CineSavant

Blu-ray La vérité Brigitte Bardot proved her mettle as a dramatic actress in H.G. Clouzot's strikingly pro-feminist courtroom epic, that puts the modern age of 'immoral' permissiveness on trial. Is Bardot's selfish, sensation-seeking young lover an oppressed victim?  Clouzot makes her the author of her own problems yet doesn't let her patriarchal inquisitors off the hook.

Tarzan Goes to India/Tarzan’s Three Challenges Jane Goodall fell for Tarzan at an early age – ‘he married the wrong Jane’ she said, half joking. A confirmed tree-hugger, the King of the Apes would seem to be a perfect match for the nature loving primatologist – even though the greater part of Tarzan’s big screen career played out in backlot jungles rather...

4K Ultra-HD + Blu-ray A Star Is Born Last fall's audience-pleaser is indeed a pleasant surprise, not because it's a classic but because it isn't plain awful. An unnecessary third remake of a Depression-era Cinderella story has been concocted to showcase the special talents of Lady Gaga, who indeed comes off as the most personable and deserving star-to-be-born since Judy Garland. Bradley Cooper...

Blu-ray Private Snafu Golden Classics Make way for the ribald, very non-PC adventures of the GI doofus Private Snafu -- demonstrator of the wrong way to do everything. This alternative-press edition of Snafu delights contains all of his adventures and more -- they're mostly animated by irreverent Warners talent. Some have rhyming dialogue and narration by Theodore Geisel, aka Dr....

Blu-ray My Name is Julia Ross Is this any way to treat a lady?  Lovely Nina Foch just wanted a job, but she instead becomes the fall-gal in a psychologically perverse plan to deny her very identity. Cult director Joseph H. Lewis makes deft use of cinematic suspense techniques to compel our involvement in a bizarre conspiracy: not just convincing a...

Blu-ray Horror Express It's a spooky, snowy train ride across thousands of miles of Siberian rails -- trapped on board with a victim-possessing creature from outer space, with eyes that kill! Actually, 'Pánico en el transiberiano' is a fine show for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, a Spanish-made chiller with a smart script and some effective shocks.

Blu-ray The Midnight Man Murder strikes a private college. In the new security guard's efforts to find the killer, he uncovers sordid secrets and multiple unsavory conspiracies. Triple-threat Burt Lancaster boasts directing and screenwriting credits here, and heads a large, exemplary cast of suspects in a mystery that implicates practically all of them in something illegal.

Blu-ray Beyond the Limit (The Honorary Consul) Retitled from The Honorary Consul and sold in America with one of Paramount's sleaziest ad campaigns, John MacKenzie and Christopher Hampton's adaptation of a Graham Greene novel features a fine Michael Caine performance, but prefers to stress sex scenes between star Richard Gere and Elpidia Carrillo. Just call it 'Lust in the Argentine Littoral' --...

Blu-ray Yanks A million American GIs are bivouacked in the English countryside, awaiting debarkation to France... and the green fields are loaded with young English women, whose own men have been off fighting for years. John Schlesinger puts together a good drama, with an excellent cast; he also avoids the expected 'please wait for me!' clichés attendant...

Jack the Ripper Jack the Ripper arrived in America with the kind of fanfare usually reserved for visiting royalty. Thanks to Joseph E. Levine’s million dollar promotional blitz the British shocker rode a wave of irresistible ballyhoo including a soundtrack LP and a typically salacious Monarch paperback that promised a walk on the wild side for adventurous ticket...

Blu-ray Television’s Lost Classics Vol One: John Cassavetes John Cassavetes springs forth as a major 1950s talent in these two 'Primetime Special' dramatic plays broadcast live on ABC and CBS. Crime in the Streets is the Reginald Rose classic directed by Sidney Lumet; No Right to Kill is a 'culture for the masses' adaptation of Crime and Punishment. Cassavetes' co-stars are Robert Preston,...

In the Heat of the Night The racial animus that roiled recent elections in Mississippi was a reminder of segregation’s cockroach-like resiliency in that state – it wasn’t until 2013 that its Secretary of State officially ratified the 13th amendment. It’s safe to assume that volatile climate was even more combustible in 1966 when Sidney Poitier refused to venture south of the...

Blu-ray Gardens of Stone Francis Coppola's get-out-of-debt directorial assignments may not be his most personal movies, but this one is satisfying just the same, with its marvelous, mellow ensemble cast. It's a movie to admire, as it's not easy to attract an audience to a show about the Army's burial detail.

Blu-ray Posse from Hell Wow -- a good Audie Murphy movie. Clair Huffaker's screenplay should take credit, as well as the workmanlike direction of former Hitchcock assistant Herbert Coleman. Even John Saxon comes off well, plus the film can boast good work from favorites Zohra Lampert and Vic Morrow, and fine support from Rodolfo Acosta, Royal Dano and Lee...

Blu-ray Shame (Skammen) War no longer recognizes 'innocent bystanders': a married couple seeks to sidestep 'civil disturbances' by relocating to a rural island, only for the war to descend on them from all sides. Forget escapist post-apocalyptic fantasies: Ingmar Bergman demonstrates how the terror of war obliterates human values at the personal level. Human trust and morals fall...

Blu-ray The Giant Behemoth "Brace Yourself For A SHOCK!...200 Feet of Living Burning Horror!"  Eugène Lourié's second feature about an irate sea monster wrecking a city features sober eco-preaching, good performances by Gene Evans and André Morell, and several minutes of exciting stop-motion animation nirvana. One just needs to overlook a few lunkhead effects scenes and concentrate on the...

Blu-ray Desert Fury The murky crimes of sordid characters come to the fore in the wide-open Nevada spaces... producer Hal Wallis' Technicolor noir concentrates on the possessive and perverse competition for Lizabeth Scott's luscious blonde -- the mother that wants to corral her, the gangster who thinks she's an escape and the local hunk who wears a badge....

The Plague of the Zombies Propping up one of Hammer Studios’ more visceral double-bills, John Gilling’s The Plague of the Zombies was released alongside Terence Fisher’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness in January of 1966. Fisher’s film was a briskly bloody chapter in the vampire’s long career but Gilling’s melancholy thriller packed a considerably gloomier punch. The London-born Gilling was a...

Blu-ray Beat the Devil The star lineup sparkles in this witty, lighthearted tale of a gang of international schemers and cutthroats trying to -- well, what they're trying to do is all but irrelevant. John Huston throws his picture together like a party, for a droll 'thriller' that yields off-kilter comic riches. It's Bogart, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre and...

Blu-ray Satan Never Sleeps Pearl S. Buck and Leo McCarey give it to ya straight: Red China is BAD. This strange mix of Cold War truth-telling and mawkish, ethics-challenged church sentiment may have meant well, but it overstates everything. A top-flight cast works hard to make it compelling: William Holden, France Nuyen and in his last film, Clifton Webb.

Blu-ray Screamers Screaming, flying 'Autonomous Mobile Swords' have decimated the enemy in a war on a far-off planet, but now the pesky smart weapons are self-evolving into ever more cruel and deadly new iterations. Peter Weller and Jennifer Rubin head a cast of desperate soldiers in this adaptation of an early story by Philip K. Dick --...

Blu-ray The Last Command The 'other' Hollywood studio version of the Alamo story is quite good, with strong production values, exciting stunt battle action and something Republic Pictures didn't manage very often, a solid screenplay. Sterling Hayden is Jim Bowie, this version's central hero, with great backup from Anna Maria Alberghetti, Ernest Borgnine, J. Carrol Naish, and Ben Cooper....

Blu-ray Forty Guns Cult favorite Samuel Fuller explodes the mid-range Hollywood oater with elements we can all appreciate: a ritualistic fetishizing of the gunslinger ethos, and a reliance on kinky role reversals and provocative tease dialogue. It's as radical as a western can be without becoming a satire. Playing it all perfectly crooked-straight is the still formidable Barbara...

Popeye The Sailor: The 1940s Volume 1 The most animated of the great philosophers, Popeye relied on his fists to express his unapologetic mantra – “I am what I am.” Created by newspaper cartoonist E.C. Segar in 1929, the cantankerous but big-hearted sailor was brought to the screen by Max Fleischer and his brother Dave in a series of blissfully rowdy cartoons...

Blu-ray The Wasp Woman Roger and Gene Corman's first 'The Filmgroup' production is a slick little programmer that belies its drive-in monster movie heritage: the trim tale is no minimalist effort, but a well-developed drama sourced in the twin drives to succeed and stay young. This deluxe edition contains both the Theatrical and TV versions, plus a Tom Weaver...

Blu-ray Bent Too edgy for the mainstream, Martin Sherman's influential play is nevertheless transformed into an admirable, well-crafted show. In Hitler's Berlin of 1934, being gay means death, or a living death in a 'protective custody' camp. Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau and Brian Webber find themselves on the way to Dachau, a new Circle of Hell. Yet...