CineSavant

Blu-ray No Orchids for Miss Blandish Devotees of crime and film noir will get a kick out of this Brit attempt to capture the American style, that now comes off as screamingly funny. It was both a huge hit and a big scandal in London, 1948, where the censors came down hard on the film's flagrant immorality and over-the-top violence. Former...

Blu-ray Henri-Georges Clouzot’s INFERNO A cinematic puzzle and a filmic detective piece, Serge Bromberg's examination of a world-class filmmaker's catastrophic, never-finished production fascinates and dazzles. If the particulars of H.G. Clouzot's experimental epic of internal torment remain clouded, the astonishing visuals he created are a total knockout. Working with hours of uncut dailies and precise collaborator memories, Bromberg gives...

Blu-ray Night of the Living Dead Talk about Zombies We've Known and Loved -- this famed shocker is now worshipped as the father of the modern horror film. It's no museum piece but a taut thriller that hasn't diminished one wit -- it still pays off in real chills. When it came to inspired independent filmmaking George Romero was a genuine...

Region B Blu-ray The Mercenary (Il mercenario) Region B Guest reviewer Lee Broughton is back with an in-depth look at Sergio Corbucci's grand 'Zapata' Spaghetti Western. Set in post-1900 Mexico, Tony Musante's rebellious peon wants to be a hero of the revolution but he primarily robs the rich in order to pay the extortionate wages that are demanded by Franco Nero's interloping Polish mercenary-cum-military...

Blu-ray The Silence of the Lambs Talk about staying power -- Jonathan Demme's riveting, ultimately humanistic horror thriller raked in a full house of Oscars and is still scaring new viewers. Even those that chose to avoid it know what it's all about. My review bows to the film's superiority and remarks on some of its finer points of cinematic splendor.

Blu-ray Nowhere in Africa Caroline Link's wonderful, woefully obscure Best Foreign Film winner is an entertaining story of the perils of wartime emigration. It hits hard right now, with our own immigration crackdown underway. A Jewish family smartly escapes Nazi Germany at the 11th hour, only to find themselves imprisoned in detention camps by the British -- who ironically...

Blu-ray The Killing of a Sacred Deer There's a point where unnervingly harsh and disturbingly irrational movies become more trouble than they're worth. This groaner is two hours of jeopardy to children and perversely cruel storytelling that never rewarded this viewer. And director Yorgos Lanthimos chooses a style of performance and presentation that all but bypasses recognizable human values. I hold the...

Blu-ray Threads Hey kids! Learn about the great time we'll be having if the world powers plunge us into a nuclear winter! This post-atomic horror show traumatized England in 1984, and  thanks to the liberal media magnate Ted Turner, even saw some airings in the U.S.. The most extreme prime-time response to Ronald Reagan's heating up of the...

Blu-ray Harper Ross Macdonald's Cool Cat detective -- originally Lew Archer -- comes alive in Jack Smight's smart SoCal kidnapping mystery, thanks to a charismatic Paul Newman and a hot cast of bright, smart actors. It's the first screenplay sale for the celebrated William Goldman, and the crisp cinematography by ace cameraman Conrad Hall doesn't hurt either.

The Witches (Le streghe) The Witches Special Edition Blu-ray Arrow Academy 1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 (?) 111 105 min. / Le streghe / Street Date January 30, 2018 / 34.95 Starring: Silvana Mangano, Clint Eastwood, Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Massimo Girotti, Véronique Vendell, Elsa Albani, Clara Calamai, Marilù Tolo, Nora Ricci, Dino Mele Dino Mele,...

Region B Blu-ray The Border Tony Richardson's look at corruption in the border patrol service is both sensational and insightful, and Jack Nicholson gives a committed performance as a downtrodden functionary who finds himself in a major moral and humanitarian catastrophe. The problem is still there today, with no consensus on the right diagnosis or solution. The action melodrama costars...

Blu-ray Kameradschaft Georg Wilhelm Pabst's mine disaster saga is both a stirring social drama and a remarkable feat of technical engineering -- the underground cave-ins and gas-fed fires are still frightening in their realism. Criterion's extras offer critical and historical context for a pacifist statement filmed during a tense political time in France and Germany.

Blu-ray The Thomas Crown Affair Hollywood glamour strikes the crime genre, with a bank robbery tale that concentrates on high living and high fashion. Superstars Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway play a coy game of thief and investigator. This expensive show is not really in fashion anymore, but in 1968 it was high-class filmmaking, with Norman Jewison solidifying his position...

Blu-ray The Diabolical Dr. Z Engaged to direct by a reputable producer, Jesús Franco takes yet another stab at conventional B&W horror. The pulp thrills get a boost through the contributions of talented collaborators: excellent camerawork flatters the idiosyncratic obsessions of a writer-director in search of his own dream-world sensibility. Although it's not saying much, this might be the best...

Region B Blu-ray Charley Varrick (Region B) It's the loose-censored early 1970s, and screen bandits shootin' up the American movie landscape are no longer suffering the once-mandated automatic moral retribution. Walter Matthau launched himself into the genre with this excellent Don Siegel on-the-run epic, about an old-fashioned independent bandit who accidentally rips off the mob for a million. It's great, wicked fun.

Blu-ray Blade Runner 2049 After 35 years Philip K. Dick's brainstorm returns in a film sequel worthy of the original; Denis Villeneuve does right by the concept, but the show will be tough sledding for ADD-plagued modern viewers. Ryan Gosling follows in Harrison Ford's replicant footsteps, surrounded by an impressive group of supporting actors. It's long, it's moody, it's...

DVD From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses Take a trip into the depths of German silent film in a documentary that links expressionist cinema with dark political undercurrents. Director Rüdiger Suchsland's essay adapts a famous & worthy but slightly outdated book, yet is an excellent overview of movies in the Weimar period.

Blu-ray The Hanging Tree "To really live, you must almost die," sings Marty Robbins, a lesson learned by Austrian import star Maria Schell. Delmer Daves' best western puts virtue and faithfulness to the test: Gary Cooper's distrustful, manipulative doctor hides his dark secrets and punishes those that admire and love him. Yet the ultimate reckoning demonstrates that sins can...

All-Region Blu-ray Bend of the River (Meuterei am Schlangenfluss) The second Anthony Mann / James Stewart western displays excellent direction and impressive Technicolor location photography high in the high mountains of Oregon. A matinee staple, it delivers everything -- Stewart's mostly good hero and Arthur Kennedy's mostly bad hero spar and tangle and eventually fight to the death near the timber line. Handsome Rock...

Blu-ray Raw Deal (1948) Style can be the star in Classic Noir, making a less prestigious film more entertaining than one with bigger names. Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt spin an excellent crime-love-murder triangle, for a road picture that's one of the best Noirs not made by a big studio. Director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton...

Blu-ray Not as a Stranger What? Doctors aren't perfect? And some practicing doctors are incompetent? Stanley Kramer's All-Star medical soap opera takes two unlikely students (Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra) through med school and confronts them with a number of pat dramatic complications. But the movie belongs to top-billed Olivia de Havilland, who lends a touch of class to the...

Blu-ray Young Mr. Lincoln Viewers looking (desperately) for American leaders to admire can't do better than to reflect on John Ford's folksy, at least partly authentic honorarium to one of the greats. Henry Fonda is 100% dead-on as a vision of Abe Lincoln to bring tears to our eyes. Imagine . . . there's such a thing as political...

Blu-ray Legend of the Lost America’s top box office star John Wayne sneaks away to a remote corner of the Sahara Desert with the top Italian sex symbol Sophia Loren ... and foolishly brings an entire camera crew with him. Henry Hathaway's impressive desert adventure boasts a fairly amazing, bona fide Lost City, made even more impressive through the Technirama...

Blu-ray The Hospital A story of murders in the ER becomes, courtesy of writer Paddy Chayefsky, either a preview of social breakdown or an impassioned examination of why we invest our lives and souls in imperfect institutions. George C. Scott is the doctor coming apart at the seams, who meets his match in a New Age hippie from...

Blu-ray Matinee A scary monster movie comes to Key West just as a nuclear crisis breaks out! Joe Dante's incomparable paean to monster kid culture has finally arrived on Region A Blu-ray, with the great extras we expect from every Dante-involved home video offering. The picture only gets more charming and funny with time, from its great...

Blu-ray Cadillac Man The irrepressible Robin Williams is Joey, a trash-talking Cadillac salesman with three women on the line, who becomes an involuntary hero when Tim Robbins smashes his motorcycle into the car showroom and threatens to kill everybody. Roger Donaldson's crisis-farce black comedy is still funny — and my favorite Robin Williams feature.