CineSavant

DVD The Russians are Coming / Career Another offering of vintage East German pictures gives us all the pieces of a cinematic puzzle: Heiner Carow's 1968 memory- movie of traumatic experiences in WW2 displeased the Communist authorities and was shelved... only to be cannibalized as a back-story for a new 1970 release aimed as a dig at West German values. It's a...

Blu-ray The Vampire Bat Another impressive horror restoration! Majestic Pictures pulls together a great cast, including Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill, for a smart gothic horror outing complete with squeaky bats, a flipped-out village idiot (Dwight Frye!), a crazed mad scientist (the worst kind) and a lynch mob with torches that have been hand-tinted in color. Melvyn Douglas is...

Blu-ray The Skull Peter Cushing! Christopher Lee! Each is at the top of his game, playing competing collectors of occult incunabula -- the kind that comes with a satanic curse, when the purloined item in question is the Skull Of The infamous, despicable and sharp-toothed Marquis De Sade! Freddie Francis directs up a storm in this amicable Amicus...

‘How to Succeed’ – Take 2 Not so fast Savant — with the help of correspondent input, CineSavant presents more information on David Swift’s adaptation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — correcting and modifying some assumptions in my first review. Don’t worry — it’s good reading. A Savant article This is an odd circumstance. I routinely update,...

Blu-ray Invisible Ghost Bela Lugosi fan alert! This Monogram horror opus is yet another narrative-challenged fumble of unmotivated, incomprehensible characters... but Bela's great in it, and in a central role, too. He's a sympathetic non- maniac this time, if you don't count his tendency to go into trances and (cough) smother random houseguests. Savant's review has the lowdown...

Blu-ray Julieta Pedro Almodóvar bounces back with an absorbing saga of a mother and daughter told in an interesting style. A woman feels isolated, powerless, alone and anguished about what has happened in her life. Is any of it her fault? Or is all of it her fault? How do we hold relationships together, or do they...

Blu-ray Peyton Place The book was raw & dirty, and did you read what that girl did with that guy on page 167? Racking up a stack of Oscar nominations, Peyton Place became one of the big hits of its year, launched the careers of several young actors and proved that Hollywood could pasteurize most any so-called un-filmable...

Blu-ray How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying Broadway's delightful -- but wickedly accurate -- satire of big business was brought to movie screens almost intact, with the story, the stars, the styles and dances kept as they were in the long-running show that won a Pulitzer Prize. This is the place to see Robert Morse and Michele Lee at their best --...

3-D Blu-ray Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 3-D J. K. Rowling is back with a wizard world tale over which she has complete control -- a diverting period adventure starring Eddie Redmayne and scores of fanciful magic creatures that belong on an endangered species list. Yep, it's 2+plus hours of CGI illusions -- in glorious 3-D for those so equipped, and Ms. Rowling...

Blu-ray 23 Paces to Baker Street No, not a blind Sherlock Holmes, but a blind Van Johnson who directs his butler, his girlfriend Vera Miles and the London police to thwart a crime based on something he overheard in a bar. Henry Hathaway directs a complicated murder mystery that plays like a combo of Rear Window and Wait Until Dark, with...

Blu-ray Tower A fateful day is re-examined by its survivors, whose stories are told via a brilliant narrative arrangement, and the use of animated recreations is only one aspect of it. The Texas tower shootings put our present, everyday reign of violent terror in a humanist context. It's not exploitative -- the killer's name is barely mentioned....

Blu-ray + Digital HD Fences Verdict? The film of August Wilson's play is absorbing, intense. If we rate by quality of writing, acting skill, and the craft of direction, Denzel Washington's film betters most of its fellow Best Picture nominees. It's also something positive for the arts, a 'black experience' play that can't be pigeonholed as merely black- themed. The...

Blu-ray Phaedra Or, "Never on Sunday with Your Stepson."   Director Jules Dassin's monument to his beloved Melina Mercouri transposes a Greek tragedy to a modern setting. The pampered wife of a shipping magnate is like a queen of old -- she can fling a priceless gem into the Thames on just a whim, and she goes...

Blu-ray Our Man in Havana It's Obi-Wan versus Fidel! Well, not really. The pre-Bond espionage genre lights up with cool intrigues and comic absurdities, as a Brit vacuum salesman in Havana is recruited to spy for Her Majesty's Secret Service. The filmmakers and stars are all top caliber, and the location is legendary: Castro's Cuba, immediately after the revolution.

Blu-ray Film / Notfilm An experimental film by an Irish playwright, shot in New York with a silent comedian at the twilight of his career? Samuel Beckett's inquiry into the nature of movies (and existence?) befuddled viewers not versed in film theory; Ross Lipman's retrospective documentary about its making asks all the questions and gets some good answers. First...

DVD Summer Storm Here's a real gem -- a 'classic' Chekhov story turned into a compelling tale of lust and murder. George Sanders and Linda Darnell shine as a judge and the peasant girl who intrigues him; Edward Everett Horton is excellent cast against type in a dramatic role.

Blu-ray World Without End "Thru the Time Barrier, 552 years Ahead... Roaring To the Far Reaches of Titanic Terror, Crash-Landing Into the Nightmare Future!" ... and as Daffy Duck says, "And it's good, too!" Allied Artists sends CinemaScope and Technicolor on a far-out timewarp to a place where the men are silly and the women are... very female. Hugh...

3-D Blu-ray September Storm — 3-D 3-D in CinemaScope? That seems like a strange combination, but this obscure treasure hunt adventure with Joanne Dru and Mark Stevens is indeed billed as being filmed in the 'Miracle of Stereo-Vision,' five years after the demise of Hollywood's first fling with 'depthies.' Kino and the 3-D Film Archives extras include two vintage 3-D shorts,...

Region B Blu-ray Cinema Paradiso Giuseppe Tornatore's ode to the Italian love of movies was a major hit here in 1990, despite being severely cut by Miramax. In 2002 the director reworked his long version into an almost three-hour sentimental epic that enlarges the film's scope and deepens its sentiments.

Blu-ray Compulsion This classy Fox production was considered the epitome of sick film subject matter in the pre- Psycho year of 1959, the true story of jazz-age thrill killers Leopold & Loeb. Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman are the nihilistic child murderers; Orson Welles stops the show with his portrayal of Clarence Darrow, going under a different...

Blu-ray RoboCop 2 It's ugly, it's violent, and it's graphic novelist Frank Miller's nasty vision through and through. Scream Factory's Collector's Edition brings out the amazing backstory of the production of this stop-motion- intensive first sequel to RoboCop. Druglord Caine is a menace, but we're just as appalled by the film's vivid depiction of a greater terror: Predatory...

Blu-ray 45 Years Andrew Haigh's quiet, two-person relationship tale won a lot of friends last year. A revelation from the past changes everything in the marriage of Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. We read the faces, read the gestures -- just like we do in our own close relationships.

Blu-ray The Valley of Gwangi Gwangi! Ready your rifles and lariats because this is one of the best. Harryhausen's happiest dinos- à go-go epic comes thundering back in HD heralded by Jerome Moross's impressive music score. Unless you count The Animal World, all of the stop-motion magician's feature films are now available in quality Blu-rays.

Blu-ray The Man Who Could Cheat Death A thyroid operation every ten years, plus regular libations of an eerie green liquid, has allowed Anton Diffring to live over a hundred years without looking a year over forty. Hammer's medical horror show features Christopher Lee, Hazel Court and sumptuous cinematography, but not a whole lot of surprises.

Blu-ray Finian’s Rainbow As a musical it's excellent -- fine tunes and lyrics, great singing and dancing by the ever-youthful Fred Astaire, the glorious songbird Petula Clark, and the impishly weird Tommy Steele cast appropriately as a grimacing Leprechaun. The update of what was a politically acute Broadway hit in 1947 is awkward but the show is a...

Blu-ray Chilly Scenes of Winter Joan Micklin Silver applies sensitive direction to Ann Beattie's novel about a lonely guy trying to win back his girlfriend, and going about it in all the wrong ways. John Heard is excellent as Charles, who can't understand why Laura (Mary Beth Hurt) has gone back to her husband and child. The whole thing plays...