CineSavant

Blu-ray The Knack…and how to get it Meet Rita Tushingham, the cutest comic (and dramatic) actress of swinging London. This '60s masterpiece applies director Richard Lester's talent for comedy to a new kind of quirky, youthful sex farce. Shy boy Michael Crawford takes lessons on how to dominate women from Ray Brooks, when all he has to do to win cute Rita...

DVD-R Hitler’s Madman Douglas Sirk's first American movie came out so well that PRC sold it to MGM, earning Sirk a promotion out of the Poverty Row studios. John Carradine is excellent — and underplays! -- as the Hangman of Prague who moonlights as a depraved sex criminal. But the context in this wartime propaganda movie is serious...

DVD-R Barbary Coast Crime, lust and vigilante lynchings in the wide-open city on the bay, back in the gold rush days. Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson and Joel McCrea form a spirited triangle as a sharp roulette dealer strings one man along and can't prevent another from throwing away a fortune. Sam Goldwyn's impressive production shows Howard Hawks...

Blu-ray The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues Minimalist 'Z' monster movies really took off in the 1950s, earning good money on tiny outlays of time, money, and sometimes talent. Dan Milner's directing is competent, to be kind, but the 'nothing happens' script is a sure-fire soporific -- Roger Corman surely didn't worry about the competition. The good news is Richard Harland Smith's...

Blu-ray Thundercrack! – 40th Anniversary Curt McDowell and George Kuchar's comedy epic of oversexed sensationalists running amuck while trapped in a storm-battered house goes beyond strange. It's a legit experimental film but -- gasp! -- also 2.5 hours of hardcore porn and other forms of giddy depravity. A movie guaranteed to make conservative heads explode -- read with caution, please!

DVD Savant 2015 Favored Disc Roundup or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015 This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North. What a year!  I was able to take one very nice trip back East to see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days’ walking in the hot sun...

Blu-ray Speedy Silent comedy rules!  Harold Lloyd epitomizes 'twenties optimism while serving up the fun. Even better, he filmed this on the streets of New York, so we feel as if we stepped into a time machine. The great disc extras include input from New Yorker extraordinaire Bruce Goldstein. It's a great show for holiday viewing --...

Blu-ray + DVD Wake Up and Kill Gian Maria Volonté has a big part in this prime quality Italo crime thriller blessed with a great score by Ennio Morricone. But the movie belongs to Robert Hoffman as the real-life public enemy who earned the alias 'The Machine Gun Soloist.' Director Carlo Lizzani's realistic treatment glamorizes nothing and implicates the police in shady...

Blu-ray + Digital HD You Can’t Take It with You Frank Capra won his third Best Directing Oscar for this Kaufman and Hart adaptation. Star Jean Arthur is radiant, and relative newcomer James Stewart seems to have lifted his 'aw shucks' nice-guy persona intact from this role.  With Lionel Barrymore, Ann Miller, Dub Taylor, Spring Byington and a terrific Edward Arnold.

Blu-ray Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special It's back and better than ever -- the makers of Pee-Wee's Playhouse capped their Saturday morning show with a Christmas Special to end all Christmas Specials. All the show's regular characters, special treats and creative extravagances are enhanced with a tall stack of celebrity guests, performers and walk-ons -- it's a 1988 time capsule.

Blu-ray Downhill Racer The stylistics of documentary filmmaking helped wipe out the old Hollywood way of doing things, and this sharp look at Olympic skiing is a prime example. Michael Ritchie became a director to be watched filming a killer competitor (Robert Redford), a blaze on the ski slopes and an SOB in every other aspect of his...

Blu-ray Team America: World Police Trey Parker and Matt Stone's 'outrageous, irreverent' comedy is a gusher of pointless profanity and smut that will cheer the myriad fans of South Park.  The ultimate message of this cringe-worthy spectacle is that liberals are dupes and traitors, foreigners are either evil or morons, and kicking ass around the world is our national birthright. Go...

DVD-R Five Came Back Dalton Trumbo and Nathanael West contributed to the screenplay for John Farrow's suspense adventure about a plane crash in the Amazon jungle -- who will survive? Lucille Ball is the ranking castaway in a glossy RKO thriller that's been restored to a fine polish.

Blu-ray Love at Large Alan Rudolph goes all mushy on us, but in a good way. This loose, somewhat cartoonish comedy pits detectives Tom Berenger and Elizabeth Perkins on opposite sides of a hot case. All they uncover is one illicit love affair after another... while getting personally involved too. A quirky romantic favorite.

Blu-ray Flying Disc Man from Mars Make room for Mota, the man from Mars!  Mota enlists a scientist and two thugs to lay the groundwork for a full-scale invasion from space. Only the heroes of Fowler Aerial Patrol can save us! Republic's serial adventure ought to carry an "80% Recycled" label -- even the flying disc craft is second-hand, bearing a...

Blu-ray Ikiru Akira Kurosawa goes full tilt humanist with this emotionally wrenching, vastly insightful look at human nature. A faceless bureaucrat, alone and empty, is diagnosed with stomach cancer. He rebels and breaks down, but then finds a way to give meaning to his life even as he's losing it. Kurosawa one-ups the Italian Neorealists by seeing...

Blu-ray Sense and Sensibility Emma Thompson both wrote and stars in this latter-day Jane Austen adaptation, blessed with fine locations and costumes, a congenial cast and attentive direction by Ang Lee. Kate Winslet consolidates her newfound stardom as a second Austen husband-seeker, lost in a maze of family intrigues and betrayals. But none are so severe as to prevent...

DVD Ken Burns’ The Civil War Ken Burns and Co. made a big splash with this historical docu miniseries that in 1990 gripped the imagination of the whole country. Eleven hours of history are a breeze when presented in what was then a new form: authentic photos and paintings accompanied by actorly recitals of letters and documents from the era. It...

Blu-ray The Brain that Wouldn’t Die Forget your 'Jan in the Pan' jokes and all those 'thing in the closet' remarks about gay subtext. This loopy, kooky and kinky horror offering from New York's Tarrytown is a keeper despite its primitive direction and campy screenplay. Mad scientist Herb Evers answered the call to Bring Me the Head of Virginia Leith, and goes...

Blu-ray Queen of Blood Curtis Harrington took an assignment nobody else would and fashioned a gem of low-budget Sci-Fi. A Russian space epic provides expensive-looking special effects scenes for a new horror show about a deadly alien rescued from a crash landing on Mars. The extras include excellent interviews with Roger Corman and effects specialist / historian Robert Skotak.

Blu-ray The Hurricane John Ford and Samuel Goldwyn's South Seas disaster picture can boast spectacular action and compelling romance. The unjustly imprisoned Jon Hall crosses half an ocean to rejoin his beloved Dorothy Lamour under The Moon of Manakoora, before an incredible (and incredibly expensive) hurricane blows the island to smithereens. Ford's direction is flawless, as are the screenplay...

DVD-R Forbidden Hollywood Volume 9 Depraved convicts ! Crazy Manhattan gin parties! Society dames poaching other women's husbands! A flimflam artist scamming the uptown sophisticates! All these forbidden attractions are here and more -- including Bette Davis's epochal seduction line about impulsive kissing versus good hair care. It's a 9th collection of racy pre-Code wonders.

Blu-ray Don’t Look Back D.A. Pennebaker puts cinema verité on the map with his terrific up-close docu portrait of Bob Dylan as he runs from concert appearances to hotels, cutting up with his friends, practicing with Joan Baez and giving reporters grief. Criterion's extras give us the best look yet at Pennebaker's innovative approach: don't direct, observe.

Blu-ray Black Widow Forget film art for a minute. Bob Rafelson and Ronald Bass's smart and sexy murder thriller throws Debra Winger and Theresa Russell into a slick neo-noir tale with fancy glamour trimmings, and comes up a bright, intelligent entertainment. A government agent tracks a serial killer that none of her superiors believes in -- who ever...

Blu-ray No Man’s Woman Shall we sing the praises of actress Marie Windsor? A self--assessed Queen of the Cheapies, she was anything but cheap, gracing some of the better films noirs and delivering some of the most deliciously acidic dialogue ever heard on screen. The woman doesn't just have bedroom eyes, she has bedroom everything, and a wicked smile...

Blu-ray In Cold Blood More than one feature film looks at the making of this picture, focusing on its author, Truman Capote. Criterion's disc returns the discussion to Richard Brooks, the director that dared adapt an unfilmable novel of lurid, unthinkable crime on the Kansas prairie. It's also a last gasp of artistic B&W cinematography from Hollywood, thanks to the indelible images...