CineSavant

Blu-ray The Man with Two Brains Steve Martin brings down the house with this adoring, hilarious pastiche of mad doctor and disembodied brain motifs -- surely the epitome of cultured comedy. Under Carl Reiner's direction Martin is marvelous, and he's aided and abetted by the daring sexpot-turned comedienne Kathleen Turner -- who has a better handle on outrageous sexy comedy than...

Blu-ray Tobor the Great Robot roll call! This also-ran robotic fantasy from the 1950s is precisely the kind of movie one would expect from Republic, a two-fisted anti-Commie tract for juveniles. The studio comes up with an impressive robo-hero, but short-changes us when it come time for action thrills. Still, as pointed out in Richard Harland Smith's new commentary,...

Blu-ray Night Moves Arthur Penn's detective movie is one of the best ever in the genre, one that rewards repeat viewings particularly well. Gumshoe Harry Moseby compartmentalizes his marriage, his job, his past and the greedy Hollywood has-beens he meets, not realizing that everything is interconnected, and fully capable of assembling a world-class conspiracy. Gene Hackman tops a...

Blu-ray Ronin Robert De Niro picks up a gun once again as a highly paid spy-mercenary-thief hired for a bit of international larceny, the robbing of a courier of some undisclosed secrets of one kind or another. Juicing up a Melville- like stoic crime fantasy with superb car stunt work puts director John Frankenheimer back in the...

Blu-ray Duel in the Sun David O. Selznick's absurdly over-cooked western epic is a great picture, even if much of it induces a kind of hypnotic, mouth-hanging-open disbelief. Is this monument to the sex appeal of Jennifer Jones an example of Kitsch in terrible taste, or have Selznick and his army of Hollywood talents found a new level of hyped...

Blu-ray The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 50th Anniversary Sergio Leone's Civil War gunslinger epic is everybody's favorite western, and most everybody has a bone to pick regarding problems with the previous DVDs and Blu-rays. The good news is that Kino's 50th Anniversary Special Edition takes giant leaps in correcting older audio issues . . . but the bad news . . .

Blu-ray Meantime Nobody stands up for Britons in the lower class trenches like the fierce, opinionated and outright brilliant Mike Leigh; his unusual writing and directing method yields terrific results in his first feature made for TV. And the early performances of Tim Roth, Phil Daniels and Gary Oldman should be the stuff of acting legend, '80s...

Blu-ray The Crimson Kimono Another great Samuel Fuller film on Blu-ray -- this one is a crime tale set in downtown Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, that forms an interracial romantic triangle. It's risky for its year because of the sexual dynamics -- a Japanese-American man falls in love with a Caucasian woman. Fuller's approach is years ahead of its...

Blu-ray Beggars of Life A happy discovery! This is a major late- silent-era gem on the order of Von Sternberg's Docks of New York -- a special treat that will please fans of director William Wellman -- he revisited parts of it in a later talkie. It's also a key movie in our education/adoration of the maverick actress Louise...

Blu-ray Freebie and the Bean Here's how one pushed the limits of good taste in 1974. James Caan and Alan Arkin run the gamut of racist, raunchy, sexist and homophobic jokes as bad boy cops breaking the rules, and director Richard Rush delivers some impressive, expensive action stunts on location in San Francisco. Does it get a pass because it's...

Blu-ray + Digital HD The Dinner How far will the new American aristocracy go to protect its privileges? Oren Moverman's intense four-way war of wills is sourced from a novel but shapes up as an intense stage piece in a chi-chi restaurant interrupted by flashbacks and other stylistic flourishes. The acting foursome is excellent, with Steve Coogan a standout as a...

Blu-ray Hopscotch A generic spy story becomes an inspired light comedy with the application of great talent led by the star-power of Walter Matthau. Matthau's CIA spook hooks up with old flame Glenda Jackson to retaliate against his insufferable CIA boss (Ned Beatty) with a humiliating tell-all book about the agency's dirty tricks history. Matthau's sloppy, slouchy...

Blu-ray Silkwood It's a quality true-life mystery-exposé that doesn't come off as tabloid trash or Oliver Stone hysteria -- the true story of Karen Silkwood is told without cooking the books. The all-superstar cast is something too -- Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell. Only a fine director like Mike Nichols could steer this one into good...

Night People Nunnally Johnson hands us a well-written spy & hostage drama set in Cold War Berlin, with plenty of intrigue and good humor to boot. Gregory Peck is the troubled negotiator and Broderick Crawford a Yankee galoot sticking his nose where it isn’t wanted. This one has been out of reach for quite a while —...

Blu-ray You Only Live Once Fritz Lang continues his take-no-prisoners indictment of America's curious relationship with crime,  this time with the thesis that an innocent man can become a pawn in cosmic game of injustice. Three-time loser Henry Fonda, the glummest actor in '30s films, doesn't mean to rob or kill. But gosh darn it, They Made Him a Criminal....

Blu-ray Terror in a Texas Town On paper it's a western with everything -- a major star, decent supporting players, a cult director and sideways references to the blacklisting years. But even with its ya-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it high noon showdown scene, Joseph H. Lewis's last feature film is still a lower-tier United Artists effort. Sterling Hayden goes up against Sebastian Cabot and Nedrick...

Blu-ray Where the Boys Are Heading for Spring Break somewhere? Long before Girls Gone Wild, kids of the Kennedy years found their own paths to the desired fun in the sun, and most of them came back alive. MGM's comedic look at the Ft. Lauderdale exodus is a half-corny but fully endearing show, featuring the great Dolores Hart and the...

Blu-ray The Breaking Point You can tell it's film noir -- even the cabin cruiser has Venetian blinds. Ernest Hemingway's favorite film adaptation of his work is this uncompromised story of a good man charting a criminal course on the high seas. John Garfield is again 'one man alone' against the system, and the moral quicksand all but swallows...

3-D Blu-ray + Digital Kong: Skull Island 3-D Kong is back, transformed into a 'MonsteVerse' colossus suitable for combat with Kaiju-sized foes. The key inspiration is video games but the day is saved by capable performers in mostly amusing roles. Even though the show treats its fantasy halfway seriously, it's still an infantile guns 'n' monsters romp, embellished with impressive visual effects.

Region B Blu-ray The Battle of the River Plate Powell & Pressburger's big-scale historical epic is perhaps the best film ever about an old-school naval encounter between battleships. The first half depicts the showdown between England and Germany in the South Atlantic, and the second half a tense diplomatic game in the neutral country of Uruguay. Peter Finch, Bernard Lee and Anthony Quayle shine...

Blu-ray The Sea Chase John Wayne plays a German sea captain in a film that goes out of its way to create a favorable image of our former enemy, with hardly a Nazi flag or even a German accent in sight. Wayne and his co-star Lana Turner are as Teutonic as Blondie and Dagwood, yet the story works as...

Blu-ray Shalako It's 007 in the saddle! Sean Connery didn't become a career cowboy but his one stint as a Louis L'Amour hero is a diverting change of pace. And we couldn't resist the pairing of two of moviedom's most attractive actors -- Connery and Brigitte Bardot.

Blu-ray The Quiet American (1958) There appear to be no rules governing tricky politics in movies -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel about terrorism in French-held Vietnam completely reverses the author's message. Does a conspiracy theory about a movie still carry any weight, when our daily political life now plays like one giant conspiracy?

Blu-ray The Valachi Papers Charles Bronson plays a real-life Mafiosi in a period picture with a fine script, some good performances and a production so sloppy that the whole thing could be called The Anachronism Papers. Joseph Wiseman and Lino Ventura bring additional tough-guy star-power, and Bronson actually commits himself to the role -- quite a change of pace...

Blu-ray + DVD Obsessions What a great sales hook -- a feature film with a Bernard Herrmann music score that we hadn't heard of. And one of the writers was Martin Scorsese, before Boxcar Bertha and Mean Streets! But wait, it isn't as simple as that. The new release is more than a little confusing. Its own ad copy...

Blu-ray The Angry Red Planet Hey, Ib Melchoir's Opus Mars-us is back, in a not-bad new scan and color-grading job. If the nostalgia bug has bitten you deep enough to appreciate a fairly maladroit but frequently arresting space exploration melodrama, this may be the disc for you. Let's be honest: NOBODY can resist the allure of the fabulous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crab, and...