I got started on this edition nice and early, which I thought would afford me the opportunity to review a LOT of discs, which as you see, I did. But I believe I bit off more than I could comfortably chew, what with having to put this aside for things like my life and actual paying work and stuff. Hence, its appearing on the last day of April. You see. Let me put out the question: how many titles a given month make this a worthwhile feature for you, the reader? One reason I decided to take on so many was that I wanted a diverse selection, but, you know, one does get bogged down. So I’m thinking of holding to a strict twenty if I wanna keep this up on a monthly basis. Your thoughts, as always, are welcome. Thanks.
Equipment: Playstation 3, domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83, region-locked import discs, Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 the display, Pioneer Elite VSX 817 AV the amp, Disney WOW the calibration disc.
9 ½ Weeks (Warner)
I acquired this disc for sentimental reasons. I know that sounds weird, but…well, this isn’t really the place to explain. Just trust me. In any event, among many other things it does offer a short course in the visual aesthetics of a certain, um, strain of slick ‘80s filmmaking. Director Adrian Lyne did a lot of NYC location shooting with long lenses, pushing the zoom, and you get a particular kind of grain and a slight almost out-of-register feel in the colors. Lyne also stacked up very distinguished supporting players for his S&M dreck, so here’s the pallor of Julian Beck and the rather shockingly blotchy complexion of Christine Baranski, of all people. Then there’s the “emotional” lighting; near the end there’s a shot in which one of Kim Basinger’s cheekbones is practically blown out while the other is under a cavern of black. Peter Biziou, the lenser, was a frequent DP for Alan Parker around this time as well. The disc, as you may by now have inferred, reproduces this tony high-budge sludge, which oft obliterates the line between visual “style” and tetchy fussiness, very well. All this and Joey Silvera’s first legit screen credit! No extras. —B+
All Quiet on the Western Front (Universal)
I have to admit I’d always underrated and underappreciated this film’s visual quality before. No more. One of the 100th Anniversary restorations/preservations from Universal, this is really quite remarkable. Like seeing the film for the first time, as they say. What it introduces is a whole other world, in a sense; this backlot-created World War I Germany in pristine silver. The overhead shot of the mud, stunning. Suddenly visible is the influence of Murnau, the affinity with Borzage’s Liliom (e.g. the uses of frames within frames). Milestone’s reputation as a great emotional director stems in large part from this film; again, this Blu-ray tells us why he was a great visual director. A must. —A+
Baba Yaga (Blue Underground)
Ah, 1973; the halcyon days of Eurotrash lying around in psychedelically appointed living rooms reading the Village Voice and dissing Godard, in English-language overdub…Still, director Corrado Farina’s picture is pretty weak tea, exploitation wise, and viewers seeking hubba-hubba appeal in the disrobing-vintage-Hollywood-onetime-starlets department should be advised that Carroll Baker doesn’t show much skin and most of the heavy lifting, nudity-wise, is done by Angela Covello, who is not inapt to the task. (Covello being naked will constitute a minor theme in this column, as you shall see.) Still, the movie as a whole is pretty amusing in its presumption: there’s a lotta faux-Blow Up stuff with the pixieish photog heroine played by fetching Isabella de Funès, and an Une Femme Mariee pastiche in a love scene, etc. The Blu-ray rendition from Blue Underground is strong, as is their standard. This might render all the more noticeable the fact that Farina seemed inclined to throw a fog filter or some other diffusing device on the lens for every shot of Baker. —B+
Boeing Boeing (Olive)
Warning: The Coen Brothers might have been kidding when they cited this film as an influence. It accrues a fair amount of ill=-will by mocking Thelma Ritter’s looks in the opening credits. There’s a certain flush to everyone’s color that suggests the onscreen participants were drinking through the shoot, for which I would not blame them. It’s a pretty handsome presentation of this 1965 film, possibly the first since Nutty Professor to feature Jerry Lewis in a non-infantilized role. I don’t get why Olive didn’t go the extra yard and put it in 1.85 instead of full HD display-screen 1.78 but it’s not an overtly objectionable difference. And the ways of Olive can be misterioso. —B
The Buccaneer (Olive)
Having little expectation of ever seeing this goofy 1958 film—a rare directorial effort from um, Anthony Quinn, who stepped in when father-in-law Cecil B. DeMille fell to ill to helm the remake of his own 1938 film (also out in standard def from Olive)—again, I had even less expectation with respect to how it might look in Blu-ray. Hence, I cannot say that I am as disappointed with this as was the DVD Beaver crew. Clean, good color, excellent early EG Marshall! For DeMille/Chuck Heston completists only of course, but…. —B
Buck Privates (Universal)
The DNR applied to this, another in the Universal 100th Anniversary series, does not contribute a hellishly unnatural sheen or make it look like a faux 3D presentation or any such thing. It merely cuts down on grain, a lot. I can’t say in this case I object all that much. The visual integrity of every film is its own thing, of course, but I dare say that a “true” high-def presentation of this movie might make it look a little, well, cheap. Because it was. Why NOT see Bud and Lou look beautiful, or something like it, I say. There’s some great routines here, nice songs by the Andrews Sisters, and Shemp Howard. Low comedy never had such a refined package. For that alone it warrants an affectionate A+.
Casablanca (Warner)
Noticeably less shiny-bright than the prior Blu-ray, but WITHOUT the corresponding downturn of detail that you might expect from a less bright picture. In face, a good deal MORE detail than the last one. A wonderful nitrate simulation, maybe the best you’ll see on a television display. — A+
A Dangerous Method (Sony)
An exceptionally strong image, from its dream-bright “Swiss” skies to its evocative Viennese studies, and a not unsurprisingly very intelligent Cronenberg commentary. If you’re a fan of this film, and it’s my opinion that one ought to be, this is desireable. —A
David Lean Directs Noel Coward (Criterion)
In her excellent essay on This Happy Breed, one of the four films in this box set, Farran Smith Nehme says that Lean and his collaborators went for “an almost washed-out look that emphasizes the décor and environment” of the plain domicile its characters inhabit, and further notes that “when brilliant color does appear—flags at a victory parade, the flowers on the women’s alarming hats, the dresses at a Charleston dance—it comes as a blaze of pleasure.” Precisely. And it’s at these moments during the Blu-ray of Breed that the viewer is treated to how expert and painstaking the transfer to digital has been; in any other video format the fast-waving miniature flags would have blurred and bled like crazy, and here they are rock-solid and definite and stunning. This goes for every other film in the set; there’s another in color (the ravishing Blithe Spirit) and the two others, Brief Encounter and In Which We Serve, are absolute definitions of expressive black-and-white. This set eloquently argues that, pace Godard, David Lean “was” cinema as much as Nicholas Ray was, albeit with an entirely different stress. But still. Essential, essential, essential. (And no, these movies ain’t badly written, either.) —A+
The Deer Hunter (Universal)
Since several purveyors of what passes for arts writing these days have done us all the favor of explaining (by both example and overt polemic) that criticism is NOT the act of exploring and describing a work of art and its function, but rather merely a one-upping form of taste-mongering, with not much utility value beyond what a dog gets by sniffing another dog’s posterior, I’ll just come right out and say I’ve never really liked this movie. Aw, I feel so much better, with my taste stubbornly remaining my taste and all. Suffice it to say that the male dynamic articulated here is completely alien to me (I CAN’T RELATE, in other words), and for a Major Film On Important Themes I always felt it was a little on the sloppy side. (All that stock footage! The Godfather didn’t have all that stock footage! Oh, wait…) But hey, you know…it’s got something, that’s for sure, even if I’m not entirely or even partially on its wavelength. The first hour really is pretty goddamn audacious whether you “relate” or not. Very compelling. This is a pretty handsome presentation, to the extent that sometimes I’m not sure what’s the DNR and what’s the classic Vilmos Zsigmond diffusion/shimmer. When I can tell what’s the DNR, well, it seems a little more evident in the brighter scenes than in the darker. I think relative to the gestalt of the viewing experience, if I may be so pretentious, that the scrubbing is judiciously applied. —A-
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Shameless, region-free U.K. import)
If I believed in “The ‘Meh’ List,” or any such thing, this would be on it. I’ve never been able to get into the movie, my sick Mimsy Farmer thing notwithstanding, and this presentation of it is largely admirable if not hugely exciting. Of all the “good” Argento movies, this is my least favorite. But it’s a version good-looking enough that if I’m ever compelled to explore why I am not crazy about it, well, I’ll enjoy the delving. —B+
The French Connection (Fox, Best Buy exclusive)
After the debacle of the personally-color-timed-by-Friedkin oddity of which we shall not speak again, a quiet reboot of the classic 1971 policier arrives via something Best Buy calls the Filmmaker’s Signature series, and here the director and Owen Roizman do it right. 
Which by the way does NOT mean slicking it up: grain haters are still not going to be pleased, the nightclub scene where Hackman first fingers LoBianco is still grainy as hell. Just not a snowed-out mess. The film’s finale quite convincingly feels like a prediction of certain scenes in Stalker, and what’s really striking is how this really IS a kind of art film: it’s entirely phenomenological, almost, which gives it a (false) undercurrent of amorality. But really, it’s all just behavior, no judgment, very dry, flat. And completely engrossing. (And the Don Ellis score is completely “out,” as they used to say.) Now THIS is how it’s done. Whatever “it” is; there hasn’t been a film to even approximate what this one does since then. —A+
The Geisha Boy (Olive)
Pace DVD Beaver, I found this very strong. Look, for instance, at the pattern on Jerry Lewis’ jacket in his introduction scene, at the airport. There IS some fluctuation in the material itself (the introductory scene/gag of Sessue Hayakawa; unfortunate, but not fatal) but very clean otherwise. Kind of a classic of the sentimental Jerry, but not without great Tashlin touches and of course Suzanne Pleshette. Fans of Le Roi du Crazy (I’m one) ought to be pleased.—A
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Paramount)
Quite a package. I think it’s worth the price just to hear Fincher coin the phrase “Fringe-line human” in the commentary. He seems like a perfectly nice fellow, have no idea where his rep comes from. Anyway, the disc is predictably breathtaking in quality and possibly too-comprehensive in extras. —A+
Hugo (Paramount)
Very strong, not unexpectedly. A good opportunity to take in just how deeply nuts the color coordination of the whole thing is, particularly with respect to the blues and grays. It’s still subtler than what Schrader did with American Gigolo/Hardcore/Mishima, but not so subtle that the comparison did not spring to mind. I f you have the 3D gear, go for that version, which I assess here. —A+
It’s Only Money (Olive)
This is kind of my favorite Lewis/Tashlin picture despite its being in black-and-white, which deprives Tashlin of one of his key tools. Although maybe that lack accounts for its strength, as the comic surrealism here reaches near “Porky In Wackyland” proportions in compensation. The presentation is very strong, showing NO noise and minimal damage. Not jawdropping stuff but honestly a bit stronger than what I saw at a rep screening a few years back. Truly manic stuff with very little Sappy Jerry. —A
The Last Temptation Of Christ (Criterion)
While the first Criterion standard-def disc was released, it was “fine,” as they say, but not as special as one felt maybe it ought to have been. This new Blu-ray IS all that. Utterly beautiful. Seeing it in this presentation, with fresh eyes, it’s like a new film, and there’s so much to see IN it. This time around, for instance, for the first time I really felt its Bressonian touches—the shots of hands, of gestures, of figures walking. The colors in this version , the ever-so-slightly pink sand of the desert; amazing. We can finally revel in this as one of Scorsese’s very greatest films. A real blessing. —A+
Legend (Universal)
“The limitations of the answer print are now even more apparent in high-definition”—Ridley Scott notes in an introduction to the “Director’s Cut” on this Blu-ray, which features that and the theatrical cut, and which was released with little fanfare that I could see. Which is too bad, because it’s a fascinating window to an interesting film. 
And what he notes is true, and a shame: Scott’s preferred sequence of Lucifer emerging from a mirror, about 1:16 in, is awesome, much more elaborate and Cocteau-inflected than in the theatrical cut, and it’s marred a bit by some answer-print blurriness. Damn. Skin tones are also better in the theatrical version…Tom Cruise and Mia Sara being quite properly peaches and cream in the final shot. —A+
Letter Never Sent (Criterion)
A sweet pre-I Am Cuba slice of the People’s Struggle (sort of) from Mikhail Kalatzov (“….and to the Soviet people this film is dedicated…”). Kalatzov loves his environments, and a swampy Siberia gives him a lot to work with here. The movie mixes typically gorgeous and unique Kalatozov imagery with typically sentimental/ideologically wacky (but Politburo-safe) content. Some of you will just eat up the Soviet gloss on the only-girl-in-the-group-of-male-scientists dynamic, which sure as hell isn’t Hawksian. Beautiful transfer, informative extras and an informative booklet essay. A fun discovery. —A+
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Sony)
Nicely grainy and atmospheric. Looks like the movie, which was winningly stylish in a deceptive “not much to look at” way. Good multiple extras too; another library essential. —A
A Night To Remember (Criterion)
Very crisp picture, as crisp as the accents on some of the ship’s staff, at least as portrayed in this very excellent telling of the Titanic disaster. A Criterion stalwart, the Blu-ray on this one seems overdue; it’s entirely welcome and wonderful. —A
Pal Joey (Twilight Time)
Clean, crisp color picture. Vintage George Sidney, the not-quite poor man’s Vincent Minnelli, always energetic and colorful if a little light on nuance. Vintage Frank, the apex of his ring-a-ding-ding onscreen insouciance. Great Rodgers and Hart songs in snappy arrangements…AND Kim Novak, and Rita Hayworth. What more does a person need? An actually GOOD adaptation of the stage piece, or something true to John O’Hara? Come come now. —A
Phantom of the Opera (Image)
This, from which I expected rather little, turned out to be a VERY pleasant surprise, presenting a clean, vibrant image throughout. One is inclined to pooh-pooh this 1925 movie as a cheesy/creaky melodrama distinguished by Lon Chaney’s performance/transformation, but in point of fact it romps along pretty briskly. 
And it IS a classic story of a sort; I understand it inspired a popular musical theater piece, or something. The tints are credible, the Red Death sequence niftily. vivid, the various music scores from classic to post-modern excellent and sounding excellent. —A
Rock-a-Bye Baby (Olive)
The best COLOR presentation of the recent Olive Tashlin/Lewis pictures, which I suppose is at least partially attributable to the VIstaVision difference. The Tashlin cheekiness is inspired in part by Sturges and had the way paved for it by Preminger’s The Moon Is Blue: “the white virgin of the Nile,” very funny. As is the conceit of Lewis as a TV repairman (not for the first time), allowing for a lot of idiot-box lampooning bits, featuring virtuosos Jerry-pretending-to-be-on-television routines and fake movie titles like The Creature from the Lower Tar Pits. Tashlin vision of suburban pastorale is also noteworthy, as is the line “don’t let him come over, he’ll do something…” Yes, this devolves into the treacliest baby-and-Jerry-loving sentimentality on the books, but my unified field theory of Lewis says you’ve got to take him whole or not at all. Connie Stevens looks so fresh here you barely register her as Connie Stevens, Jerry sings not once but twice, son Gary turns up and HE sings too, but not “This Diamond Ring,” alas. And the whole thing looks fabulous. —A
Scarlet Street (Kino/Lorber)
The second panel in the Fritz Lang/Edward G. Robinson/Joan Bennett Diptych of Sexual Masochism, and it’s a CORKER. The first, of course, was The Woman In The Window, made the year before this 1945 classic, and those who (semi-spoiler alert!) thought Woman a bit of a cop-out in the denouement department get their own back, and change, here. Anyway, this looks quite good, while being hardly of Casablanca grade. Put it this way: never before on home video have the implications of Joan Bennett’s see-through raincoat been made so thoroughly manifest. What a tramp! And what a slob! Look at that kitchen sink! And Dan Duryea, what a sleazeoid. This movie and the people in it are just RANCID! Jeepers! —A-
The Skin I Live In (Sony)
A super-strong, just look at the way the outlined typeface on the title overlays pop against the establishing shots of overripe luxury. I think this is among Almodóvar’s oddest, angriest works, and the coolness of the visual scheme makes the rage burn harder in the rumination. —A
Swamp Water (Twilight Time)
This was a difficult film for its director, Jean Renoir, who fled from France to Hollywood during the Second World War. 
This was the first film he made in the States, and given the Okefenokee setting/location, one gathers he was going for something more in the vein of Toni than Rules of the Game. What he got that was his, and that remains in the film, is still open to question: while his reminiscences of the shoot and his troubles (“Here again we were in the kingdom of Père Ubu”) in his book My Life And My Films are very interesting and moving, they’re not, you know, time-code specific. In any event, any picture with Walters Huston and Brennan is likely to be of interest regardless of the director, and the image here is very strong studio-grade black and white. Worthwhile. —A
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Universal)
DO NOT turn up the brightness on your display! The sky is SUPPOSED to be that gray, all the time! —A
To Catch A Thief (Paramount)
More VistaVision in high-def digital, and holy cow, is it amazing. I understand that there’s a contingent that insist that this is minor Hitchcock, but man, even if you consider yourself immune to its many diegetic and personal charms (in which case I kind of feel bad for you), you have to revel in the Master reveling in his technical mastery in the most deluxe of settings and the most deluxe of celluloid formats. Brilliant, in every damn sense of the word. —A+
To Kill A Mockingbird (Universal)
Churls and stupid people (and the two categories aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive) who dismiss this film as weak liberal gruel are the kind of people who listen to a film without ever really looking at it. 
So much of the delicacy and dignity and poignancy and horror of this piece is contained in the light and shadow of the frame. And that light and shadow gets a gorgeous presentation here. Super beautiful. A great film by a great director. —A+
Tom And Jerry: The Golden Collection Volume One (Warner)
This is pretty awesome in every respect that counts; the cartoons look gorgeous, they’re presented whole and unexpurgated, the extras are engaging and scholarly but not dry, and so on and so on. For my own pleasure it would help if I liked Tom and Jerry more, know what I’m saying? A Blu-ray set that expended this much care on, say, the collected works of Tex Avery, I would certainly be all a-drool for. A man can dream, or beg, or what have you. In the meantime, I grade according to the standard the package achieves with not resort to my personal slighted feelings. —A+
Virgin Witch (Redemption/Kino Lorber)
I’m pleased as punch that Kino Lorber is bringing big chunks of the psychotronically adept Redemption fare to the U.S. on Blu-ray, and I’ve been kind of stuck trying to write about their Jean Rollin reissues, but I’ll say here that if you like that sort of thing you should just get them all, immediately. As for the non-Rollin stuff, well, I picked out this one to treat for a CG, and I’m simultaneously glad and sorry I did. This laughably opportunistic 1972 hot-chicks-in-sorcery-trouble item is seedy and technically shoddy (the sound recording is particularly poor), badly acted, and slackly directed (dig those bizarre unmotivated dissolves). Definitively unwholesome throughout, it’s not really my particular cup of squalid, and the Blu-ray would seem to faithfully capture the film’s bright reds, skin tones have that florid flush, flat lighting, and all the other individual flawed features that enhance the for-trash-junkies-only feel of the enterprise. “The entire advertising industry is witchcraft bound.” Okay then. —B-
Torso (Blue Underground)
“Play with Eli Roth introduction/Play without Eli Roth introduction,” says a particular option on the top menu. 
I played the Roth intro so you don’t have to. Eli talks about how great and influential and disturbing this is, blah, blah, blah. “Una Produzione Carlo Ponti,” announce the opening credits; go Carlo! The scenario of this has four young women literally locking themselves in a villa in a bid to escape a serial killer, and you can guess how that turns out. Lead actresses, international starlets Suzy Kendall and Tina Aumont, once again delegate the substantial nudity to lesser-known costars, including, well what do you know, Angela Covello. The picture is of a very good quality, has that groovy European 1.66 aspect ratio, so no complaints, except that this is my least favorite Sergio Martino quasi-giallo of this era and I will continue to pray for a Blue Underground Blu-ray of All The Colors Of The Dark, at least. —B+
War Horse (Dreamworks)
This Blu-ray presentation is really exquisite, every shot a fantastically detailed visual feast, remarkable. And it gave me a different perspective on the film that I’m trying to work out, and hope to write about at length later. Two stray thoughts on that perspective; one, Spielberg really is an interesting adapter of other material in that he has an almost subliminal respect to the emotional/thematic core of any given piece, regardless of where he overtly diverges from the original. Two: This movie is about movies almost as much, or maybe even more, than Hugo and The Artist are. In the meantime, if you’re an admirer of this effort, the Blu-ray is an impressive continuation/iteration of it. —A+
Where Love Has Gone (Olive)
In which Betty Bette Davis, Susan Hayward, and Joey Heatherton reenact Harold Robbins’ version of the Johnny Stompanoto case. Sounds like a John Waters wet dream, and it is, in spite of having been produced by Joseph E. Levine rather than Ross Hunter. The movie’s juicy as hell in that way, but the presentation here is incredibly blah, soft as clay really. Hence I can really only recommend it to Heatherton, Jack Jones, and Edward Dmytryk completists.—C-
Who’s Minding The Store (Olive)
This 1963 picture represents the weakest of the Olive Jerry Lewis Blu-rays. Relative to the format, it’s blurry, soft, and offers little detail. It’s still watchable, and a pretty neat film. In case you’re wondering where the Lewis “typewriter” bit was immortalized on cinema, it is here, dear reader and/or Martin Short fan. As with Connie Stevens in Rock-a-Bye Baby, Jill St. John in ingénue mode here is almost unrecognizable. —B-
Wings (Paramount)
The Top Gun of its day comes to Blu-ray just as a half-dozen of the smarter Twitterific Kidcritz™ are eager to tell you about their discovery of William Wellman and how that Sarris book needs to watch its back. I know, I know, you’re grateful in SO MANY ways. As for the actual object, well, this restoration is quite something, very sumptuous, the tinting on the machine-gun flare from the fighter planes very…interesting. Interesting enough to nag me a little bit with respect to how faithful a recreation of the original this represents. But my old-man-doubts/carping have, again, little to do with how this plays as a home viewing experience, which is spectacularly. —A+
Wizards (Fox)
Quentin Tarantino is quoted as calling this 1977 Ralph Bakshi dream project a “cross between The Hobbit, ‘The 2000 Year Old Man’ and Howard the Duck.” You know how sometimes a film wants to be a certain thing, and you want it to be that thing too, so in spite of its shortcomings you sort of mentally fill in the blanks and make it that thing for yourself? I think that’s what’s going on in that quote. Which is not to say that animated mythology pisstake/tribute Wizards is bad, or badly botched. It’s just that its reach sure does exceed its grasp whether you’re rooting for it or not. I root for it, and find its designs and characters kind of trippy, and its rendering in this collectible Blu-ray absolutely first-rate. —A
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