CineSavant

Blu-ray ‘Pimpernel’ Smith How could England have won the war without him? Horatio Smith sneaks about in Nazi Germany, liberating concentration camp inmates right under the noses of the Gestapo. Leslie Howard directed and stars in this wartime escapist spy thriller, as a witty professor too passive to be suspected as the mystery spy.

Blu-ray Loophole (1981) It sounds like a winner -- Albert Finney and Martin Sheen team up for a daring subterranean bank robbery in the heart of London. The locations, the sets and the production are all first class. So what happened? Susannah York and Jonathan Pryce are in on the heist as well.

Blu-ray + DVD Deepwater Horizon Does your memory go as far back as 2010, or have too many catastrophes and cataclysms blurred your vision? Peter Berg's tense account of the BP Gulf Oil Spill debacle covers twenty hours of technological peril, as Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell battle idiotic executives and a badly-cemented oil well that's fixing to blow sky...

DVD 50 Years with Peter Paul and Mary The immensely popular singing trio provides an extremely pleasant eighty minutes of musical nostalgia - with plenty of full-length performances but also the full variety of their music through the years. Interviews with the principals give us the back story, light but not superficial, while film clips show their political activism through the years.

Blu-ray Bad Day at Black Rock Don't mess with the one-armed man -- did you know that at 56 years, Spencer Tracy could whup Ernest Borgnine to a frazzle? John Sturges knocked this one out of the ballpark and booted his career into high gear. It's well remembered... but does anyone remember that the subject is the murder of a Japanese-American?...

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Sully The story didn't end with the Miracle in the Hudson — hero pilot Sully Sullenberger is tried by an investigative committee. Clint Eastwood's film examines and re-examines the 2.5 minutes, as the bureaucrats make the case that 155 passengers were unnecessarily put at risk.

Blu-ray The 3 Worlds of Gulliver Ray Harryhausen eases up for his second color Dynamation feature, restricting the stop-motion and instead utilizing traveling mattes to make a more juvenile adventure movie for smaller kiddies. The big draw is the beautiful music score by fantasy favorite Bernard Herrmann.

Blu-ray Dreamscape One of the better-remembered '80s sci-fi horror thrillers is back in an improved Blu-ray with a pile of extras. Dennis Quaid gets to act with Max von Sydow Christopher Plummer, Eddie Albert and Kate Capshaw, as they deal with a Cronenberg-like device that can invade human dreams.

DVD Savant 2016 Favored Disc Roundup or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2016 Above, from 1989: In Bronson Caverns, Savant and the intrepid Todd Stribich encounter an omen from the menacing future. I guess 2016 is going down on the record books as an, ‘interesting’ year, for reasons that are all too evident. Whenever some sage survivor has to...

Blu-ray Federico Fellini’s Roma Federico Fellini's best non-narrative feature is an intoxicating meta-travelogue, not just of the Eternal City but the director's idea of Rome past and present. The masterful images alternate between nostalgic vulgarity and dreamy timelessness. Criterion's disc is a new restoration.

Blu-ray I Want to Live! It's a powerful plea against the death penalty, but also an Oscar bid for a fiery actress. And don't forget the cool jazz music score. On top of this Robert Wise adds a formerly- taboo sequence, a realistic depiction of an execution in the gas chamber. Of such things were gritty, hard-hitting reputations made.

Blu-ray 100 Rifles A big, loud, lusty western battle movie with sexy stars and zero brains, this was a big hit back in '69, just before The Wild Bunch rebooted the entire genre. Jim Brown, Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds burn up the screen with action, even though the actual acting is on the weak side.

Blu-ray Brazil (1944) Good neighbor policy? Wartime exigencies inspired an intra-hemisphere cultural exchange, with the movies seizing on the new popularity of Latin music. Republic's contribution gives us the great songs of Ady Barroso and a full soundtrack of his compositions -- in a featherweight musical romance, of course.

Blu-ray The House on 92nd Street Just what is the dreaded 'Process 97'?  Henry Hathaway's docu-drama combined newsreel 'reality' with a true espionage story from the files of the F.B.I., creating a thriller about spies and atom secrets that dazzled the film-going public. But how much of it was true, and how much invented?

Blu-ray Short Cuts Success in the '90s gave Robert Altman the opportunity to experiment once again. Several short stories by Raymond Carver interlock in a mosaic of Los Angeles populated by scores of actors in ensemble mode. Clocking in at three hours, Altman's epic has all the time and space it needs.

Blu-ray The Exterminating Angel Will somebody explain the sheep and the bear? Luis Buñuel really knows how to disturb people. This, his most characteristic surreal drama proposes an impossible, irrational situation - which isn't all that different from the reality we know. Petty social rules, jealousies and bitterness make life hell for group of dinner guests stuck with each...

Blu-ray Bad Girl All sing the praises of Frank Borzage, a gentle director fully committed to the idea of romance in an imperfect world. Sally Eilers and James Dunn make a go of marriage, despite their personal flaws and difficulties with communication. It's hard to believe that films of this vintage portray behaviors as sensitive as this.

Blu-ray Pretty Poison Psycho launched a thousand twisted sickos and pathological relationships in films, but none can best Noel Black's fascinating, funny romance between a newly-released arsonist and a fetching high schooler, hungry for freedom and lacking a moral compass. The pairing of Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld is inspired.

Blu-ray Sudden Fear Joan Crawford controls every aspect of this glamorous, Oscar nominated noir about a murderous marriage double-cross. Good acting enlivens a by-the-book, gimmick-laden plot, with every moment designed to flatter the star.

Blu-ray Cry of the City Robert Siodmak's superb noir classic pits two graduates of Little Italy against one other: a crook who can deceive relatives and seduce strangers into helping him, and the cop who wants to put him out of business. Starring the great Richard Conte, with Victor Mature in what might be his best role.

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Pete’s Dragon (2016) Does anybody still care about great movies for small children? If so, here's a good one. A big, furry green dragon named Elliot is the kind of playmate every lonely kid wants. It's a non-musical rethinking of the old 1977 movie, made with taste, discretion, and plenty of heart.

Blu-ray The Asphalt Jungle John Huston's primal heist film is an almost perfect movie, with a score of unforgettable characterizations. A solid crime noir, it concerns itself with the human ironies in the 'left handed form of human endeavor.'

Blu-ray The Undying Monster Fox's first official monster movie is a terrific-looking but mostly flat mystery that tries its utmost not to be a horror film at all. It's a head scratcher that will interest fans of the expressive John Brahm, and help completists scratch another werewolf film off their gotta-see lists.

Blu-ray The Quiet Earth Remember the warning to avoid 'crossing the streams' in Ghostbusters?  Director Geoff Murphy enjoyed a world-wide release for this eerie sci-fi fantasy about a scientist who becomes unstuck in time-space, alone in an empty world.

Blu-ray Moby Dick I have a back file of reader notes asking for a Blu-ray for John Huston's Moby Dick, and more pointedly, wondering what will be done with its strange color scheme. I wasn't expecting miracles, but this new Twilight Time disc should make the purists happy — it has approximated the film's original, heavily muted color...

Blu-ray C.H.U.D. Can an old-fashioned monster movie still work in the 1980s? The dedicated cast for this overachieving chiller takes its story of 'Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers' in directions most punk-era horrors do not.