CineSavant

Blu-ray The Tree of Wooden Clogs Ermanno Olmi's three-hour saga is a masterful ethnographic recreation of the long-gone way of life of Italian tenant farmers, virtual slaves working for a landowner. We see the entire agrarian lifestyle, with hints of modern times on the way. An ever-present backdrop of spiritualism and faith keeps the laborers going. Using unprofessional actors and an...

Blu-ray Panther Girl of the Kongo Did Republic's serial-makers lose their marbles? This is an endurance test of a thriller, with 12 chapters that refuse to advance a story beyond the same repetitive ambushes and fistfights. It's got monsters in the form of giant crawfish bred to... well, bred for almost no reason at all. With Phyllis Coates and Myron Healey....

Blu-ray Deluge Do rediscovered 'lost' movies always disappoint? This Depression-era pre-Code science fiction disaster thriller was unique in its day, and its outrageously ambitious special effects -- New York City is tossed into a blender -- were considered the state of the art. Sidney Blackmer and a fetching Peggy Shannon fight off rapacious gangs in what may...

Blu-ray 3 Classic Films by Claude Chabrol Being called the French Hitchcock does Claude Chabrol a disservice, as his dark thrillers approach mystery and suspense almost completely through character, not cinematics. These three very good 1990s productions are completely different in tone and approach, and each showcases a stunning French actress.

Blu-ray By Sidney Lumet A lengthy talk-fest interview of the underrated filmmaker, who takes us through his life story as a personal journey, not a string of movie assignments. Sidney Lumet seems to attract a lot of criticism, and so did this docu for not challenging his opinions or rubbing his nose in his less admirable movie efforts. The...

Blu-ray The Boy Friend It's hard to think of a musical that would benefit more from a Blu-ray boost than Ken Russell's kaleidoscopic all dancing, all singing send-up of theatrical clichés on the music hall stage, circa 1925. We're just happy that the adorable Twiggy got to be put in a film like this, to be enjoyed forever. The...

Blu-ray The Gate Screen horror gets a fun-ride boost with the adventures of a trio of home-alone kids squaring off against demons from, 'right in their own back yard.' Creative, expertly daring special effects heighten a perfect spook thriller for young kids, that's has more and better 'Boo' moments than most of the hardcore genre classics of its...

Region B + A Blu-ray Breakout / Der Mann Ohne Nerven Charlie Bronson cashed in big with this lightweight action thriller co-starring Jill Ireland and Robert Duvall. Did Duvall get involved because the original concept was a serious look at political scandals between big business, the CIA and Chile? The clues from the real source story are still there.

Blu-ray + Digital HD Arrival Yep, yet another fleet of giant alien spaceships has Earth surrounded, but Denis Villeneuve's movie is not your garden variety invasion fantasy. Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner have a limited time to figure out how to communcate with alien creatures whose intentions are a complete unknown. It's a rare sci-fi thriller that succeeds on a...

DVD A Walk in the Sun Lewis Milestone's poetic character study of an infantry landing in Italy gives us a full dozen non-cliché portraits of men in war, featuring a dramatic dream team of interesting character actors. Dana Andrews was the only big star in the cast, joined by hopefuls Richard Conte, Lloyd Bridges and John Ireland; the standout crew includes...

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Loving The story of Mildred and Richard Loving could easily have become a sledgehammer epic about social injustice. Writer-director Jeff Nichols instead sticks to the facts and recounts their ordeal with a quiet subjectivity that neither exaggerates nor sanctifies. The result is a marvelously affecting demonstration of how a civilized, progressive America rights a wrong. Ruth...

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD The Edge of Seventeen Teen comedies can be annoying, but every year seems to bring a good one. What work nicely are thoughtful movies that acknowledge the modern problems of teens in such a highly sexualized world, and place the sexual aspects in a non-exploitative context. I have been entertained and moved by Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick in...

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Manchester by the Sea A major Oscar contender, Kenneth Longergan’s Manchester by the Sea is certainly sobering, yet is nowhere near as depressing as the initial word on the street would have had us believe. We all know of tragedies that happen all the time, things that we go to sleep at night praying won’t happen to us. Bad...

Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD Hacksaw Ridge Combat movies fascinate this reviewer — if you look at the Savant review index you’ll see that I review practically every war picture of note that I can get my hands on. But brace yourself — I become huffy when I see themes of patriotism and faith used to deliver dicey messages. Mel Gibson’s big,...

Region B Blu-ray Valkoinen Peura (The White Reindeer) A few years back the pioneering disc boutique Mondo Macabro imported a number of exotic Eastern horror films, such as Purana Mandir from India. The movies seemed a real cultural curiosity, an imitation of our genre filmmaking with local touches added. Phil Hardy’s Encyclopedia of Horror reference book whetted my appetite for scores of amazing-sounding...

Blu-ray One Million Years B.C. Here’s a title we haven’t seen in a while, and that we’ve never seen at this level of quality. Hammer Films’ most successful release ever One Million Years B.C. launched a new film star. I count myself among the zillions of kids that pinned her poster on my bedroom wall. At age fifteen, the release of...

Blu-ray When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth didn’t get much attention when released here early in March of 1971. Only film fanatics obsessed with special effects had much to say about it. Cinefantastique magazine showed a still photo or two of dinosaurs on the rampage, and told us that stop-motion effects notable Jim Danforth, who we knew...

3-D Region B (+A ) Blu-ray Inferno 3-D (Note, 1.18.17: Twilight Time will be releasing a domestic disc of this title on May 16, licensed for U.S. distribution.) A fine 20th Fox entry for the 3-D craze of 1953, the adventure thriller Inferno is often labeled a film noir in the desert. Despite the presence of a scheming, murderous wife, the noir quotient...

DVD-R Gabriel Over the White House (revisited) A Review Revisit. The unique political fantasy Gabriel Over the White House has become painfully topical lately. This is an update of a 2009 review. To my knowledge nothing has changed with the product — I saw a re-promotion of Twilight Time’s 1984 disc and thought, Gabriel is twice as relevant and at least as...

Blu-ray Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Connected film festival attendees learned about Pedro Almodóvar before everybody else, especially if they had an understanding of new developments in Spanish cinema. Film school had shown us nothing but the very exceptional work of Luis Buñuel, most of which is really from Mexico and France. In the 1980s we Angelenos were just getting access...

Blu-ray Love in the Afternoon A favorite of Billy Wilder-philes, Love in the Afternoon is a strong expression of the ‘romantic-Lubitsch’ vein in Wilder’s work. It’s essentially a return to the early ’30s Lubitsch comedies with Maurice Chevalier, but played in a more bittersweet Viennese register. It’s also Wilder’s first collaboration with the comedy screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond. Together they fashion...

Blu-ray What a Way to Go! Want to know what the producer of Planet of the Apes was up to, before that milestone movie? Arthur P. Jacobs was an agent for big stars before he became a producer, which positioned him well for his first show for 20th Fox, What a Way to Go! The front office’s idea of a black...

Blu-ray Mildred Pierce James M. Cain’s 1941 novel Mildred Pierce offers a venal and self-destructive view of America not with a story of respectable bourgeois society, not the criminal underworld. A de-classed, suburb-dwelling nobody fights her way onto the social register by using men and by hard work… and then watches as her obsessive goals blow up in...

Blu-ray The Lair of the White Worm Wild man director Ken Russell struck back against commercial indifference with this alternately elegant and outrageous horror offering, that excepting a few hard- ‘R’ moments, comes off as a real (snake) charmer. Few horror movies have a real sense of wit, and fewer still can laugh at themselves without crumbling into sad parody. As if...

Blu-ray Dr. Orloff’s Monster Arguing the merits of Jesús Franco seems a blind alley to me. I know academic film writers that have seen dozens of his films and who assure me that they perceive an artist amid all the exploitation and pornography. Why not? I continue to see Franco as a fringe filmmaker of little talent and less...

Blu-ray The Yakuza The Warner Archive Collection is on a roll with a 2017 schedule that has so far released one much-desired library Blu-ray per week. Coming shortly are Vincente Minnelli’s Bells are Ringing, Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon, Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend, and Val Guest’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and that only takes us...