blu-ray debut...

The Strange Case of Until the End of the World: CineSavant Archive Articles I wrote the pair of articles here in 1998 after seeing the long  ‘Die Trilogie’ version of Until the End of the World at the Harmony Gold Preview Theater on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. The articles contain plenty of Spoilers, so beware. A new 2019 disc release is reviewed at CineSavant. The Strange Case of...

The Magic Sword Fresh off producing and directing Tormented, a mildly lurid psychological shocker released in 1960, Bert I. Gordon pointed his next film in the direction of the Saturday matinee crowd, a select audience of thrill crazy adolescents who made box office bonanzas out of phantasmagorical entertainments like 7th Voyage of Sinbad. As with most (all?) of...

Blu-ray The Bells of St. Mary’s One of America's favorite holiday movies plays strangely today, and despite being one of the most popular pictures of its year, really should have disturbed people when it was new as well. Director Leo McCarey and his glowing stars Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman do remarkable work, and the show has its heart in the...

Blu-ray Now, Voyager This must be an official Bette Davis month... Criterion has two vintage Davis pictures on offer, and TCM is devoted to a roundup of the actress's work as well. This one qualifies as the all-time champion Women's Weepie, but one that holds up as a great picture on all levels. Director Irving Rapper guided this...

Blu-ray Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Michael Cimino could have done worse for his first directing gig -- a big Clint Eastwood-Jeff Bridges buddy picture with guaranteed major attention. It's a simple crime caper for simple audiences, and he pulls it off in style. The Sunday movie supplements celebrated Cimino as a great new talent. His picture still looks handsome and...

Blu-ray RoboCop Extra-special extras adorn this stunning reissue of a modern sci-fi action classic. Paul Verhoeven's sledgehammer of graphic-novel brutality and wicked political satire (courtesy of a Michael Miner-Ed Neumeier screenplay that should have won awards) hasn't diminished one iota. We still feel like we're being subjected to a shockingly ultra-violent entertainment from the future. Both versions...

Blu-ray The Bad and the Beautiful One of Vincente Minnelli's best is this glamorous 'Hollywood Looks At Hollywood' exposé of sin and conniving among the actors, directors and producers that make Quality Entertainment for us unglamorous nobodies. It's overstated and often grossly overacted (Kirk Douglas, front and center!) but still carries a grandiose charm. Lana Turner gets to play an idealized...

Region-free Blu-ray Requiem for Gringo We've got more Spaghetti western action from Guest Reviewer Lee Broughton -- the more obscure they become, the more fanciful the concept. This creative 1968 entry foregrounds a gothic vibe and employs imagery and narrative devices that Lee says would fit well in a horror movie. Italo western fans know the regular actors Fernando Sancho,...

Blu-ray Madigan Manhattan detective Richard Widmark is up the creek without his .38 special -- a maniac killer has stolen it. He's desperate to get it back, while his personal and professional problems pile up. Henry Fonda, Inger Stevens and Harry Guardino give sterling performances, but the assured direction of Don Siegel is what keeps us on...

Blu-ray The Far Country Did star James Stewart and director Anthony Mann corner the market on upscale 'A' '50s westerns?  This beauty sends Stewart, Ruth Roman and Corrine Calvet on a breezy trek over a Canadian glacier, with Walter Brennan as a folksy, ditsy sidekick -- not very original but endearing. John McIntire saves the day as a charmingly...

Konga Like any actor worth their salt, Michael Gough contained multitudes. And so did his fans – from the West End to 42nd Street they gathered as one to sing his praises. Born in Kuala Lumpur and educated in England, Gough bolted Wye College for the Old Vic, eventually graduating to roles in films like Richard III...

3-D Blu-ray The 3-D Nudie-Cuties Collection Oh, have you reached the right page?  We know you were looking for the review of Aunt Minerva's Hymns of Faith in 3-D.  We instead have uncovered a blistering, too-too spicy duo of 'adult movies,'  created for dirty old men in the prehistoric days before humanity was transformed by X-rated porn. The first show may...

Region-free Blu-ray They Made Me a Fugitive Sinister stabbings, women kicked and beaten, perverse hoodlums selling cocaine and murdering street-beat bobbies: what happened to civilized English crime?   Cavalcanti's vicious postwar Brit Noir shocked critics for The Times and was cut to ribbons for American distribution. A disillusioned, bored RAF hero turns to smuggling and skullduggery;  this fully restored crime classic gives...

Blu-ray Great Day in the Morning Jacques Tourneur's 'big sky' western gives us the beauty of Colorado mountains plus stunning color images (originally Technicolor) of his attractive cast: Robert Stack, Virginia Mayo, Ruth Roman. North-South antagonisms break out in Denver City, before the Civil War begins, and Robert Stack's loner opportunist must choose a side. The WAC's disc includes four Jacques...

Spirited Away The story of a lonely child lost in a beautiful and bizarre dreamscape, Spirited Away naturally begs comparison to Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. But in contrast to those frenetic classics, Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece is cooly meditative – a serene head trip. At first sight Miyazaki’s Wonderland is not so wonderful –...

Blu-ray The Man Between Critics compare this sophisticated spy thriller to Carol Reed's earlier Triumph set in Vienna with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles -- but it's a different story altogether, not about black-market evil but the perils of moral compromise in a divided Berlin. James Mason and Claire Bloom are stunningly good together, in a moody suspense that's...

Blu-ray Eegah Mean-spirited 'Bad Movie' satirists forget that production values aren't everything, even if the collected works of Barry Mahon and Coleman Francis say otherwise. This threadbare backyard production has 'endearing' written all over it. I judge many independent movies to be like picture puzzles with pieces missing, and this one is missing a LOT of them....