Some Came Running

Blu-ray Consumer Guide, February 2019

To Peter Nellhaus, and to the memory of Nick Redman.

Equipment: Playstation 3,  Sony KD50X690E display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver. (As it happens even the U.K. imports I looked at this time around were all-region, so the OPPO was not brought into play.)

 Age of Consent (Indicator)

There’s a super-cheap U.S.-issued Sony Blu-ray double-featuring this 1969 Michael Powell picture with Cactus Flower (some May-December romance theme uniting them I guess) and while it looks decent if you are any kind of Powell person this is the version to seek put and pay more money for. It’s dated in the way so many ‘60s films that took advantage of the “new freedoms” tends to look today, but once it shifts to the island where James Mason’s quasi-Prospero makes his home there’s so much beauty in it you can’t help but be seduced, and this disc sops up and redelivers all of it like a thirsty sponge. My friend Kent Jones’ commentary is terrific, detailed, intimate, entirely in consonance with Powell’s sensibility. “Powell comes from the era of filmmaking as exploration,” he reminds us, pertinently. On-screen contributions from Helen Mirren (this was her first film) and Martin Scorsese are also great, and the disc also contains Powell and Pressburger’s final collaboration, a 1972 mini-feature for children, The Boy Who Turned Yellow, which aside from being a delight in itself also features young Lem Dobbs (under the name Lem Kitaj) in a small but central role. What a world. —A+

 All The Colors of The Dark/All the Colors of Giallo (Severin)

I reviewed a Blu-ray of this essential and essentially odd giallo (the film that introduced this lad to the allure of Edwidge Fenech, via a converted-to-NTSC German version I bought from Luminous Video at a Chiller Theatre Expo in the late 1980s, for what it’s worth to you) that Shameless put out in 2017 and was somewhat resigned to that version being the best we’d get. But, as Mike Ness might say, “I WAS WRONG,” because this Severin disc, mastered from the original negative, supposedly (where’d they FIND it?), blows the Shameless away while also revealing that as imaginative and grotesque and titillating as the movie is, it’s also often outstanding in what Frank Zappa would call its cheepnis. But no matter. Some might argue that the best Psychotronic cinema intertwines all the above attributes. I sprung for the Severin limited edition bundle, which also includes the All The Colors of Giallo package, which is an insane compilation of giallo trailers, a documentary, a CD full of giallo tunes (the Dark package also includes the film soundtrack on CD) and more. No, I haven’t watched every last minute of all this but I think you can trust me: if this sort of thing is your thing, it’s a lot of your thing and it’s delightful. Critic and above-and-beyond-the-call-of duty enthusiast Kat Ellinger has shed her collaborator from the commentary she did for the Shameless edition, and done a whole new commentary on her own, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot of overlap between the two, which is impressive. (She does lean heavily on a defensive “film historians UNFAIR to Sergio Martino” tack.) In a feat of endurance exceeded, as far as I know, only by Richard Suchinski’s’s full-length commentary on the Cohen Blu-ray of La Belle Noiseuse, Ellinger provides running commentary for the full four hours of trailers too, and concocts a drinking game, that you should by no means play if you want to avoid alcohol poisoning. The movie itself remains quite the wild ride, and Ellinger’s not wrong in her esteem for Martino. The picture’s risible is-she-or-isn’t-she-hallucinating premise gains credibility (sort of) from Martino’s confident shot-by-shot construction—and, of course, the iconic presence of Fenech. Inspirational trailer commentary line: “Despite the sensationalism in that [title] — Naked You Die — there’s not very much nudity actually in this. It’s slightly misleading.”—A+

Born of Fire (Indicator)

I’d not even heard of this unusual 1987 film prior to its release on this impeccable U.K. label. Directed by Jamil Dehlavi from a scenario he concocted, it concerns a British musician named Bergson (nice; he’s played by Peter Firth) who’s haunted by time-tripping visions; Suzanne Crowley has multiple roles as “The Woman” but mostly she plays an astronomer who helps Firth’s character figure out that a so-called “Master Musician” is about to call the apocalypse with his flute, and all this is tied in with Bergson’s dad’s marriage. Described in some quarters as “the first Muslim horror movie,” it’s not quite that; point of fact, it takes some time figuring out whatever it is it wants to be. Once Bergson travels to Turkey and some rough, volcano-inclusive terrain there (other attractions include maggots, skulls, an evil [maybe] woman), the movie takes off. The beautiful transfer highlights ceaseless striking imagery. If Dehlavi is not quite as inspired as Tarkovsky or Herzog in shooting his landscapes, he’s good enough to approximate a mystic atmosphere, and the supporting cast, including Nabil Shaheen — whose condition of brittle bone disease necessitates that he move around in a way that’s fascinating to watch — add to the minimalist sense of The Significant/Cosmic Other. Supplemental interviews with Firth, Dehlavi, Shaheen  and composer Colin Towns add a lot of anecdotal intrigue but my fave extra is Dehlavi’s short documentary of a volcanic eruption accompanied by Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream jams. ‘Delic for sure. I do love when you gamble on a disc and get this kind of reward. Inspirational film dialogue: “The sun’s power is so strong it’s damaging the surface of the earth. That volcano is the beginning.” Inspirational supplement soundbite: “The shoot wasn’t physically demanding, but morally demanding.” The flute soloist on the soundtrack is, whoa, James Galway! —A

Crimson Peak (Arrow)

Guillermo del Toro’s vivid Gothic romance, a 2015 picture, has been in print on Blu-ray since…February of 2016? So why invest in this Arrow limited edition issue? I’m not always sold on beautiful packaging myself, although the package and accompanying booklet are indeed lovely. Moving on to the disc, one immediate advantage is that you don’t have to slog through the Universal BD Live previews (I already saw The First Purge, thanks) to get to the main menu. And then there are the 12 or so discrete additional extras that are not on the Uni disc (the delightful, passionate, nicely organized but also quirkily digressive commentary from del Toro was on that puppy). And while there’s no note on the disc indicating this is a different transfer from the Universal one, I noticed slight differences. To my eyes, the Universal presentation is a little brighter than the Arrow one, and the downtick in brightness in the new edition brings out more detail; check out Sofia Young’s cheekbones in the opening scene. The integrity of the movie’s VERY COMPLEX color scheme is maintained throughout. The chapter breaks are placed differently too, and make more sense. I’m not trying to twist your arm but if you cherish this  misunderstood-by-too-many picture, and you have the cash you should absolutely go for it.— A+

Daisies (Second Run)

Criterion made this still-stunning 1966 (!!!) film available in a relatively raw (but completely, pleasurably watchable) form in its Eclipse “Gems From The Czech New Wave” collection. But this region-free stand-alone upgrade is spectacular. The movie is a remarkable phantasmagorical delight that benefits from the cleanest presentation possible. The phantasmagoria itself is offered in the service of what the filmmaker called a “philosophical essay in the form of a farce.” Its young heroines wander through their world making droll commentary and enacting rebellious gestures, with mixed results. Director Vera Chytilova has said it is not a feminist film, and of course it is, but I understand why she’d think it’s not, because the movie’s concern for FREEDOM is ultimately/arguably gender-neutral. The movie has two commentary tracks, one from historians Peter Hames and Donald Bird (who mistakenly say the movie was made “before feminism almost. Before U.S. style feminism,” but wait, The Feminine Mystique was published in 1962, my dudes) and another from Kat “I Live To Do Audio Commentaries” Ellinger  + her Daughters of Darkness partner Samm Deighan (whom I was worried about after she failed to show for the new All The Colors of the Dark commentary).  Both tracks are on the staid and sober side; it takes 20 minutes for one of the males contributing to allow of the film, “it’s fun!” That said, they’re worthwhile, and my only complaint about the disc is authoring related—it doesn’t allow you to toggle between the commentaries while they’re running, you have to listen to one or the other via the main menu, from the beginning. Rounding out the extras is an eye-opening short doc on Chytilova.  If you’re a fan of Broad City who’s looking to, um, broaden their horizons, this is a potent gateway drug to I’m not sure what.  –A+

The Giant Behemoth (Warner Archive)

One hesitates to use the word “dregs” or the phrase “bottom of the barrel” when referring to a giant monster movie with stop-motion effects work, but…well let me put it this way, if you were a Ray Harryhausen/Willis O’Brien nut and you were told you were going to be exiled to a desert island and the only giant monster movie you were going to be allowed to take with you was gonna be 1959’s The Giant Behemoth, you just might say “You know, skip it.” No one blames Willis H. O’Brien for the debacle. He was working with practically nothing, and his Behemoth has occasional moments of integrity in spite of looking like it is coated in chicken skin. Thank God his last film was not this but rather, um, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The disc looks great though, and if you’re in enough of a bitter mood the movie has mordant appeal; Gene Evans’ “what the hell am I doing here?” performance makes him an ideal audience surrogate. On the commentary, recorded for the 2007 DVD of the film, effects mavens Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett simply can’t get excited enough: “So, this movie…was released in…what do you think, ’57?” Inspirational dialogue: “All these beaches are clogged up with dead fish, and nobody can tell why these fish are dead. However, it has its more amusing side to it.”—B-

 The Gingerbread Man (Kino Lorber)

I missed this one on its theatrical release and am just getting to it now. The John Grisham–derived storyline is not quite a world-beater, and despite the great cast this doesn’t get within swinging distance of The Long Goodbye, which is the prior Altman it most resembles generically. As late Altman goes, though, I found it pretty agreeable. (if you want to calibrate this against my barometer, I hated Short Cuts and Gosford Park, admired Kansas City and Cookie’s Fortune, and loved A Prairie Home Companion.) And there are a couple of moments that absolutely qualify as Vintage Altman, like the introduction of Robert Duvall’s character. The Blu-ray offers a clean albeit what you’d call unextraordinary image; the source isn’t  trumpeted on the packaging. The only extra is the sometimes laconic but mostly amiable and informative commentary Altman recorded for the DVD edition in 1998. —B+

The Grissom Gang (Kino Lorber)

Just as much of later Dario Argento work has admirers of his early pictures wondering “Did he FORGET how to direct a movie?” so too does the output of Robert Aldrich in the brief time he ran his own studio (financed with the profits from The Dirty Dozen) cause similar head-scratching. While I find 1968’s The Legend of Lylah Clare a hoot, more emotionally stable film lovers than I hold that its tossed-off contempt lands it on the far side of incompetence. I entertained similar thoughts while watching this, a 1971 rethink of James Hadley Chase’s scandalous novel No Orchids For Miss Blandish, already made into a really weird movie in Britain in 1948, released on Blu-ray, also by Kino, a little while back. Aldrich was clearly aiming at a Bonnie and Clyde style success here but he can’t touch the way that Penn, Beatty and company managed to make their period material both period-credible and absolutely contemporary. The first half hour or so is almost, by my light, unwatchable. The transfer is 4K from camera negative and it’s super vivid, but the main thing I kept noticing was how not one of the actors even vaguely matches the other in skin tone (check out beet-red Don Keefer, and, not entirely on-topic but also not unrelated, the disappearing/reappearing mustache on poor Irene Dailey). And while the movie is relentlessly violent, man, is the fake blood hella fake looking. The movie materially improves as it goes on though, with Scott Wilson, looking rather early–Edward–Norton­–ish, completely committed to his role as lovesick idiot rapist “Slim" Grissom. The commentary is from Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson, the same crew that got so agitated by Susan Kiger on the commentary track to Andy Sidaris’ Seven, not that I entirely blame them. Here they recount how certain of them were traumatized by the picture when they were six or seven years old and sundry production tidbits. They are an energetic crew; within mere minutes they manage to slag Vincent Canby (he “never met a foreign film he didn’t like” — this is an empirically false claim), oversell the original Blandish (it’s not a good movie guys), bring up Schindler’s List, and talk about how Robert Lansing is underrated (agreed, but not a whole lot we can do about it now). Entertaining! But still for Aldrich completists only. —B

 Home From The Hill (Warner Archive)

This 1960 Vincente Minnelli-directed melodrama has so outré-seeming elements, like the stiffness of Robert Mitchum’s performance, which clicks once it’s clear that it’s central to the characterization; Mitchum’s not phoning it in. I’ve always found the picture beautiful and compelling. Strangely it feels even more so now that its heteronormative gender politics and other ideologically whack features are even more anachronistic than they may have been back in the day. The camera positioning shot to shot is never less than striving for maximum emotional delivery (I’ve used the climactic truce scene between Mitchum and Eleanor Parker — chapter 33 if you are interested — in my film class to explore the potential of variation within a shot/reverse shot pattern, and in CinemaScope yet). The transfer looks beautiful and features smooth dissolves, nothing glitchy. No extras.  Inspirational dialogue: “Libby, I’m dying to kiss you.” “Don’t die.” So now where’s a Blu-ray of The Cobweb, Warner Archive? —A

Invention for Destruction (Second Run)

A while back I purchased, directly from The Zeman Museum in Prague, a Blu-ray with three Karel Zeman  pictures including this 1958 beauty, released in the U.S. with a quaint Hugh Downs introduction as The Fabulous World Of Jules Verne (and later a very special childhood treat for me when it would turn up in the 1960s on WOR 9). Zeman’s mix of live action and animation always enchanted me; these strangely baroque flat drawn/etched backgrounds traversed by live actors, on their way to action scenes where they’d face cartoon artillery shells and such. The version of Vynález zkázy on that disc is version is handsome, and has been made from clean materials. Due in part (I reckon) to limitations in telecine tech of only just a few years ago, the image has a noticeable flicker to it. This new Second Run presentation is incredible. It’s like looking through a just-cleaned windshield. The English-dubbed version is the exact same transfer with that matchless Hugh Downs intro tacked on, or so it seems. Three Zeman shorts never before available in this format,  and some extras imported from the Zeman Museum discs, are also here. British animator John Stevenson’s on–camera appreciation is more personal than generally informative, detailing his experience of Zeman and the maestro’s influence. I’m still glad to own the Zeman Museum disc (like this Second Run release, it is all–region compatible FYI) but this is what I’m gonna put on when I want to see Invention. —A+

 The Killing Kind (Vinegar Syndrome)

I’m not the world’s greatest Curtis Harrington stan but I know a key component of a distinctive director’s filmography when I see one, and this is that. This unfussy 1973 portrait of a serial killer played by John Savage in an early role is a sharp, nasty picture. It doesn’t ask you to root for the murderous Terry but it does allow you access to his upsetting point of view, which creates a nagging effect. It is replete with supporting players of interest, including Ruth Roman, Luana Anders, and Cindy Williams; Ann Sothern is disquietingly superb as Suffocating Mom. Cinematographer Mario Tosi likes his diffuse light (see The Stunt Man, certain scenes in Carrie, The Betsy) and Harrington allowed him to go full bore with it, which makes the action that much more disturbing. The careful transfer courtesy of the ace schlock revivalists at Vinegar Syndrome gets the job done nicely. Cat lovers will want to take a pass on the movie, as there’s a scene in which Terry pulls peeping tom duty while holding a cat and gets a little too distracted. Essential Psychotronic Cinema  (“A seldom–seen sickie” says the PEF itself) and an exemplary double feature with The Honeymoon Killers. Extras include a vintage 30-minute interview with Harrington (he also goes into some detail in his memoir “Nice Guys Don’t Work In Hollywood,” about his fondness for the film and why it never received proper distribution) and a dishy, affectionate commentary from mondo film historian David Del Valle and mondo film maker David DeCoteau. Inspirational dialogue: “That’s not a mouse, it’s a rat!”—A

My Name Is Julia Ross (Arrow)

So Dark The Night (Arrow)

I know it’s not cricket to review a Blu-ray on which you did the audio commentary but indulge me. When I was preparing for the audio track for So Dark The Night, no disc of the new transfer was yet available, so I worked from a bootlegged version up on YouTube. Circumstances were such that my commentary partner Farran Smith Nehme (she contributes the good parts) had to watch the same while recording the commentary. The film is strong enough that we were able to psychically infer how good a decent print/transfer would look (and we’d seen the film before under different circumstances, so we had our memories to fall back on too). But nothing could have prepared me for the gorgeousness of what Arrow has put on this disc, and the disc of Julia Ross is equally breathtaking. (The two new versions are 2K restoration supplied by Sony, and while he isn’t credited, I reckon Grover Crisp had something to do with them.) Both these thrillers were directed by Joseph H. Lewis and are best watched together. I think they’re among the greatest waking nightmares American cinema has yielded us. Ross is the more familiar of the two, a story of gaslighting that goes up to 11. So Dark the Night…well…as Robert Ridgely says in Blazing Saddles, this one is a doozy. There’s simply nothing like it. Each disc has an equal consort of extras, one commentary, one essay and one video discussion. For Ross, the commentary goes to the great Alan K. Rode, recent author of a terrific Michael Curtiz biography. Rode is more Team Nina Foch (the film’s lead) that Team Lewis. (He takes Lewis to task for his egocentric tall-tale-telling more than once.) The challenging essay is by Adrian Martin.  A video interview with The Nitrate Diva, Nora Fiore, fills out that disc. As I’ve mentioned, the commentary on Night is Farran and me, and I am very much Team Lewis (I believe every word that ever came out of his mouth). Farran does very well as always. The video interview is with Imogen Sara Smith, and she’s informative as always, and very poised. (So is Fiore, while I’m dotting my Is.) David Cairns is his usual superb self for the booklet essay.  Tonci Zonjic’s new cover art for Night is particularly clever. Forgive me for flogging these (I don’t get residuals, in case you were suspicious) but they’re both wonderful. —A+ 

The Naked and the Dead (Warner Archive)

This 1958 movie gets a bad rep for being an unfaithful adaptation of Norman Mailer’s novel, but any picture that begins with L.Q. Jones rhapsodizing over Lily St. Cyr (as “Lily”) can’t be all bad. Can’t be all good, either, it turns out. You could cut this together with the three-years-earlier Battle Cry, also directed by the generally unimpeachable Raoul Walsh, and have a mini-series, especially given that Aldo Ray plays pretty much the same character in each. The movie, a few hairs over two hours, tries to hew to Mailer’s flashback-laden structure but it’s more than weird that it moves to establishing Cliff Robertson’s discontented officer that main guy, and then, when the flashbacks start, they’re… ALDO RAY’S flashbacks! And it turns out he used to be with L.Q. Jones’ girlfriend Lily! (At least that’s what I think is going on.) “Sam! Don’t hit him! He’s from the finance company!” she protests at one point. Scene plays like  The Dark Side of L’il Abner or some such thing. (Hmm.)  Other stray goodies here include the apotheosis of character player Max Showalter, Phantom Echoes of Citizen Kane in Bernard Herrmann’s score (the Xanadu theme most prominent), and very nice picture quality. For some reason this plays like the least WWII movie of all the WWII movies I’ve seen; the conflict at hand seems entirely generic. And the way it upends the novel’s actual narrative is both appalling/hilarious while making for a not-unsatisfying movie-movie conclusion. Inspirational dialogue: “Under that mask of humanism, you’re a reactionary, just like I am.” That might even be from the book, come to think of it. For Raoul Walsh and/or L.Q. Jones completists only. —B-

 The Night of the Demon (Indicator)

This deathless classic finally gets the exhaustive treatment and beautiful picture quality it deserves from Indicator, which really went to town. For instance: the limited edition two-disc set features two discrete high-def transfers of the 96-minute pre-release version, presumed as the closest to a director’s cut we have. (Notwithstanding the appearance of the actual demon, which poor Jacques Tourneur was divested of his say on.) (It’s funny though, as much as we complain about said demon and how it detracts from the movie’s nuance, it’s still a sufficiently iconic image that it adorns the front of this set’s box. And it is a good looking demon, all things considered. ) AND a high-def of the UK release version, an 82-minute cut. I haven’t even made a dent in the extras yet, but I’m grading this anyway just based on how it presents the movie, and also because of one particular extra, an object as hilarious as it is disturbing: a reproduction of the calling card of Julian Karswell, which I barely noticed when it fell out of the box; I put it away someplace I did not remember, and was stunned to find in the pocket of a coat I was wearing several days after watching the disc. After which it took a while for me to calm down and remember that it is the parchment containing the runic inscription, rather than Karswell’s card, that was the film’s bringer of death. Whew. Essential. —A+

Obsession (Scream Factory)

If you’re looking to program a double feature of Cliff Robertson/Bernard Herrmann pictures, you can’t do better than this and the above-reviewed The Naked and The Dead. Literally. Because that’s it — those are the only two. What are the odds they’re both end up reviewed here? This 1976 Brian De Palma picture, hatched with writer Paul Schrader after the then-friends saw Vertigo together (their warm relations waned a bit, apparently, at the completion of the project, which jettisoned a third of Schrader’s original script), is regularly disparaged from all corners practically.. Rumor had it that Hitchcock himself wasn’t thrilled with it. In the recent De Palma documentary by Baumbach and Paltrow, the director laments his fussy, inexpressive leading man. (In the extras here there’s a recollection that Robertson was insistent about having only what he considered his “good side” facing the camera, a position that causes major headaches for directors, camera people, editors, people who are sick of seeing Cliff Robertson’s “good side,” etc.) Still, with what appears to be a spruced up transfer relative to the Region B locked Arrow release of some time back (which had the delightful and now out-of-print extra of a booklet with Schrader’s complete screenplay attached), and the benefit of hindsight and/or nostalgia, the film slightly less misguided than it did on first viewing. In its margins, particularly as they relate to John Lithgow and Florence, the movie achieve its own integrity. The commentary by Douglas Keesey (a professor and the author of De Palma: Split Screen) is well-researched and informative but Keesey sounds so stiff that it can be an awkward listen. While I got somewhat turned around on this film by the presentation, I did conclude that Palma movies need sex and/or violence to really fly and the implications of its premise notwithstanding this doesn’t have a lot of either. Other new extras include on camera interviews with producer George Litto (he once wrote a song that was recorded by Louis Armstrong, who knew?) and editor Paul Hirsch, which have only slight overlap with the EPK type stuff, shot years ago, also included here. Hirsch’s tales of Bernard Herrmann’s explosive temper are hair-raising for sure.—A

The Other Side of Midnight (Twilight Time)

I think my mom had read the Sidney Sheldon novel in the early ‘70s when it came out, and around then, and when the movie followed in 1977, I heard a lot about how LURID it was, but I was too punk rock to care, or something. The recent emergence of a Twilight Time Blu-ray piqued my curiosity. Combined with an old, old memory of a screening of Robbe-Grillet’s Trans Europe Express at MOMA on Senior Citizen Thursday, or whichever it was. Lotsa shots of Marie-France Pisier chained to a metal bed frame in that one, and on the way out a couple of biddies were saying, “Marie France-Pisier, she’s such a nice girl, why did she let them do that to her?” I presumed they got that “nice girl” idea from this, her first Hollywood picture. Thing is, for the first half hour or so this thing is more comatose than lurid. Sure, “nice girl” MFP is besmirched by the future Boss Hogg, but it’s all portrayed very tastefully as, an ocean away, Susan Sarandon is presaging Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy in her portrayal of a period girl with MOXIE, which quality greatly impresses Clu Gulager as Beau Bridges’ uncle or whatever the hell he’s playing. So the movie is moving along in this respect and I’m thinking, God, what is it with the LIGHTING—flat and bright and uninspired on this very handsome disc. I didn’t think I was gonna make it, and then  about 50 minutes in, MFP gets into a warm bath and unravels a wire coat hanger. Not to make light of her character’s predicament, but after that the movie really is off to the races. In seeking her revenge against jilter John Beck, who goes on to marry Sarandon’s character, she climbs the ladder of passion, or whatever it is. When she’s oiling herself up before straddling poor Christian Marquand, who by this time had seen better days, I’m writing in my notes “IS SHE TRYING TO KILL HIM.” He does not die, but notes, drolly, “You make love like a star. Perhaps you’ll be a star.” Um, you betcha. So it does get lurid. I don’t know where those old ladies got that “nice girl” stuff about MFP because it sure is not here. Inspirational dialogue: “In spite of all the smart talk, I guess I’m just Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I’m moral, I’m silly, and I’m sad.” The multi-player commentary, recorded by Laurent Bouzereau for a DVD a long time ago, features producer Frank Yablans’ tips for filmmakers, such as, “There’s a place for camera movement” Once the movie settles in at the estate of Greek Tycoon Raf Vallone, the look of the whole thing gets a big boost. It’s never a model of mise-en-scène and is nevertheless the second Charles Jarrot-directed picture from Twilight Time in a span of months. (The other was Anne of a Thousand Days, which I haven’t been able to check out yet but know is not lurid.) But one thing that makes Twilight Time a great label is its commitment to putting out what floats its boat for reasons overt, obscure or occult. Its cofounder Nick Redman, to whom this column is co-dedicated, died late last year and he is already much missed. This disc’s grade, and the one for Satan Never Sleeps, is for him.  —A+

Panique  (Criterion Collection)

This film is best appreciated if you just forget the novel on which it’s based, Georges Simenon’s landmark 1933 Mr. Hire’s Engagement. (Among other things, with its painstaking attention to physical details other authors would deem insignificant, it’s a precursor to the nouvelle roman.) Yes, the 1946 film directed by Julien Duvivier adheres to many of that book’s plot points, but in its emphases and characterizations it’s a wholly different animal.  Duvivier’s 1933 adaptation of a Maigret novel, La tête d’un homme, demonstrated that the filmmaker “got” Simenon. Now, back from Hollywood after the war and apparently eager to allegorize an occupation undreamed of when Mr. Hire was published (although the novel’s incidents were drawn from Simenon’s experiences during the German occupation of Belgium in World War I), Duvivier opted to make the book a vehicle for his own statement. The tipoff to the differences that will envelop the picture comes early on: Michel Simon’s Mr. Hire speaks more dialogue in the first ten minutes than he does in the first 80 pages of the novel. Not just a voyeur, the character’s a sort of extortionist too. Now, Simon is always worth watching but I have to admit it: all through the picture I just kept thinking how great it would have been to have the actor work on a conception of the character closer to Simenon’s. The presentation of the film is startling, vivid. Supplements include Rialto Pictures’ Bruce Goldstein on subtitling (wonky, fascinating); one of Georges’ sons,  Pierre Simenon, discoursing on how Duvivier’s variations are more than okay ( in order to successfully adapt Simenon, his theory goes, you “have to betray him” at least a little bit) and French critics Guilemette Odicino and Eric Libiot gushing over the movie. Vaguely tut-tutting that Hitchcock raided this picture for elements later seen in overrating the film. Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, and Rear Window, they don’t mention how the bumper-car scene might have influenced Mouchette. —A

Satan Never Sleeps (Twilight Time)

“A film not without its McCarey moments,” Gary Giddins wrote of this 1962 picture when Fox put out a standard-def DVD of this in 2005. He of course has to mention its moments, too,  that are bad McCarey, including the weird theme song (“Satan never sleeps/he walks behind you”) sung, as he accurately (he IS Gary Giddins) notes, in Nancy Wilson style by Timo Yuri. The Pearl–Buck–conceived story of Communist Chinese doing some revolutionary Catholic bashing (as seen from the bashed side) offers almost a full hour of lower grade Going My Way stuff (with a butched–up Clifton Webb as the Fitzgerald surrogate disapproving of fresh recruit William Holden the Crosby surrogate) before exploding into some weird wild anti-Communism plot points and willful misunderstandings of rape. It’s in the more serious values-querying scenes that the most McCarey moments appear, oddly. (I think Giddins took interest in the 2005 disc because he was studying up on the director; there’s practically a mini-biography of McCarey in the recently published second volume of Giddins’ Bing Cosby biography, a honey of a book in every respect.)  Martin Benson as the Russian apparatchik pinching his pince-nez and holding his cig between thumb and forefinger is a classic portrayal of HUAC–nightmare Red Villainy. The picture and sound quality are aces, while the movie’s ending is both insane and obscene. A maddening piece of work...and McCarey's final feature, and Twilight Time remains the best for releasing it. Inspirational Holden dialogue: “Now they’ll be spreading DISEASE along with their propaganda.”—A+

A Story from Chikamatsu (Criterion Collection)

This 1954 Kenji Mizoguchi picture has been more commonly known in the West as The Crucified Lovers, which is both more sensationalistic and not entirely inaccurate but the truly salient feature of this tale is that it indeed derives from an 18^th century puppet play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Do not be confused: this is not a puppet movie, it is beautifully acted by an ensemble of humans including Kyoko Kugawa, who contributes a quiet, revealing interview to the supplements. And yes, you read right, this is a 1954 movie, same year Mizoguchi made the immortal Sansho the Bailiff (and Uwasa no ona, aka The Crucified Woman). Kyoko Kugawa recalls being at the premiere of Sansho at the Venice Film Festival in September and flying back to Japan to start this, which  was released in Japan in…November. Jesus. This film’s story is not as immediately emotionally devastating as Sansho but it’s still pretty tough. And it gives the viewer the same  sense of a masterfully distilled cinematic style as that masterpiece. The narrative, more dry and nuanced, examines the tangled webs of deceit as practiced by both the powerful (who lie so they can profit, sexually or monetarily) and the oppressed (who lie for survival’s sake). The fabulous restoration yields a sumptuous black-and-white image. The supplements are solid, and feature illuminating observations, in an audio essay, from Dudley Andrews about Bunraku (puppet theater, that is) and Mizoguchi’s enthusiasm for the stage. —A+

Salvaged: August (or so) 2018 Blu-ray Consumer Guide

So at the end of every year I rearrange my computer desktop. Folders for freelance work, SCR work, and more go on to an external hard drive and are replaced on the desktop with folders for the current year. And one thing that had been on the desktop, outside of any folder, more than half a year was a document titled "AUGUST 2018 BLU RAY CONSUMER GUIDE." This is how it always works when I actually manage to finish a Blu-Ray Consumer Guide. Last one was in May, and I did it for the tenth anniversary of the blog, mainly because it represented the only type of writing that I couldn't find anyone to pay me for. (Not the ONLY kind, but you get my meaning.) Having pushed myself to get it done I thought, well that wasn't so bad, and immediately set about doing another, and of course I got too busy and never got it done. But I had still watched all the discs (in a period that extended well past August, mind you) and made notes, and there they sat, on my desktop. So I thought, January being a fairly fallow work time, maybe I can draft them up into something, so I did, although in many cases I am just presenting the notes themselves, as a glimpse into certain habits of mind that some of you might find amusing. The sole ringer here is the review for The Comfort of Strangers, a disc I only watched last week. 

Equipment: Playstation 3, OPPO Sony KD50X690E display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

Au Hasard Balthazar (Criterion)

Notes: “Bresson deliberately refuses to chase beauty in his compositions but beauty finds its way into them anyway. The shot of PK [Pierre Klosowski, venerable author and brother of Balthus—ed.] getting a little water for the donkey. The blackness of the bottom of the well. The blackness of the container of water.” — A+

 Avanti! (Koch Lorber)

Back when it came out in 1972 it was in some quarters dismissed as old Billy Wilder trying to do one of his acid romances new-style, with cussing and nudity and all. Now, the movie is itself old. The pacing of it really stands out: It’s Billy Wilder’s Slow Cinema. There are unexpected moments of lyricism here, also sourer-than-usual bits of misogyny and projected transphobia with the mustachioed-maid joke. An anomaly and a curio. — A-

The Changeling (Severin)

Looks good and is a fabulous film, a well-paced and consistently scarifying haunted house mystery with a restrained and convincing George C. Scott lead performance. Lots of then late-model Fords getting involved in all manner of mishaps, quite a time warp to my suburban teens.  —A

Combat Shock (Severin)

One Viet vet’s worst day ever on Staten Island; a very working class New Yawk take on Eraserhead. Things I learned from the commentary: Director Buddy Giovinazzo studied with  seminal minimalist musician and multi-media pioneer Phill Niblock, who wrote him a “legit filmmaker” note. Inspirational commentary soundbite: “Eddie had a gall bladder operation” meaning cast member and future cult figure Eddie Pepitone. —A

 The Comfort of Strangers (BFI Region B import)

I’ve long thought this Schrader’s most accomplished directorial effort (although there are quite a few gaps in my viewing of his films) and with the exception of the anachronistic and trendy camera-click-sound-effect freeze frames in some early scenes, this holds up spectacularly and is naggingly creepy in the best way. The image quality is particularly good in a nuanced way; the gorgeous detail doesn’t pop but instead insinuates. Among the extras is a typically spectacular Schrader commentary. Topics include degrees of queer in Rupert Everett’s performance and the way he instructed Schrader to rein him in; uses of screen nudity back then (1990) versus today, and working with screenwriter Harold Pinter. One admirable thing about Schrader’s practice is that he has a confidence that doesn’t register as entirely egotistical, and when he talks about Pinter he’s very matter of fact, never fanboying it in. One of the niftiest features of the film is that its theme of the proximity of danger leading to hotter sex, while a valid one, is usually depicted in cinema in  the most dumb and ham-handed way, and this picture provides an excellent exception to that. There are two other audio tracks of Schrader here that I haven’t gotten to but the primary commentary is aces. While he’s not an overtly sentimental man, the way he almost always refers to Natasha Richardson as “Tasha” tips me off that he misses her…as do all film lovers, really.  —A+

Curse of the Cat People (Scream Factory)

The 2016 release of Cat People on Criterion made me hope that the entire Lewton run of RKO pictures would be on the label. Apparently that’s not to be. But Shout!/Scream Factory  are not trifling here. “Beauty” is the only note I had on this, so clearly I didn’t get to any of the extras. But I’d still call this essential. —A

Designing Woman (Warner Archive)

John Alton shooting in color Cinemascope is as much a recommendation for this Blu-ray as one would need I suppose. And this is a lovely disc; the materials from which it was transferred look to have been pretty pristine, as there’s not a lot of wobble or color degeneration in dissolves.  The movie, according to my notes, is “weird as fuck.” Probably more for its perspective on gender relations than its Husbands and Wives-prophesying device of framing it as a quasi-documentary retrospective on a romantic quandary. Bacall and Peck struck me as a very mismatched couple. But what a supporting cast: Mickey Shaughnessy, Chuck Connors, Ed Platt, Alvy Moore. And that climactic brawl. All that notwithstanding, I think (and it's possible I've made this observation before in the context of a different picture) this is the sort of output that compelled François Truffaut to call Vincente Minnelli “un esclave.”—A-

Female Trouble (Criterion)

Boy she’s really fixated on those cha-cha heels. This is one of those demonstrations that no amount of digital scrubbing can make a movie that purposely looks TERRIBLE look any less terrible, and that is how it should be. And yet by this point in his career (1974) John Waters (with Charles Ruggero) has sufficient editing chops to pull off the scene in which Divine plays two characters, one of whom rapes the other. And yes, the skid mark on the Fruit of the Loom is there in spectacular HD. My favorite bits in this are with Edith Massey telling her son to “go nelly” and describing the boredom and emptiness of the heterosexual lifestyle. The wide-ranging extras are entertaining, not least in that they feature both the refined debonair garrulous elder statesman Waters we know and love AND the  semi-surly, snotty, sunglassed, chainsmoking Waters on R. Couri Hay’s public access show from back in the day. —A

Frank and Eva (Cult Epics)

Hard to describe this 1973 Dutch counterculture relationship drama. Maybe to say it’s as if Crown International decided to do a homage to Bergman or something. A prodigiously drinking male constantly pranks his lovely female partner, including with fake suicide attempts, while relentlessly pursuing side interests including a pre-Emmanuelle Sylvia Kristal. Energetic if ultimately pointless, with lots of nudity on a not-at-all-bad-looking disc. —B-

Hilda Crane (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time’s devotion to Fox Cinemascope and films that fall outside the purview of conventional  auteur-driven cinephilia has been opening my eyes for years now. This 1956 Phillip Dunne melodrama (adapted from a Samson Raphaelson novel) can be commended as an exceptional anti-Sirk example of the genre in that there’s no subtext whatsoever. The only “there” in the movie is the “there” there. Jean Simmons plays the title role, a double divorcee crawling back from New York to small town Winona,  her British accent a victim of Midwestern small mindedness. Hilda’s mom Judith Evelyn disdains how New Yorkers laugh at the solid virtues. But this Harper Valley doesn’t quite teem with hypocrites, just old folks with ultra-hardened arteries who don’t want anyone to have a good time, exhibit A being  clinging mom Mrs. Burns, who doesn’t want Hilda anywhere near her good boy Guy Madison. “I live for nothin’ but that boy,” she proclaims in a REMARKABLE characterization from Evelyn Varden.

Jean Pierre Aumont phones in the great French lover bit, e.g., Hilda: “Get out and never come back.” Jacques: “Varay well. I wish you lots of unhappiness. But I’m sure you’ll get it anyway.”

From notes: “UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF MOTHER best shot in the movie.”— B+

Let’s Make Love (Twilight Time)

Notes: “ ‘A lively interest in balloons,’ are you fucking kidding me?

All the guitarists in the Elvis parody are out of tune.

Dennis Hopper was right. [When he said to Cukor “we’re gonna bury you man” at some dinner party recounted in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.-ed.]

The plot line is very pre-code.

JOE BESSER

Quine’s ‘among the beatniks’ or whoever they were treatment in Bell Book and Candle was better.

‘I’ve never been so humiliated in my life’  you said it.”  Not a bad-looking disc, though.—B

Lifeforce (Shout! Factory)

Generally I’m a little skeptical about re-remasterings, but this new version of the 1985 Tobe Hooper classic, the best Hammer movie Hammer never made while at the same time kind of wholly and irrefutably a Cannon film, is a worthwhile investment for the wise people who love it as I do. From notes: “ It DOES look a little better. There’s more definition on the FX Halley’s Comet looks better. Oh yeah it looks HELLA better.”— A+

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (ClassicFlix)

Notes: “Super nifty movie little movie, classical in direction and outlook. Claude Rains is fabulous, one of his greatest performances. Truculent and weaselly wimpy within a single breath. and it looks great. No extras.”  —A-

Midnight Cowboy (Criterion)

I’m only going to say this once about 1960s and 1970s and sometimes even 1980s films getting scanned/transferred/mastered for HD with what some would call a bias toward teal in the color correction: it’s always all about how the movies looks in motion. And in motion, this Blu-ray looks absolutely wonderful. The overall color values are superb—check out Joe Buck’s mom’s pink dress in the beauty salon flashback shot. Green  seems a dominant color in the film’s palette anyway. Also noteworthy, more and more each year, is the location shooting: look, it’s the last gasp of Hubert’s Museum. The 1991-recorded commentary from Schlesinger is  very good and made me miss Supreme Macaroni all over again. “Little too snazzily cut,” he says of one sequence, and yes, you could say that. Audio mix is fabulous.  From notes: “This is A LOT OF MOVIE MAKING (b&w, film within film, lighting, quick cutting)”—A+

My Sister Eileen (Twilight Time)

Notes: “Charming and bright. The dance between Fosse and what’s-his-nut is great. Sexism aside, the congenial sympathies of Quine and Edwards are practically palpable. Lovely transfer. It feels like a movie everyone had a good time on.”—A

Queen of Outer Space (Warner Archive)

Notes: “The most undemanding movie ever made, maybe. Fond and unexpectedly sweet commentary.”—A

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Twilight Time)

This features Jane Russell as a barely-disguised prostitute thrown out of San Francisco for being a barely disguised prostitute and going to Hawaii and dying her hair red and becoming a barely disguised prostitute who get real estate investment tips from semi-Hemingwayesque author Richard Egan. It all goes pretty well until Pearl Harbor. Raoul Walsh directed. Agnes Morehead plays a barely disguised madam. CinemaScope, Deluxe Color, 1956.

Notes: “Vivid.” —A

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (Warner Archive)

From notes:  “A triumph of MISE EN SCENE. Catchy tunes.  A lot to chew on for Jordan Peterson.”—A

Two Weeks in Another Town (Warner Archive)

Notes: “Timeless classic in a crisp transfer. These are mean mean people. ‘Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha’ ‘Toby Dammit’ “—A

Under Capricorn (Kino Lorber)

Kat Ellinger’s commentary is fact-filled and interesting, and her notes on Hitchcock’s treatment of class are engaging. But I gotta disagree with her when she says this relative obscurity from 1949 doesn’t LOOK like a Hitchcock film. This was Hitchcock’s second color film (the first was Rope) and his first period piece in some time (since Jamaica Inn ten years before), so maybe that’s where she’s coming from, but…the film language is very much Hitchcock’s. I also think she’s off base with her semi-constant disparagement of Hitchcock’s use of Bergman, that he “takes a great star and he kills her off” and then her note that Hitchcock’s insistence on long takes was “perhaps unnecessary.” Yeah, Hitch, why didn’t you try getting some COVERAGE, little indulgent there, ya think? But I’m not gonna kid myself. Ehringer is the future: with film critics a generation or two younger than myself, the thing with Hitchcock from now on is gonna be three parts slagging for every one part praise. And that’s if we are lucky. The disc looks GOOD, but given this is the only substantive collaboration between Hitchcock and Jack Cardiff it’s not quite what I had hoped for. —A-

Blu-ray Consumer Guide, May 2018 (SCR 10th Anniversary Edition)

This month marks the tenth anniversary of this stupid blog, and I was thinking of what I could do to commemorate this landmark, and the main thing that occurred to me was that I could just pull the plug on the whole thing. My work load really doesn’t allow me the time to contribute much to it, and my temperament has improved over the past few years to the extent that I don’t feel the need to vent as much as I used to, and when I do feel that need, I attempt to exercise some prudence, at least eight times out of ten if my track record of the last seven months is a reliable indicator. In any event, something—sentimentality, the need to maintain a safety valve or existential escape hatch, who can say—compelled me to pony up for another year with Typepad. And to carve out (and it wasn’t easy) the time to write the one thing that no professional outlet will pay me for.

Also, one of the providers of one of these discs asked about a review a little while back, and I got snippy with him about it, which I then felt guilty about, which then motivated me to write an entire thing to support the one capsule. I shall have to discuss this with my therapist. ("So I wrote 6000 words as an amends to a guy I had a mildly unpleasant DM exchange with.")  As our President likes to say, “Enjoy!”

Equipment: Playstation 3, Sony KD50X690E display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

La Belle Noiseuse (Cohen)

Hopefully I need not extol the virtues of this 1991 film directed by Jacques RIvette, nor excessively clamor with respect to the necessity of a swell high-def edition, a necessity that this two-disc set so satisfactorily addresses. The image quality is consistently gorgeous. And what an amazing movie it is, an epic that’s tight and devastating and incorporates all the lessons of Rivette’s prior experimentations with improvisation in the service of a multi-dimensional dissertation on art and life and life as art and art as life. Here’s the matter I want to address though: Once this disc was delivered to my doorstep and I looked at the back cover I had one question, which was “What kind of freakazoid can conceive and deliver a full-length audio commentary to a nearly four-hour motion picture?” Not to say that Rivette’s work doesn’t lend itself to exhaustive analysis but, well, you know.  (Believe it or not, I get tired of hearing my own voice after about 40 minutes, which is why I prefer to do  Blu-ray audio commentaries with partners.) In any event, for this Blu-ay package that freakazoid is Richard Suchenski, a writer and academic associated with Bard College. Bard. Figures. The phrase “vertiginous interchange between different layers of intertextual reference” is uttered not even ten minutes in. I kid, I kid—while I consider this a borderline jargon incident, I also concede Rivette’s art calls for complex language in analysis. In any event, Suchenski’s work is outstanding. He takes an aesthetically holistic approach harking back to Rivette’s criticism. Weirdly enough there’s little in terms of nuts-and-bolts making-of info or on-set anecdotes. And yet the commentator fills the space. In the first half he’ll pause for 20 or 30 seconds at a time, but that’s nothing! The pauses do get longer in the second half, which reduced my potential resentment somewhat.  He’s very sharp on any number of topics, including the film’s approach to female nudity. (Even as you watch with commentary you recognize how amazing Emmanuelle Béart is in an IMPOSSIBLE role.) Suchenski deserves a medal in addition to his fee. Perhaps he’ll settle for my giving this package an… — A+

The Church (Scorpion)

Michele Soavi’s 1989 Not Demons 3, concerning an monoportal church whose only entrance/egress is sealed up via some satanic power, the better to condemn its inhabitants to  grotty death. holds up pretty well. It’s no Cemetery Man but what is; anyway it’s credible enough throughout not just to hold your attention but to make you feel bad that poor Soavi’s stuck directing Italian mini-series these days, or so it seems. (The near-suffocation-by-wedding-dress-bit is particularly inspired.) Featuring little Asia Argento, a bit tomboyish as the curious daughter of a church caretaker (she was over 20 here but looks 15), and Tomas Arana, who transforms from Wall Street-trading-floor-extra to Peter Murphy lookalike as he is compelled to serve the devil.  Scorpion’s presentation is better than solid—check out the good autumnal tones in its medieval prologue. Only the English-language soundtrack is offered, and that’s fine. There are video interviews with Soavi, who doesn’t dis the prior Demons movies here, as he’s been rumored to in the past, and with Argento, whose recollections are funny and affectionate.  Swell. —A

The Color of Pomegranates (Criterion)

The blow-the-top-of-your-head-off imagery of this cheaply made work of film poetry registers beautifully in this edition. Shots that then-music-video directors like Mark Romanek and Tarsem lifted wholesale from this 1969 Sergei Parajanov masterpiece look better in the original; once, you had to take this assertion on trust, now it’s as plain as the nose on your face.  The commentary from Tony Rayns, one which he confesses his personal trepidation about taking on in the beginning, splendidly illuminates the rich veins of history, tradition, art, and literature from which the motion picture derives. He is deft in sorting out what he calls its “fusions of trans-Caucasus identity” and still finds time to drop some choice anecdotes, including one in which Parajanov goes to the New York Film Festival and makes dirty talk with Allen Ginsberg.  —A+

Dead Man (Criterion)

This new transfer of one of Jim Jarmusch’s best films looks superb, so the 2011 issue regarding the first Blu-ray atrocity (see here) can be considered resolved. (And can also be considered as Harvey Weinstein’s last of many aggressive acts against the film.) The extras are multifarious and delightful. A making-of-focused commentary from  production designer Bob Ziembicki and sound mixer Drew Kunin is wonky in all the right ways. There’s a 45-minute supplement in which Jarmusch reads and answers questions submitted by fans of the film. Among the submitters are Bill Hader and Alan Arkush. The latter asks about Iggy Pop and Neil Young and their contributions.. But there’s not a drop of consideration for my friend and neighbor Gibby Haynes, who appears in an unusually memorable cameo. Well you can’t have everything.  —A+

Don’t Bother To Knock (Twilight Time)

Made in 1952, the same year in which Marilyn Monroe also did creditable work in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night, this fascinating, weirdly unfocused melodrama/thriller directed by Roy Ward Baker features a stellar performance, supple and gradient, from MM. She plays a mentally disturbed young woman on a babysitting gig at an NYC lodging, whose bearings are further shaken up when sullen Dick Widmark makes to pick her up after a spat with Anne Bancroft, who plays a singer in the ground floor nightclub. The confined environs of the action suggest the alternate title Glum Hotel. Bancroft lip-syncs “How About You” (the lyrics “and Tyrone Power’s looks/give me a thrill” tip you off to this Fox production in the event you’ve missed the opening logo). MM’s portrayals of longing and malingering listlessness are convincing and upsetting, especially the way she uses her breathy, sex-kitten voice to put over the character at her most dangerous. (It probably goes without saying, by the way, that the movie’s got a pretty unenlightened view of mental illness.)  The disc has no extras to speak of, the usual excellent Julie Kirgo booklet essay aside. But it does look good and crisp (Lucien Ballard shot it so we expect no less.).  All this and Elisha Cook, Jr. too—he plays an elevator operator and uncle to MM’s character (his insistence of recommending her as a sitter is what gets all the trouble started).  Not to mention Jim Backus. —B+

A Fistful of Dollars (Kino Lorber)

Good God I think this is the 700^th home video edition of this movie I’ve owned. Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH? I think I first saw it in the late ‘60s on a double feature with For A Few Dollars More. I was maybe ten years old and I was completely transfixed and nothing Pauline Kael said will ever make me change my mind and take your bromides about putting away childish things and stuff them because these movies feature Gian Maria Volonte and yours are about superheroes and everyone knows Gian Maria Volonte is cooler than any superhero. Excuse me. This Blu-ray is based on a recent 4K restoration and it looks fabulous. If you know this movie well (and if you don’t WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU) you will remember that it’s the sweatiest movie ever, and lemme tell you in this rendition you can practically count the beads. Extras include pretty much everything that’s been on the previous 700 versions, so that’s a lot. A new one is a commentary by Tim Lucas, delightful as always. There’s also this prologue for network television, shot by Monte Hellman and starring Harry Dean Stanton and some guy dressed in the Man With No Name (or “Joe,” if you believe Richard Schickel, whose old commentary is NOT included—Lucas has a good long riff on his track about how the Man With No Name in fact “has” several but goes by none personally). What’s very funny is how the actor doubling for Eastwood keeps trying to make sure his face isn’t in the frame, almost holding his hand up in front of it at one point—shades of Mrs. Prickley’s double. All things considered this is great and you should buy it. —A+

Gun Crazy (Warner Archive)

This year I showed my Language of Film students the fabled bank robbery long take and was newly impressed by so much, including Peggy Cummins’ driving skills. I am happy to know that next time I do the course I’ll be able to show it with the Blu-ray bump, which is pretty much all this new edition offers but that ain’t nothing. —A

Harper/The Drowning Pool (Warner Archive)

Well here I was hoping that I’d get some kind of eye-opening demonstration that would enable me to argue that the big studio genre films of the 1960s don’t get enough love. But I’m sorry to report that, Paul Newman notwithstanding, both these pictu res prove you can’t make The Big Sleep without Howard Hawks and Raymond Chandler, not to mention Leigh Brackett. These are adaptations of Ross MacDonald novels, with Lew Archer now named Lew Harper. Screenwriter William Goldman, on the not unexpectedly engaging commentary he recorded for the standard def DVD of Harper, reproduced here, tells us why this happened, but I didn’t put it in my notes, and what he said now escapes me, so I guess you can rest assured the rationale was real exciting. Anyway, the most interesting thing about 1966’s Harper is that I’m now convinced that Joel and Ethan Coen watched it (maybe preparing for Hudsucker Proxy) and lifted a few facets from it for The Big Lebowski. The movie seems to introduce the cliché of the ditzy poolside bikini babe, which reaches its nose-thumbing apotheosis in Lebowski (in this picture she is played by Pamela Tiffin). There’s also some kidnap-money-drop stuff that Lebowski goofs on. This movie’s tough-guy atmosphere is steeped in ugly sexism, as in the dialogue about a woman who “used to be a pretty hot young starlet, what happened to her?” followed by a cut to high-BMI Shelley Winters. Director Jack Smight handles this kind of stuff competently, but is a stiff with action and suspense sequences. In the time-capsule department, the look is mid-60s Panavision/Technicolor, and the soundtrack features an André and Dory Previn song, sung by Julie Harris in the role of an arty Lola Heatherton. No really. I admittedly eat up this kind of stuff, and this movie has plenty of it, which, combined with the superb image and sound quality of the disc,  wound up being its saving grace. Drowning Pool was made almost  10 years later, has the  action shifted to Louisiana (for no reason one can discern from the diegesis), and at first seems  overall like it might turn out to be a better picture than Harper. Young Melanie Griffith is memorable in a “problematic” role for sure. But while Harper is merely pedestrian, at least it’s got an Old-Hollywood-Tries-To-Stay-Spry spring in its step, while Pool devolves to  downright sluggishness (and the playing out of the whole title conceit is five kinds of dumb). The discs are beautiful so if this kind of fare is your idea of a great nostalgia trip, or if you’re a Newman completist. you’ll be in a lower circle of heaven. Both discs:— B+

The Holy Mountain (Kino Lorber)

Hey kids it’s Leni Riefenstahl’s 1925 screen acting debut, given a spectacular restoration by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation.  As a screen presence, I never got her, I must tell you. I’m skeptical about her as a filmmaker too but this is not the time for that. As its title suggests, this is, um, a “Mountain Film”—this was a big genre in German filmmaking starting in the beginning of the 20^th century, one which is pretty much what it sounds like. Germany, you know, is somewhere in the vicinity of the Alps, and Germanic Romanticism places a great emphasis on, you know, climbing, so, I don’t know how much more of this I need to spell out for you. The director of the movie was one Arnold Fanck, who liked to be known as “Dr.” Arnold Fanck, even though he only had a PhD, and again what does that tell you. I shouldn’t be ragging so hard given this movie is genuinely curious, and ravishing to look upon. One salient feature of the Mountain Film was that it was hard to shoot, and it’s clear that technical difficulty yielded high technical sophistication—the outdoor stuff here is still startling. “The sea is her love—wild, boundless…” an intertitle says of LR’s character early on, and her wacky Dance to the Sea is something to behold. According to the commentary by Tavis Crawford, Hitler loved it. The shot of LR’s love interest standing on a peak is fer-sure Caspar David Friedrich in orange-tinted monochrome. According to the commentator, the Mountain Film also helped popularize skiing; talk about being freighted with a lot to answer for. Another interesting feature is how often the movie messes around with aspect ratio, at one point settling in for a frame orientation that looks quite a bit like what we now call “vertical video.” This goes unnoted by Crawford. The disc itself is pretty great looking. I can’t emphasize enough the truly incredible imagery throughout,  but particularly in the final 20 minutes. —A

 Joe (Olive)

One of the verboten movies of my childhood, a Socially Significant tale of the late 1960s and one that inspired as many thinkpieces as a movie was capable of inspiring back then. . Beleaguered Square Businessman and Hard-Drinking Bigoted Construction Worker (I don’t think he really IS a construction worker, but might as well be) meet and team up to find and/or kill hippies. In some expects you kinda hadda be there back in 1970,  but the title character played by Peter Boyle still walks among us, and makes it to his polling place, alas. The film, directed by John G. Avildsen from a Norman Wexler script, is cheaper-than-the-norm cold-water-flat-kitchen-sink realism, not much to look at, but the Blu-ray features a solid transfer from clean materials, with particularly good color values, so watch with confidence. All the pre-echoes of MAGA aside, this has some not-displeasing anachronistic  1970 feels, beginning with Jerry Butler singing the opening theme. “Child, all you gotta do is grow up little girl,” the lyrics go, and what incredible irony if you already know the movie’s ending. Mr. Wexler’s writing of hippie/drug-addict dialogue lacks (“You promised maybe we could stay off the hard stuff for a while…”) but by the same token, I can’t tell you that a junkie skeezebucket of the era wouldn’t hassle Susan Sarandon over her not at all fat “fat ass.” Peter Boyle’s Joe doesn’t show up in the movie until a half hour in, and when he does it’s in an out-of-focus master shot. The movie meanders in its social commentary, sometimes veering into comedic territory (and here’s where Boyle shows the chops that were to serve him so well in Young Frankenstein and Everybody Loves Raymond)—hey look, the two squares have stumbled into a health food restaurant, and so on. The finale is still pretty harrowing. And interestingly enough, the scene where the working-class Currans have the upper-middle-class Comptons over for dinner could be dropped into Fassbinder’s Why Does Herr R. Run Amok (made the same year) and no one would raise an eyebrow. —B

Les Girls (Warner Archive)

This underrated 1957 Cukor musical is a visually sumptuous cross between Pal joey and Rashomon. Also one of the jewels of Kay Kendall’s too-short filmography. And a good source of early Patrick Macnee (he’s one of the barristers in the courtroom scenes). The Cole Porter songs are all good but I don’t hear a single. The disc itself is dazzling from stem to stern. It never ceases to amaze me that Cukor did so well with CinemaScope here, with cinematographer Robert Surtees, then screwed the widescreen pooch so badly on ‘64’s My Fair Lady with Harry Stradling, Jr. Sr., future beloved of Barbra Streisand and no slouch with 2.35 with Quine on How To Murder Your Wife. Just one of those things, I guess. Check out the solidity of the Paris dressing room scenes, with each of the mirror light bulbs’ filaments visible in a given shot—so gorgeous. I showed the scene, one where Taina Elg tries to escape the notice of her nobleman boyfriend,  to my students in tandem with a clip from Black Narcissus to exemplify a Golden Age of Hanging Lights. —A

 Manhandled/Stage Struck (Kino Lorber)

Two silent Gloria Swanson starrers directed by Allan Dwan;  I’d say these recommend themselves.. If your sole exposure to Swanson is by way of Sunset Boulevard or Stroheim or various and sundry of her works for DeMille, you will be knocked sideways by the super-likable comedienne you’ll meet here. 1924’s Manhandled is a rags to riches story whose generic plot was more or less recycled by the Clara Bow vehicle It a few years hence, while 1925’s Stage Struck depicts a daydream-prone waitress who finds unusual inspiration when a performing idol hits town. Both films are distinguished, and elevated, by the wit, humanity, and reliability of their star and director. The Manhandled commentary by Gaylyn Studlar gets started by referring to the “post-World War I fascination with young women’s deployment of their sexuality,” while the Stage Struck commentary, by Dwan biographer Frederic Lombardi, is a bit more nuts-and-bolts. Stage Struck also has an essay by Farran Smith Nehme,  and the movie itself features AMAZING two-strip Technicolor  sections, nicely restored, at the beginning and end of the picture. You should have both but if you have to choose, Stage Struck would be it. Both discs: —A

Model Shop (Twilight Time)

Back in the day, when the powers that be, or were, at home video concerns had little interest in releasing catalog titles, those beneath them who were invested with getting stuff out were compelled to come up with unusual marketing schemes. I have no first-hand knowledge in this matter, but I think that must have been what inspired the short-lived Sony-Columbia “Martini Movies” rubric for a group of otherwise completely unrelated titles. This was one such title. As was, I’m seeing now, The New Centurions (see below). As was, good grief, Anthony Newley’s draft-dodger drama Summertree. One of the nice things about boutique labels is they don’t have to justify putting out what they want. On balance I like Agnes Varda’s California movies better than Jacques Demy’s single one, made in 1969, which sees his Anouk Aimee character Lola inhabiting a pretty grim little California world. Gary Lockwood plays a disaffected, directionless would-be architect who’s gotta make up his mind about something or other before Uncle Sam plucks him up for Vietnam duty; instead, he meets Lola at the title establishment and pulls some Before Sunrise action on her. Prior to that he drops in on Spirit, the band, and gives Jay Ferguson the opportunity to do a little acting. A speech Lockwood gives in this scene encapsulates the film’s reason for being: “I was driving down Sunset and I turned down one of those roads that leads up into the hills. And I stopped at this place that overlooks the whole city, it was fantastic. And I suddenly felt exhilarated, you know. I was really moved by the geometry of the place, its conception, its baroque harmony. It’s a fabulous city. To think some people claim it’s an ugly city, when it’s really pure poetry. It just kills me. I wanted to build something right then, create something.” Model Shop is Demy’s own L.A. inspired creation, but as love letters go it’s kind of glum. Also, this is not the color-feast that you might expect in the wake of the one-two punch of Cherbourg and Rochefort. But it’s a key component of the Demy filmo nonetheless and this extras-free package is the finest extant presentation of it. —B+

Moses Und Aaron (Grasshopper)

Grasshopper does invaluable art-film service here not just by presenting a super-scrupulous rendering of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s 1975 non-spectacle cinema rendering of Schoenberg’s great opera, but by also including three other films by the duo, all crucial, including their 1965 debut feature Not Reconciled, their prior short Machorka-Muff (1963; practically Expressionist relative to their subsequent works), and Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene (1973). That’s a lot of Straub-Huillet, and because of the addition of Schoenberg, I’m not sure I’d call it an ideal beginner’s package but on the other hand, with all three of these artists you’re either all in or out, so might as well. I have to be in a very particular mood to be receptive to the filmmakers (I never don’t have time for Arnold), who withhold a lot in terms of conventional audience engagement and provide dense intellectual inquiries instead. Surely no filmmakers are more resolute, or distinguished, in their austerity: they are resolutely anti-chic even when depicting snazzy Euro cocktail lounges (see Not Reconciled). My only complaint about the package is that the Ted Fendt booklet essay is in something like 7.5 point type, which is too small for this old man to comfortably read. —A

The New Centurions (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time remains one of my favorite Blu-ray labels, and I think even they would agree that with their always good-looking releases, the extras situation is either feast or near-famine. “Near” because Julie Kirgo can always be counted on to deliver a great booklet essay every time out. For this 1972 Richard Fleischer adaptation of a Joseph Wambaugh novel, it’s close to feast because of the presence of two audio commentaries. The first is with Nick Redman and actor Scott Wilson, co-starring here with Stacy Keach, George C. Scott, Ed Lauter, Clifton James, and Erik Estrada. It’s a casual conversation with Nick taking the role of the well-informed fan. A lot of Wilson’s stories fall into the “How I Got Shafted Once George C. Scott Came On Board” category—Scott’s star power compelled a reshuffling of the ensemble in terms of numbers of scenes and so on. But he’s entertaining. The second commentary is by  film historians Lee Pfeiffer and Paul Scrabo, who are also informative, but allow me to vent a little here. They’re not even ten minutes into the movie before the “Dick Fleischer never got his due critically” complaints start. Now one of the great things that Twilight Time does is give love to underappreciated directors by putting their movies on Blu-ray, which isn’t nothing. But the Fleischer reassessment is not actually all that new, Sarris’ American Cinema rankings only have Papal Infallibility status if you want them to, and sometimes things can be taken too far. Lauding the ostensible eclecticism of a director who mainly went where the work was seems a bit special-pleading to me. Statements such as this: “They certainly never got the recognition or fame that they deserved. They were usually dismissed by critics as ‘workmanlike.’ Efficient directors who could turn out a good movie but really weren’t ‘artistes.’ And I think history has proven that to be wrong and Fleischer was a perfect example.” are really straw man arguments that don’t advance anyone’s appreciation, and when you follow such a pronouncement with “Doctor Doolittle, although a box office bomb, is actually a very good movie that’s better regarded today,” well, I don’t know what to tell you.  Messrs. Scrabo and Pfeiffer are otherwise amiable and knowledgeable. As for the movie itself, it's not The Choirboys but it’s not bad. And man is it dated! Plenty of casual sexism and racism and yeesh, the depiction of the Stacy Keach-Jane Alexander union, in the first domestic scene, when they’re discussing partner Scott:  “Is he married?” “Divorced.” “Then he’d probably appreciate a home-cooked meal!” The next time we see the couple they’re practically divorcing, though. The “gritty” film doesn’t have much of a plot, just a bunch of it’s-tough-to-be-a-cop anecdotes leading up, of course,  to a tragic death. The cinematography, by Ralph Woolsey, is pretty low key and the disc gets the Eastmancolor By Night vibe pretty nicely, which is kinda my favorite part of the package. —A

No Down Payment (Twilight Time)

Speaking of people who discontinued their blogs, I can’t find the entry from Like Anna Karina’s Sweater that hipped me to this “whoa!”-inducing 1957 problem picture, which could be alternately titled Varieties of U.S. Post War Suburban Rot. My buddy Filmbrain, going slightly against what was considered the proper auteurist grain, lavished love on this Martin “Marty” Ritt picture in which Jeffrey Hunter and Patricia Owens buy into a prefab community all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but wind up defeated by All-American hypocrisy. The combination of soap opera and social commentary still whips up a heady froth today, thanks largely to a go-for-broke cast that includes Cameron Mitchell when he was still a thing, Joanne Woodward soaking up fryer oil as the ebullient one-time Southern belle and Tony Randall in a “don’t look at me like I’m an alcoholic” vodka sulk. Early on Pat Hingle, manning a barbecue most manfully, asks Mitchell “When you gonna start a family of your own?” and I’m all like HEY LAY OFF ME JORDAN PETERSON. There’s a lot more crisis-of-masculinity stuff in there too. Lovers of black-and-white widescreen will find a lot to like here even if they can’t engage the content (although I can’t imagine anyone being unable to engage the content); this extras-free presentation is a really nice transfer. —A-

No Orchids for Miss Blandish  (Kino Lorber)

What an oddity. This 1948 British production, shot at  Alliance Studios, Twickenham, is a New-York-set story that begins with a bogus depiction of the Manhattan skyline. Based on the James Hadley Chase novel that inspired a salty Raymond Queneau parody (We Always Treat Women Too Well), this is one of the messier tales of Stockholm Syndrome before it was so named. (I know that’s not Blue Book accurate, description wise, but bear with me.) The movie fascinates from the start for its off-base depiction of New York life among both the rich and gutter-bound. It’s like that bit in Carpenter’s The Thing when the alien tries to disguise itself as a husky and the other dogs are like, no, you’re not right. Director St. John Legh Clowes (no, really) throws in some fancy camerawork amidst the fake American accents. Linden Travers, as the titular Miss Blandish, sports some pretty elaborate boudoir wear early on, reminding the viewer that British productions were not subject to the overview of Joseph Breen. This circumstance of course extends to features of the plot as well, as witness  Bill O’Connor’s Johnny, the rotter fiancé who thinks bringing her to a dive roadhouse will melt Miss Blandish’s frigidity. About a half hour in the movie gets fixated on the sexual assault of the heroine; the squalor is neither bracing or unusually repellent, just odd. The movie was clearly made by people with no experience of firearms, as one of the gangsters involved in the abortive kidnapping of the title character calmly takes hold of a gun by its barrel right after it’s been fired. One may infer that a similar lack of real-world savvy informs every other part of the film. Once Miss Blandish falls in love with one of her captors, and he back (“You’re the only dame that’s ever got me. Got me inside and twisted my guts!”), Travers really starts to magnificently overdo her performance. Unfortunately this plot development also signals the point where the movie starts to truly and finally go off the rails. Pretty good image quality overall. A cinephile novelty. —B+

 The Outer Limits, Season One (Kino Lorber)

I may never finish watching this 1,632 minute set 32 episode monster. I haven’t even listened to any of the audio commentaries yet. But for random hours of pleasure to steal, this has proven both incredibly consistently great and revelatory. According to Tosches’ Dean Martin biography, when Martin passed Frank Sinatra said “He has been like the air I breathe.” I haven’t thought about it in a long time, especially as someone who grew up to be not much of a television person, but Outer Limits, even as glimpsed out of a corner of my boyhood eye, was a huge formative influence. The effects might be dated, but that’s fine, and the extremely high quality of the writing, acting, directing, cinematography is consistently awe-inspiring. I’m beside myself with admiration here. And very eager for a Season Two set. —A+

Raw Deal (Classic Flix)

Relative newbie label Classic Flix follows up its first-rate renditions of He Walked By Night and T-Men with another essential Anthony Mann/John Alton collaboration, a narratively astounding noir whose twists and turns are put across in a style that’s both moody and breakneck. The transfer was made from a fine grain element from the BFI, on which 400 hours of digital restoration were spent. The results are pretty remarkable to behold, with the fabled John Alton blacks looking plenty dark and the image stability rock solid overall. The detail is so fresh that I actually noted some surprisingly ragged technique during the beach house scene—a dropped gun that winds up on a section of floor not seen anywhere before, and lighting mismatches once Dennis O’Keefe is outside and moving down the shoreline. Jeremy Arnold’s generally cogent and informative commentary doesn’t address this, which I found frustrating. Overall it’s a spectacular package, with a  bounty of supplements. Essential home library material. —A+

The Sadist of Notre Dame (Severin)

Late ‘70s Jess Franco films almost always make you wanna take a long shower afterwards. Talk about a pervasive atmosphere of perdition—you’re soaking in it. This release along with its Severin companion Sinfonia Erotica are exemplary examples. (And both are more rewarding than the recent Severin release of Two Female Spies With Flowered Panties; not that that’s Severin’s fault; it’s just that the movie itself is a dose of cinematic Sominex laced with PCP.) This one is a mad pastiche, a Frankenstein/Franco monster stitched together from portions of 1975’s Exorcism, its hardcore variant Sexorcisme, and more; the extras provide all the gory details (and also contain snippets of Sexorcisme featuring our auteur performing unsimulated cunnilingus, which will allow you the privilege of saying “Now I’ve seen everything”). Turns out Franco maven Steven Thrasher Thrower and I agree that the best parts of the movie are the shots of trench-coated Jess skulking around Rue St. Denis and Ile de la Cité, giving a back street crawler context to the surrounding squalor. The supplements are varied but all high-spirited, including a mini-doc on a Paris grindhouse theater. I was most taken with the interview with Thrasher, though. The presentation looks quite good, especially considering the endless iterations the film material had to have gone through before landing in this mess. For normal people this disc is useless; for the rest of us, it’s an essential course in Franco Education.  Inspirational dialogue: “I inherited the house from my parents.” “I only inherited misery.” —A

 Seven (Kino Lorber)

This 1979 Andy Sidaris  babes-and-bullets (and bombs and stabbing implements and all manner of nonsense) actioner has more integrity in its nuttiness, I think, than Hard Ticket to Hawaii, but I realize such a distinction is possibly lost on those of you who are not “into” Andy Sidaris. As with Jess Franco, your loss. Then again, the three Andy Sidaris fans who contribute the commentary to this title might be a little too enthusiastic for their, or anybody’s, good, as when one of them evinces a desire to be incarnated as Susan Kiger’s shorts. Oh, boys. Shot mostly in Hawaii over what appear to be a series of cloudy days, each individual scene’s color palette seemingly determined by that of whatever car in the scene figures most prominently in the action, this is not the most visually distinguished of Sidaris’ pictures. The titlular seven refers to the number of agents in freelance mercenary William Smith’s team, and one of the film’s biggest formal laughs comes about 40 minutes in when Sidaris seems to realize that if he keeps spending as much time as he has on the individual character introductions, he’s going to have a three hour movie on his hands, and so ruthlessly picks up the pace. The movie seems to have had a high flash-paper budget, as it has more flash-paper tricks in it than I think I’ve seen in any movie ever. In addition to Ms. Kiger (who really is quite attractive) and Mr. Smith, who both seem engaged in some unspoken competition as to who can deliver the worse line reading (Kiger aces “Hat on the bed; that’s bad luck, Cowboy” but Smith trumps her near the end with “Hey I’m rentin’ your bike for a while, pal, thanks, huh?”), the film also features Lenny Montana and Reggie Nalder. And Art Metrano. While the bad guys are plenty bad, it still seems unsporting that Smith’s team pretty much murders them all in cold blood—Kiger and Guich Koock, as the aforementioned Cowboy, actually lock a couple of mooks in their Town Car, douse it in gasoline, and set it on fire. Yikes. An essential 20^th century entertainment. —B+

A Christmas Gift To You From Some Came Running (That Is, A 2017 Blu-ray Consumer Guide)

Let's get right to it. 

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

I can’t believe I actually carved out the time to do this, although if you check out the release date of the very first disc reviewed (I’ll save you the trouble, it’s August of last year) you’ll see it’s been indeed over a year in the making. Whew!

3 Bad Men (Kino Lorber)

This 1926 Western, not to be confused with 1919’s Marked Men, which was Ford’s first stab at the story that would become Three Godfathers, is a fleet and exciting film with a similar theme—the title fellows, en route to a gold stake, save the life of, and then look after, a fair waif. This disc presents a beautiful restoration terrifically augmented by a wonderful Joseph McBride audio commentary. Aside from its erudition (fun fact: this was Ford’s last Western for over a decade; he would not revisit the genre until, yup, 1939’s Stagecoach) it’s a master class in how to deal with, um, problematics. One of the movie’s most thrilling moment sees a baby lifted from the ground in the middle of what’s effectively a stampede (an antecedent to several stunts in Raising Arizona). The clear-eyed McBride, who loved Ford and Ford’s films, says “this is a famous shot, unfortunately in my opinion it’s reprehensible…I think it’s unconscionable to risk the life of a child for the sake of an effect.” And that’s that. —A

All the Colors of the Dark   (Shameless UK Region B)

You never forget your first Edwidge Fenech movie. I picked up a German DVD of this lurid and nonsensical 1972 sort-of giallo in the mid’ 90s. It was a 4x3 image that was pictureboxed to honor its widescreen framing, and the image was sufficiently blah that you might have guessed the negative had been processed in dirty bathwater. And yet the power of La Fenech’s ultry-sultry screen presence somehow shone through. This U.K. Blu looks…okay. It’s 16x9, always a plus of course. The opening minutes, featuring the credits, are dingy enough to raise an eyebrow, but then you realize this was always a cheap film in every respect, not just content. Once you make peace with. that it’s completely watchable and sometimes a bit better. And the lead actor looks great. The package has satisfying extras, including casual but enthusiastic and informative commentary from Kat Ellinger (editor of Diabolique magazine) and Samm Deighan (contributor to that magazine; both do a podcast called Daughters of Darkness) and a 20-minute interview with director Sergio Martino. —A-

Battle Cry (Warner Archive)

Raoul Walsh conducts this nearly 150-minute adaptation of Herman Wouk’s novel at a spanking pace, which is salutary not just for the usual reasons but also because the story is maybe 80 percent soap opera and 20 percent war movie. No extras here, but the widescreen color image is very nice. The WA release of Hell on Frisco Bay, while vivid, suffered during dissolve transitions in which color values were lost, a limitation of the material they had to work with. This is not the case here, for the most part, and in the rare occasions that it is, it’s so fleeting only the sharpest eye will catch it. Attractions include Tab Hunter trying to play drunk, Walsh using short fast pans as an accommodation to CinemaScope (see James Whitmore telling Perry Lopez to take off his fake medals, and Lopez then bragging about Guadalcanal to a group of strangers, all in the same shot). Aldo Ray playing a rapey character who is talked down from committing actual assault is a very, um, vivid portrayal. —B+

The Birthday Party (Kino Lorber)

Don’t know why I haven’t seen more Friedkin-heads celebrating the release of this 1968 picture, his follow-up to, um, Good Times, that Sonny and Cher movie. This, on the other hand, is an adaptation of the Haold Pinter play about a withdrawn boarding house tenant who receives a visit from some existential gangsters on what may or may not be his birthday. Their introduction is really special: the cut from Robert Shaw’s Stanley sneaking out the kitchen window to Patrick Magee and Sidney Tafler standing in the house’s sitting room is really one of the great edits in cinema. Friedkin shows remarkable sensitivity to Pinter’s text, and if you only know Magee and Shaw from A Clockwork Orange and Jaws respectively, you’ll be surprised at how good they are at underplaying. (I know Shaw does SOME underplaying in Jaws, but here he even underplays underplaying.) The image looks great relative to what Eastman Color in the late ‘60s generally yielded. Although I wish the responsible parties had cleaned up the soundtrack a little more. Extras include a Friedkin interview in which he relates material that readers of his Friedkin Connection book will remember, including how the movie irritated Joseph Losey. —A-

Casa De Lava (Grasshopper)

This 1994 picture was Pedro Costa’s second feature, and while it’s in some respects much more conventional than his stiffer future pictures, it’s still suffused, as they say, with a singular voice, achieved through formal mastery. And confidence. The much-cited influence of I Walked With A Zombie is evident but it’s more subterranean than many accounts would have you believe. The excellent Blu-ray image honors the work of cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel (who also shot, not insignificantly, Bresson’s L’Argent); aside from its characters and story, the movie is also about a volcanic island in the Cape Verde archipelago, and the movie’s color palette, its range of lights and darks, the often charcoal quality of the landscape, is well-represented. Machuel is interviewed in one of the discs’ supplements. The other notable extra is a 24-minute paging through Costa’s scrapbook for the movie, which features lots of shots of Edith Scob (one of the picture’s stars) in Les Yeux sans Visage; the famous photograph of Robert Johnson and guitar, which seems to inform the movie’s characterization of the role played by Isaac De Bankole; and pictures of Edgar Allan Poe and Edie Sedgwick. —A+

Chandu The Magician (Kino Lorber)

The dream team of William Cameron Menzies (direction) and James Wong Howe (cinematography) having some fun with pulpy radio-play characters, baroque villainy, in-camera effects and so on. The material used in the Blu-ray of this 1932 picture shows some damage (speckles and such), especially during transitions. Still great, sometimes dazzling, fun, not least due to Bela Lugosi’s scenery-chewing as a baddie named Roxor. (In future sequels he would play the hero Chandu, just to confuse people.) Commentator Greg Mank is super enthusiastic albeit possibly unavoidably stodgy in his praise of analog effects as opposed to these kids today with the CGI. Pretty much all the extras are taken from the 2008 Fox DVD, including a commentary by Richard Schickel that I’ve still not gotten around to listening to. —B+

Death Laid An Egg (Cult Epics)

What do you say about a 1968 giallo starring Jean-Louis Trintingant, Gina Lollobrigida, and Candy’s Ewa Aulin that climaxes with the introduction of a headless, all-breast-meat live chicken? Quite a few things, and I said some of them about eight years ago in a piece for MUBI, in which I categorized this picture as being one of the “genre films that embedded a Marxist critique of Western economic and/or social practices into the thrills of their particular subsets.” This transfer beats hell out of the Japanese standard def DVD that was my reference for the review, which like my first disc of All The Colors of the Dark, was letterboxed in a 4x3 format. The image here is pretty bright; in sequences when there’s a lot of white light pouring through windows you get the impression of tipping into overexposure. But everything holds nicely, making the viewing experience gratifying. I did not spring for the three-disc version that was part of the crowd funding campaign for the disc, which included a CD of Bruno Maderna’s striking modernist score. —B+

The Earth Dies Screaming (Kino Lorber)

This 1964 British sci-fi cheapie is one of those pictures that, seen at an early enough age, will lodge in one’s unconscious and forever resonate with the stiff, sniffy inverse-claustrophobia of its scenes depicting human survivors of an alien onslaught sniping at each other in empty pubs and hotel lobbies. The sense of desolate isolation created by director Terence Fisher and his cast (especially the ever-tetchy Dennis Price) is not upended by the ridiculous dome-headed killer robots roaming the empty streets, but enhanced by them. After years away from the picture, you’re not sure if it’s something you saw as a movie, or just dreamed. But it is real, as this Blu-ray attests. This peculiarly remarkable film is presented in a good-looking, smooth, 1.66 picture. The commentary from Richard Harland Smith is good and thorough (dig, for instance, how he identifies footage repurposed from Village of the Damned) and leavened by his dry sense of humor: “We begin…with stock footage.” —A-

Freebie and the Bean (Warner Archive)

Did Stanley Kubrick really call this the best movie of 1974? Because it’s not very good. This despite being shot by Laszlo Kovacs, having a theme song crooned by Bobby Hart , and featuring a glimpse of City Lights books early on. Other things that had me on its side included a terrifying scene on a building crane, a vehicle featuring the logo “Vertigo Trucking Company,” and, well, not much else. But as it happens, James Caan and Alan Arkin yelling at each other for almost two hours is not as entertaining as it sounds. (Yes, this is my first time seeing it. I couldn’t make it to the movie when it first opened, despite its poster tease "...and look who’s playing Consuelo.” [It’s Valerie Harper].) The image is vivid enough that it’s no trouble at all to see that during one shot in the rough-housing-around-the-fountain scene, Caan is replaced by a very indifferently disguised stunt double. The ending, when put up against The Color of Night, suggests that Richard Rush, the director of both pictures, has some issues with trans people. I guess the thing has curio value. Inspirational dialogue: “She’s on the pill.” —B-

Funeral Parade of Roses (Cinelicious Pics)

Speaking of Kubrick, it’s said that this 1969 quasi-underground picture by Toshio Matsumoto was screened by Kubrick as research for A Clockwork Orange. Lest that give you the wrong impression, this is hardly a picture about wayward/criminal youth, regardless of what Japan’s policy concerning trans people or cross-dressers. In any event, this is a remarkably striking picture in every particular, starting with lead performer Pita (a.k.a. Peter), whose portrayal of the beautiful night life queen Eddie makes everything else about the film possible. Pita’s own artifice of self-presentation constitutes an immutable truth that makes the movie’s diverse postmodern strategies not just unforced, but necessary. The movie’s black-and-white immediacy is beautifully captured in the transfer, and there’s a superb and informative commentary by Chris Desjardins, a.k.a. Chris D. of Flesheaters and fanzine fame (the prior DVD edition of this, from Eureka!/Masters of Cinema, had liner notes from Jim O’Rourke—musicians looove this movie). The package is rounded out by a separate disc of eight shorts by Matsumoto, ranging from the early ‘60s to 1975, many featuring psychedelic music by Toshi Ichiyanagi, avant garde composer and ex-husband of Yoko Ono. —A+

Le Gai Savoir (Kino Lorber)

Released on Blu-ray in tandem with La Chinoise, this is arguably the more difficult of the two films that Godard made in the run up to May ’68. These prophetic pictures were of course irrevocably affected by the events they more or less predicted. Our world is still wracked by the concerns, philosophical and social, of the films; only the vocabulary has changed. Savoir, originally conceived for television, has no story as such; instead, it features Jean-Pierre Léaud and Juliette Berto, as characters named Emile and Patrice (referencing Rousseau and Lumumba) but also as themselves, inhabiting the black expanse of a studio and talking education, overlaid frequently by montages that are, no surprise, quintessentially Godardian. The movie gets more visually “interesting” the more you watch it, actually, and the disc includes an informative and cogent commentary by Adrian Martin. Also, and this is not an insignificant detail, Léaud and Berto have the richest, most lustrous hair of anyone in motion pictures before and after this film. It’s not just the backlighting. It’s great hair. —A+

Gidget (Twilight Time)

The exceptional label Twilight Time’s always idiosyncratic releases suggest an alternate history of Hollywood. Not an anti-canon so much as an aesthetic animated by discrete pop cultural blips that were executed with notable technical panache. This 1959 picture, in CinemaScope and “Columbia Color” finds the studio, bereft of Harry Cohn (he died in February 1958) grappling to deal with the Youth Culture. Adapting a novel by Fredrick Kohner (Susan Kohner’s uncle, since you ask) that he based on his own teen daughter’s adventures with surfing, it came up with this oddity. Sandra Dee plays the title character, a “girl midget” who’s roundly sassed when she tries to ingratiate herself into a cadre of male surfers, including the snooty Moondog (James Darren) and the adult beachcomber “The Big Kahuna” (Cliff Robertson). Look for Tom Laughlin, Doug McClure, and Yvonne Craig in small roles. Cringe at dialogue like “Hey Moondoggie! You’re not going for that jailbait caper are you?” Thrill to the unexpected lyricism of Cliff Robertson looking out of the Kahuna’s shack at all the younger surfers. Directed by Paul Wendkos with an efficiency he would be disinclined to supply in his later films (trust me, I watched The Mephisto Waltz a few months ago), this is an often glum and tetchy film that gets downright weird when the moments of tension are broken by characters bursting into song, because while it may not be a full-fledged drama it sure ain’t a musical either.   A fascinating artifact and of course it looks mighty good. Not much shaking in the extras department, save a typically astute Julie Kirgo essay. —B+

Innocent Blood (Warner Archive)

At the Venice Film Festival last fall, John Landis headed the jury, and so they showed a lot of his stuff, some newly restored. The video for “Thriller” isn’t that great, really. The making-of documentary is slightly more interesting, and creepy in part. 1985’s Into the Night, which screened in a restored version, is a remarkably indulgent movie in soooo many ways. Many of which sound cool. You’d think a picture in which David Bowie has a knife fight with Carl Perkins would be some kind of sure thing, but you’d be surprised. The whole thing is logy as hell, every scene a kind of non-sequitur. And the overall sadism had a self-serving AND self-loathing quality to in. It made me wonder: had Landis forgotten how to make a movie after that Twilight Zone business? Not that it wouldn’t have arguably served him right—but this isn’t the venue for such discussion. (Although, when you consider the entirety of the Landis Sage you may reasonably conclude that karma doesn't exist, or if it does exist, it is a weirdo rather than a bitch.) Anyway, I mention all this because part of my interest in this high-def version of was my curiosity as to whether, five films after Night, he had remembered how to make a movie. The answer is, kind of. This super-grisly horror comedy from 1992 sort of ups the ante on American Werewolf In London’s total disregard for human life. The hook here is a turned vampire victim who likes it, and can derive some advantage of if, that is, Pittsburgh mob maniac Sallie the Shark, played by Robert Loggia with chop-smacking ferocity. A kind of genre template for Loggia’s Mr. Eddie in Lost Highway. The Blu-ray gets the movie’s garish color schemes—lots of neon-lit nightclubs and stuff—very well. I said it back then (in Entertainment Weekly I think), and I'll say it now: any movie that puts Don Rickles and Dario Argento in the same frame has got something going for it. —B

Kill Baby Kill (Kino Lorber)

These are the times that try men’s souls, to be sure. On the other hand, think back to thirty years ago, when the only way we could watch movies such as All The Colors of the Dark, Death Laid an Egg, and this were via VHS tapes from Video Search of Miami or something. And now we have them on Blu-ray, complete, often restored, sometimes pristine. This 1966 Mario Bava picture is a key work in many respects, amping up the dreamlike qualities that would spin into a fantastic delirium in his subsequent Lisa and the Devil. It also features the Demonic Little Girl figure that would recur in Fellini’s greatest film, Toby Dammit. Which, Tim Lucas allows in his typically excellent commentary, could have its roots in Juliet of the Spirits. In any event, each director and each little girl is somehow distinctive in spite of the affinities. In the case of the one in this picture, Tim tells us, it’s in part because the child is a little boy in a wig, who was not happy to be in the role. —A

Letter From An Unknown Woman (Olive Signature)

This replaces the Olive Blu-ray from a few years back and it’s worth the double-dip I’m afraid. The 4K transfer appears to have been scanned from different source; there’s a Universal logo before the Dozier/Rampart card…but that’s hardly the only difference. The point is that differences are clear from the opening credits on. It’s a picture improvement of maybe 30 percent, possibly more. So, for this exquisite bit of canon you know what you have to do. The extras are almost all astonishing. Lutz Bocher’s commentary is unlike any I’ve heard before. His delivery is kind of abrupt (sounds as if English is not his first language). But his detailed formal analysis, and accounts of what the film could have included, how shots were constructed, and so on, all informed by production documentation and Ophuls’ own notes, consistently informs and fascinates. Tag Gallagher’s visual essay is a tour de force on the film’s very subjective POV. There’s a brief, moving interview with Marcel Ophuls, son of Max and a master of cinema his own self. Dana Polan on the origins of the production is very good. The only dud in the supplements (and not one worth docking a notch over) is cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ tiredly snide interview, in which he reveals that the first time he laid eyes on Letter star Louis Jourdan, it was in Swamp Thing. Wow, man. —A+

The Lost World (Flicker Alley)

This is hardly a conventional upgrade from standard-def to high. It’s a whole new construction of this 1925 granddaddy of giant monster movies, supplemented by a raft of scholarship and exciting related material. The movie itself, with giant reptile special effects work by Willis O’Brien, is an important precursor to King Kong but also a brisk and sometimes eccentric, other times repellent, adventure yarn, based on a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. The movie looks remarkable for the most part, and the commentary by Nicolas Ciccone consistently identifies the source materials for each part of the reconstruction. It does a lot more, too. Conan Doyle’s yarn was inspired, you will learn, by the real-life explorers who were the subjects of this years The Lost City of Z. Ciccone also frankly addresses the movie’s repellent racist aspects, particularly with respect to the character Zambo, a betrayal, as it happens of Conan Doyle’s more benign but still colonialist conception. The more pleasant stuff includes two Willis O’Brien shorts, test footage from his abortive Creation, deleted scenes. Serge Bromberg contributes a “Secrets of the Restoration” essay in the booklet—A+

Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case (Kino Lorber)

Whose fault is it when critical reputations go down the tubes in a way that’s so ignominious that twenty years (or so) after the fact, a rep-series revision, motivated as much by sentimental regret as it is by critical curiosity, emerges to dole out praise and blame and woe? In other words, does every reassessment of William Wyler have to drag Andrew Sarris for his “Strained Seriousness” categorization of the director in The American Cinema? Why not accompany a celebration of Wyler with André Bazin’s celebration of The Little Foxes instead? Also, Ben-Hur is not that good. Come on. Anyway. This is a roundabout way of noting that this year saw the re-release of two 1950s policiers, based on popular novels by Georges Simenon about his classic detective Maigret. These pictures were directed by Jean Delannoy, one of François Truffaut’s favorite punching bags back when Truffaut was a critic. Invariably, when such pictures are revived, they are accompanied by complaints about how mean Truffaut was. Delannoy is not someone whose films I know a lot about, and when 1958’s Maigret Sets A Trap was revived for theatrical release in the fall, I checked it out. It’s not at all bad—Jean Gabin, while not exactly Simenon’s own vision of the detective, takes over the character with brio, and the story is a good juicy one. But in what should have been the film’s climax, I began to get what Truffaut was on about—the goods Delannoy delivers are talky, monochromatic, pedestrian, saved only by Gabin and the story itself. Not for nothing, but this 1959 follow-up, which did not play in any N.Y. theater in the fall, is rather a better picture. It’s got a more interesting story, the milieu is more intriguing, or at least intriguingly portrayed; the direction is better. And the 1.66 image on the disc is superb. Alas, that’s it for the Delannoy/Gabin Maigret films, so maybe I should be ticked at Truffaut—seems like Jean was hitting his stride with the material just as Cahiers was hammering him. —B+

Night School (Warner Archive)

I thought this 1981 picture would be fun to check out, as it was one of the remaining few entries in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film that I haven’t seen. About ten minutes into the movie I paused it to see what Michael Weldon said about it—he was a lot more dismissive than I remembered. And yet here I was, watching. Oops. No point in stopping now, though. The “Lorimar Presents” logo at the opening was a nice blast from the past…and the 1980s grain in the nighttime image was not displeasing. Nor was the news that the DP was Mark Irwin, who worked with David Cronenberg for many years. Sure, the director was also responsible for one-fifth of the second Casino Royale, as well as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Cromwell, and Sextette—not the credentials you are necessarily looking for in a Halloween derivative. Ken Hughes’ sense of restraint only takes him so far, though; while this decapitating-serial-killer tale is not inordinately gory, the vast array of red herrings the plot offers up include a mentally disabled busboy. Bad form. Also anachronistic is the half-milquetoast/half-smarm-king academic who, for all his thin-haired blandness, is catnip to the lady grad students. Drew Snyder, who portrays the simp, puts on a hilarious look of resignation when his character overhears the female dean telling a TA that she’s going to fire him. is going to fire him. So, yes, the main distinguishing characteristic of this movie is that it features Rachel Ward taking a shower. And she’s not killed therein. For very good reason. Anyway, the presentation is, some would say, better than the movie deserves. But my argument, as a general rule, is that all preserved films should be this well-preserved. Whatever. —B

The Old Dark House (Cohen Media)

As I wrote when I saw it in Venice in September: “This is the archetypal horror comedy, or would be, had it ever been equaled.” Or nearly equaled, even, I ought to have said. To continue: “Ernest Thesiger is genius incarnate as the house’s very nervous master Horace Fenn, while British stage actor Eva Moore is an exemplary crone as his religious fanatic sister. The movie brims with quotable dialogue, including the immortal line ‘Have a potato.’ The restoration, produced by U.S. outfit Cohen Media, looks dazzling.” Yes it sure does, and never more so that when Moore takes Gloria Stuart’s silk nightie between her fingers and says “That’s fine stuff—but it’ll rot.” You really get the fineness of the stuff. And the distorted mirror business that follows looks like it could have been shot yesterday. Extras are from the prior Kino disc. And are fine. —A+

Red Line 7000 (Kino Lorber)

One of the hardest Hawks films to see, generally, which has been frustrating for not just cinephiles as a general class but for Robin Wood devotees—his chapter on the 1965 picture is one of the hinges that hold his 1968 book-length study of Hawks together. So this disc is cause for much celebration. It presents the film well, with a solid image and clear soundtrack. The racing footage has some rawness to it, but that’s kind of an asset—there’s a resonance of period authenticity to it. At the start it feels like Only Angels Have Wings transposed to the world of stock car racing, but it mutates into a sort of All-American La Ronde, one in which the male characters—typical Americans!—suffer from sexual jealousy of practically maniacal proportions. Although the film, true to its era, looks at them as Normal Guys With A Few Problems. James Caan’s character is particularly truculent, and Caan portrays him with utter conviction. The whole thing’s kind of unsettling. On the other hand, George Takei has a small role, and the nightclub musical number is almost completely insane, and that’s fun, no? Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo, usually the highlights of the Twilight Time commentaries, are here, and Kirgo has a special insight—her dad wrote the screenplay. She is not as partial to the movie as the relation might imply, which makes for an even more interesting commentary than she usually delivers. —A

Suspiria (Synapse)

I know that Synapse head Don May, Jr., has been working on this labor of love for literally years. David Mackenzie, who did the compression and authoring on the project, is a friend and someone I’ve worked with on a lot of Blu-ray projects—he is the recordist on every  Blu-ray commentary I’ve done in the 21^st century. So I’m…partial? But I’m also a Suspiria nut, and a demanding one.  If this were to disappoint, I might have just let it pass without comment. But honestly, I’d also be shocked, because I know the technical acumen and commitment to quality of the people making the product. Well, here we are, and here is a review of it, so you can guess what I think of the new version. Indeed, it is wonderful. Indeed, I’ve never seen it look better. Yes, all of the baroque lighting effects are incredibly vivid and fresh but there's more. The flesh tones are incredible. Jessica Harper’s “natural” healthiness versus the overly made-up overseers of the ballet school, or the ruddiness of the professor with whom she consults near the end—this  contrast constitutes its own theme in the movie as presented here. There is none of the oversaturation that plagued the German version I wrote about in 2010. It’s beautiful. Perfect. Too perfect? Since the restoration has the enthusiastic approval of cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, I’m comfortable saying “not likely.” And the audio. There’s an amazing depth of detail that I’ve never heard before in this very loud but intricately “composed” movie. I’ll be honest, I haven’t even delved into the separate disc of supplements yet, and if I did things like declare “Blu-ray of the year” this would win in a walk, even if I never got around to those extras. The extras I did sample were the two audio commentaries. Troy Howarth is very informative with bios of the cast, stories of the movie’s development, and whether or not it’s a “giallo.” He says no and I agree. On the other commentary, David Del Valle and pal Derek Botelho kick around critical ideas, invoke Jung, and all that. They also speculate on a theoretical Suspiria expanded universe: “Are we to believe that some of these girls are part of the coven?” I got the collectible steelbook, which I pre-ordered for a mere $50; on Amazon it’s going for $90 as I write this. I pre-ordered not because I’m such a collectibles enthusiast, but because I wanted to SEE THIS THING, and man am I glad I did. $90 is a lot of money, and I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, but knowing what I know now, I'd shell it out if I had to. If Synapse's pattern runs true to what it was with the Phenomena Blu-ray of a few years back, a less fancy version of the same restoration will come down the pike some time. But none such item has been announced at press time as they say. Inspirational commentary line, from Mr. Del Valle: “You can never use black magic to do anything good. Kenneth Anger told me that.”—A+

Witchhammer (Second Run)

To paraphrase John Belushi, I suggest you buy as many Eastern European period films from the '50s through the '70s as you can. I'm not sure I've ever been let down by one yet. This nightmarish 1970 Czech picture directed by Otakar Vávra—who began as an avant-garde filmmaker (his first short, 1931's The Light Penetrates The Dark, made when he was 20, is included here) and died in 2011 at the age of 100, with over 50 films to his credit—is a meticulous simulation of an ignorant procedural. Given the circumstances of its production, it is of course specifically allegorical. But it also speaks the universal truth that abuse of power should come as no surprise, and a few other universal truths as well. Its widescreen black-and-white imagery is dazzlingly precise, creating an unusually immersive atmosphere. Second Run, the British label responsible for this release, always does an amazing job with its releases and I'm here with good news: its Blu-ray discs tend to be region-free. That goes for last year's Horse Money and its new upgrade-from-standard-def disc of The Cremator, which I haven't been able to watch yet. So if you've been curious about this fare but lacking in what had been the necessary equipment, jump on all three of these.  —A+

Young Mr. Lincoln (Criterion)

Beyond the high-def image, which is breathtaking, this Blu-ray reissue of a Criterion standard-def features a new, excellent supplement. Yes, I’m bookending Consumer Guide with Blu-rays of two John Ford films with audio commentaries by Joseph McBride. Here McBride considerately separates myth from fact and contributes deep-dish analysis of Henry Fonda’s performance. Frank as ever, he recalls some personal anecdotes about Fonda that reveal both commendable and less-than-delectable aspects of the actor’s character, but his storytelling never takes a punitive tone. He explains why Ford was usually anti-moving camera (in the context of one of this film’s few tracking shots, one which I reckon was suggested by a Murnau work) and takes apart the famous Cahiers du Cinema deconstruction of the movie. Geoffrey O’Brien’s booklet essay, featuring the line, “We are invited to indulge a naïve lyricism that always proves deceptive,” holds up, as of course it would. As for the movie, well, cinema doesn’t get more essential than this. As Orson Welles said (and of course this is cited by McBride): “John Ford knows what the earth is made of.” —A+

Return Of The Son Of Blu-ray Consumer Guide: July Fourth Weekend 2016 Edition

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to be shutting down the blog maybe, not writing for no money ever again definitely, and all sorts of stuff like that. And yet. Here it is. Some things refuse to be killed, and/or die a natural death.

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

Recommended without comment (because I got to them too late to really formulate readable capsules in time for my self-imposed deadline here): Belladonna of Sadness (Cinelicious Pics), Everybody Wants Some!! (Paramount), Hawks and Sparrows/Pigsty (Region B U.K. import, Eureka!/Masters of Cinema), Horse Money (Region B U.K. import, Second Run), The Last Command (Region B U.K. import, Eureka!/Masters of Cinema).

Appassionata (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time’s eclecticism is genuinely unpredictable; just when you think you’ve got the label’s tastes pegged (it loves strong music scores, CinemaScope, uber-competent studio directors like Henry Levin and…Ralph Nelson? Yeah, Ralph Nelson) than they release something wholly other. In this case, a 1974 Italian domestic drama with 100-proof psychosexual content, starring then-teen Ornella Muti and then-newly-turned-20 Eleonora Giorgi. Gabrielle Ferzetti, of L’Avventura jaded-stud fame, looks pretty tired of being a jaded stud, and is here Muti’s dad, a dentist whose wife is going bonkers and whose daughter’s best friend has the hots for him. The movie’s opening scene features young Ornella in schoolgirl white blouse and sweater, so you know the movie wants to make you feel dirty right off the bat. About 41 minutes in, do take note of the “what the hell is she doing with that dog scene.” Eventually all the sexual repression/expression—which really begins roiling once Ornella’s character starts inexplicably swaying her butt at daddy—builds to a, um, climax of staggering WTFness. Not since the “Knock it off, Vix” shower sequence in Russ Meyer’s Vixen has the male gaze had to contend with such seriously icky mixed feelings about being the male gaze. As for the disc, damn—the transfer has excellent color values and the image quality overall is spectacular for a 40-plus year old film. Not big on extras, but a highly memorable viewing experience. Inspirational dialogue: “All big, handsome cowards, all filthy pigs like you are.”

—­B

Bad Influence (Shout! Factory)

Early David Koepp, sure, why not. Early Curtis Hanson, ditto. Relatively early Robert Elswit—WTFIU?! This 1990 movie still looks and feels a little‘80s, and some of that look and feel is a mite cheesy—the white walls of James Spader’s apartment, the overdetermined shadows of Venetian blind slats on Lowe’s face. On the other hand, the late afternoon job promotion scene with Spader and John DeLancie is pretty sweet and definitely suggests visual expressiveness to come from the Elswit camp. As does the discovery of the emptied-out apartment. And then there’s that great party scene where they’re projecting Alphaville on the wall of a house. Ace soundtrack too—Les Negresses Vert, Don Cherry and Nana Vasconcellos, Gavin Friday… and the movie holds up, for the most part. The sole extra of note is a 30-minute interview with, Koepp, which has lots of solid stuff. —B+

 

Candy (Kino Lorber)

Not a bad looking disc, but pace pal-of-mine Kim Morgan, who contributes an eloquent and impassioned defense on one of the discs extras, an almost unspeakably bad film. I think the only way a viable movie could have been made from Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s porn pastiche would have been to film it completely straight =-faced, in the mode of either Douglas Sirk or Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. Renata Adler was terribly unkind to young Ewa Aulin in the former’s New York Times review of the movie but she also had a point—the poor young thing looks so puffy in the film’s opening scene that she’s almost unrecognizable in the following schoolroom scene. Which is where the film’s problems proper begin, with John Astin’s intolerable nonstop mugging. A fascinating curio though, what with the cameos (Brando’s is less mortifying than Burton’s) and the location stuff (is she actually walking over the Verrazano Bridge?) and so on. Good looking disc, too; the other extra is screenwriter Buck Henry offering a frank assessment of the film while unabashedly recalling what a great time he had with director Christian Marquand while making it. —B-

The Chase (Kino Lorber)

Of the 300 movies titled The Chase, this 1946 Arthur Ripley-directed number, from a Cornell Woolrich tale, definitely belongs in the top five at least. The thing about Woolrich, or one thing about Woolrich, is that like a lot of genre writers he was not allergic to using pretty hoary plot devices but was always smart enough to use them in completely insanely inspired ways. As you will see if you’re watching this very nicely restored and transferred thriller for the first time, in which Robert Cummings, as a down on his luck nice guy who turns chauffeur to bonkers gangster Steve Cochran and OF COURSE falls for his wife Michèle Morgan, is largely eclipsed by his co-stars, another one of whom is Peter Lorre. The pervasive atmosphere of the picture is such that it’s completely fitting that Guy Maddin does the commentary. (“A little sprocket wriggle…it’s still alive, in other words,” he notes of the UCLA restoration.) Other extras include two-count-‘em-two radio adaptations of the Woolrich story. —B+

La Chienne (Criterion)

I’ve always been pretty nuts about Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street, which was based on this 1931 Jean Renoir picture. A picture, I admit, that I had never seen until now. This is another reason Criterion is kind of the best. Street gets the kudos for bone-chilling sexual sadism and voluptuousness, and near-nihilist ending hijinks, while Renoir’s film is a remarkably fluid slice of sleazy life that displays a lot more sexual frankness and has a realism that’s as raw-nerve-provoking as Lang’s fevered stylization. (Check out the amazing hand-held camerawork in the arts-patron-courting scene here.) Hence, the films are as alike as Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir are alike, and as different as Edward G. Robinson is different from Michel Simon. The Criterion package also contains Renoir’s first sound feature, which looks as good as the main feature, another 97 minutes from Jacques Rivette’s made-for-television study of/tribute to Renoir, and more. An essential purchase. —A+

City Heat (Warner)

The picture quality on this is really something—more ‘80s cheese, this time ‘80s cheese doing period, so lots of red neon and such. So the disc is a pleasure to look at, always. And for about three or four minutes you get the feeling that this might hold for the movie itself—it can’t be as bad as the critics said it was, or as I remember it, can it? Oh yes it can— this is just a really terrible movie that gets worse as it goes on. I can forgive Clint Eastwood a lot but clearly his inclination to act upon his inability to get along with Blake Edwards was a major failing on his part. For Eastwood or Burt completists only. I may be both those things, as I still have the Blu-ray of At Long Last Love (don’t even get me started). —C+

Cuba (Kino Lorber)

In his book Getting Away With It, partially a series of interviews with Richard Lester, Steven Soderbergh classes this picture in the category of “fascinating films that get better with age.” Interestingly, when he made Che with Hispanic actors in Hispanic roles and shot the whole thing (almost) in Spanish, he added, within the cinematic canon, to the aggregate of movies that actually make Cuba, with its casting of the likes of Martin Balsam and Chris Sarandon in roles as Cuban natives, seem that much more anachronistic. Nevertheless, this remains fascinating, particularly for Lester nuts (and why wouldn’t you be one) and those who enjoy watching Sean Connery deconstruct his screen persona (which, as Lester revealed to Soderbergh, was something that in this particular case he was actually rather reluctant to do). This disc provides a very handsome version of the film, which, as it happens, twists around the standard-issue Casablanca scenario in a way that Soderbergh would later attempt with The Good German, a movie that, it so happens, I have found to have gotten better with age. Circles within circles. But back to Cuba: Evocative and trenchant visuals, low-key characterizations, and the tragic-comedy of errors in the climactic battle scene really sells the whole thing. The unstable dynamic between Connery and female lead Brooke Adams is fantastic and rare. The only extras are trailers, but that’s okay. —B+

Death By Hanging (Criterion)

Nagisa Oshima’s 1968 anti-death penalty movie is part absurdist theater, part parable, possibly not wholly artistically successful in the way that, say Cruel Story Of Youth is, but most certainly more that a curio. Its claustrophobic setting, unshowy black and white cinematography, and standard 1.85 frame combine to yield, well, not one of Oshima’s most visually distinctive films. But the animating impulse behind it gathers a power that increases the way decibels do, and yields a movie whose hatred of injustice is potent, vicious. —A

Dillinger (Arrow)

Watching this excellent release a while back, thoughts along the lines of “John Milius is so much better on paper than in reality” kept bouncing through my head. But the movie’s snuck up on me since; little bits in which Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Harry Dean Stanton et. al. do all sorts of their characteristic stuff, and the brutality of the shootout scenes, and lots more, keep popping up and resonating. So, you know. A picture that can displace the 1945 Lawrence Tierney Dillinger from my consciousness is worth reckoning with. Excellent transfer, fantastically persistent use of “Red River Valley,” and the customary passel of engaged extras. My favorite has producer Lawrence Gordon waxing sort-of nostalgic for his time in no-budget filmmaking and expressing an affection for and belief in Milius that you wish every producer had for a good director. —A

Dr. Strangelove (Criterion)

Not much to say about this one. Lately I’ve been seeing a few Feisty Young People weighing in on how they “don’t like” this movie, and I don’t know what to tell them except “Bless you hearts” and/or “Good luck.” (I know the Self Styled Siren doesn’t consider it her cup of tea either, but she gets a dispensation because, well, Self-Styled Siren.) It’s a genuinely canonical film and The Culture is stuck with it, although you’re of course under no obligation, say, to buy this Blu-ray. But if you are a sensible person and you like this movie you definitely should. On this new transfer derived from new a 4K scan—made from the same source as the prior excellent Sony BR—there’s an overall barely detectable uptick…but an uptick nonetheless. A good point of comparison—the low angle close-ups of Sterling Hayden and his cigar, where there’s definitely more facial-crease detail, for instance. So until 4K discs, players, and displays are common, this is the definitive home version for the movie alone. The extras manage to say a few newish things about the movie, which you might not have thought possible. —A+

Eureka (Twilight Time)

A very odd movie that’s been very difficult to see decently in a proper state for some time, this is the object of near-simultaneous Blu-ray releases by Twilight Time in the U.S. and Eureka!/Masters of Cinema in the U.K. In the spirit of international cooperation I hoped to foster in my New York Times piece about differing U.K. and U.S. Blu-rays of The Fury, the two releases share the on-disc extras, my favorite of which is the nearly hour-long chat with screenwriter Paul Mayersberg in which he lays out the movie’s complex symbology, and discusses how it does and does not riff on Citizen Kane. The region-free TT disc gets an edge for its region-freeness, while the Eureka gets an edge for having more Nicolas Roeg stuff (including an excerpt from his forthcoming autobiography) in the printed extras. The movie looks stunning on both.—A+

 

Father Of The Bride (Warner Archive)

Wow. When Elizabeth Taylor comes bounding down the stairs to greet Spencer Tracy in her first scene, I almost cried. I wonder how this film will play for people who don’t have the same associations of Tracy and Taylor that I others of my and prior generations do. But I insist they had something numinous that transcends that, and that anyone who can watch the aforementioned bit and not have their heart melt just a little might not be a movie person, or a person. Anyway. When Scorsese had Vicki spending an afternoon at this movie in Raging Bull he knew whereof he spoke, that is, who MGM and Vincente Minnelli made this movie for. This 1950 delight presents a vision of middle class America that must look now to be 500 times more of a fantasy than it might have then, but I know it was the America that my children of immigrant grandparents bought into (that is, desired) big time. The movie version was as seductive as Lubitsch’s Paris, Hollywood. Minnelli’s meticulous assuredness is evident in every shot of this movie. This, of course it one of his parables of normalcy, which through the ‘50s and into the ‘60s would kind of alternate with his parables of neurosis (The Cobweb, Two Weeks In Another Town). He was so absolutely at home with both. But also very knowing about “normalcy:” note the woozy dissolves after the Dunston patriarch breaks out the martinis at the first in-laws summit. The high angle shots from church ceiling of the wedding rehearsal and its attendant choreography are also spectacular. Every frame of this Archive Blu-ray is worship-worthy. Just perfect. And you can also see why Truffaut kinda hated Minnelli—he’s so spectacularly adept at reifying values Truffaut probably considered utterly sham at the time. Very few extras, which would normally deprive it of an A+ but I’m still giving it an —A+

Garden of Evil (Twilight Time)

When the Fox DVD came out, I thought it was one of the most visually beautiful discs I’d ever seen…this Blu-ray is almost maybe too gorgeous: those matte paintings in the first cantina scene look an awful lot like, well, matte paintings. But you can still drown in the blues if you like. This better than decent 1954 double-cross Western is also supplied with, among other spiffy supps, a commentary from TT honcho Nick Redman and three film music guys: Stephen C. Smith (a Bernard Herrmann biographer), John Morgan, William T. Stromberg. They talk about a lot more than the music though: other topics include the studio system, optical vs. magnetic tracks, how and why they don’t make ‘em like these anymore, etc. A terrific package overall. Which leads to my question for Twilight Time: How about Warlock, pretty please?—A

Gold (Kino Lorber)

“No more mischief with the high voltage!” one character says in this 1934 Ufa production, presented by Kino Lorber from a handsome Murnau Foundation restoration. This sci-fi melodrama about modern-day alchemists and the corporate scum who seek to steal their secrets could have used a little more mischief with the high voltage, frankly. The electrical arcs redolent of Metropolis are a little more fun than the overheated machinations of the characters. Although it is interesting to contemplate this picture’s circumscribed world, in which an alluring vamp like Brigitte Helm could fall big time for a puffed up dude who looks like Charles Dance’s stuffier grandfather. I’m glad this disc exists, but I still more-eagerly await a Blu-ray of one of those fucked up Alraune movies I read about in the Overlook sci-fi encyclopedia. —B+

Hound of the Baskervilles (Twilight Time)

Haven’t seen the U.K. version from Arrow, but this version of the 1959 Hammer picture, with Peter Cushing as Holmes, Christopher Lee as Sir Henry, and André Morrell as the most competent, least goofy Watson ever, is really beautiful. Scanned from spotless materials, it seems, with great color. A really fun, effective movie; Cushing’s Holmes is a thing of beauty to the extent I sometimes consider it better than Rathbone’s. The wide-ranging extras here include two equally diverting commentaries. —A+

I Saw What You Did (Scream Factory)

William Castle’s 1965 hybrid of Psycho and The World Of Henry Orient certainly does not lack for novelty value, premise-wise. Capitalizing on what it presents as the new fad with the kids, it shows a couple of charming teens (and little sis too!) calling random folks and asking stupid questions. The married couple who get a call and react with grins that say “Prank calls are such good fun!” Unfortunately the girls call John Ireland and say “I know who you are and I saw what you did” right after he’s pulled his estranged wife into the shower with him to stab her to death. No really. And Ireland just gets tetchier. He develops the conviction that he can just solve all his problems by killing everyone who irritates him, not realizing this is in fact only likely to increase his troubles. Not a rational thinker. Joan Crawford, as Ireland’s inexplicable next-door neighbor AND girlfriend, is here in her second and final collaboration with Castle, and she stomps through the proceedings with real “who do I have to fuck to get off this picture” zeal. The movie is pretty crisp looking in this as-usual conscientious Shout/Scream presentation. But it is one odd picture: tonally all over the place, sometimes consciously, sometimes maybe not, and saddled with a music scores that’s part ‘60s sitcom and part…Big Valley? I’d say this could be profitably remade but contemporary phone culture doesn’t really support the idea. (A trailer in the scant supplements actually posits the phone book itself as something to be terrified of.) —B 

Journey To The Seventh Planet (Kino Lorber)

How can one not have affection for this cheesy/earnest/ambitious 1962 picture whose premise presaged Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris and by extension the two movies made from that book? As Michael Weldon summarized/rhapsodized in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia Of Film: “Five astronauts on Uranus have their brains picked by a giant eye creature. Their fears, desires, and memories appear as realistic hallucinations. One of the weird monsters is a Cyclops-dinosaur-rat animated by Jim Danforth. One of the dream women found lounging in a bikini is Greta Thyssen, seen in many of the final Three Stooges shorts. One of the astronauts is John Agar! What a movie!” Indeed. This is plainly one of the rocks upon which the church of Psychotronic/fantastic cinema is built. Carrying the torch, Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas provides an informative and astute commentary, noting of the picture that it’s “the last of the naïve films about space travel.” As for the movie itself, I’ve never seen it looking so good. Healthy color, rich detail, clean picture throughout. —A

The King and Four Queens (Olive)

The film materials used to make this high-def version, one can see from the opening craggy vistas, were ever so slightly on the pink side. But this is something that will only be really noticeably if you’re looking at it with a color corrector’s eye, not a movie-watchers. That aside, this is a handsome looking presentation of Raoul Walsh’s 1956 chamber Western, in which Clark Gable settles in at a ghost town to play footsie with the four daughters-in-law of an outlaw matriarch. All the girls are waiting for their outlaw fellas—them that’s survived, if any—to come back to the ranch with a fortune in gold. Pretty entertaining stuff. Poor Jo Van Fleet has to endure the indignity of playing mom-in-law to four actresses who are only between thirteen and seven years younger than her, and Eleanor Parker is the wiliest of the beauties. As the movie’s story is a bit of a waiting game, nobody really goes anywhere, which keeps its vistas limited. Gable plays the melodeon and sings (badly) “In The Sweet Bye And Bye.” Composer Alex North plays with some Copeland voicings during a bizarre dance sequence. The movie’s laid-back vibe may account somewhat for the filmmakers getting the definitely morally unacceptable denouement past the Breen office. Not much in the extras department, but it’s Clark Gable and Raoul Walsh. Come on. —B+

Million Eyes of Sumuru/Girl From Rio (Blue Underground)

I always stop for a Harry Alan Towers double feature. 1967’s Million Eyes, shot in expedient Techniscope, looks mighty fine here, and the movie itself promises at first to be a bikini clad feature-length catfight, which is great, but then Frankie Avalon shows up. (Uninspirational dialogue from Avalon: “I wonder if this is where I’m supposed to sing.”) The movie nonetheless maintains a certain voluptuous goofiness, thanks in part to Goldfinger girl Shirley Eaton, withstanding several not-great hair days in the title role. The movie also features George Nader reaching a kind of apotheosis, and Klaus Kinski wearing makeup that vaguely recalls that of Daniel Gelin in The Man Who Knew Too Much. You’re sold, right? But wait, there’s more: the Jess Franco directed sequel Girl From Rio, boasting wacky Rio and Brasilia locations. It’s a fun movie but a little repetitive with the mild torture scenes, which is a complaint I never thought I’d make. A very Francoesque touch is the use of what looks like a dental X-ray machine to represent a deadly heat-ray generator. In the supplements Ms. Eaton waxes slightly priggish about Mr. Franco, which made me sad, and I thought ever so slightly less of her as a result.—A-

Panic In The Year Zero (Kino Lorber)

Ray Milland’s directorial debut is a terrifically downbeat look at the disintegration of an American family as it escapes what it believes to have been a nuke attack on Los Angeles. It should make great Election Night viewing.  Milland cast himself as the stolid patriarch, a Good Liberal who has to make some Tough Choices, while Jean Hagen tamps down her comedic skills to play the world’s now most stressed-out 1950s white housewife. Mary Mitchell is good as the daughter…and Frankie Avalon, as the son, evokes the deathless question “Where the hell is Ricky Nelson when you need him?” Hell, even David Nelson would do. This is nevertheless a tough and tense picture, and it looks super crisp here. Richard Harland Smith of Movie Morlocks gives one of the most informative and well-organized audio commentaries I’ve ever heard. Discussing the movie’s locales, he starts off talking about the Republic Pictures back lot, mentions a particular house on its street set, and says “I’ll tell you about that in about 75 minutes,” and sure enough, 75 minutes later, he does. —A-

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (Olive)

A remarkably solid-looking presentation of an idiotically under seen film. George Sanders is genius, in the title role of the Maupassant-derived cad. Angela Lansbury is great and gorgeous. The script is magnificently highfalutin—the actors CLEARLY love the dialogue. Darius Milhaud did the score, and the movie is also Warren William’s last stand. Pictures of determined, even willful, refinement were director Albert Lewin’s stock-in-trade, and their aspirational qualities turned off critics like Andrew Sarris. But there are several scenes here that provide solid evidence that Lewin truly was a director of the first rank. Look at the sequence in which Sanders counts off twenty-five paces prior to a duel and tell me that’s not filmmaking. As for the refinement, maybe it seemed pretentious in 1947 but in 2016 it strikes me as rather tonic. A good and memorable film.—A-

Rollercoaster (Shout! Factory)

This 1977 movie, the first really memorable egg laid in the ‘70s disaster genre, looks really good here. Timothy Bottoms’ skin tones are a little red, but he IS playing the villain, a psycho who’s planting bombs on roller coasters at America’s amusement parks. Like Dr. Evil, he wants “one million dollars.” There’s what I like to think of as a nice in-joke here when George Segal says to Richard Widmark “You remind me of the man I work for—I don’t like him either.” “He seemed nice enough to me,” Widmark responds. The man Segal’s character works for is played by Henry Fonda, so laugh it up, Madigan people. Phoning in his demands, Bottoms talks like Douglas Rains, and Segal keeps saying “Screw you” to him. And it’s like maybe 45 minutes straight of this sort of thing. So clearly, this movie’s trouncing by the likes of Star Wars was not unearned. The Sensurround gimmick, here rendered in a mutation of three-channel stereo, is not entirely compelling either. In the disc’s sole substantial supplement, one-time child actor Tommy Cook, who came up with the story idea and the scenario, waxes so enthusiastic about his dream project you feel kinda bad that it turned out so meh. Things only really heat up about an hour and 25 minutes in, when both Sparks and a wild-eyed long-haired Craig Wasson show up. —B-

She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

They Were Expendable (Warner Archive)

“Custer is dead,” now that is one heck of an opening line. It’s the opening line of the cavalry movie, not the World War II movie, obviously. Yellow Ribbon doesn’t immediately seem to possess the gravitas of Fort Apache or even Liberty Valance, but it’s entertaining as all getout and in terms of the heavy stuff it’s a grower. The key is Ford’s use of Technicolor, which is as determinedly anti-realistic as it is in any Powell-Pressburger. We get to practically expressionist levels, particularly in the scene where Wayne’s character is at his wife’s grave site—a beautiful echo of Young Mr. Lincoln but also much more. Expendable, along with The Best Years Of Our Lives one of the Hollywood pinnacles of immediately-post WWII filmmaking, is in black and white, and visually “plainer” because it wants/needs to be. Both discs look pretty spectacular (yes, there are one or two “soft” shots in Ribbon, and here and there in Expendable the process shots are more process-y than you might remember them) and both films are library items. —A

Summer Lovers (Twilight Time)

Director Randall Kleiser contributes an informative, thorough, albeit stiffly delivered commentary to this high-def version of his shot-in-the-Greek-islands 1982 youths-experiment-in-polyamory sex drama. The scenery is pretty and the people—a very buff Peter Gallagher, a very lithe Daryl Hannah, and a very continental Valerie Quennessen—equally so. The look is sun-dappled, so it’s aged less drastically than many other 1980s pictures. Cinematographer Timothy Galfas was no Nestor Almendros, but he was no slouch either. While in several respects the movie is fluff, on a base level it’s still a smarter and more engaging movie about being a young adult in the ‘80s than fucking St. Elmo’s Fire was. And for what it’s worth, all the way down to extras casting, Kleiser really knows how to appeal to the heterosexual male gaze. —A-

Susan Slept Here (Warner Archive)

Yes, the whole setup of this not-quite-bedroom farce is potentially infuriating. (If you don’t know the setup, think of the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon dueling-Michael-Caine bit in the first Trip movie.) But the movie’s energy and spectacular visuals create a cartoon vulgarity that transcends cartoon vulgarity. Even the most relatively sedate frames of this early Frank Tashlin live action feature are pop-art insane. He makes Ann Francis look like a real-life version of his colleague Tex Avery’s Swing Shift Cinderella or some such lust object. The Blu-ray gets every last bit of visual tinsel, from the light glinting off the Christmas presents when Dick Powell steps off the elevator to the sheen of a cop’s hat band. Spectacular, and a clear influence on Godard’s Une femme est une femme if you want to get highbrow about it. —A

Suspicion (Warner Archive)

One of the most frustrating Hitchcock pictures, due to his inability to get an actually convincing ending past either the censors or the studio or whoever ultimately put the kibosh on the letter-mailing twist that should have been the final shot. Nevertheless, like every Hitchcock picture, it is of considerable interest for students of film language and other living things. The Blu-ray looks good and slick—check out Cary Grant’s pomaded coif in the “kissed in a car” scene, you can count each particular hair. Other moments jump out: the movie’s opening in the dark, Grant “breaking” the fourth wall when clowning in wretched antique chairs. The character played by Carol Curtis-Brown ought to be catnip for today’s cultural studies undergrads. There’s a certain deliciousness in Grant’s character is so abysmal, but on rewatching one gets an intense reminder of how insufferable Nigel Bruce’s best friend is as well. It’s kind of excruciating—and Hitchcock’s sympathies are with Joan Fontaine throughout: he portrays the character not as a fool but a genuinely lonely and vulnerable There’s an acute awareness of just how Grant’s character is textbook abusive, particularly in the depiction of the “give us a smile” torture he inflicts. Finally, Hitchcock and Fontaine and Grant are so great they sell the stupid ending anyway. —A

Too Late For Tears

Woman On The Run (Flicker Alley)

Two “rediscovered” and restored noirs from the always-impeccable Flicker Alley, and they are both revelatory and enjoyable. Tears features Lisabeth Scott falling in love with a suitcase full of money, and Arthur Kennedy and Dan Duryea paying the cost of that love. Byron Haskin directs with apt vinegar and movement. Woman stars poor Ann Sheridan, only 35 but aged by booze bloat, in the middle of a killer-wants-to-off-a-murder-witness plot that ends with nightmare imagery of the same horrible amusement park mascot that figures so prominently at the climax of Lew Landers’ Man In The Dark. Inspirational dialogue from the latter: “What are you worried about mister, he missed.” Both discs feature lively engaged commentaries from Alan Rode and Eddie Muller respectively, and extensive video supplements on the restoration. Noir nuts will be very satisfied. —A

Under The Sun Of Satan (Cohen)

A two-BR set, part of the label’s Pialat collection, and it’s a beautiful rendering of one of the Great Films of the 20^th century, so what do you want? The second disc of extras replicates much of the Eureka/MOC standard def set, including an interview with a very thoughtful Gerard Depardieu from 2003 in which he makes the immortal observation “acteurs son des…des…des animaux malade.” But the package does NOT contain the two Pialat shorts from the early ‘50s, and so as much as I don’t seek title redundancy in my DVD library I’m hanging on to both. But when I want to watch Satan itself, this is the version I’m watching. —A

The Vikings (Kino Lorber)

I understand that the casting of this 1958 picture (alternate title: Kirk Douglas Presents “My Life As A Blond”) imbues it with unintentional camp or kitsch value, but if you can get past that, this is a surprisingly credible period action picture and yes, Ernest Borgnine actually pulls of his role as a patriarch/warrior. This Blu-ray of the movie is very nice; the renderings of the exteriors in daylight are particularly beautiful. Some of the content is what some call “rapey” these days, with dialogue exchanges like: “She said she’d kill herself…if I touched her.” “They all say that. What they really mean is that they’ll kill themselves if you don’t!” But the story is reasonably eventful: by the end, poor Kirk has only one eye, and poor Tony Curtis only one arm: it’s hard out there for an early Common Era warrior. A career high for director Richard Fleischer, and, in a sense, for cinematographer Jack Cardiff.. —A-

Where’s Poppa? (Kino Lorber)

I have a confession to make. While this 1970 movie looms large in my childhood memory, largely due to its reputation as an object so outrageous as to be practically taboo—despite its being the product of Hollywood rather than of young John Waters—I’ve never actually seen it until a couple of weeks ago. When it first came out on DVD, I was running the DVD reviews section at Premiere, and I assigned the disc—MGM/UA, if I recall correctly—to the woman who I would eventually marry. I don’t remember why I did that. “Was it to punish you?” I asked her the other day. “I think it was more that I drew the short straw,” she said. Because now that I’ve seen the movie I’m a little mixed up about it. Despite the participation of very talented people, from director Carl Reiner on down, the movie is creepily unpleasant in a way that goes beyond the standard level of discomfort aspired to by black comedies. It’s unremittingly ugly and racist, and not all that funny either. I had not been aware, not having seen it, that the whole thing, a miserable scenario in which George Segal contends with a mother whose dementia has rendered her, well, demented, takes place over a fraught maybe 30-hour period. The movie’s extended rape, um, joke, is curious. In a sense it’s too ridiculous/idiotic to be taken in earnest, but it still makes you want to take a long shower. The climactic scene at a senior “home” run by Paul Sorvino is, on the other hand, pointedly and purposefully horrific—one of the aspects of the movie that give it a “you won’t believe it unless you see it” reputation. Which is not a recommendation. The transfer is good looking—ever dingy moldy tile of Segal’s shower looks dingy and moldy. —B-

The Blu-Ray Consumer Guide That Wouldn't Die: Labor Day 2014 Edition

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE: Well, when I started writing for RogerEbert.com last year, around the time MSN Movies closed up shop, I thought maybe I could "monetize" this feature. I'd pitched it around to other revenue-generating sites before, and received...unenthusiastic responses, but my Ebert pals were into it. But it really didn't work out in terms of traffic (thanks Obama) and so we decided my contributions would have to be of a different nature. But...I couldn't...stop...watching Blu-rays...and making...notes on them. So we're back at the blog, without promise of regular updating, even though if I can't sell a Gift Guide to a revenue-generating site, that'll end up here, too. Enjoy! Consume! Leave me a tip! Or not. But at least enjoy. 

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.  

25^th Hour/He Got Game (Disney)

This is the debut volume of the so-far two-volume “Spike Lee Joint” collection on Blu-ray.  If you’re strapped for media-buying cash, I’d say this is the one to get: his second-greatest film (Hour, that is, second to Do The Right Thing) alongside one of his strongest and most-worthy-of-revisiting efforts (the underrated-in-its-time Game). Both pictures look  very good to great, the extras are not comprehensive but they’re hardly negligible, and what else do you want. —A-

All That Jazz (Criterion)

Looks great, sounds great, feels great. A boatload of good extras, including some from previous incarnations, my favorite being the commentary from editor Alan Heim. (A new doc short with Heim features the editor talking a little smack about Dustin Hoffman.) The return of Erszbet Foldi, who plays the beleaguered daughter and never made another film after this! Fosse biographer Sam Wasson giving a mini-bio on camera—Wasson’s a smart guy and knows his stuff but has an unfortunate fondness for fatuous ideas, including his proposition that Quine’s My Sister Eileen is a “rinky-dink” movie. I actually first saw this at a press screening—my very first one, when I was a college student working at the school paper, I don’t know how or why I got the invite—and I was full of snotty collegiate observations about its derivativeness and was also grossed out by the open-heart surgery scenes. And yet I’ve always revisited it with affection. And now I think it’s a Great Film. It has an energy and ambition that steamrolls over its flaws, and it’s really just beautifully put together. And Roy Scheider gives the performance of seven lifetimes. Exemplary. —A+

Bang Bang You’re Dead (Olive)

This 1966 item appears to promise much to the aficionado of oddball old cinema; Tony Randall co-starring opposite Euro-beauty Senta Berger in an espionage-picture pastiche produced by Harry Alan Towers and featuring Klaus Kinski as a heavy. Alas, director Don Sharp, the man behind a bunch of lesser Hammers, doesn’t maintain anything like a snappy pace let alone inject any wit, so the biggest kicks to be derived from the picture proper come from anachronistic dialogue along the lines of “I’m with Iranian oil.” The visual presentation is soft, pleasantly colored. A bit of damage here and there but never less than watchable. But only the most fanatic of Randall, Berger, or Kinski fans will have a compelling reason to watch.  —C

Born Yesterday (Twilight Time)

This 1950 picture looks terrific, especially relative to its prior video editions: I believe I remember this title from the early VHS years. Anyway, the image is a silky-smooth black-and-white, made from materials in clearly good shape. There’s not a lot of evident DNR artifacting. This is pretty much standard operating procedure with Sony-derived product, so I’m not surprised. The soundtrack feels like it was mastered at a lower-than-standard volume, though, as sometimes we had to boost the volume to hear the dialogue. Which leads us to a problem: the movie’s really hard to listen to. And to watch sometimes. It’s actually more jarring to see Broderick Crawford smack Judy Holliday than it is to watch Lee Marvin hit any of the women in Point Blank. As much of a miracle as Holliday is, this gets as grating as any movie you can call a classic can. I’m not even sure I’d call it a classic, myself.  —B+

Caught (Olive)

This spectacular, essential 1949 not-quite-noir directed by the divine Max Ophuls (here rendered “Opuls” in the credits) gets a very solid presentation in this Olive rendering. The shot of lead actress Barbara Bel Geddes in the hospital bed looks kind of dupey but that’s the only problem I discerned. I don’t know much about the making of the movie but the way Robert Ryan’s character is rushed out of the narrative combined with the dubious hospital-bed shot inclines one to suspect studio tampering with the vision, which was partially that of Arthur Laurents, who scripted. Among its many points of interest (exceptional moving camera stuff aside, and there’s plenty of it here) is that it was edited by Robert Parrish, features the ineffable Curt Bois in a great juicy/sleazy support role, and has bit parts for future television sitcom icons  Natalie Schafer Barbara Billingsley. Also that it builds to an insane delirium that is in some respects reminiscent of Black Narcissus, of all things. It’s also a bold picture in terms of its character “likeability” or, God spare me, “relatibility” quotient: I had forgotten just how callow and whiny Bel Geddes’ character, the ostensible heroine, is for almost two-thirds of the film. Fantastic stuff in any event. Good grief, Robert Ryan’s performance. —A

The Children’s Hour (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)

This is a pretty good presentation of a dour, self-serious film that’s more an emblem of William Wyler’s downturn as a director than was his picture prior to this, the much-disparaged Ben-Hur. I kind of blame playwright/screenwriter Lillian Hellman, given Wyler’s slight rebound after this with the equally dark but much more impressive The Collector. The interest here comes from the cast’s grappling with the material. And grapple they do, as, of the principals, only Shirley MacLaine and, um, Miriam Hopkins are particularly suited to their roles. James Garner and Audrey Hepburn are obliged to run counter to their individual strengths. The picture is solid black and white in its delightfully early-60s 1.66 aspect ratio. Now a Blu-ray of The Little Foxes, that I would get behind with more enthusiasm.—B

Cobra Woman (Alive AG Region B locked German import)

Thanks to Jack Smith, and Susan Sontag’s apprehension of Jack Smith, this film and its star, non-acting bombshell Maria Montez, became defining emblems of Camp. The lush visuals and relentless ridiculousness of this second-tier romance/adventure aside, this does, when all is said and done, nevertheless present Surrealist-influenced director Robert Siodmak at a disadvantage he did not have to grapple with even with the likes of Phantom Lady. Which is a perhaps overly wordy way of saying that this is, cultural significances aside, a helluva goofy movie. This German Blu looks VERY good. A couple of shots show something like registration problems, but not that’s infrequent. Also, and I don’t know how to say this without coming off piggish so I’m just not gonna bother, but Camp icon or not, Maria Montez sure did have a rack on her. If you’re into that sort of thing, I mean. If you invest in this, remember to set the audio to English before you start the movie, or else you’ll get Sabu speaking German, and that’ll really fuck up your shit. —B+

Eden And After/The Man Who Lies (Kino/Lorber)

Having gotten through the entirety of the early films of Alain Robbe-Grillet offered in very nice editions from the fine folks at Kino/Lorber, I’ve concluded that the idea of Robbe-Grillet as a filmmaker is often more enticing/attractive than the reality. Which boils down to the fact that as sophisticated as his ideas concerning the upending of film narrative conventions were, he simply did not have the technical expertise (or, to be fair to him, in some cases, the money) to pull off his most ambitious coups. He gained fluency as he went on, to be sure: La Belle Captive, a 1983 picture not included in this series (which terminates with the 1974 Progressive Slidings of Pleasure [reviewed here]) was pretty much everything for which it aimed. But the best transposition of Robbe-Grillet’s storytelling mojo to film will ever be Resnais’ Last Year At Marienbad. As for these two pictures, the memory-and-guilt wartime labyrinth The Man Who Lies, from 1968, looks nice and clean in 1.66 black and white, and features one of the most antic and peculiar performances from Jean-Louis Trintignant, but is in many other respects dead on its feet. The 1970 Czech co-production Eden and After is a pleasingly psychedelic color picture with lots of red liquid, nudity, and deadpan depictions of perversion as it “follows” a group of students whose violent, sex-fueled gaming takes them places they hadn’t counted on, thanks to a Steranko-character-come-to-life agent played by Pierre Zimmer. Its companion piece, N Took The Dice, recut from Eden footage for a television presentation, is a funny translation of Eden’s essential abstractions into a critique of television conventions. If you can only afford one, ask yourself whether you’re more a fan of Trintignant or nude young women, and proceed accordingly. Both films: —B+

Follow That Dream (Twilight Time)

The King meets The Other King…here’s an Elvis Presley film directed by latter-day alternate-auteurism hero Gordon Douglas! How come you aren’t more excited. Although the opening of this picture sees the main characters driving over a seemingly large body of water, the 1962 film is neither set nor shot in the Florida Keys but rather in several towns in the northern and central part of that state. Florida’s a pretty big state, as it happens. In any event the sunny locations look terrific in wide-screen, as does Mr. Presley, here with nice brown hair rather than threatening dyed-black, and playing, as had become his costume, one of those likable, slightly thick, but secretly crafty and entirely decent quasi-rednecks. Those who scoff at his film career underestimate his real appeal as a screen performer; he’s thoroughly watchable, always. This picture, while less deplorably risible than, say, Kissing Cousins, still isn’t all that—the songs are not terribly distinguished, and while the female leads Anne Helm and Joanna Moore are hardly unattractive, they’re kinda bland—this could have used a Yvonne Craig or Ann-Margret. Still. It really is very briskly directed and features some bathroom humor that’s curious in a film of its vintage. That aside, it’s pretty much for the hardcore fan of Presley and/or Douglas. The former is a very powerful lobby, it seems, as it got the stretch of road featured in the opening rechristened the “Follow That Dream Highway” back in 1996.—B+

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Fox)

Wes Anderson’s latest, which surrounds a throbbing vein of melancholy with a near-insane cornucopia of eccentric and rough humor and high-whimsical pictorial detail, gets a beautiful rendering here in its parent-studio high-def release. As was the case with the theatrical presentation, the only “full screen” sequences are those in the 1.33 and 2.35 ratios: the 1.85 sections are recessed, so there’s never an ACTUAL full-screen picture on your TV display. It matters little and/or makes sense depending on your viewing temperament. The minimal extras include a fun short of Bill Murray touring the thrillingly quaint German town where much of the film was shot, and a few clever promo shorts, including one that provides the extremely daunting instructions for the baking and construction of a delightful sweet pastry featured in the film (the Mendl’s “Courtesan au Chocolat,” to be precise.)—A

Hit The Deck (Warner Archive)

This is maybe what you call a “minor” MGM musical of the ‘50s, and as such one would like to make a case for it as a representative studio product that reveals interesting things about the time it was released but oops, Wikipedia tells me the whole thing was a box office flop so…so much for flogging this as what my teenage parents were into or something. When did Vic Damone get popular, anyway? But still. This is a really nifty-looking widescreen color picture and a lot of fun in its way, but I’m the kind of guy who likes seeing Walter Pidgeon as Russ Tamblyn’s dad.  And ridiculous pretexts for musical number. The disc has really sharp color and detail. A registration issue crops up about 58 minutes in, but nothing fatal. Every character gets a song, including Damone’s mom, played by operatic singer Kay Armen.  gets a song. The Funhouse number is a real highlight, as is “Join The Navy See The World.” I dug it. —A-

Jodorowsky’s Dune (Sony)

A well-constructed documentary about an epic film that never was and never will be. Exceptionally watchable and engrossing even given the presence of my virtual reality nemesis Devin Faraci, who has a pretty squeaky voice for an Internet tough guy but whom director Frank Pavich keeps on his best behavior, and lights pretty mercifully as well.  (Kinda weird that the young’un  talks of the  riot at the Mexican premiere of  Fando and Lis as if he had been there.) Why is this desirable on Blu-ray? For the idea artwork, animation, etc., all of which looks spectacular and deserves to be seen looking so.   Many surprising folks turn up, e.g., Amanda Lear, which is one of the many things that keep it engaging. The mavens among us will also eat up the 46 minutes of deleted scenes.—A- 

King And Country (VCI)

When last we were rating Losey Blu-rays, we had Stranger on the Prowl. I watched it again after reading the great J. Hoberman’s measured praise of it in his Times column, and I still was pretty “meh” about it. Then this comes along.  As much as I have enjoyed many VCI products over the years I’ve seen a fair share of non-16x9 optimized or otherwise lacking videos from the company that I was a little wary about this, the company’s digital rendering of Losey’s superb 1964 anti-war jolt. But boy, was I pleasantly surprised. From the old-school, color Janus Films logo through the nasty rat imagery and beyond, it's a pleasure to watch. Excellent, clean black and white. A trenchant, bracingly high-modernist vision. That rat stuff it brutal, though, I’m warning you. Great acting from all the cast, toplined by Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay and featuring Barry Foster, Frenzy’s necktie killer in a prominent role. My only complaint is that the cover art is a fucking spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie before. Jeez. —A-

Kismet (Warner Archive)

It’s easy to forget this is a Vincente Minnelli movie, because, for lack of a more refined assessment, it’s all kinda goofy and borderline dumb. Mainly on account of its whole Western-Musical-Comedy-Conventions-And-Tunes-In-The-World-Of-Islam premise, which, especially nowadays, can be, in the immortal phrase of Stephen Metcalf, “off-putting to the contemporary sensibility.” It also has one of the weirdest casts ever, including Jamie Farr, Sebastian Cabot (!), Dolores Grey, Monty Wooley (!), Jack Elam and Jay C. Flippen (no really) and yeah, Vic Damone again. Who was it that came up with “Take my gland/I’m a stranger in your thighs?” Lennie and Squiggy? Nah, too dirty for TV, musta been New Bomb Turk. But I digress. The picture is not super vibrant but very clear and attractive. A real study in mauve. The picture was apparently in some four-track magnetic stereo configuration that translates very attractively to a 5.1 Surround track. Lyrics like “Don’t underestimate Baghdad” and the rhyme of “Aden” with  “maiden” and “laden” are eyebrow-raising. Kinda fun but also one of the reasons that François Truffaut once referred to Minnelli as “un esclave.” —B+

Legend of Hell House (Scream Factory)

This movie messed with my head but good when I saw it as a tender-hearted 13-year-old, not just because Pamela Franklin was my first really serious movie-girl crush. (I had felt feelings for Diana Rigg prior to my encounter with Franklin, but I didn’t really understand those feelings.) The new high-def rendering of this then-edgy and still remarkably effective haunted-house-investigation movie is gorgeous: those pastel colors, the enveloping darkness, the spectacular settings swallowed up into Stygian black. Plus a nifty commentary from the lovely and delightful Ms. Franklin herself.  Also, I repeat: the movie holds up really well. It’s damn good.  —A

Love Streams (Criterion)

An exhausting movie in an exhaustive package. More than an essential appendix to the Criterion Five Films By John Cassavetes box, the film that may be J.C.’s crowning achievement, in all its emotional demolition and cinematic dismantling. (Alternate title: Stop Breaking Down. ) The extras are amazing, moving, disturbing: J.C.’s distended gut when he’s out of costume and directing, a ghastly portent of his four-years-off death. Inspirational quotes: “Well, if it was easy, anybody could do it” and “We’re making a picture about inner life and no one believes it can be put on the screen. I don’t believe it either, but...screw it!” The subtextual news on this release is that Criterion has managed to license a Cannon film from the MGM archive. I remember calling an executive there over six years ago inquiring about rights to Godard’s King Lear for a friend who had a video label; she never called back. That the great label is having better luck at this is not a surprise and may bear some more exciting fruit in the future. —A+

Mr. Majestyk (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)

This 1974 crime movie, from an original script by Elmore Leonard and directed by Richard Fleischer, got slaughtered by critics hostile to Charles Bronson back in the day, folks who were kinda used to reflexively hating on anything with Bronson’s name attached to it. Here’s the thing about Bronson: as canny as he was about his anti-glamour screen appeal, there really wasn’t all that terribly compelling a performer underneath that, and yes, I have heard what Sergio Leone said about him and I respectfully disagree. Anyway, Once Upon A Time In The West will always by Bronson’s supreme screen moment, and this…well, it’s underrated. But that’s not to say it’s great. It’s solid. Leonard’s script is laconic even by his standards, and Fleischer’s direction is solid. The plot setup is the most perversely enjoyable thing, and boy does Al Lettieri enjoy glowering as the never-say-die heavy. Shot by Richard Kline so it looks real good, lotta natural light or what looks like it. The high-def transfer is consistent and stiff-backed, but you do get a lot of grain in the cabin interiors if you’re bugged by that sorta thing. On the whole both movie and disc Get The Job Done. —B

Manhunt (Twilight Time)

A brilliant, shimmery, shadowy transfer of a really first-rate Hollywood picture from Fritz Lang. As with Ministry of Fear, some of the imagery is silent-era quintessential especially the cat-and-mouse in the Underground sequence. You’ll laugh at Joan Bennett trying to do a cockney accent, but she’ll win you over soon enough, and then you’ll feel bad. This retains the commentary from Patrick McGilligan, who wrote a pretty hatchet-jobbish bio of Lang, and I suppose you can listen to it if you like. I won’t dock the disc any notches on its account. —A

Noah (Paramount)

Darren Aronofsky’s  visually majestic, emotionally bold Bible extrapolation looks really great in this iteration. Not many extras though. Still, it’s a movie that gives up more with each viewing. There really isn’t much more to say about this disc, except thank the parties who afforded me a review copy. —B+ 

Only Lovers Left Alive (Sony)

“That was very visual.” A signature line from this Jim Jarmusch instant classic, a very smart film in which the aging auteur draws the crucial distinction between hanging on to youth and hanging on to one’s own youth, and makes the entirely supportable argument that the Elizabethans and the first wave of CBGB patrons were and remain Western Civ’s greatest generations. The Blu-ray gets the lovely, simple but packed with telling detail visuals just right. The extras are fun: 50 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage with a highfalutin title. Dribs and drabs of deleted and extended scenes, revealing the movie was once bookmarked by Rumi quotes, that sorta thing. Inspirational dialogue; “I’m like…Gomez Addams.” —A

Out of the Past (Warner Archive)

When word of this came out, I saw a few people online complain that a manufactured-to-order Warner Archive release was an “insult” and that this deserved a full bells-and-whistles release. Well, bells and whistles are all well and good but sometimes the movie is enough. And in this case, this truly great movie—exciting, sardonic, poetic, lyric, exhilarating, tender, tragic—looks so beautiful it’s more than enough. This is why Blu-ray exists. —A+

Phantom of the Paradise (Scream Factory)

The most eccentric of Brian De Palma’s ‘70s films, and if that sounds like a “and that’s saying something” kind of pronouncement, it sure is. But watch this and try to tell me I’m wrong. This new transfer has a very neon bright look, which seems appropriate to the pop art material. It is very different from the French version I got a few years back, which is much more subdued. And I never got the Arrow edition, which is apparently more subdued still. In any event, I like this garish version, makes the whole thing play like the sick live-action cartoon it at least partially is. And is also subjectively attractive to me. There’s a huge number of extras here, some more disciplined/informative than others. The De Palma interview is a real keeper. This is not a universally beloved movie—I saw a film critter of high standing, and not even a psychotronic-averse one, condemn it as “awful” on the Twitter machine just the other day—but if you DO love it, this is the edition to get. Guess where I sit on the issue. —A 

Pickpocket (Criterion)

A fabulous picture upgrade that makes the black-and-white imagery very handsome without rendering it fake-beautiful, because Bresson didn’t play fake-beautiful, sucker. All the extras from the standard def survive, and they’re all good. Not optional.—A+

Point Blank (Warner)

Superb. Essential. The amazing color coordination (the yellows of Marvin’s shirt, Dickinson’s dress, and the spy glass) and the water imagery, all of John Boorman’s galvanic, psychologically acute visual beauties are beautifully rendered here. Lossless soundtrack has good clarity, but a  wildly wide dynamic range—the nightclub scene’s music is really loud—that may make this not an ideal late-night watch for urban apartment dwellers with easily excitable neighbors, and that’s the reason this disc’s grade doesn’t have a plus sign attached. A small but solid coterie of extras includes a commentary with Boorman and Steven Soderbergh, who admits early on to “stealing” a lot from the picture, and indeed, this time around I noticed the elevator gag here repeats in Out of Sight. —A

Radio Days (Twilight Time)

Its frequent touches of mordant humor notwithstanding, this 1987 picture is Woody Allen’s most consistently pleasant film, and its burnished look suits its mode of lyric but not entirely treacly nostalgia. (Carlo Di Palma, who went for a similarly cozy look with Hannah And Her Sisters the year before, shot.) The Twilight Time disc is just beautiful, and if you’re still a Woody fan the movie’s great fun: the jokes are pretty good to excellent, and the cast, from Mia Farrow to Kenneth Mars to Josh Mostel to the recently departed and very dear Don Pardo, is one of Allen’s best. —A 

Scanners (Criterion)

“Why is this getting the Criterion treatment?” Some People asked a while back, dismissing this as a low-budget genre movie and hence Disreputable Cronenberg. Boy, Some People can be really fucking dumb. Disreputable Cronenberg IS Cronenberg, and in this 1981 picture shows him not just in full command of his Unique Ideas but also really ruling cinematic space. Really an awesome movie, Stephen Lack is FINE in the lead, the transfer’s fabulous, and the wonky FX-centric extras are disturbing—no wonder these guys come up with all this oddball stuff, what with their inadvertently huffing chemicals all the time. Also: whoa, Michael Ironside is old! —A+

 The Secret of the Santa Vittoria (Twilight Time)

Despite featuring a largely, you know, Italian cast in this 1968 life-loving-wine-making-Italians-flim-flam-oenophile-Nazis period comedy/drama, a good deal of this movie really plays like Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day. The real Italians include Anna Magnani, Sergio Franchi, Virna Lisi, and a super-young Giancarlo Giannini, which is pretty cool. Looks pretty good, too, with vibrant colors and sharp detail. If Stanley Kramer had hung up his directing shoes right after making this, which got ignored and/or dissed at the time, his rep would be a lot better today, as it’s a movie that goes down relatively easy. Gotta admit it really picks up when Magnani is kicking the shit out of  impish/apish male lead Anthony Quinn (not a real Italian). —B

Southern Comfort (Shout! Factory)

I hope the mini-revival of Walter Hill stuff on Blu-ray, which began in my book with Twilight Time’s releases of Hard Times, then The Driver, and continuing with this merciless 1981 swamp shocker, given a really swell treatment from the Shout! Factory folk. Starring Powers Boothe, Keith Carradine, Bryon James and Peter Coyote in the Janet Leigh role, it teems with unusual directorial and editing choices (lotsa dissolves, which is unusual for a kind of action movie, but highly appropriate to this one’s soupy setting). Hill was/is a really top-notch director forever out of step with his ostensible peers. This is as good a movie as any to catch up with him on. Inspirational dialogue: “It’s like a steel pussy.” “Hell, man what kinda women you been hanging out with?” Inspirational supplements quote: “I don’t make movies about metaphors.” (That’s Hill.) —A

Thunderbirds Are Go/Thunderbird 6 (Twilight Time)

If you like marionettes inhabiting truly awesome art-direction, then you’ll like them even more in high-def. This truly nifty (if I were doing ad copywriting I’d of course say “FAB”) Twilight Time one-disc package bundles the two feature films concerning the adventures of the privatized Red Cross embodied by the Tracy family and their spaceships and their heavy friends and such. The movies look very good, all bright and pop-art, the extras mostly date from prior video editions (Sylvia Anderson’s recounting of how she handled a phone call from Stanley Kubrick revels, for better or worse, the way in which she was the brains of the “Supermarionation” team), but there is some newly unearthed material; as a big Shadows fan, I was particularly chuffed at the nearly 20 minutes of test footage Gerry Anderson made of the combo, the better to turn them into puppets for the benefit of a really interesting space-nightclub fantasy scene in Are Go.  Also, the isolated score feature lets you hear the Shadows without dialogue stepping on them. —A-

The Wind And The Lion (Warner Archive)

Looks very good—really quite beautiful at times. Sounds pretty good. (Jerry Goldsmith’s score has fun with hints of Arabic modes and ironical variants of Maurice Jarre-style pageantry, and is almost a constant presence.) John Milius’ high point as a director is an almost 40-year-old movie that plays as if it should be an almost 70-year-old movie. Not a bad thing—“crackerjack,” as they used to say. Bonus points for featuring Geoffrey Lewis in the role of a more or less normal person. Inspirational commentary tidbit: “That’s why this movie is held in such high regard in the world of Islam.” —A-

Image of the day, 4/25/14

Virginia Leith in Violent Saturday, Richard Fleischer, 1955.

I got so terribly excited by the new Eureka! blu-ray disc of this ineffable thriller that I just had to post a screen cap of it, and I've always loved this particular shot from the POV of peeper Tommy Noonan. I got so excited that I forgot that I wrote at length about Noonan and this film a couple of years back. Which musings may provide some consonance for the above image.

For a long time the only home video versions of this movie have been non-optimized for 16:9 displays, meaning they put a 2.55 image in a 4:3 box, which is obviously less than optimum. The Eureka! disc is the first second true widescreen version [as a commenter below points out, Carlotta in France issued a prior such rendition, I apologize for the error] and hence cause for celebration. It's beautiful in pretty much every other respect too. If you don't have a region-free player you're out of luck at the moment, as the disc if Region-B locked,  but I'm reasonably confident a domestic-player-friendly version will surface.  

A Tale of two versions of "The Fury"

Back in the Spring of this year, I expressed some reservations on the Twilight Time Blu-ray disc of Brian DePalma's 1978 The Fury, and promised to do some investigating once a new version of the title from Arrow appeared. And so I did. But I did it for the New York Times, as a guest DVD columnist, and the results of my research are here. Enjoy!

Blu-ray Consumer Guide: Labor Day 2013 edition

Given how and when the last Blu-ray Consumer Guide came into being, it may be that scheduling these to appear at random national holidays may be the way to go. 

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.  

Blood and Sand (Fox)

This has been on my “to see” list since I read Tom Milne’s passionate and persuasive monograph on Rouben Mamoulian, recently reprinted in the BFI’s wonderful Silver series. It cites an article by Mamoulian for American Cinematographer in 1941, the year of this film’s making, in which the director writes of how he deliberately styled scenes in the movie after the work of Spanish painters: Murillo, Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Titian, Veronese, Sorolla. The strictures of Technicolor in that year allowed Mamoulian sufficient flexibility to achieve dazzling visual effects, and this high-def transfer is simply breathtaking in their reproduction. The fact that Rita Hayworth and Linda Darnell are also dazzling visual effects in Technicolor is also a major plus. As for the remainder of the movie, you know how some people don’t really get Glenn Ford? I’m kind of like that with Tyrone Power. Oh well. Doesn’t matter. An amazing picture, and an absolutely appositely wonky commentary (imported by the standard def issue) by cinematographer Richard Crudo who, among other things, makes note of the scarcity of diffusion-wedge use in contemporary cinema. —A+ 

Body Double (Twilight Time)

Not a guilty De Palma pleasure, but a complicated one, in my case at least in part because my first New York girlfriend had a horrible date with Craig Wasson a little while before she first met me. So I’m torn between being grateful to him for being such a lunatic ass that he made me look good, and kind of thinking he nonetheless was asking for a smack in the chops. This was clearly made from a less wonky HD master than that from which the problematic Twilight Time Blu of The Fury was derived (I’ll be covering the corrected rendering of that picture soon to come from Arrow). It is a really beautifully detailed version, a little disquietingly so at points, as in the visibility of Melanie Griffith’s lower ribs in her topless dancing scenes. Have a cheeseburger, girl, it won’t kill you! The dazzling parts remain dazzling, and there are plenty of them. The silly parts remain silly, but I’ve developed affection for them. — B+

Cleopatra (Fox)

Sure is pretty. As is not unusual, the movie is not as bad as its detractors claim, or as good as its contemporary champions trumpet. Good lord it is long. But hardly as unwatchable as has sometimes been threatened. I recommend looking at it in 45-minute chunks. That way you’ll be all like “Hey! Hume Cronyn!” and all that, but not have enough time to start feeling super-bad for Elizabeth Taylor, who’s trying SO hard throughout. The transfer is so sharp that there are several scenes in which the leading lady’s real-life tracheotomy scar is PAINFULLY visible. Was that the case on the big screens on which it famously flopped? I need to ask my mom. —A-

 The Driver (Twilight Time)

A good, solid high-def transfer of a movie that didn’t inspire all that rapturous a reception when it came out but now plays perfectly all the way down the line. Inspired by Melville, clearly, but to my mind even more perfectly distilled than Melville’s own Le Samourai, in which one can detect a whiff of affectation compromising his attempt to wed Les enfants terribles to Le doulos. Writer/director Walter Hill achieved a kind of perfection here, particularly with his depiction of the brutality of the story’s criminal world. The movie is noteworthy for its preponderance of chase sequences, many of them set at night, and all of them are rendered nicely here. The greenish hue discerned in the DVD Beaver review was not quite as noticeable on my display’s settings, but where it was most present, as in O’Neal and Adjani’s exchanged-glance-on-the-modernist walkway, it wasn’t inapposite. Extras are typically minimal, which I usually don’t much care about but in this case I’m VERY curious about the makings of this movie, specifically Hill’s influences in the writing, and this disc tells me NOTHING about those things, so I’m withholding the “plus” from my grade. That’ll show ‘em. —A

The File on Thelma Jordan (Olive)

This unusually discursive 1950 noir mismatches Barbara Stanwyck against Wendell Corey. With Robert Siodmak at the directorial helm, one might expect some primo oddness, but the movie is frustratingly diffuse as it plods to an admittedly bizarre finale. The Olive Blu is an unextraordinary transfer of a not-great (scratches, wobbly contrast in places, etc.) source. For Siodmak completists only. —B-

 The Fog (Scream Factory)

Silly snobby me turned up my nose at this thing when it first came out in 1980, because it wasn’t “scary” enough. It’s still not particularly scary but good lord is it a beautifully crafted film, a complete pleasure to watch from shot to shot, start to finish. This Blu-ray honors that, far more than the Optimum issue released in the U.K. in 2008. It’s an example of the “good things come to those who wait” ethos of Blu-ray collecting. Although five years ago Scream Factory didn’t exist. How was I to know? Anyway, this is a gorgeous thing with terrific extras and something you’ll want to watch pretty often; there’s something kind of classic-movie-appealing about the way it plays with campfire ghost-story conventions that makes it apt for, you know, Halloween quadruple features and such. —A+

Heaven’s Gate (Criterion)

Still a problem movie, in that it wants grandeur, and largely achieves bloat. Also, the director’s cut doesn’t have my favorite line in the movie, which is “That man is a friend of the President of the United States.” (So Kristofferson’s character observes of a guy who’s mooning him from across a battlefield if I recall correctly.) Other portions of the extant dialogue are sloppy: one doesn’t admit to “blackballing” someone, seriously. I’m still fond of the line “Sure as hell isn’t convenient,” though. I’m rambling here. As far as the movie’s concerned, here are more complaints; No characters, just good actors looking tragic; overlong expository scenes; numbingly obvious political and moral points scored with relentless ham-handedness. The homage to Dr. Zhivago with Waterston in fur hat on train is pretty funny though. And there are some “stirring” moments and a fair amount of protean filmmaking. I’m glad this exists, I think the treatment is in many respects deserved, but don’t feel bad about yourself if you don’t fall in love with it. —B-

Help! (Apple)
Remarkably beautiful, in every respect. It’s one of those movie’s that’s directed with such simultaneous freedom and assurance that the flow of the innovations is kind of moving in and of itself. This is particularly true in the musical sequences, which in their way are as sublime as anything Busby Berkeley ever concocted. Richard Lester doesn’t much care if he pushes the aperture so the grain gets to Pennebaker levels, and he is wise not to care; his command of focus and color are what gives him the confidence to experiment, improvise. He happened to be working with artists of a similar bent, who were maybe a little tired of being put through comedy paces by this point but looked good and performed gamely. Wrote good songs for the picture, too. — A+

Keep Your Right Up (Olive)

In the late-Godard-aspect-ratio war, Olive puts its foot down at an unambiguous a 1.33 for this 1987 feature, a slight, light picture that extrapolates from the Woody Alien film editing scenes of King Lear and the string quartet rehearsal sequences in Hail Mary First Name: Carmen. Featuring Godard in a lead role, sorta channeling Peter Sellers as Chauncey Gardener and some unspecified Buster Keaton character simultaneously. Doesn’t do a bad job, either. The movie as a whole has an almost antiseptic look; unlike the maddeningly dark Detective or the multi-hued Nouvelle Vague this is bright and flat…rather like a TV commercial advertising the end days of cinema as Godard knew it. No extras, no choice about the subtitles, ‘cause they’re burned in; in other words, the usual gift-horse-you-ought-not-look-in-the-mouth from Olive. For Godard completists only. —B+

Kentucky Fried Movie  (Shout! Factory)

The food-oil-as-fuel joke in this movie has ACTUALLY COME TRUE, people. Other than that: This movie STILL looks terrible. As in super low-rent; the materials used were likely at their best, and they were transferred well. Actually, for celluloid nuts, the grindhouse crudity of much of the lensing has its own appeal, and given the pastiches involved in a lot of the takeoffs, the cruddy look is purposeful in a lot of instances. The first time I saw this 1977 movie I didn’t quite get it all. The second time, with a cannabis assist, I laughed harder than I had at any other movie. This time around, I thought it was pretty funny. Not quite sure I can pronounce it an immortal comedy on that basis. I still like it though. —B+

Lifeforce (Scream Factory)

The Showgirls of horror/sci-fi movies! Once considered louche and risible, what with its Steve Railsback post-Helter Skelter/Stunt Man cuh-razy astronaut and constantly nude space vampire Matilda May, it now plays pretty damn well, a gonzo Hammer picture with all the exploitation elements taken to their logical ‘80s extreme. The movie’s 70MM status wasn’t too played up at the time of its release but damn, on this GREAT looking disc the fisheye widescreen vistas look especially great. Terrific extras too. Unmissable. —A+

The Only Game In Town (Twilight Time)

I was looking for an auteurist lost cause to champion…and I didn’t find it here, alas. George Stevens’ last film is drab and lifeless, with decent individual moments (Warren Beatty’s stalk into the casino after he gets his money off of Elizabeth Taylor) lost in a fog of theatrical speechifying, dubious sexual chemistry, and cultural desert-wandering (you’d never guess this was a 1970 movie). The Blu-ray has a mixed look that mostly matches the movie’s lifelessness. Every now and then, on some comment thread or another, the perpetually dissatisfied and tetchy cinephile who calls himself Lex G goes on a rant about how 1.85 is a complete pussy aspect ratio. I do not agree with him, but if I had to take his side on the debate team, I’d make this movie Exhibit A. Stevens, who had done superb work in both CinemaScope and1.66 in the past seems utterly lost in the framing department here. And the cinematographer is Henri Dacae, for heaven’s sake. — B-

Possession (Second Sight region B U.K. import)

This movie is so great for a number of reasons, one of which is that is starts off at a pitch of emotional hysteria that most dramas take an hour or two or six to build to, and then it goes CRAZIER from there. The distribution and home video history of the 1981 Andrzej Zulawski is long and storied and perhaps even more insane than the movie itself. Hell, I didn’t even know this picture was in 1.66 until the excellent Second Sight Blu-ray, which gets my unqualified recommendation. Zulawski, predictably, does fabulously in the audio commentary, revealing that the movie was initially a project for Paramount (!!!) and recounting a dinner he had with Gulf and Western head Charles Bludhorn at which Bludhorn asks Zulawski “What is this movie about” and Zulawski responds  “It’s about a woman who fucks an octopus” and Bludhorn delightedly asks him when he starts shooting. And it gets better from there. —A+

The Producers (Shout Factory)

This label is unostentatiously turning into pop culture’s answer to The Criterion Collection. Mel Brooks’ debut feature is as sloppy a piece of technical work as you can get and still be a Great Film, but it is nevertheless delightful to be able to see it in something resembling the glory with which Avco-Embassy presented it in 1969. A single extra that wasn’t on the MGM standard def disc is the only addition to the disc array. But the Drew Friedman cover art is an absolutely marvelous extra in and of itself. —A+

 Safety Last (Criterion)

The 2005 box set The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection was a labor of love, and that was evident throughout, but certain technical hurdles didn’t get fully addressed. The image on the features and shorts, while clear, had a lot of combing artifacts. That’s generally a thing endemic to an interlaced television picture, which, in the new HD era, ought not exist any more. The Criterion issue of  Lloyd’s best-known and perhaps best-loved film is in fact a 1080i (for interlaced) transfer, but nevertheless rids us of the combing problem, and presents a delightful, pristine image that represents the best way to appreciate the performer and gagman’s sunny  can-do disposition and athletic slapstick prowess. This retains most of the extras from the 2005 box (including an informed commentary featuring Leonard Maltin) and adds three shorts and a twenty-minute documentary featuring writer John Bengtson, who also contributes commentary to the shorts. One hopes more Lloyd of this quality turns up in high-def. —A 

Seconds (Criterion)

Sometimes one gets the feeling that John Frankenheimer enjoyed working in black-and-white more than he did with color. Or maybe it’s just that it shows more; I can’t really figure whether his black-and-white movies are more genuinely visually expressive than his color ones or if black-and-white brought out his ostentatiously arty side. In films wherein the subject is a kind of madness—this, The Manchurian Candidate—it doesn’t matter. And it especially doesn’t matter here, where the cinematographer is James Wong Howe, whose sensitivity and mastery more than redeem what would elsewhere be severely overdetermined use of the fish-eye lens. Not that such hell-visions perspectives are not apt to this horrific, grim fable about the denial of death and aging. The 1.78 image here is gorgeous, grainy, with blacks so solid you could swallow them, or they could swallow you. I have to look through my old Video Watchdogs to figure out what version of the grape-stomping orgy made it into the theatrical release; this may blow my theory about Blow Up being the first studio picture to feature full-frontal nudity (Seconds came out several months before the Antonioni). I discuss this picture in a bit more detail here. Upgraded from “A” for making Jeffrey Wells unhappy. — A+

The Servant (Studio Canal region B U.K. import)

Man, this is certainly the best looking version of the first Losey/Pinter collaboration I’ve ever seen, so much so that throughout I kind of wondered if it was too perfect. Little if any damage with respect to film materials shows. The black-and-white image is very smooth, with not much in the way of grain. But everything also has a filmic integrity: not much in the way of irritating digital artifacts show up either. A thoroughly credible, nearly breathtaking presentation of a movie of supreme creepiness and multiple ambiguities, with a lot more going on in its odd little world than mere role reversal. Master guitarist Davy Graham is now fully visible and appreciable in his bit part as a pub muso. The extras are voluminous, not all are in the greatest of shape, but the segment of the arts television program Camera 3 on the first New York Film Festival, featuring Losey and Adolph Mekas, is astonishing. —A+ 

Simon Killer (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema region B U.K. import)

Some may blanche that the “Masters of Cinema” imprimatur is going on the second feature of an American filmmaker who’s part of a production collective made up of what the aforementioned Wells would call “beardos” (see also William Holden in Billy Wilder’s Fedora). Let’s get some perspective here. This isn’t the first contemporary picture that the label has released. See also The World, Mad Detective, Tokyo Sonata. And while I myself am not 100 percent sold on this explicit portrait of a very ugly young American getting up to bad behavior in Paris, it is a largely effective construction (although director Antonio Campos is a little too hidebound in his belief that the slow back-and-forth camera pan is a really interesting way to connote that something sinister is happening beneath what’s playing out on the screen). The excellent disc is an object lesson in getting a great home-digital project from a digital source, a process that is not as automatic as a lot of people assume it is. The extras include a persuasive essay by Karina Longworth and a comic documentary short in which the filmmaker and star of the picture are interviewed in tandem with their mothers, and which ought to be avoided by viewers who are already super-skeptical about beardos in moviemaking. —B+

Tabu (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema region B U.K. import)

I shall make a confession here: this 1931 picture is probably my least favorite Murnau. Yes, it’s staggeringly visually beautiful, yes, its final moments of grim implacability are among the most sublime cinema has offered at any time and in any context. But, not to get all holy leftist or anything, its perspective necessarily is entrenched in Western paternalism, which turns out to be more of a stumbling block for me than Sunrise’s sexism. I think this is a genuine problem for the movie, objectively, just as the sexism in Sunrise is. (City Girl remains the most startlingly “progressive” extant film of Murnau’s late period. The MOC Blu-ray of that puppy is pretty awesome too.)  On the other hand,  it’s still effectively just a prejudice on my part because this is still an indispensable movie and it looks wonderful here (although man oh man is the 1.19 aspect ratio SEVERE) and the extras, which include an enthusiastic and informative commentary by critic Brad Stevens and historian R. Dixon Smith, are superb. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to the Nosferatu Blu-ray from this label. —A+

 The Tarnished Angels (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema region B U.K. import)

I didn’t expect to be watching this again so soon after I wrote a bit about Sirk and Faulkner for the blog, but the MOC Blu-ray seemed to land at my door mere moments after it was announced, and My Lovely Wife was interested in seeing it, so… Anyway, watching the movie with another person and with a different discipline in place, what struck me this time around was how the material was both hemmed in and made strange through the film’s marriage of convenience to conventions of ‘50s melodrama, particularly with respect to Dorothy Malone’s performance. Interesting, though, that Robert Middleton plays the ostensible heavy Matt Ord right down the middle; you could almost mistake him for one more lonely guy in this movie of lonely guys. The whole movie is more or less contained in the shock moment when the Mardi Gras partier masked as Death bursts in to Hudson and Malone’s reflective drinking; a shot I sometimes see in my mind in garish color. Angels is of course CinemaScope black and white, beautiful here. The extras are both scholarly and nifty and include unexpected treats such as a video interview with William Schallert and a contemporary article about the shooting of the aerial sequences from Air Progress magazine. —A+

Teorema/Theorem (BFI Region B U.K. import)

One of Pasolini’s drollest provocations and one of Terence Stamp’s most blithely enigmatic performances. There are very few extras, but one gets the feeling that the movie doesn’t want any explication beyond itself, such is its magisterially serene perversity. Nifty Morricone score too, you could almost swear the title theme was taken off a Freddie Redd record, but it wasn’t! (Per Nick Wrigley's tip, it's actually Ted Curson, not that you'd know from any goddamn credits. Morricone's versatile but not THAT versatile.) Watch on a loop until it tells you what to do with YOUR complacent bourgeois life. —A

Things To Come (Criterion)

I was getting all set to do a Very Important Comparison of a British issued Blu-ray and a Ray-Harryhausen-overseen Blu (on a double feature with She) of this eccentric futurist fable when along comes the announcement of a Criterion version. And once the Criterion version showed up in my mailbox, my suspicions were kind of confirmed: this renders the British disc…well, as it happens, not quite irrelevant. Criterion’s rendering sacrifices a barely discernable smidge of sharpness in the interest of smoothing out the picture for a more internally consistent viewing experience, while the 2012 Network issue opts for getting top detail out of a scratched-up source. I’ll be kind to the late great Ray and just leave his presentation out of the conversation. Anyway, my preference is for the Criterion. I’m not satisfied by the black levels on either rendering. Some will bitch about the grain, there’s a very good deal of it. Until a full-scale restoration is performed, and that’s not a matter of when but rather a very big if, this is as good as we are likely to get. And what a weird ass movie, with all those haughty guys in togas at the end. Yet as William Cameron Menzies directorial efforts go, this is on the relatively sober side (check out The Maze if you ever can; see also Chandu The Magician, twice a year is optimum). —A

Twixt (Fox)

You want personal filmmaking from an established old master? Well, like it or not, it doesn’t get any more personal that Francis Coppola’s digitally-shot, occasionally in 3D (although the disc I’m reviewing doesn’t have that option) sort-of genre movie in which still-bloated but highly game Val Kilmer plays a dissolute hacky horror novelist stuck in a zero-bookstore town (his signing is at the hardware emporium) sucked in to a twisty tale of bohemians and murder and vampires and ghosts. The first gonzo frisson is that the wife Kilmer argues about money with over Skype is Kilmer’s actual ex-wife Joanna Whaley. Then Ben Chaplin shows up as the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, to give Kilmer’s character some writing advice. Then Alden Ehrenreich turns up in a hybrid of his role in Tetro and Mickey Rourke’s role in Rumble Fish. Then it becomes plain that a lot of the movie is about Coppola’s guilt over his son Gian Carlo’s 1986 death in a boating accident. Coppola demonstrates enough detachment to have a sense of humor about the manifestation of that guilt (and the scenes of Kilmer doing improv impressions to exorcise his writer’s block are a stitch) but there’s nothing funny about the complex sense of loss the movie evokes through various horror tropes, some more hoary than others. A sumptuous-looking transfer of a digital source, its only extra is a charmingly open making-of doc by Gia Coppola, the daughter Gian-Carlo never knew and Francis’ granddaughter, who has since the 2010 shooting of the film made another feature, Palo Alto. —B+ 

Blu-ray Consumer Guide: May 2013, A Memorial Day Gift To You From Some Came Running

How did this forty-disc monster CG happen, you may wonder? (Then again, you may not wonder, in which case just skip ahead to the capsules.) Well, it’s like this: whilst working on the De Niro book I would take breaks from the intensive De Niro watching by popping in a Blu-ray to “relax,” and mostly they would be things that I’d had in the “staging area” for the Consumer Guide anyway. Once the De Niro book was done, and I’d done another round of revisions on The Novel That I Delusionally Expect Will Catupult Me Out Of This Particular [redacted] Business, I had been hoping to get a few weeks work on another actually remunerative project, but that DIDN’T HAPPEN. Also My Lovely Wife has had to work late a lot. What’s a fella to do? Go to rep theaters? Interact with OTHER PEOPLE? Hell no.

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver. 

3:10 To Yuma (Criterion)

Commended by Andrew Sarris for his “stylistic conviction in an intellectual vacuum,” Delmer Daves does in fact offer stronger, better stuff than that, according to his post-Andrew champions. Dave Kehr has written compellingly on his frequently dismissed melodramas, Susan Slade and Parrish, particularly (“Call it Camp…”—Sarris) and in the booklet essays for this and the also-superb Jubal, Kent Jones makes the case that Daves was the master of a rare and particular kind of Western, one in which the depiction of goodness was paramount (“or call it Corn,” Sarris continued). Jones is compelling and well-informed, and his descriptions of Daves’ technical innovations in shooting his uniquely American landscapes adds persuasive ballast to his case for the director as a major one. But  here it’s really the seeing that’s believing. The simple-as-death storyline (adapted from an Elmore Leonard tale) gets a beautifully measured treatment here; this is a far, far more substantial film than its lazy movie-guide categorizations as a “solid B Western” or whatever give it credit for, and the transfer of the black-and-white film is gorgeous. Outtakes include still shots from an excised Felicia Farr nude scene. OK, that’s not actually true. Extras are sparse but as I said the Jones essay is an education. And I can’t emphasize enough that the movie is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, on pretty much every conceivable level. —A

Bakumatsu Taiyo Den (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema region B U.K. import)

This 1957 picture ranked fifth in a 1999 poll of greatest Japanese films conducted by the nearly hundred-year-old magazine Kinema Jumpo. It’s relatively obscure in the west; the reasons for the high esteem there and the scarcity of its reputation here are probably not unrelated; it’s a very culturally specific film, an allegorical farce in which the dwindling of  the shogunate in the mid-to-late 19^th century reflects upon the Japan of the time the film was released. The opening montage, as it happens, has a lot in common with that of the veddy British On Approval, reviewed below; taking the viewer by the hand and saying this story is about “then,” but it’s also about now. So what is it about, anyway? It takes its time with that; the ostensible plot hook, in which a broke brothel patron starts doing odd jobs around the joint because he can’t pay his bill, doesn’t really kick in until about 45 minutes into the nearly two-hour film, directed by  Yuzo Kawashima and co-written with his then protégé, the soon-to-be-great Shohei Imamura. The movie is diverting for its picaresque humor, social observations, and overall frankness (never not funny: when a bunch of the film’s male characters gang up for a group piss); sometimes it comes off like a Moliere farce with a change of venue. The disc boasts an excellent transfer of a recent digital restoration; extras are confined to the disc package booklet, which has some essays. I’d tend to recommend this most highly to viewers already very conversant with Japanese film looking to catch up on what had been a hard-to-find canon classic. —A

Band of Outsiders (Criterion)

How audience friendly was this Godard film considered to be back in 1964? Please note the Columbia Pictures logo between the “Visa de controle Ministériel No. 28712” card and the opening title montage. Yep, with its tack-piano theme, jokey credits, quirky tendresse, and more, this really is the sort of film that represents to perpetually disillusioned one-time Godard fans of a certain age what “earlier, funnier films” meant to the aliens chastising Sandy Bates in Stardust Memories. To such an extent that one almost is tempted to trash it, the better to extol the virtues of Ici et aeilleurs. OK, not really. Much. It’s wonderful, the race through the Louvre and the much-bruited Madison bit are as great as everyone says they are, and in all this is Godard’s most Queneau-esque film, not just with respect to Gallic “charm” and all that, but also in terms of a structural self-consciousness that’s designed to enhance genuine feeling rather than preclude it. In short, a Great Film. This Blu-ray is a lovely upgrade of what had been an already excellent package, the wintry black-and-white rendered in exceptional crispness and detail. Even the booklet essay by Joshua Clover, quite possibly my least favorite writer of all time (because I’m sure you were wondering)  is better than all right. —A+

Black Sabbath (Arrow region B U.K. import)

I think this anthology picture may be Mario Bava’s best film, by virtue not only of its consistency but its variability. Alternatively dead serious and irrepressibly playful, every shot a wonder and certain images so hauntingly terrifying and sad as to be unforgettable, it’s a concise feast of very particular cinematic inspiration. I speak of course of the Italian language version of the 1963 film, entitled I tre volti di paura (The Three Faces of Fear), which retains the original order of the three tales and has a final shot featuring “host” Boris Karloff that’s an utter delight. That version is the highlight of this three-disc (one Blu-ray, two standard def) edition of the film from Arrow. There’s also the English-language American International cut, which gives us Karloff’s own voice, which is nice. The most salient extra on the Blu-ray is a very good half-hour video with split-screen explanations of the aural and visual differences between the two versions. The picture quality of my favored version, from red telephone to sickly green vampire family to grimacing jewelry-wearing corpse, is so staggeringly great it brought tears to my eyes, almost. A definitive edition and an intense pleasure. Wowsers. Co-starring Jean-Pierre Leaud’s mom, by the way.  —A+

Cloak and Dagger (Olive)

I raised my eyebrows in an approving way when I saw the logo of The Film Foundation on the back cover of this edition of the 1946 Fritz Lang thriller. The restoration presented here looks pretty grand. A little damage in the form of scratches and such is visible here and there, but overall this has really superb picture quality with excellent contrast and detail. It’s a damn fine film, too, boasting a solid Gary Cooper performance (whether you buy him as a nuclear physicist really doesn’t matter after about six minutes or so) and some very nice bits, including a a scene in which attracted-to-each-other-awkwardly roommates have to contend with a hungry cat, and a killing-in-self-defense scene that’s a definite precursor to the nasty kitchen-murder sequence in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. Check it out. —A 

Crimewave (Shout! Factory)

As the saying goes, films don’t get too  much more maudit than this 1985 item. Director Sam Raimi’s second proper feature, and the first that he and his associates (Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, et. al.) made for/with THE MAN,  was a behind-the-scenes tragedy/farce from the get-go, from imposed leading man to unforeseen union overages to clueless execs doing recuts that mutilated a plethora of elaborate and possibly beautiful master shots and more. Surely an object lesson not just for Raimi and company but for co-writers Joel and Ethan Coen, who here dub a correctional facility “Hudsucker State Penitentiary” and make a blink-and-you-miss it cameo appearance (Frances MacDormand plays a nun, too). So how’s the movie? Sometimes quite entertaining, always exuberant, a bit of a mess, and an unexpected stylistic link between Raimi, the Coens, and honestly, Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. Like the Coens’ subsequent Raising Arizona, it’s a real cartoon movie, although at this point Raimi has a slight edge in chops. Still, never such innocence again and all that. And I bet Tarantino was a big fan, for reasons you’ll get if you watch it yourself. The picture quality is very good and will likely satisfy the recollections of the five people who actually got to see this in its abortive theatrical “release.” The extras are nicely explanatory overall but the jewel is of course the Bruce Campbell commentary, because production train wreck tales are way more interesting than success stories and because it’s the irrepressible Campbell telling them. Speaking of Reed Birney, who got the lead role that Raimi wanted for him, Bruce notes, “Reed’s pretty cute in this. I wonder why he didn’t work much after this. I guess it’s because we destroyed his career.” He also refers to Louise Lasser as “a piece of work.” Great stuff. —A

Day of the Falcon (Image)

Every now and then I hear of a direct-to-DVD (more or less) release of a film of the sort maybe that they don’t make anymore, and I kinda get my Sentimental Old Man hopes up, like somehow I’m gonna be gifted with a latter-day Khartoum or something that will help me to banish dull care or something. This is particularly weird because I don’t even like the actual Khartoum all that much.  Anyway, I thought maybe this produced-by-some-obscenely-rich-Middle-Eastern-dude item, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, might do some kind of trick in this realm, but alas, no. It opens in “The Yellow Belt, somewhere in Arabia.” And boy, that belt sure is yellow! The noble heads of warring factions come to an uneasy truce involving one of the scions of a warlord living under the safekeeping of the former rival, or something, setting the stage for an epic (not quite) series of conflicts once the land of the Yellow Belt is discovered to be oil rich. The disc looks very good, but the  visual splendor does not ameliorate a cliché-collection storyline and script, po-faced direction that takes every cliché dead seriously, phoned-in performances, and….well, the battle scenes take forever to get started, and aren’t so hot once they do. I’m sticking with Khartoum. —C+

The Devil And Miss Jones (Olive)

Ah, Olive Films. Its Blu-rays of old Republic Westerns (right, as opposed to the up-to-the-minute Republic Westerns) kept me sane when I took breaks from grappling with The De Niro Perplex and other inerleckshul challenges. And its off-kilter but hardly random selection of other vintage Hollywood fare consistently uncovers gems of substantial cinephilic pertinence. This 1941 Norman Krasna-scripted, Sam Wood-directed comedy is an excellent case in point, a swell vehicle for the great Jean Arthur and an amusingly agitationist pro-labor parable to boot, with Charles Coburn as a magnate who conceives the concept for the later television series Undercover Boss, as it were. A crackerjack picture with a standout sequence set in Coney Island, and a very interesting just-pre-World-War-II time capsule (although there’s not a single allusion to the troubles in Europe at the time). All this and production design by  William Cameron Menzies. (Cogent, but a little on the subdued side for him, although the Coney Island police station did give this viewer an eerie little pre-echo of Invaders From Mars.) The Blu-ray is crisp looking,  but a little lowish in the contrast department, which I sometimes find to be the case with Olive. Hardly a cardinal sin and in any event and the movie is well worth your time. —B+

Diary of a Chambermaid (Olive)

Hollywood-studio bound Jean Renoir is frustrating in a lot of ways, I noted as I began watching this, struck by the stage sets, and the sometimes-Mickey-Mousing musical score. This ain’t no Toni, in other words. However. Once you’re accustomed to the climate, the salient features of which include Paulette Goddard’s incarnation as a blonde, the movie builds up a nicely sly and sardonic head of steam. And of course this 1946 gloss on Mirbeau is an excellent double feature with Buñuel’s 1964 treatment of the same material, starring a Jeanne Moreau who’s permitted to keep her natural hair color. The cursory treatment Renoir accords this picture in My Life and My Films tends to confirm my suspicions that this was more a passion project for Burgess Meredith (co-star, co-screenwriter, co-producer, and Goddard’s husband at the time) than the director himself. In any event, the disc looks good, there’s a slight uptick in contrast relative to The Devil and Miss Jones, and ostensibly minor Renoir is still Renoir. —A-

From Beyond (Scream Factory)

Barbara Crampton’s metamorphosis from bespectacled researcher to  leather corseted dom is possibly the greatest sexy librarian switch in cinema history. And the Stuart-Gordon-directed 1986 followup to the immortal Re-Animator doesn’t disappoint in its other particulars either. The disc is first rate: Good detail, great psychedelic colors. Gordon’s brio and the overall inspiration of the rest of the crew bring this latter-day exploitation goodie way above generic Italian-studio Charles Band-dom. (Longtime Fangoria and/or Video Watchdog subscribers know too well what I mean.)  Filmmaking lesson: various gradations of psychedelic pink lighting definitely give your rubberized creature effects a more convincing feel. Good explosions and fire, always a sign of a well-done transfer. Inspirational Commentary Bit: “From Beyond has a machine!” —A

Frontier Horizon (Olive)

The good news is that this 1939 B oater, the eighth and last Three Mesquiteers picture to star John Wayne, is the best-looking of all such Blu-rays I’ve looked at thus far (I haven’t yet  gotten to Santa Fe Stampede and Red River Range). It’s one of the more unstuck-in-time Mesquiteers adventures, with an engaging land-grab storyline and tight narrative margins and brisk action; a real tonic. Also the film debut of Jennifer Jones, here billed by her real name Phyllis Isley, and looking and acting very fresh, innocent as she is of the knowledge that David O. Selznick would soon come along and CRUSH HER SPIRIT.—B+

The Fury (Twilight Time)

This, as it happens, is one of my favorite Brian De Palma movies, largely because it’s just the director going virtuosically nuts on a B-movie “Don’t fuck with Kirk Douglas” scenario. For the first quarter or so I was having a wonderful time with the high-def version. The beach scene with William Finley, and its bizarre depth-of-field show-offery, looked amazing. And I noticed that Hillary Thompson, the girl Amy Irving gives the nosebleed to, was a dead ringer for Sasha Grey, who was not even a concept in 1978. This is what movie watching’s all about. However. Once the night scenes started, the picture got pretty wonky: a good deal of speckling akin to what one sees in the Italian transfers of some Dario Argento pictures. It’s particularly evident in a scene after Douglas puts Irving on the bus: the over-graininess doesn’t get as bad as that of the misfire French Connection Blu-ray of a while back, but it’s close. Off-the-record consultations with technically trusted sources suggests the problem arises from an anomaly of an outmoded storage medium for digital transfers. It certainly didn’t kill the movie but it took me out of it for a bit, and it’s a poor comparison with the wonders inherent in the daylight scenes. A shame, and a problem I hope can be corrected at some point in time. —C

The Grandmaster (Mei Ah mixed region Hong Kong import)

If you wanna see the latest from Wong Kar-Wai before Harvey Weinstein regales the U.S. with his shorter-by-fifteen-minutes cut, this  pricey import would seem to be the way to go, and it’s a beauty. An evocative and sometimes elliptical biography of martial arts legend Ip Man (in case you were wondering, that’s the guy’s actual NAME, not like a superhero title or anything) it begins with a rain-soaked fight sequence that’s both quintessential and unlike anything the director’s done before. The colors are quietly ravishing, the performers profoundly enigmatic, and on the whole it’s more assured and cohesive than My Blueberry Nights, which I’ve actually gotten fonder of in recent years. On this disc, movie itself is region-free, and has English subs; special features are region-locked, and have none. They look pretty EPK-generic, as far as I can tell.  Your call. —A-

The Grapes of Death (Kino Lorber)

That’s a goofy title (and the French original, Les raisins de la mort, isn’t much better) for a genuinely remarkable horror movie, one of the most desolate films ever made, its often goofy special effects notwithstanding. There’s something about zombie-like pestilence occurring in the bucolic French countryside (Michael Haneke exploited it for rather similar effect, in fact, for his more arthouse-respectable [and also excellent] Hour of the Wolf) that just gets to you. Director Jean Rollin’s determined simplicity alternates with genuine (blank verse0 poetry, and the atmosphere of dread and despair is simply remarkable. Brigitte Lahaie-aiie-aiie-aiie is great as a not-what-she-seems character and her “behold my infection-free naked body” bit is a rather hilarious bit of exploitation deadpan in an otherwise mordant vision. The disc looks spectacular, very true to its source. Which source contains the aforementioned cheesy special effects, but what are you going to do. —A-

The Grifters (Miramax/Echo Bridge)

Ah, Echo Bridge, perpetrators of that wretched Blu-ray of Dead Man back in 2011. How I dread the idea of spending money on your product. So I think what happened is that I picked up this (admittedly cheap retail price point) disc in a trade in, because my curiosity got the better of me and also because damnit this is a pretty great picture that belongs in one’s library and it has a Donald E. Westlake script and naked Annette Bening and so there. Still, once it was home I didn’t look forward to checking it out. It’s not bad. The opening credits are in 1.66, which piqued my interest for a minute, but once they were through the picture reverted to a plasma-screen-filling 1.77 (not even 1.85, those motherfuckers). The picture’s solid, a little soft at times (like during Bening’s nude scene, imagine that) but it doesn’t have any jump-out-at-you pixilation screw-ups as Dead Man did. Not terrible, but also nothing special. I’d recommend you shoplift it but what kind of person would that make me?—B- 

The Hobbit (Warner)

I don’t have full-time access to a 3D display, so I acquired the flat Blu-ray of this, a movie I’d probably like a lot more if I smoked pot, because I was curious about how a more conventional version would look—I saw it on the big screen in 3D and at the controversial 48 fps projection speed and was mixed but sometimes very impressed. The “regular” version on Blu-ray is more…mixed. The textures of the visuals offers more disctrete distinction between the live-action and animated components within a given frame that I was comfortable with; the images rarely, if ever, merged into a coherent and satisfying whole. Again, this might not have been a problem had I been watching stoned. But I think the thing is, this movie actually needs  3D, if not necessarily 3D in 48fps. Having figures inhabit different planes just makes the multi-platform effects more digestible, as it were. Whenever I get a display upgrade (and it’ll probably be a while), I’ll give the 3D version a look and report back. —B

The Hudsucker Proxy (Warner Archive)

Almost ten years after their pal Sam Raimi got majorly burned on Crimewave, the Coen Brothers got a big budget and no studio interference on their own arguably final Full Cartoon movie, their first effort to really take a bath at the box office, as it happened. Like all Coen pictures, it’s since acquired a cult, but not nearly the one that The Big Lebowski entertains. And so, its Blu-ray gets a bare-bones Warner Archive release. Not that you go to Coen Brothers movies on video for the DVD extras anyway. This movie looks very nice; the disc nails the movie’s highly burnished look, which we come to understand as but one function of its Dada-by-way-of-Preston-Sturges snideness. By this time the Coens’ chops had come to match the ambition of their crazy gags (if you watch Raising Arizona today, while it’s still delightful, you might be shocked at how ragged some of it looks), and with more money to throw at production design and such, they really went to town. It’s kind of astonishing that the movie even exists. And yes, I think Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance works. —A-

The Jazz Singer (Warner)

One rather wishes that Michael Curtiz rather than Alan Crosland had directed this 1927, um, breakthrough film, but what are you going to do. It would have still retained its problem-picture status. What this Blu-ray really demonstrates is how great a result is yielded via application of expensive up-to-the-minute technology. I’m admittedly speculating here; I don’t have the details of how this transfer was made but it simply has to be a meticulous frame-by-frame scanning of good or eminently restorable materials. Look at the whites of Warner Oland’s eyes when he pops them out in indignation that Jakie is late to sing at temple. It’s incredible in a movie that’s almost ninety years old. As good as the older movies Olive puts on Blu-ray can look, their transfers are done by more conventional means, and it shows. The rest of this package runs along the same lines as the 2007 standard-def release, with multiple eye-popping hours of vintage musical entertainment, while the commentary track on the movie itself from  Ron Hutchison and Vince Giordano is one of the best of its kind. Just amazing. —A+

Knightriders (Arrow Region B U.K. import)

I cannot tell a lie: until this Arrow release came under my transom, I’d actually never seen this crucial George A. Romero film. I regret I didn’t sooner; it’s a pretty spectacular film. And it’s really not nearly as goofy as its conceit of stunt cyclists enacting Arthurian myth in the modern world might strike you, in large part due to Ed Harris’ superb lead performance and to the workmanlike, thorough way that Romero and his company enacts said conceit. Expansive, emotional, but never sentimental, it’s a quintessential Romero treatment on the wages of integrity. The transfer looks terrific, and the extras, including a commentary and a contemporary interview with Harris, are also excellent. Shout! Factory has this slated for a domestic release in July but I’m not sure if the company will best this particular product.—A+

Leave Her To Heaven (Twilight Time)

There has not been an extant Technicolor source for this glorious Technicolor film since maybe before you and I were even born, which is a shame and maybe even a crime. So as much restoration as it gets, we shall never be able to behold the full glory of John Stahl’s mesmerizing 1945 plunge into murderous neo-noir amour fou, starring Gene Tierney at her most hypnotically ga-ga gorgeous. But this Blu-ray boasts a beautiful picture for all that, so much more than passable that I wonder whether viewers of the real Technicolor were struck by Stendhal syndrome en masse. Essential. —A+

Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles (Warner)

What a sort of random idea: a two-Blu-ray anthology of  Looney Tunes mice-themed cartoons, billed as “The Chuck Jones Collection.” The adventures of Abbott-and-Costello-esque Hubie and Bertie are featured, as well as a bunch of shorts featuring neurotically gabby Sniffles. While I grant that a little Sniffles goes a long way, I also insist that in small doses he (she? it?) can be kind of winsomely delightful. Aw, fuck it, I’m a complete sucker for Looney Tunes on Blu-ray in any permutation, so maybe take my grade with a grain of salt. But know also that the collection includes “Trap Happy Porky,” which has that drunk-mice singing “On Moonlight Bay” and one of them hiccupping “You’re flat” at the end, still one of the most reliably hilarious gags in all of cinema, for my money.—A

 Major Dundee (Twilight Time)

The heroic-not-quite restoration of a too-much-messed-with Sam Peckinpah coulda-been-a-masterpiece looked great in the standard-def package released in 2006; this version looks better still. Even the 1965 Columbia opening logo has this particularity of grain that provides a Proustian rush of movie-palace power. The reconstruction of Peckinpah’s vision is a movie one wished one could have seen in precisely that context, because it would have blown minds; it begins by coloring very deftly within the lines of the standard Cavalry Western and grows progressively wilder and stranger while never betraying its prime directive, so to speak. It’s also one of the most emotionally stirring pictures of its kind. Cinephiles who are unconvinced by claims for Peckinpah’s genius will at least have to credit him for a very particular singularity of vision after seeing this. And in this format you need make no excuses for the presentation.—A+

Monsieur Verdoux (Criterion)

Speaking of strange, Charles Chaplin’s 1947 black comedy, based on an idea of Orson Welles’, is one of the filmmaker’s odder creations, the character a very upfront mix of self-love and self, if not loathing, then some degree of disapproval. Verdoux is Barbe-bleu as bourgeois fallen on hard times, as it were, his endeavors in murder slapstick cookies dipped in arsenic and his exercises in restraint and/or compassion sentimentally self-aggrandizing. Fascinating, to say the least. This is a good-looking but not extraordinary rendering of the film—there’s apparently only so much that can be done with the material available from the licensing agent. Nevertheless, a necessary entry in the Cinema of Extraordinary Personality. And it’s pretty funny, at least in parts, particularly those parts in which Chaplin jousts with Martha Raye.—A

On Approval (Inception)

No, I had never heard of it before either. Dave Kehr had, of course Dave Kehr had, and it was his review of it in the Sunday New York Times that convinced me to check it out. I’m very happy I did. The 1944 take-everyone’s-mind-off the war comedy (set in the Victorian era, it has a present-to-past prologue that pokes gentle fun at the torn-from-the-distressing-headlines pictures of its day) is pretty much a fat-free puff pastry of droll dialogue exchanges in a Wildean mode, to wit, “You have a sweet voice, Helen.” “Thank you, George.” “But you seldom sing. That is a great accomplishment.” Reproduced in stellar, high-contrast black and white, and supplemented by a dry but informative commentary from scholar Jeffrey Vance. Aside from featuring a rare film performance by British comedy queen Beatrice Lillie, the wonderful movie happens to have been adapted, directed by, and starring Clive Brook,whom you may remember as “Doc” Harvey from Sternberg’s Shanghai Express. I had no idea he had it in him. —A 

Pals of the Saddle (Olive)

Another Mesquiteers title. No windowboxed opening this time. A clear crisp  image, not quite as crisp as that of Frontier Horizon. I like it better than Frontier Horizon though because it features kinds creepy quasi ventriloquist Max Terhune as “Lullabye” Joslin, whom I find a more compelling (not to say Lynchian) character than Raymond Hatton’s Rusty Joslin. Terhune’s character also indulges in some merciless mocking of sap Tucson, played by Ray “Crash” Corrigan. It’s also one of the Mesquiteer’s present-day-set adventures, and it involves a woman of initially ambiguous allegiances and the smuggling of something that’s not quite uranium but is definitely meant to be. Hence, the movie is Notorious avant la lettre, and hence cinematically important. Look, my point is that if you don’t get your hands on every Three Mesquiteers western you can, you’re a bad American. I don’t know how else to put it. —B

Panic In The Streets (Fox)

Essentially a high-def clone of  the Elia Kazan box set edition (note the menu, which is designed in the style of the box set), but a really good looking version of a masterful movie. As Kazan himself understood, this 1950 thriller was much more than a genre exercise, but it works on that level just fine. It’s thrilling filmmaking right from the get-go, with Kazan deploying genuine locations and idiosyncratic performers (Zero Mostel has a major role in one of his scarce films from this period before the blacklist kept him out of movies for pretty much a decade) with remarkable energy and invention. The contrast is just as I like it, the detail looks just fine to me. A couple of  newer extras are added (docs on costars Jack Palance and Richard Widmark), but the commentary from  Alain Silver and James Ursini remains the crucial one.—A    

The Telephone Book (Vinegar Syndrome)

This Blu-ray from a relatively new concern that seems commendably concerned with unearthing and preserving unusual grindhouse and quasi-underground fare does a nice job with this curio, written and directed by Nelson Lyon, whose unfortunate subsequent claim to fame would be accompanying John Belushi through a good portion of the Hollywood drug binge that killed the performer. This not-quite-tale of a girl Candide’s search for the world’s greatest obscene phone caller (no, really) boasts lovely vintage NYC locations rendered in yummy black and white and features, not necessarily in this order, Roger C. Carmel yelling “Fuck,” William Hickey contemplating a giant erection, and Jill Clayburgh loading a gun while wearing a sleep mask. Producer Merv Bloch provides a lively and sometimes sadly nostalgic commentary. Utterly intriguing but not for everyone. —B+

Tess (BFI Region B U.K. import)

One of Polanski’s greatest films, it’s rarely acknowledged as such for reasons I’m not sure I ought to speculate on. So I won’t, and instead will hope that this beautiful albeit extras-short Blu-ray from a restored source will help find it a newish and appreciative audience. Yes, the British countryside of Hardy, not to mention of Turner and Constable,  is  evoked via the ravishing cinematography (Ghislain Cloquet took over for Geoffrey Unsworth after the latter died some weeks into shooting) but the effects are not “merely” picturesque; the beautiful golden glow  that illuminates “Sir John D’Urbeville” throws that character’s strong ignobility into sharp relief, and throughout, natural glory is undercut by human stupidity and/or cruelty. The director is at his most expansive and his most crushing, simultaneously. —A

That Cold Day In The Park (Olive)

Pre-M*A*S*H Altman, but the purposeful murk of the imagery, and  the focus fakeouts throughout,  presage McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Images and Three Women more than they do the subsequent film that would make him famous. The movie got slagged as a squalid but conventional psych thriller at the time but seen today its particular tetchiness is really auteur-distinctive, if you ask me. The drab of the supposedly swank apartment inhabited by the Sandy Dennis character speaks volumes. The Olive disc seems to have been transferred from not pristine materials, but the Blu-ray renders what is likely a pretty accurate account of cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs’ long-lens impressionism. Fun fact: after retiring from acting male lead Michael Burns became an academic historian and has written more than one book on the Dreyfus case. — B+

Tristana (Cohen)

Goddamn there are a lot of trailers before the beginning of this movie. And that’s my only complaint. This high-def version of what I still consider Buñuel’s masterpiece of masterpieces looks amazing right from the beginning, as it casts a seemingly simple but ultimately devastating spell. Kent Jones fortifies his reputation as The World’s Most Enviable Film Critic by hosting a commentary track with Catherine Deneuve herself, and he keeps it relaxed and gets great stuff.  The included alternate ending is interesting. The actual ending is…well, unbelievable. Get this. Inspirational Commentary Bit: “He was really happy to be back in Spain, to be back working in Spain.”  —A+

 

Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics (Warner)

Good idea, putting these things on Blu-ray. The individual discs reproduce the extras, “Warner Night At The Movies” cartoons and shorts and all, of the standard def editions. And we approve. As for the high-def picture quality, the films are, in backward chronological order: White Heat, which looks very nice; there's some crackle on the audio of the 1949 film, and one insert shot in the opening train robbery sequence kind of stands out like a sore thumb, but otherwise solid, terrific. The longest movie of the bunch, almost two hours, because it’s kind of surprisingly plotty. Never lags a minute though. 1936’s The Petrified Forest screened in a restored version recently, and I presume that’s what’s on this Blu-ray, because the picture is easily the sharpest and most consistent in the set (not that the others are considerably behind, mind you). I mean, you can see stray hairs pop off both Bette Davis and Leslie Howard’s heads in medium closeup when they’re facing each other. Also the painted desert backdrops of the set are more evident. Terrific film, a bit on the talky side, but great performances (it made Bogart a star, but Howard really sells his slightly ridiculous role; the guy was some actor) and interesting action…and the two African-American characters are not broad stereotypes or even really stereotypes at all, a near-impossiblity for a Hollywood picture of this time, I used to think. The Public Enemy looks spectacular, sometimes grain heavy but what of it. Little Caesar  displays a  little softness in the shallow focus shots but it’s likely endemic to the material and it’s neither displeasing nor “bad.” A wonderful thing in all respects. —A+

  Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (Sony)

A lot of The Kids have been raving about this one (and I gotta say that getting behind Peter Hyams’ son could be Vulgar Auteurism at its most innovative), so I thought I’d check it out, despite the fact that I turned off the similarly-praised The Raid after about twenty minutes cause the thing looked as if it had been developed in a mud bath. The first twenty minutes of this were really disgusting (slaughter of lead character’s family in graphic detail, including much-teased adorable-little-girl death), and looked pretty damn good. Eventually I thought I discerned a pulpier, freaked-out extrapolation of The Bourne Legacy and/or Unknown, with some intriguing Fire Walk With Me "touches."Eventually I had to own up to the fact that I was being way too optimistic and that the movie really wasn’t about much more than a guy who comes out of a coma to discover that he has a British accent. This does have more nudity than an average Bourne knockoff, plus the lead actress is a pretty credible Stoya lookalike. (Don’t hassle me for knowing too much about porn stars, she was on the cover of the goddamn Village Voice.) The action stuff is pretty credibly bone-crunching, I admit. The commentary is the usual “we had a great second unit” stuff. Verdict: not as essential as you may have been led to believe. —B-

The Vampire Lovers (Scream Factory)

No real complaints from me on this one. Yeah, maybe the materials weren’t pristine/super-restored, but they look decent. If there’s ever a Blu-ray of Fearless Vampire Killers, I’ll expect it to look better. But, no disrespect to Roy Ward Baker intended, the way this looks is both objectively good, and also entirely appropriate to the movie’s aesthetic pay grade. Inspirational dialogue: “German’s so difficult.” Among the extras: ten minutes of pasty but nicely dressed white males trying to come up with more erudite ways to exclaim “Boobies,” (because there sure are a lot of them in the movie, and most of the guys saw the movie when they were at an impressionable age). On the other hand, while the very sensible and nice and still lovely second female lead Madeline Smith gives an interview my wife characterizes as “darling!” Commentary features very sedate-sounding Ingrid Pitt,  delightfully named screenwriter Tudor Gates,  and the great Baker in a dry but informative interview format. (All three are now deceased, which is lamentable but inevitable.) —A

Van Gogh (Gaumont Region B French import)

Gaumont’s been putting out the Pialat catalog in new high-def editions and while I am sufficiently pleased by my current Eureka!/Masters of Cinema standard-def editions of the films and I figure eventually the company or some like concern will step up to the plate with versions featuring English-language extras, in a couple of cases I have not been able to resist. This 1991 picture is one. (It’s not among the MOC titles, is one reason.) This is a magnificent film, an artist’s portrait of an artist that concentrates on interstices, pauses, and work, work, work rather than the usual romanticized “artiste” stuff. It’s kind of the ultimate act of respect to its subject and likely a kind of self-portrait of its director. It looks sweet throughout, though there are hints of noise in some of the darker scenes near the end (for instance, Jacques Dutronc’s Van Gogh with a prostitute in the Moulin Rouge back room). I hold out hope for cheaper, more English-comprehensive editions (you’ve got subtitles on the feature but not on any of the extras) but I’m still glad to own this. —A

The Verdict (Fox)

The long-awaited (by me and Jeffrey Wells and probably some other people too) Blu-ray of the 1982 movie looks pretty splendid: a good library copy of a movie that belongs in your library. Watching it this time around I noticed for the first time that the relationship between Paul Newman’s Frank Garvin and Jack Warden’s Mickey Morrisey rather neatly reverses the dynamic between the Jimmy Stewart and Arthur O’Connell characters in Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder. Director Sidney Lumet often complained that critics didn’t really appreciate the depth of cinematic craft he brought to his deceptively straightforward storytelling; this movie is a master class in it. As Phillip Lopate put it in a recent Cineaste review of the Blu-ray of Lumet’s film of A Long Day’s Journey Into Night (which I haven’t gotten around to looking at yet), “If Lumet refuses to disguise the theatricality of the source material, he brings an impressive array of cinematic techniques to its moment-by-moment realization.” Where, say,  Preminger moved the camera, Lumet likes to place it in a comprehensive overview position and keep it there for a good long time (see the pretrial conference with Newman, James Mason, and Milo O’Shea), but he then places his emphases via judicious cutting to ground-level medium shots as the scene builds in verbal and strategic complexity. In other words, he is rather like a theater director in that his moves service the script, and this script, by David Mamet from  a novel by Barry Reed, is a very strong one. One of the best by the director, the screenwriter, and the star. —A+

Viva Zapata! (Fox)

I haven’t kept up on the critical reputation of this 1952 picture, and I haven’t watched it in quite some time,  and I have to say I was not that thrilled by it (and I recall not having been too thrilled by it first time around, which must have been when I was in my twenties). It looks beautiful; Joseph MacDonald’s lensing of various parts of the North American west standing in for Mexico is inspired. But I  found it dramatically stilted (John Steinbeck’s script wears its earnest didacticism on its sleeve) and kind of a waste of Brando, who is very conscientiously consistent in his portrayal of the plaster-saint version of the title character. This movie immediately precedes another Kazan non-favorite of mine, Man on a Tightrope. Maybe the guy was having personal problems in the mid-50s, I dunno. The disc is a solid presentation to be sure.—B

Wake In Fright (Alamo Drafthouse)

This highly disquieting 1971 thriller directed in Australia by Canadian-born Ted Kotcheff could just as well be titled Alcohol Is A Hell Of A Drug. A dissatisfied outback schoolteacher en route to Sydney makes a stop in the so-called “Yabba” that, after a few beers and a few more after that, submerges him in what we’ll call a distinctly unwholesome culture. Definitely a movie you ought to show anyone who thinks the “Wolfpack” ethos endorsed by those idiotic Hangover movies is something, you know, real. Also, you'll never see Donald Pleasance the same way again, even if you already do know Cul-de-sac. Long considered lost, Wake was revived on the rep circuit recently and the Blu-ray from relatively a new distrib outfit (an offshoot of the legendary Texas movie venue) is highly admirable: a great transfer that really puts across that baking-heat yellow light that seems endemic to Australia and certain Australian films, and good extras. If you can stand the (multiply disclaimered) kangaroo hunt that’s the movie’s horror centerpiece you’re golden. If not, well, you’ve been warned here. —A

War of the Wildcats (Olive)

Lest anyone accuse me of being completely in the tank for any Republic western, I cite this 1943 relative dud, which is kinda dull although arguably as semi-interestingly weird as one would expect any movie that casts Albert Dekker and John Wayne as romantic rivals to be.  Originally titled In Old Oklahoma, it features Dekker and Wayne as two different types of oil men, one the rapacious land-grabbing type, the other the hard-working man of the people. Guess who’s which. Martha Scott plays the object of their affections, a former school teacher turned early 20^th-century chick lit purveyor. Nothing against Scott, but Claire Trevor might have put more oomph in the role. Also featuring Sidney Blackmer as Theodore Roosevelt. Seriously, it’s not as good as I’m making it sound. And the disc presentation itself is quite mixed, what with the frequent speckling of the source material. For Republic junkies only.—C

Zeta One (Kino Lorber)

This 1969 secret agent/sci-fi pastiche looks pretty good. GREAT colors. (Note the orange kitchen. If you watch it. Which I'm not recommending.) Whiter than white whites. Too bad it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. INSIPID direction, coy dialogue, flat delivery. Nice 60s art direction…I think my parents had those white swivel chairs. The first scene goes on forever and nothing happens. It’s like The Room of James Bond parodies, honest. But I watched it all the way through! And the the image quality does hold up but man, does this movie ever answer the question “How bad can it be?” And the answer is: in the final shots, the At the end the hero is surrounded by six naked and/or semi-clad women and he looks absolutely bored to death…and you completely understand how he feels. Brilliant. —C+

Zombie Flesh Eaters (Arrow Region B U.K. import)

This 1979, um, classic, looks pretty amazing, and you’ll know a little about why from the interview I conducted with supervisor James White, here. The clarity and detail is such I was able to cogently identify (for my own self) the hallmarks of  The Lucio Fulci “Look:” Shallow focus, almost exclusively long lenses, not ostentatiously lit, lotta “natural” light. And you know, maybe it’s my grindhouse taste talking, but I think it’s a pretty good horror movie. And now one word never associated with prior video versions can be applied to it: beautiful. Nifty extras, too, including three different discrete title sequences, ‘cause that how international distribution of Italian exploitation cinema used to roll. —A+