Equipment: Sony UBP-X800 multi-region 4K player, Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.
Angel Face (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
Of all the amour fou film noirs out there, this one is absolutely the fou-est. Only Alain Corneau’s Serie Noire comes close, and that needed almost thirty years and being actually French to top this 1952 Otto Preminger lulu. If you’ve seen it you know what I’m talking about. If you ain’t seen it, grab this disc pronto. Very clean black and white image. The bags under poor beleaguered Herbert Marshall’s eyes have never spoken more eloquently. He plays the (spoiler alert) doomed dad of (not too much of a spoiler alert) psycho heiress Jean Simmons. Robert Mitchum, of course, is the ambulance-attendant sap who falls hard for her upon seeing her tickle the ivories and immediately throws over his Nice American Girlfriend for her after she, um, stalks him to his favorite diner. The cad. But anyway — TOGETHER THEY GO TO HELL. Preminger tells this hot tale with exemplary cool, the better to blow your mind at the finale. Beyond essential. As with Land of the Pharaohs (see below) the commentary from the standard def edition is included in…a standard def edition, as for some reason it couldn’t be imported on to the new transfer. It’s by Eddie Muller and it’s good. — A +
The Circus Tent (Second Run Blu-ray)
Second Run is almost unique among labels in that every single title it puts out is worth your time. Not just a cinephile’s time, not just a collector’s time; but your time as in you, a human being presumably invested in life on this earth. Taste doesn’t come into it. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I think a rhetorically useful one, as a challenge. Someone name me a title in the label’s catalog that doesn’t meet my exaggerated claim. Whether you’ve heard of the picture before or not, you’re going to get something good out of watching it. This 1978 Indian film, for instance, presented in the restored form in which it went to Cannes last year. It was not dreamt of in my philosophy prior to my acquiring a copy. And here it is, a singular and great film. And by singular I do mean a film unlike any other. It is a fiction composed of documentary components, or something like documentary components — there are professional actors in the mix. The premise is simple: director Aravindan Govindan hires an actual circus and brings that circus to a riverbank village that has never seen such a thing. First there’s mystery, wonderment. Then there’s hardship, dissatisfaction, boredom. Some people change their lives. Others bemoan that they’re incapable of changing theirs. The black and white imagery is poesy in a rich but narrow register. Startling. The extras stress the restoration work for the most part and are illuminating. — A+
Creepshow (Scream! Factory 4K Ultra)
This was, in a sense, George A. Romero’s first unimportant picture. That’s not a dismissal. But consider that the likes of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies and Martin were not just incredibly effective genre films but also significant statements, both aesthetic and social. As also was, I’ll insist, Season of the Witch. And Knightriders. Okay, maybe not There’s Always Vanilla. But don’t ruin my thesis. Let’s just iterate that this 1982 movie is focused on serving up not too much more than a nasty good time, and it does, propelled of course by Stephen King’s script. Critics who complained about the predictability of the scenarios in this EC--inspired omnibus kind of missed the point. A certain amount of predictability is built-in by convention. As it happens, I was a little surprised to be reminded that the opening scene, establishing the frame story, is pretty genuinely dark for an ostensibly “fun” movie, but then again, have you read an EC comic lately? Romero was a fan of Tales of Hoffmann and this film is the closest he got to making a picture akin to that Powell/Pressburger eye-popper. Not just the multiple stories, but the garish colors! And animation! And frames composed to look like comic book panels! Diopter shots! The shimmering water in the bathtub in the segment in which Stephen King acts in fact looks like a direct homage to Tales. This is a damn good looking 4K Ultra disc kitted out with customary Shout! Factory abbondanza. THREE soundtrack audio tracks (7.1, 5.1, 2-channel) Three commentaries (Horror people cannot get enough details) And more. — A+
DuBarry Was A Lady (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
People used to say, “Wait, was Red Skelton ever a thing” and now I guess they say, “What’s Red Skelton?” So, that’s either progress, or not. I say not, at the risk of sounding like a “square.” The silly stylings of the benevolent “little guy” comedian have certainly dated, we cannot deny. Nor can we do much of anything about it even were we inclined to. In any event, this curio from 1943 showcases Skelton at the relative height of his thingness, but wait, it also represents one of the biggest cinema vehicles for, um, Lucille Ball, who’s still a thing. So maybe I’m missing the lede here. In any event, this irrepressibly fluffy MGM musical is about ordinary Yankee doofus nightclub types who dream themselves into the reign of Louis XV. Singing Lucy is dubbed (mostly) by Marsha Mears. Relatively svelte but irrepressibly brash Zero Mostel doing a wacky Charles Boyer impersonation sets the overall comedic tone right out of the gate. Oh, it’s a Cole Porter musical too, or rather it’s based on one, and as it happens one of its standout numbers is “Salome,” which is an Edens and Harburg song and performed by Virginia O’Brien, who’s a pip. Keep your eyes peeled for an unusually pleasant-looking Buddy Rich, who’s the drummer in Tommy Dorsey’s band. Consider that an outfit called The Oxford Boys was once at least a minor thing. Jo Stafford sings “Katie Went To Haiti” as part of the Pied Pipers. I like the preceding sentence here, because anyone born after 1980 might think it’s in Esperanto. This Warner Archive disc boasts spectacular Technicolor; Karl Freund, later hired by Ball to pioneer sitcom filming for I Love Lucy, was the cinematographer. You’ll note that the focus puller is frequently challenged during the “I Love An Esquire Girl” number, which has a wonderful cameo punchline. Delightful in all its particulars, a movie actually so insubstantial as to be kind of monumental — A+
East of Eden (Warner 4K Ultra)
For its 100th Anniversary, the entity still known at least partially as Warner is putting out substantial upgrades of a good number of its classic titles. Their manifestations as physical consumer products are, we ought to remember, a side benefit to the fact that these digital versions are what’s going to be distributed to rep theaters from hereon in, replacing physical prints, which in a sense is a shame, but as the man said, you can’t stop what’s coming. This edition of Elia Kazan’s 1955 picture, James Dean’s debut in a lead role, is a real revision of the Blu-ray in the prior Dean box set, right down to the opening. The typeface designating the overture, for instance, here matches the type on the original opening credits, whereas on the box set disc it was just rendered in blocky orange letters. And that rendition of the film kicks off with imagery that’s really brown and sunbaked. Yes, a title card speaks of the Santa Lucia mountains as being “dark and brooding” but… The new version gets some accurate green into the imagery. Not just in the opening shots, but check out eleven minutes in, when Dean jumps a train and walks across a green field; it’s properly lush. In that same shot there’s a dissolve to future Smiths cover star Richard Davalos walking with Julie Harris, and that transition is smoother than on the Blu-ray. The whole thing looks properly fantastic. Sound is also excellent. Boy oh boy is it a shame that Timothy Carey’s voice was dubbed by costar Albert Dekker, because Kazan didn’t like Carey’s own cadences, which the stubborn actor insisted represented “the way pimps talk” and Kazan decided no it wasn’t. The sole extra is Richard Schickel’s old commentary. — A
From Hollywood To Heaven (Powerhouse/Indicator Blu-ray)
I haven’t made it all the way through this eight-disc, thirteen film collection yet and who knows when I will. And I cannot tell a lie to sensitive souls out there: one of the films in it, 1968’s The Exotic Ones, features footage of rockabilly singer Sleepy LaBeef appearing to actually bite the head off of a chicken. So maybe don’t watch that one, although the movie is quite the thing otherwise so maybe you can just skip the scenes when you get close to it. Or not. Its whole gestalt kind of relies on that scene. So I don’t know what to tell you. Anyway. This set represents a substantial, one might say representative percentage of the film output of Ron, June, and later son Tim Ormond. Ron got off the ground at Monogram, formed an alliance with Western B star Lash Larue, branched out into making Southern-fried exploitation pictures showcasing, in some cases, a truckload of country music stars. And after a plane crash in 1966 experienced a Road To Damascus religious conversion and started making whacked out evangelical tracts on film. If you know that Negativeland album Escape From Noise, you’ve heard preacher Estus Pirkle intone “Christianity is stupid! Communism is good;” the source of this sample, the eye-opening satanic Cold War apocalypse now item If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971) is here. Many of the transfers here are upgraded standard def (a flood in Tim Ormond’s home messed up a great deal of original material) and they’re done well. ANYWAY. The main reason I’m listing this here is the set contains the 1959 sex-trauma-and-hypnotism picture Please Don’t Touch Me, which is just one of the most startling films I’ve ever seen and one that I’ll include in my Ten Greatest List if I’m invited to participate in the next Sight and Sound poll. To say it’s as if Straub and Huillet attempted a grindhouse picture doesn’t quite cover it. But it does make so many self-conscious attempts at surreality look limp as hell. It’s worth the price of the whole box. And the rest of the box is pretty extraordinary anyway. — A+
Hugo (Arrow 4K Ultra)
Two things: Blu-ray and 4K discs have their shortcomings — which almost always stem from the quality of the restoration or transfer, rather than the formats themselves — and you may notice that the ones I’m reviewing are all getting high grades and it’s because they’re really good. Luck of the chosen draw — nothing I’ve been looking at in this batch has, to my eye, bad blacks or blown out whites. There is perhaps no better time to be a physical media person than right now. And another thing, I should admit that a lot of the labels I’m reviewing here are ones for which I’ve done supplemental work. Or that my friends have. As it happens my good friend Farran Smith Nehme wrote an essay for this new, 2D-only edition of this, one of the greatest in Martin Scorsese’s endless series of gangster films. (Ar ar ar.) So I’m ethically compromised. Which is why this feature goes on my blog and not on a paying website. (Actually I could PROBABLY get away with putting it, conflicts and all, on a paying website, but since no paying website wants it, that’s kind of putting the cart before the nonexistent horse.) Christopher Lee’s in it. Funny how the things you want to see in cinema work as time passes. At the time of this movie’s release I was so stoked for Christopher Lee that he got to work with Scorsese, and now that Christopher Lee is gone I’m still stoked that Scorsese got to work with Christopher Lee. The disc is gorgeous, beautiful pastel colors throughout. I’m still exploring the COPIOUS extras. I listened to and liked Méliès biographer Jon Spira’s commentary, which concentrates on what’s on screen, and not the hilarious process of the movie’s making, which cost producer Graham King so much money that he took some revenge for the overages when Scorsese was trying to make Silence. You can read about that in my book about Goodfellas. I know, it sounds confusing, but it isn’t. Also. People who complain that there’s not enough CGI in Scorsese movies really need to check this out. There’s plenty, and it’s really well done. — A+
Invaders From Mars 4K (Ignite 4K Ultra)
So many components made this 1953 independent production such special nightmare fuel for children of all ages. The unique color, courtesy of a two-strip, standard camera process called SuperCinecolor. It’s obviously less rich in saturation than three-strip Technicolor was, and the ever-so-slight sense of muting contributes mightily to the movie’s eerie feeling. As does director William Cameron Menzie’s sense of cinematic space, derived of course from his unique, idiosyncratic set design aesthetic. The plot anticipates Invasion of the Body Snatchers but the hook is here applied to a kid, eager little Jimmy Hunt, who’s convinced that aliens have replaced his loving parents with mean sorta-zombies, because, well, that’s what’s happened. Leif Erickson in particular really digs deep for his Evil Dad side — he’s lowkey terrifying. Extras include an interview with Menzies biographer James Curtis; it’s dry but informative. Child lead Jimmy Hunt, now an adorable old man, is delightful. The alternate scenes are weird: Euro distributors requested a different ending and more, and they were shot and edited most perfunctorily, and they appear here prefaced by a long text explaining how they’re so bad and why. And the standard stuff on restoration, which is a little more unusual than usual because of the materials themselves. Anyway, a must-own. — A+
Joy House (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)
One rarely hears the words “I need to bone up on my Rene Clement” in this household, although as of this writing I do rather look forward to Kino’s upcoming Blu-ray of Is Paris Burning? This title just happened fit the bill one random movie night, and one thing that Claire K. and I enjoy on a random movie night is getting kicked in the head by an unexpected whack job of a 1960s movie. Which this is. “This is kind of Losey-esque, isn’t it,” Claire observed midway through this sometimes goofily moody thriller in which an on-the-run Alain Delon finds himself cooped up in a French mansion with Lola Albright (!!!) and Jane Fonda and a cranky dude in a hidden room (André Oumansky). And a cat. Anyway, the image quality is solid — the 2K Gaumont restoration yields a nice, sharply detailed widescreen black-and-white frame —the soundtrack options slightly challenging (seems as if its native language is, indeed, International Coproduction English, with the actual voices of at least Fonda and Albright; and the lip movements sync up in the case of both lead actresses; it’s hard to tell who’s dubbing Fonda in French, but it often doesn’t really sound like her, despite the fact that she could have done a French dub rather credibly; overall I recommend the English version frankly), and the commentary from Howard Berger and Nathaniel Thompson a little more focused than these often discursive (but always engaging) gentlemen sometimes manage. Look for future Boss Hogg and Commandant Lassard (that’s Sorrell Booke and George Gaynes to noninitiates of The Dukes of Hazzard and Police Academy) as a couple of the tough guys pursuing Delon. — B+
Land of The Pharaohs (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
Helen Of Troy (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
Ah, the mid-1950s, when widescreen color epics set in the ancient world were in Tribble-like profusion. John Ford didn’t succumb to the fad, but Howard Hawks did, and so produced what pretty much everyone acknowledges as a failure, Land of the Pharaohs. And when citing that failure, pretty much everyone repeats something that Hawks told Joseph McBride about starting the script with William Faulkner: “I don’t know how a Pharaoh talks,” Faulkner said to the director. But they don’t repeat the rest of the story, in which Faulkner asks, “Is it all right if I write him like a Kentucky colonel?” After which co-screenwriter Harry Kurnitz protest that he doesn’t know from Kentucky colonels, he wants to do it King Lear style, and Hawks tells them to go their own ways, he’ll rewrite what they come up with, and then Hawks admits that in so doing, “I messed it up.” And the final truth of the matter is that you can almost never win with this kind of period stuff, at least not with some people. Witness the ridicule Scorsese got in some quarters for making the Apostles talk and walk something like contemporary urban, um, mooks in The Last Temptation of Christ. Still. Watching the Hawks film, the first thing you might think is BOY DID THEY EVER NOT KNOW how a Pharaoh talks. But the problem isn’t so much the dialogue as it is it delivery, and the acting in general — it’s too stiff, too stately. Only a few times does Jack Hawkins show the spark of a, say, Jack Hawkins. As it happens the movie has a lot to recommend it. A truly adventurous Dimitri TIomkin score. Spectacularly sensible compositions that don’t resemble the tableaus of De Mille. And unlike a lot of other films of this ilk, it really does move right along, and is pretty thoughtful on a few interesting topics: ritual and ceremony, slave labor. That kind of thing. The disc looks great too. Inspirational dialogue from Joan Collins: “Perhaps my Lord would PREFER it if I were OLD?” Her performance is a bit much but then again Dewey Martin’s no Montgomery Clift, let alone a Ricky Nelson. The only actor who appears comfortable is James Robertson Justice. None of the actors in 1956’s Helen of Troy, not even the at this time usually insouciant Brigitte Bardot, look particularly comfortable. (She does not play the title role, by the way; rather, she is servant to Helen, played by Continental Beauty [as they used to call such figures] Rossana Podestá.) Robert Wise’s picture opens with an overture, Max Steiner borrowing heavily from Ludwig van, and then dips into some narration delivered by a Paul Frees wannabe, intoning non-Homeric phrases like “Today known as the Dardenelles.” These components are generally never good signs. The movie winds up being a lot more watchable than you’d think, though, provided you’ve a high tolerance for Cinecitta-itis. Those who know, know. The battle scenes are better than competently directed, although they do succumb to cliché, as in a cutaway to a single wounded soldier staggering about with a fatal sword wound. The psychedelic-lighted orgy and of course the Trojan horse bits are other highlights.
Land — A-
Helen — B+
The Nutty Professor 4K (Paramount 4K Ultra)
Consider J. Hoberman on Robert Bresson: “Bluntly put, to not get Bresson is to not get the idea of motion pictures—it’s to have missed that train the Lumiére brothers filmed arriving at Lyon station 110 years ago.” Now consider Gilbert Adair on a particular image derived from Jerry Lewis’ astonishing 1963 picture: “For if it’s possible, even easy, to dislike Jerry Lewis, possible to dislike The Nutty Professor, possible, even, to judge the image opposite as kitschy, downright ugly, I would nevertheless submit that, if you cannot understand how such an image might ever be judged beautiful, even as it rejects, or insults, every virtue in the canon of high-art pictorialism, if you cannot understand how its garish color tonality, so very vulgar on the printed page, may be transfigured within the context of the medium to which it owes allegiance, then you do not understand the cinema.” Anyway so there. The transfer on this new edition is very…accurate. Which some might take for subdued, but as you get further into the film its candy-colored clowning becomes more vibrant. The gray-pink pastels of the gym walls…well they’re something else. The whole thing is really beautiful. Frankly, all of Lewis’ films, at least all of those from his Paramount run, warrant this treatment. Fat chance. Extras include the commentary Lewis recorded around 2003 with his good buddy Steve Lawrence and is exactly what you’d hope/expect it to be. Lawrence singing “Stella By Starlight” over the instrumental version in the opening credits. “Victor Young!” Yes it was. “Unbelievable. This is before Eddie Murphy was born!” “Shelly Manne on drums!” Praise of Kathleen Freeman, good for those guys. And so on. A brand new extra is a 48 minute phone call between Lewis and Frank Tashlin in which Lewis hashes out the script and its gags with his mentor. Tashlin opens his remarks by saying ”I’m reading this like an idiot producer does.” Classic. A masterpiece with a message: “You might as well like yourself. Just think about all the time you’re gonna have to spend with you.”— A+
One False Move (Criterion 4K Ultra)
Man, Carl Franklin shoulda made more movies. He’s still around, so maybe he will, but he really ought to have racked up a bigger filmography by now. He’s got the goods — sensitivity with actors, great attunement to mood via mise-en-scene and more, the whole package. If you’re looking for specific proof, check out the way this movie introduces Bill Paxton’s ingenuous lawman, a guy who’s about to get into a situation that’ll sink him way over his head. It’s an all-time great thematic/narrative dovetail that’s palpable in its power. This is an unsparingly tense crime thriller, sociologically pertinent and emotionally wrenching, and yeah, I guess it IS something like a noir (I tend to be practically parochial in what I’ll term a noir or not), although Billy Bob Thornton emphasizes in a conversation with Franklin that’s a primo extra in this package, he and co-writer Tom Epperson that they never thought in terms of genre while concocting this.. The image quality is pretty much sublime. Inspirational dialogue: “Good to meet you, Chief Dixon.” Poor schmuck. — A+
Rio Bravo 4K (Warner 4K Ultra)
As with East of Eden, this Howard Hawks Actual Classic (he made it right after the above Land of the Pharaohs! Robin Wood famously stated, “If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the existence of Hollywood, I think it would be Rio Bravo!’ [Is “famously” still right? - who knows?]) was a pretty brown Blu-ray, and again, in this 4K rendering, the green of the fauna in its landscapes is more prominent right from the start. And again, one feels that the studio restoration people expended extra care on this upgrade because for better or worse THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MOVIE from now on. There’s more detail, individual colors are more properly differentiated. The brightness of the day when Ward Bond rides into town is very bright but doesn’t wash out; the impression you get is of, well, heat. The whole thing is as much of a pleasure to watch as it’s always been, and for many it will be more so. The Richard Schickel commentary is enhanced by the presence of John Carpenter. They don’t interact; it appears they were recorded separately, which must have been nice for Carpenter. Ar ar ar. In fairness to Schickel, with whom I had an unpleasant personal interaction once upon a time (and many share my experience), he doesn’t lay on the pomposity here, coming off as a relaxed and smooth pro, and is very informative. Essential. — A+
Rules of The Game (Criterion 4K Ultra)
How do we see this film now, in the historical continuum that has led us to this precise and rather awful moment? Taking place between two 20th century disasters, what does it give us in the here and now which can be considered a farcical/horrific coda to that century. I’ll be damned if I know. Except I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just be grateful when the title card reading “Restoration of this film was sponsored by CHANEL” came up. I’ve been following the home video releases since the laser disc, which I wrote up in Video Review in the late 1980s. Spine number 50 in that format. Spine number 216 in this. Anyway, I keep saying the same thing: it never looked better. And so it is with this 4K edition. The thing that always gets me about the movie and has been getting me well before spine number 50, is not just its profundity, whatever that may amount to nowadays (and I believe it amounts to a lot, but others, not so much, poor benighted souls as they might be) but its fluidity, its utter watchability. The staging and the camera movement always just perfect and the acting beyond perfect. It’s funny, it’s tragic, it’s hard to watch (the scene of the hunt, gawd), truly an Everything Movie. — A+
Showgirls (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)
Is this a “Murican Rules? No, seriously. Just as Rules presciently closed the door on and rang a death knell for a certain idea of Europe, Showgirls can be perceived perhaps as a final and possibly defining-by-damnation gob of sputum from the coughed up by the expiring American Century. As Jerry Lee Lewis would say, “think about it.” This irradiated variant of All About Eve takes that film’s professional rivalry into a feral neon realm that’s much more “Made In U.S.A.” than the refined milieu of 1950s Broadway. The motif here is along the lines of what Iggy sang in our national anthem, “Death Trip” (see Raw Power): “I’ll rip you/you’ll rip me/baby we’re goin’ down in history.” Is the dialogue “awful?” Kinda. Did non-native-English speaker director Paul Verhoeven know it was awful? Hard to say. But it is also wrong to say that the movie is poorly acted, especially by its lead. If we can praise Crispin Glover’s baroque performance in River’s Edge, we can work up some admiration for Elizabeth Berkley’s stylized hyper-expressiveness here, as it’s entirely thematically apt. And on the level of, you know, mise-en-scene and that kinda thing, this is incredibly well -made. Great lighting, great shots, great cuts, incredible staging of everything. (By the way, looking over the contemporary reviews of the movie, I see that my own perspective lines up with that of, well, Stanley Kaufmann’s.) And it looks incredible in 4K Ultra. The backstage stuff with the strippers clearly inspired the much more well-liked (mistakenly, for sure) Hustlers, certainly, but the staging and shooting of the club material reveals Hustlers as the dead-ass piece of filmmaking it really is. Newly produced extras include an interview with bad dialogue scribe Joe Eszterhas, he’s hella old now, and mildly conciliatory relative to his prior complaints about the movie. Good interviews, too, with the cinematographer and one of the lighting guys, the editors, and Penny portrayer Rena Riffel. The ostensibly comedic commentary from David Schmader includes his belching up some Diet Coke. And then dripping sporadic and uninspired disdain for the picture. Judging from the ten minutes I listened to, the feature as a whole is pathetic and arrogantly stupid and unfunny, all in a particularly obnoxious Seattle-based-“liberal” way. The package’s grade is docked two whole notches for its inclusion. — A-
Something in the Dirt (XYZ Blu-ray)
Brothers-from-other-mothers filmmaking team Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead should be as celebrated and awarded as “Daniels,” and in fact a lot more so, but life is unfair. This 2022 grabber is not their best movie (for me that’s still the mind-blowing The Endless), but among other things it’s an inspiring demonstration of pandemic production resourcefulness — most of the film is just the two of them, freaking out their convoluted conspiracy plot in a safely restricted location. How do they make it sing cinematically? They’re very eloquent with insert shots, like our friend Martin Scorsese, for one thing. The filmmakers take the lead acting chores (which they have done before) and make the most of constricted space — a house shared by the two that starts behaving oddly. It’s essentially the story of the world’s greatest self-cleaning ashtray. It’s also a very funny quasi-allegory of ambition and the lure of “success;” as the characters chronicle the seemingly supernatural phenomenon, one of them asks, “How much do you think, um, Netflix pays for these kinda documentaries?” For all that, the outstanding tidbit of Inspirational Dialogue is “Stop being paranoid, it’s weird.” The extras include two commentaries and a “watch party” (which I guess means commentary-only-goofy) with social media something-or-other Henry Zebrowski. I don’t like “watch parties,” I just learned. — A
There’s No Tomorrow (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)
Critic Adrian Martin, on his comprehensive commentary, recounts a late career interview with Ophuls conducted by Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut, in which the maestro, when asked about this movie, pronounced it “Not bad.” Martin’s point being that for the painstaking Ophuls to be so kind to one of his own pictures meant it was something special. And this — a first time viewing for me — really is. This 1939 melodrama has story elements you’ll recognize from Blonde Venus and Stella Dallas and even Lady For A Day. And since it’s French, it’s a lot less coy than even Sternberg had to be about its milieus — the cabaret in which lead actress Edwidge Feuillère works is an actual topless joint, just like in Showgirls. Feuillère plays Evelyn, a down-at-heels single mom who, upon meeting a love from the past, concocts what is, to be honest, a truly hare-brained scheme to retrieve happiness. The cinematography by longtime Ophuls collaborator Eugen Schüfftan (he did Metropolis, too. And The Hustler!) is quite purposefully dark, and the Gaumont restoration looks good; there’s not too much visible in the way of digital cleanup artifact but the image is very clean overall. Ophuls’ style here is mature but not wholly advanced — that is, the moving camera is present but not dominant. He does make it count, as when dollying back from the paradisical auberge the lovers shared.. Or dollying in and out at the train station near the end. Immaculate overall, and the ending is remarkable. Inspirational dialogue: “I’d like to drift into the fog” — A+
To Live And Die In L.A. (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra)
It was quite critically drubbed upon it 1985 release (future screenwriter Paul Attanasio called is “overheated and recklessly violent” what a bunch whiny moralistic twaddle) but this late Friedkin is not only great but it really is an ideal companion piece to the early Friedkin masterpiece The French Connection. The filthy cold boredom of being a cop in NY versus the filthy hot squalor of being a cop in L.A. When the guys in this movie are doing undercover staking out, they’re hosted and fed by Jesuit friars, or something. That’s as close to normal like as they really see. The intensity of Friedkin’s direction, and of William Peterson’s A-1 performance as Secret Service loon Chance, really helps you forget how hackneyed the whole opening gambit of “my partner got killed three days before retirement and now I must avenge him” is. Other points of interest, aside from the almost relentless action, the overall atmosphere of sleaze and corruption — perdition, even — include great supporting bits from Robert Downey, Sr. AND Valentin Vargas (whom you may remember as “Pancho” in Touch of Evil) and the fact that Willem Dafoe’s definitely evil counterfeiter character is nevertheless on higher moral ground than the cops. This 4K Ultra presentation is without a doubt superior to the prior Blu-ray (which wasn’t bad) — definitely an upgrade in terms of sickly orange sunset moodiness, sharpness and detail, skin tones, all that. Just a compulsively watchable package. The extras are old and include Friedkin saying “I’m gonna do this commentary for the film without referencing the film itself.” Oh, the experimental commentary days. — A+
Trouble Every Day (The Film Desk Blu-ray)
“They are jealous,” Catherine Breillat said to me in February of 2002, when I brought up to her the negative reaction that had greeted this Claire Denis movie in Toronto the prior fall. “The film is too beautiful, they know they can never fathom a film so beautiful.” Okay, the last part I’m paraphrasing a bit, I presume, as my memory may not be entirely accurate. But you get the idea, and right on. And so this beautiful film’s long overdue beautiful Blu-ray presentation is finally here. Which is all you need know. The supplements are not copious but they’re intelligent and coherent. Commentary by Alexandra Heller Nicholas; she starts right off on the opening credit’s use of Comic Sans. She recalls that the boos began not in Toronto but in Cannes.
Melissa Anderson’s booklet essay is cogent and sharp. The video essay from director Zack Clark tells us “the pace is languid,” which you know upon actually watching the movie, but the visual cross references to Franco and Herzog and Kenton and Browning and all those guys are solid. But the movie’s the thing, and it’s essential. Inspirational commentary observation: “What level of absolutely insane pearl-clutching bullshit is that?” — A+
Undefeatable (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)
This Godfrey-Ho-directed Hong Kong film (made in English with almost entirely Occidental performers) is a weird unselfconscious hybrid. The Cynthia Rothrock vehicle is a little disinterested in its martial arts elements — the most impressive stuff in this respect is Rothrock doing solo sword exercises — and favors serving up queasy latter-day grindhouse luridness, what with its rapist serial killer villain who gouges the eyeballs out of his victims for his coup de grace. It’s only eight years after Rothrock’s big-splash debut with Yes Madam! and she seems kind of tired here to be honest I don’t know, maybe the real problem is that everyone’s very caky face makeup is prominently visible in this 4K transfer. (You can also see the knee pads under Rothrock’s jeans in the first fight sequence, but that’s not a 4K artifact, it’s just…you know.) So much of this really doesn’t work, and yet I had something like fun. The eyeball gouging effects are rather amusingly sub-Fulci. Because I was amused in this way, I may need help. Anyway. The final fight scene is apparently on a lot of social media martial arts “worst” lists and on the commentary Rothrock is good-humored in response to the japes, and even throws some shade at director Ho’s idea “let’s have you do a cartwheel with your hand in a sling.” Also noteworthy is the really ludicrous mullet on bad guy Don Niam. Inspirational dialogue: “You know the rules: no knives, guns, bricks…or anything else” For addicts, mostly. I may be one. — A