CineSavant

Blu-ray Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon Troubling fact: the great director Otto Preminger's worst film is not Skidoo. Three physical misfits form an alternative family as a defense against the world. It's a good idea for a movie, but the writer and director do just about everything wrong that a writer and director can do.

Blu-ray Love Me or Leave Me MGM's show is a surprising powerhouse musical bio about the personality clash between an ambitious singer and the powerful enabler who wants her in his bed. Doris Day and James Cagney are at their best in an only slightly compromised telling of the real-life showbiz relationship of 'twenties star Ruth Etting and the domineering mobster...

Blu-ray A Taste of Honey

Blu-ray Road House (1948)

Blu-ray + DVD Microwave Massacre 'Worst Movie Ever?'   No way. But neither is Wayne Berwick and comic Jackie Vernon's tacky cannibalism tale a piece of art. When I say it's interesting, it's more as a study item than entertainment. Bad movie -- but a terrific restoration!

Blu-ray The Spiders (1919) When Fritz Lang began in film he was a better writer than director. This lavish two-part thriller sees him concocting a multi-genre mashup, shoehorning cowboy action thrills and an exotic lost Incan civilization into dagger-and-poison serial skullduggery.

Blu-ray Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words

Blu-ray Chandu the Magician Hissable villain Bela Lugosi is in denial --- no, actually star Edmund Lowe is in the Nile, deep-sixed in a sunken sarcophagus. Lugosi's up top trying to get his art deco death ray in running order -- opposed only by some nubile babes and a Great White Hypnotist from the Swami school of mind control.

DVD-R These Three Radical changes were required to adapt Lillian Hellman's Broadway play for post-Code Hollywood, to eradicate a theme that in 1934 was entirely taboo. But were audiences really unaware of the subject matter switch?  William Wyler excels with this bowdlerized, yet curiously near-perfect, story about the power of scandal.

Blu-ray Woman in the Dunes

Blu-ray Destiny Death doesn't take a holiday in this, the granddaddy of movies about the woeful duties of the Grim Reaper. Fritz Lang's heavy-duty Expressionist fable is as German as they get -- a morbid folk tale with an emotionally powerful finish.

Blu-ray Pioneers of African-American Cinema It's arrived -- thanks in part to a successful Kickstarter campaign, this nearly comprehensive compendium of American 'Race Films' is here in a deluxe Blu-ray presentation.

Blu-ray Betrayed Costa-Gavras sets his focus on right-wing political terror in the American heartland, where FBI agent Debra Winger finds farmer Tom Berenger at the head of a clan of murderous white supremacists. Our friends and neighbors!

Blu-ray A Touch of Zen A Taiwanese wuxia masterpiece from director King Hu: three hours of suspense, visual beauty and amazing action scenes. A beautiful mystery woman captivates an artist-scholar. He who happily becomes her strategist in a battle to hold off an army... partly with ghost illusions.

Blu-ray Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Liz Taylor scorches the screen (as least as much as it could be scorched in 1958) in a watered-down yet still potent Tennessee Williams adaptation. Paul Newman gets his Brando act together, and the rest of the show is stolen by 'Big Daddy' Burl Ives.

Blu-ray The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension The new branded line Shout Selects chooses Buckaroo for special-special edition treatment, with a long making-of docu just like the ones from the heyday of DVD. And this oddest of oddball sci-fi pictures has a backstory worth documenting.

Blu-ray The Gang’s All Here Wonderful isn't a good enough word to describe this joyful, funny and visually intoxicating Alice Faye musical by Busby Berkeley. Decades later it became part of a big Camp revival, but the real draw is still the Benny Goodman swing music, delightful performers like Carmen Miranda, and Berkeley's bizarre Technicolor visions.

Blu-ray Muriel, or The Time of Return Alain Resnais' deceptively conventional drama is really about interpersonal dynamics: lives lived in the here and now are really anchored in events and concerns from the past, that bleed into the present. Delphine Seyrig's antique dealer invites an old beau to visit, but instead of clarity and direction finds just more personal confusion.

Blu-ray Modesty Blaise Joseph Losey didn't normally make trendy, lighthearted genre films, and in this SuperSpy epic we find out why -- the impressive production and great music don't compensate for a lack of pace and dynamism, not to mention a narrow sense of humor. Yet it's a lounge classic, and a perverse favorite of spy movie fans.

Blu-ray ‘Neath Arizona Skies This early John Wayne oater displays the natural star quality and winning personality that sustained him through the 1930s -- it's a naïve, charming western that features some of The Duke's closest early associates.

3-D Blu-ray Miss Sadie Thompson Rita Hayworth in 3-D, in a hot story that was acceptable for 1925 and 1932, but too racy for repressed 1953. On a tropical island, a prostitute cabaret singer battles a fiery preacher missionary inspector for her freedom. Hayworth is dynamite, and it takes all of her talent to keep the show afloat, with so...

Blu-ray + DVD Crimes of Passion Flamboyant artist Ken Russell was eventually sidelined for what the industry calls 'excess,' but he was a genuine artist, as indicated by this, his last American film. Absolutely beyond the pale in terms of polite viewing, it's by turns awkward and insightful, profane... and more profane.

Region A+B Blu-ray Mill of the Stone Women (German import) Mad doctors! Mortiferous maidens! Horrifying hallucinations! A key early Euro-horror and one of the very first in color, this French-Italian production is a medical horrorshow crossed with a folk tale -- its centerpiece is a vintage carillon attraction in an old mill; creepy Scilla Gabel is the minatory seducer who bridges the gap between life...

Blu-ray Gun the Man Down This almost completely forgotten '50s western couldn't compete with the big productions, but it has a good cast -- James Arness, Robert J. Wilke, Emile Meyer, Harry Carey Jr. Plus early work by writer Burt Kennedy, and the debuts of actress Angie Dickinson and director Andrew V. McLaglen.

Blu-ray Silk Stockings It's in glorious Technicolor Metrocolor, CinemaScope and StereoPhonic Sound! Fred Astaire's final MGM musical gives him Cyd Charisse and a Cole Porter score, plus some nice Hermes Pan choreography. The script and Rouben Mamoulian's direction aren't the best, but the combined magic of the musical and dancing talent saves the day.

Blu-ray 3 Bad Men What's this? John Ford's last silent western is as exciting and entertaining as his later classics. A trio of horse thieves turn noble when given the responsibility of a young woman lost on the prairie; Ford gives the show comedy, drama and spectacle.