CineSavant

Region B Blu-ray + PAL DVD The Housemaid (Region B) Guest reviewer Lee Broughton offers a look at writer-director Derek Nguyen's intriguing debut feature, a finely observed supernatural gothic chiller-cum-illicit period love story, set on a French plantation in Vietnam towards the end of the First Indochina War. It's also a spooky melodrama with a difference. As such, this well-acted, handsomely staged and stylishly shot...

Blu-ray Great Balls of Fire! Director Jim McBride puts retro magic into a rock 'n' roll bio about a big talent who was probably more fun on stage than in person. Dennis Quaid hits the right note of insanity for his portrayal of Jerry Lee Lewis's rise to fame and fortune. Winona Ryder's hilarious, almost scary bobby-sox Lolita becomes Jerry's...

Blu-ray A Fistful of Dynamite (Duck You Sucker) More mysterious than ever, Sergio Leone's ode to (condemnation of?) revolution is said to be the centerpiece of his three 'Once Upon a Time' movies linking western violence to the modern age of brutal politics and ruthless gangsterism. Crudeness rubs shoulders with sad and beautiful images as Leone takes on a theme he claimed not...

Blu-ray Highway Dragnet Here's something odd: the formative feature in Roger Corman's proto- career. Roger gets credits for Story and Associate Producer, and learned what he needed to learn to produce two movies of his own in the same year. The modest crime thriller sees Richard Conte involved with three women during a chase on dusty desert roads:...

Region B Blu-ray Colossus: The Forbin Project (Region B) This nearly forgotten Sci-fi masterpiece should have been a monster hit. For some reason Universal didn't think that a computer menace was commercial -- the year after 2001. The superior drama sells a tough concept: the government activates a defense computer programmed to keep the peace. It does exactly that, but by holding the world...

Blu-ray Elevator to the Gallows Louis Malle's French thriller is cooler than cool -- his first dramatic film is a slick suspense item with wicked twists of fate and images to die for: 1) Jeanne Moreau at the height of her beauty 2) walking through beautifully lit Parisian back streets 3) accompanied by a fantastic Miles Davis soundtrack. Murder in...

Blu-ray The Hallelujah Trail Blown up to Road Show spectacular dimensions, a fairly modest idea for a comedy western became something of a career Waterloo for director John Sturges. But it's still a favorite of fans thrilled by fancy 70mm-style presentations. A huge cast led by Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton and Pamela Tiffin leads the charge on...

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice John Updike and Philip Roth, those faithful chroniclers of American infidelity, had a kindred spirit in director Paul Mazursky. Employing a double-edged sword tempered with Updike’s Protestant angst and Roth’s hair-shirt humor, Mazursky served up 1969’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a shrewd and ultimately compassionate satire about lovelorn narcissists. As it stumbled...

Blu-ray The Outlaw Louise Brooks once said that the movies were invented to enable rich men to own desirable women. The Outlaw is the stuff of legend less for itself than for Howard Hughes' creation of the sex star Jane Russell, and his battle with the censors and Hollywood itself. We've always gotten the impression that nobody has...

Blu-ray The Incident New Yorkers of two centuries ago surely complained loudly about rampant street crime, but in the 1960s the media really ramped up the reportage paranoia. Had a new age of senseless violence begun? A New York play about terror on the subway is the source for this nail-biter with a powerful cast, featuring an ensemble...

Blu-ray The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds Of all the 'depressed relationship' dramas of the early '70s, this may be the most rewarding. It also sports one of the longest titles on record. Paul Zindel's award-winning play gets a marvelous adaptation for the screen, thanks to Alvin Sargent, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. There's also the stealth input of the star couple's...

Blu-ray Shoes Some movies attempted to change social attitudes from the very beginning, and director Lois Weber made that goal her specialty, with a great many enormously popular films of the 'teens and 'twenties. Milestone's disc of a Dutch restoration of this 1916 gem is a major find in terms of film culture: it helps write women...

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...

Tom Jones Yorkshire native Tony Richardson, lauded for a string of melodramas set in grayer than gray factory towns, took an abrupt left turn with Tom Jones, an 18th century period piece steeped in the vibrant New Wave sensibilities of the 60’s. Starring Albert Finney as the randy hero, Richardson’s sunny holiday is as far from the mills...

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.

Special Edition Blu-ray The Witches (Le streghe) The strangest Italian portmanteau picture of the sixties features glorious Silvana Mangano in dozens of costume changes, directed by big names (Visconti, De Sica, Pasolini) and paired with a woefully miscast Clint Eastwood. The other major attraction is a delightful music score by Piero Piccioni, with an assist from Ennio Morricone.

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.

The L-Shaped Room The winter of 1962 found British films at their most grandiose and self-effacing. Opening at the Odeon was Lawrence of Arabia, using every inch of that cavernous theater’s wide screen. Five minutes up the road Dr. No had just premiered in the smaller but no less lofty London Pavilion. On the other side of the...