Blu-ray Consumer Guide: June 2011

These things are always fun at the start (“Yay! I’m gonna watch a shit­load of discs!”), daunt­ing in the middle (“When am I gonna find time to watch all these damn discs?”), and a pain in the ass at the end (“Christ, I’ve got to write about all these fuck­ing discs!”). But I’m try­ing to man­age my time bet­ter, and I’ve got a pile of discs ready to go for the next install­ment, which I should be well into before the Red Hook pool opens, at least watching-wise.

You may notice I included the Blu-ray of Lolita but not Barry Lyndon. As it hap­pens, I’m still gath­er­ing, um, data, on the whole, um, aspect-ratio, um, thing. I will say the image qual­ity of the disc is such that if you can, as Roger Corman might put it, swing with the 1.7‑something frame, it’s pretty damn good. And that’s all I’m gonna say at the moment. In the mean­time, enjoy. And as this is the most service-journalism-ish fea­ture on this blog (ground rules: for the most part a sub­ject­ive but informed image-and-home-theater-experience assess­ment) it’s the one wherein I men­tion that the blog does have a tip jar wid­get. Thanks, and again, enjoy. 

Equipment used: Players: For Region A domest­ic and import discs, Playstation 3 con­sole. For Region B import discs, OPPO BDP 83. Display: Hitachi P50V701, 16:9 Standard 2 Aspect Ratio set­ting, Day (Dynamic) pic­ture set­ting, reset by eye by author using Lawrence of Arabia film still in Kevin Brownlow’s David Lean bio­graphy as guide.

A.I. : Artificial Intelligence (Warner)

Possibly my per­son­al favor­ite Steven Spielberg film, look­ing very good indeed on high-def.  That dif­fused light­ing thang the dir­ect­or and his cine­ma­to­graph­er Janusz Kaminski so enjoy is rendered very nicely.  The slightly inhu­man sheen of the cyborg char­ac­ters seems more evident/pronounced…but the effects stuff looks pretty seam­less, at least as seam­less as they were at the time. This is the first of sev­er­al films I’ll be rat­ing in high-def that my wife will nev­er, ever, in a mil­lion years let her­self be talked into watching—emotional child-abandonment trauma, don’t you know. —A

 All The President’s Men (Warner)

Cinematographer Gordon Willis has gone on record call­ing this hi-def ver­sion a botch, and com­plain­ing, quite jus­ti­fi­ably, at not hav­ing been even con­tac­ted with a notion to being con­sul­ted on it. And it’s true—if the cinematographer’s alive and still has eyes and so one, he or she ought to be con­sul­ted. And then you get Vittorio Storaro and his unusu­al ideas con­cern­ing aspect ratios and you…oh, nev­er mind. In any event, the Blu-ray of this clas­sic and still extremely enga­ging thrill­er DOES render col­ors little toward the hot side, par­tic­u­larly in the  scenes set in the Washington Post offices—the red fil­ing cab­in­ets do look as if they’ve been freshly painted. Redford IS very golden and blonde. And so on. On the plus side, I have to say that this only really registers as a dis­trac­tion when you’re con­cen­trat­ing on these details. In a lot of oth­er respects, the new detail really enhances the absorb­ing view­ing exper­i­ence. But still. Come on. — B-

Le Amiche/La Signora senza Camelie (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema Import)

Two sep­ar­ate pack­ages, Region‑B locked imports from a great label; both spec­tac­u­lar look­ing black and white ‘50s 1.37 films; both cor­rect­ives to the con­ven­tion­al (and for­tu­nately now-fading) wis­dom that Michelangelo Antonioni only became a major film­maker with L’Avventura, and the equally incor­rect notion that L’Avventura rep­res­en­ted a major break from his pri­or films.  Both insanely good films. Ostensibly ’50s melo­dra­mas, with Le Amiche being the ostens­ible “women’s pic­ture” and Signora a not-quite avant le lettre quasi Daisy Clover show­biz exposé. Both Antonioni to the bone, in fact—brilliant, detached, vir­tu­osic but ampath­et­ic con­struc­tions. Have I men­tioned the image qual­ity is remark­able?  The very astute Gabe Klinger’s smart video dis­cus­sions (shot, and not badly at that, by one Joe Swanberg, mak­ing these quite pos­sibly the only Swanberg-related products besides that Criterion My Dinner With Andre that I’ll ever be able to whole-heartedly endorse, although hope does spring etern­al) are enga­ging extras on each of the discs, although be aware, Mr. Klinger is suf­fi­ciently youthful-appearing here as to per­haps inspire some envi­ous “Doogie-Hauser-of-film-crit” grous­ing. But he really knows his stuff, and con­tex­tu­al­izes it and com­mu­nic­ates it in an enga­ging, dir­ect way. Really remark­able image qual­ity, have I men­tioned that? No kid­ding, it’s like a newly struck print on Signora. Same with Le Amiche. A new excuse to buy a region-free Blu-ray play­er. For real. —A+

Betty Blue (Cinema Libre Studios)

First thoughts upon pop­ping in the disc, almost lit­er­ally: “What the fuck is up with this MENU?” Ugly typeface, poor nav­ig­a­tion. The trail­er pre­ced­ing the menu, advert­ising this upcom­ing group of high-def releases of films by dir­ect­or Jean-Jacques Beineix, also flum­moxes, being all over the place in terms of image qual­ity. Once you get past the menu and into the film, though things improve. It looks pretty damn good, there’s SOME noise evid­ent at inter­vals in shadow-pocketed areas of the image, but noth­ing overtly egre­gious. The sum­mery golden beach glow of the early idyll­ic scenes is very nice. The sub­titles are shad­owed for easi­er read­ing. There were weird pauses when skip­ping chapters on my play­er, but oth­er than that, this was a nice sur­prise. —B+

 The Beyond (Arrow)

Lucio Fulci’s pro­voc­at­ive med­it­a­tion on the chal­lenges of hotel renov­a­tion gets the elab­or­ate cultists-gone-wild treat­ment cour­tesy of Arrow. An import at an import price, but a region-free one. A pretty much per­fect rendi­tion of the never-not-opportunistic hor­ror cheapie: Grungy. Viscous. Disgusting.

Ew, and addi­tion­ally, ick. As such, pretty great. —A-

Bicycle Thieves (Arrow)

Awesome U.K.-based label Arrow isn’t just about the exploit­a­tion films, you know, and this high-def ren­der­ing of a DeSica pic­ture you might have heard of is thrill­ingly beau­ti­ful. Really sharp and beau­ti­ful for the most part, dis­play­ing a little material-related soft­ness in some areas, but over­all a com­plete gift. This is Region‑B locked;  I don’t know if a domest­ic ren­der­ing of the film in Blu-ray is in the works, but if you’ve got the set-up for it this release is a must. —A

The Black Pirate (Kino Lorber)

As great Douglas Fairbanks silents are con­cerned, no, this isn’t The Thief of Bagdad, but it is frisky and full of derring-do and has incred­ibly inter­est­ing two-strip Technicolor sequences. This Blu-ray’s from a mas­ter made from the res­tor­a­tion neg­at­ive and has an abund­ance of what we some­times call “good” grain. It’s a touch on the bright side… and largely pretty beau­ti­ful. The col­ors often have a muted pas­tel feel that’s not at all dis­pleas­ing. The detail reveals a good deal of the movie-magic involved in con­coct­ing this sea­far­ing fantasy, e.g., painted back­drops on the desert island, pan­cake makeup on Fairbanks. A nifty pack­age. More, please. —A-

Blow Out (Criterion)

Not my favor­ite DePalma by a long shot, not even at the time, even though I saw it in theat­ers some­thing on like a half dozen occa­sions dur­ing its 1981 release. What can I tell you, I must have had a weird and/or insuf­fi­cient social life back then. In any event, this new, director-approved present­a­tion has more grain on it than I actu­ally recall. Detailing and col­ors are very strong, very con­sist­ent. This isn’t the place to get into a debate on the rel­at­ive mer­its of the pic­ture itself but I do have to say that the blas­ted thing does move right along and holds togeth­er on its own terms. In oth­er words…they don’t make ‘em like they used to? Who knows. Also, the guy who plays cranky-on-television dude  “Jack Matters” (Maurice Copeland) looks an awful lot like future-suicide-on-television Bud Dwyer, which is weird. In all, a pack­age to delight even the skep­tic­al on this pic­ture, I’d say. —A

The Comancheros (Fox)

First thing you notice here is that the pic­ture is pretty bright. The second thing is…Hey, is that Henry Daniell? So it is. Good grain struc­ture, a touch of orange a little too prom­in­ent in the over­all col­or palette, maybe… and widescreen. Director Michael Curtiz, whose final film this 1961 John-Wayne-starring Western was, didn’t work in ‘Scope often, so that’s an attrac­tion. What’s this? Whoo-hoo! A roul­ette table! Shades of you-know-what, speak­ing of Curtiz pic­tures! Damn, look at that hat Wayne is wear­ing. There’s some­times a too-bright sheen on nasty Lee Marvin’s face, and the strong detail here makes the “wound” on his fore­head look exactly like the fake plastic vomit that you could nev­er fool your friends with.  That aside, a fun pic­ture of its kind, pos­sibly for specialists/collectors/auteurist/Western freaks only. Actually, that cov­ers a not insub­stan­tial amount of ground. —B+

Dementia 13/The Terror (HD Cinema Classics)

Time to check out some offer­ings from a new label offer­ing public-domain “cult” “clas­sics” newly remastered in high-def, you know the drill hype. There’s some­thing about such out-of-nowhere enter­prises that causes almost auto­mat­ic sus­pi­cion. I’ve been read­ing not-great things about the fare offered by HD Cinema Classics, which had put out HD ver­sions of Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential and Welles’ The Stranger that reviews said were barely worthy of being des­ig­nated high-def. I steered clear, there­fore, but for some reas­on wasn’t able to res­ist these new­er offer­ings, maybe because they were such par­tic­u­lar­ized cult items that I couldn’t ima­gine a more pres­ti­gi­ous, respons­ible out­fit as being inter­ested in tak­ing Blu-ray cus­todi­an­ship of them. Well, I may be right there but more fool me. Dementia 13, an enjoy­able early Coppola pulp thrill­er backed by Roger Corman, fea­tur­ing that indelible early image of a still-blaring tran­sist­or radio under water, is here a dis­ap­point­ment even by the stand­ards of dis­ap­point­ment. A “clean” black-and-white image, to be sure, but VERY soft, with a lot of digit­al manip­u­la­tion. Ugh. Key scenes (e.g., the tran­sist­or radio shot!) don’t play very well. Too bright, face tones bloom­ing, washed out…bleh.

For whatever reas­on, the sep­ar­ate pack­age of Corman’s dis­or­i­ent­ing, ener­vat­ing mess The Terror, in widescreen and col­or, looks a lot bet­ter, pretty close to how you’d ima­gine you’d see it at a loc­al theat­er back in the day, giv­en that said theat­er wouldn’t have cared much about the present­a­tion of such a piece of bottom-of-the-bill schlock. Said indif­fer­ence might be said to enhance the dis­creet tedi­um of the film itself. But then again, we’re here to exam­ine tech­nic­al qual­ity, not extra­pol­ate in the mode of the sur­real­ist crit­ics. So: there’s some notice­able blow­ing out in the exter­i­or day­light stuff.  —Dementia: C-;The Terror: C+

Diabolique (Criterion)

Clouzot on Blu-ray: since The Wages of Fear, we pretty much always approve. This delight­fully curdled thrill­er is a no-brainer for any lib­rary, and the Blu is an optim­um present­a­tions. The slight soft­ness of the image that crops up at times seems a product of actu­al light dif­fu­sion rather than a weak trans­fer or digit­al manip­u­la­tion. Still, the sharp cyn­icism of the pic­ture and its cli­mactic hor­ror image do resolve in memory as a some­what harder pic­ture than is some­times evid­ent here. The exper­i­enced real­ity of it is very hand­some and entirely apt.  —A

 Fat Girl (Criterion)

Catherine Breillat’s growing-up-much-worse-than-absurd laugh­fest, which would make a truly great double fea­ture with Hughes’ Sixteen Candles, don’t you think, is presen­ted here with a very strong European image. Perhaps a little too strong, as in overly detailed for abso­lute verisimil­it­ude: you can see the strap of the pros­thet­ic penis in the notori­ous “you’ll still be a vir­gin if I do it like so” scene. I swear I wasn’t look­ing for it, hon­est. (See also Breillat’s Sex is Comedy.) In any event, high-def pro­voca­tion for the whole fam­ily, if you’re family’s headed by Chuck Manson! I kid! [Rim shot] Seriously, strong stuff, recom­men­ded if you’ve got the stom­ach. Given the level of cul­tur­al adven­tur­ous­ness encour­aged by our vari­ous gate­keep­ers, for bet­ter or worse I ima­gine you prob­ably already know, or think you know, if you do or not.  —A

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Criterion)

What can one say, besides what one is usu­ally com­pelled to say when one looks into a Criterion high-def upgrade of one of its cata­log titles. That is, “Wow, it’s like the old stand­ard def one, one, only BETTER!!!!” I caught e very slight bit of video noise in Apocalypse Now pas­tiche desert-race scene, but that aside, pristine, hal­lu­cin­at­ory, great. —A

 Grand Prix (Warner)

We can all agree on the film’s weak­nesses as a film…that is, its dra­mat­ic com­pon­ent is…wait for it….kind of bor­ing. Jessica Walter get­ting huffy or no Jessica Walter get­ting huffy. Who knew that the com­bined per­son­al­it­ies of James Garner, Yves Montand, and Toshiro fuck­ing Mifune could fail to gen­er­ate onscreen excite­ment in and of them­selves? Still, I loved the HD disc ver­sion of this non-classic strictly on image qual­ity grounds back in the com­pet­ing format day, and the Blu-ray ver­sion is just as good; a really stun­ning image. Demo disc mater­i­al for those who know their stuff. I recall the HD of Milestone’s Mutiny on the Bounty had a sim­il­ar wobbly movie/great disc vibe, and I eagerly await THAT Blu-ray, too. —A

The Great Dictator (Criterion)

Chaplin’s first fully-fledged talk­ing pic­ture, a paci­fist satire that makes poor Ron Rosenbaum’s head explode whenev­er some­body brings it up. Not really. Still, just to be on the safe side, nobody men­tion this Blu-ray to him, and enjoy the beau­ti­ful sil­very image qual­ity of this Blu-ray; notice the detail of the wind mov­ing the grass in the back­ground of the open­ing gag with the explod­ing shell. Ponder, too, the begin­ning of Chaplin’s EXPANSIVE mode. (The film is 125 minutes). Warning: the sup com­ment­ary, by schol­ars Dan Kamin and Hooman Mehran, is inform­at­ive but gives new mean­ing to the term “super­dry.” —A+

Henri Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (Flicker Alley)

French crit­ic and pre­ser­va­tion­ist Serge Bromberg’s excav­a­tion of a doomed pro­ject by the afore­men­tioned Clouzot is, I believe, the first Blu-ray disc from the redoubt­able label Flicker Alley, and it’s a gor­geous rendi­tion of a fas­cin­at­ing and slightly dis­turb­ing record of a filmmaker’s obses­sion. You’ve nev­er seen such beau­ti­ful screen tests. And graphs! Look at the dot­ted green lines on that graph paper that was part of Clouzot’s prep for a film he could nev­er fin­ish! The actu­al hi-def video stuff—contemporary inter­views with sur­viv­ing indi­vidu­als involved with the doomed ‘60s project—is actu­ally weak­er look­ing than the archiv­al mater­i­als. But not bad at all. All this and a top­less, smoking Romy Schneider—you could assemble a damn good fet­ish video from her foot­age alone. Maybe that was part of the prob­lem. —A

The Horse Soldiers (MGM/Fox)

Ford on Blu-ray. Another we-always-approve thing. This bare-bones offer­ing of a first-rate, consistently-toned 1960 Civil War story is very sol­id. While there’s no real “res­tor­a­tion” or boost­ing evid­ent to speak of, this appears to have been mastered from mater­i­als in bet­ter than decent shape. Over at his own web­site, in a com­ments sec­tion, the ever-sharp-eyed Dave Kehr noted, “One thing the Blu-ray really brings out on The Horse Soldiers is the rad­ic­ally exper­i­ment­al nature of Clothier’s cine­ma­to­graphy. Ford seems to have pushed/allowed him to go even fur­ther than Winton Hoch did (reluct­antly, it’s said) in the impend­ing thun­der­storm sequence of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Throughout The Horse Soldiers, they’re shoot­ing in low light, over­cast con­di­tions, with very little fill light in the fore­ground, going for a drained, flattened look at least ten years ahead of its time (I was often reminded of Ric Waite’s work on Walter Hill’s The Long Riders). That, com­bined with the unusu­al, for Ford, south­ern land­scape with its soft, rolling hills and tense thick­ets of tall trees, gives The Horse Soldiers an excep­tion­al atmo­sphere in late Ford — almost the oppos­ite of the harsh con­trast and spare sets of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which of course was also pho­to­graphed by Clothier.” I couldn’t put it bet­ter, so I won’t try. And I’ll be look­ing at the Blu-ray of The Long Riders for my next roundup. —A

The Hustler (Fox)

Good stuff, over­all. There’s a slight, some­times barely notice­able soft­ness in the out-of-focus back­grounds of cer­tain shots that speaks of some digit­ized adjust­ment, but noth­ing that really detracts from the over­all effect. An aus­pi­cious high-def ren­der­ing of the beloved clas­sic, etc. —A

Kes (Criterion)

“Was this shot in 16?” I wondered when I began watch­ing this. Looks it, I fur­ther thought, but not in a bad way. The par­tic­u­lar tex­ture and grit of “real­ism” Ken Loach’s won­drous fea­ture debut has is some­thing I kind of reflex­ively asso­ci­ate with the smaller-gauge format. In any event, it was appar­ently NOT shot in 16, and it really looks swell. One of those films in which you can see the sun bright as any day right in the middle of a shot and you still know it’s cold as hell out­side. The extras are also illu­min­at­ing. Talk about a film­maker who knows what he’s about;  Loach makes no bones about exactly what he and his cinema are after. Essential cinema in a superb configuration…albeit anoth­er film I’ll nev­er show my poor wife (who was, just to give you a test case, abso­lutely trau­mat­ized by the pen­ul­tim­ate scene of the Coens’ True Grit.)  A+

King of Kings (Warner)

People will say what they will about I Was A Teenage Jesus, but I’m always impressed by how fleet this thing is, how unusu­ally it’s struc­tured (the first hour is much more like a his­tor­ic­al back­ground­er than a Christ biop­ic), and by its quirky cast­ing (Torn as Judas, Ryan as John the Baptist, etc.). And it does carry a sense of genu­ine albeit con­fused con­vic­tion through­out. And the image qual­ity on this Blu-ray is gor­geous,  unim­peach­able. My grade reflects my very pro-Nicholas-Ray-bias, I have to admit.—A+

Lolita (Warner)

Shelley Winters’ poignancy, James Mason’s dry line read­ings, and Peter Sellers’ alleged imper­son­a­tion of his director’s Bronx honk not­with­stand­ing, this teen­age Nabokov freak has always con­sidered this to be Kubrick’s weak­est film. Still in all, I do not dis­dain its Blu-ray, which offers a quite nice black and white image in a lovely 1.66 frame. I’ve seen online com­plaints about low bitrates but can report from where I sit that the disc offers a far better-than aver­age or even above-average home view­ing exper­i­ence.—A

The Man Who Could Cheat Death/The Skull (Paramount/Legend)

The double-feature Blu-ray discs of less-than-entirely dis­tin­guished Paramount releases from the Legend label, avail­able at VERY pop­u­lar prices, would seem, like the above-reviewed HD Cinema Classic titles, to present a “buy­er beware” situ­ation, poten­tially. But check it out. This double-feature offer­ing presents two films on two sep­ar­ate discs…and one of them is, as you can see, The Skull, the lur­id Freddie-Francis-directed 1965 Amicus potboiler-with-benefits. The pic­ture here is grainy, a little on the purplish side to begin with…and improves fur­ther in. Into a fine, fun high-def exper­i­ence. How much did I like it? So much that I haven’t even looked at The Man Who Could Cheat Death yet, and I’m already fully sat­is­fied with hav­ing spent about 16 bucks on the pack­age.  —B+

Once Upon A Time In The West (Paramount)

You know one movie moment that nev­er fails to bring tears to my eyes? The crane shot going over the train sta­tion and show­ing the amaz­ing Monument Valley land­scape as Morricone’s score swells up dur­ing Claudia Cardinale’s entrance scene in this movie. And then the ride through the val­ley a little after that? I just bawl. I know, I’m abnor­mal. Anyway, this is one of my all time favor­ite movies, warts and all (this is not the time for a dis­quis­i­tion on Leone’s women prob­lems, suf­fice it to say that’s where all of the wart­age lies) and I see it on the big screen every time I can (did it at year’s end 2010, had an amaz­ing time, at the Walter Reade). This Blu-ray uses the Film Foundation res­tor­a­tion as its source and has all the neat extras that were on the ori­gin­al DVD release. In any event, it was with a great sense of “WTFIU!?” when I put this in the play­er, which was soon replaced by a great sense of “WTFIU!!!!” I mean, this is IT. Nails it. Just won­der­ful.  From the first minute, it was like, “nailed it!”  And that con­tin­ued through­out.—A+

Onechanbara (Bikini Samurai Squad) (Tokyo Shock)

Okay, I’ll admit that des­pite my some­times refined lan­guage and my “aspir­a­tion­al” eso­ter­ic sens­ib­il­ity, I’m essen­tially as much of a pig­let as any white male het­ero­sexu­al. Hence my being drawn to this bit of Japanese exploit­a­tion, the cover/poster art of which fea­tures a view of star Eri Otuguro in a stance I find preter­nat­ur­ally, um, attract­ive. If only the film itself con­tained a single image as arrest­ing. “Maybe the standard-def DVD was mastered too DARK, and I missed some­thing. Maybe I should try the Blu-ray.” And so. I did. And no dice. I have to con­clude the prob­lem is with the film, as this doesn’t rep­res­ent a bad trans­fer. I’m telling you this because you should avoid meet­ing the same fate, if you can help it. I’ll under­stand if you can’t. You pig.—C-

The Outlaw Josey Wales (Warner)

I don’t think this movie’s gonna need a whole lot of selling from my end, so I’ll just say the Blu-ray looks really great. They did a par­tic­u­larly good job with the video com­pres­sion: you may recall there are quite a few fires in this pic­ture, and nowhere do we get any car­toony stuff with the flames, a sign of half-assed com­pres­sion at best. It’s releases such as this that have mavens accus­tomed to hold­ing Warner to a very high stand­ard, and that’s why we tend to be dis­ap­poin­ted when it’s not always met, even in seem­ingly picay­une ways.—A+

Pale Flower (Criterion)

This fatal­ist­ic deep-noir 1964 yak­uza pic­ture from dir­ect­or Masahiro Shinoda will be seen as a genu­ine dis­cov­ery by a lot of people. It’s got some amaz­ing stuff in it, for sure. And  this present­a­tion offers a very good pic­ture. Incredible detail. Wonderful blacks and grays. I was ini­tially gonna say, the image “makes the film, which is no great shakes although it IS eccent­ric, look bet­ter than it actu­ally is.” But I hear from some I have high regard for that they con­sider the film pretty great shakes indeed, which makes me wanna reas­sess it a bit. I won­der why I was ini­tially dis­ap­poin­ted in it; maybe because I was expec­ted a Seigen Suzuki pic­ture, and this ain’t that. In any event, the qual­ity is SO out­stand­ing that one wants to come back to the film again and again, so in a way Criterion has done MORE than its job here. So… —A+

Senso (Criterion)

Casting that could have been: Visconti wanted, and got assents from, Brando and Ingrid Bergman for his ulti­mately plan­gent peri­od romance. But, “typ­ic­al of Visconti’s bad luck,” Andrew Sarris recoun­ted, Visconti’s “cast­ing coup of the dec­ade was vetoed by an Italian pro­du­cer  who pre­ferred and sub­sti­tuted Alida Valli and Farley Granger! Valli was extraordin­ar­ily effect­ive and Granger sur­pris­ingly so, but the emo­tion­al elec­tri­city was nev­er turned on.” Something else was, and from this peri­od of hind­sight this “lack” adds a dol­lop of not unin­ter­est­ing objectiv­ity to the oper­at­ic pas­sion. In any event, this is a gor­geous disc of what has been a too-little seen film, and if you think the pas­tels of the two-strip Technicolor in The Black Pirate are some­thing, you’ll be thrilled by the more del­ic­ate col­or effect the dir­ect­or and cine­ma­to­graph­ers Aldo, Krasker, and Rotunno (talk about a murderer’s row!) achieve here. You need this. And you know I NEVER say that. —A+

Smiles of a Summer Night (Criterion)

A good, fun Bergman, the basis of the great music­al by Sondheim and com­pany, riffed on not-so-well by Woody Allen in a sim­il­arly titled film and a bunch of oth­ers. Another one-time stand­ard def disc raised to a new level by Criterion. The high-def ver­sion is not as unearthly and beau­ti­ful as that of The Magician, but that’s split­ting hairs. “Wonderful” is the oper­at­ive word. —A

 Solaris (Criterion)

The uni­ver­sally beloved sci-fi clas­sic gets a high-def Criterion rethink with some new tints that emu­late those on the not-well-liked Ruscico ver­sion, but have thus far not been as con­tro­ver­sial as the whole Barry Lyndon aspect ratio deal. I wish I could accur­ately recol­lect things from my vari­ous the­at­ric­al view­ing of the film but I under­stand that even attempt­ing to do so is a way in which lies mad­ness. What I can say is that it all FEELS right, and that the pic­ture is gor­geously sharp, unim­peach­able even; the grain struc­ture true and film­like. If you love the film, a must. If you think it might be of interest of you, this is the ver­sion to check out. If you’re not a fan, stay away. Simple.   A+

Some Like It Hot (MGM/Fox)

The release was not much hyped, the pack­age is not big on new-new extras, but, like, holy crap: this is a really great look­ing ver­sion of one of the greatest com­ed­ies ever. Widescreen (ish-it’s actu­ally a 1.66 pic­ture!) black-and-white, with a real the­at­ric­al solid­ity to the pic­ture, and no video noise to speak of. Tell the truth, I was expect­ing more than a bit, from the start, and so was a little shocked that there was…zip. Instead, fant­ast­ic dif­fer­en­ti­ation in the gray scale, and there’s a lot of gray; look at the car Curtis and Lemmon are crouch­ing behind in the gar­age mas­sacre early on, versus the brick wall behind them. Marilyn really glistens, even when she’s look­ing a bit drawn and tense. A really great sur­prise and a must-have if you’ve ever loved the movie. —A+

 Something Wild (Criterion)

What a fas­cin­at­ing film. Watching it today, the notion that there’s some­how a schism between the ostens­ibly care­free, funsy open­ing stuff and the ultra­vi­olent nasty cli­max is pretty much a com­plete myth, albeit one manip­u­lated by dir­ect­or Jonathan Demme. All the seeds are there from the begin­ning, with the “Do I look like the kind of guy who would run out on a check, come on…” bit. Of course the mas­tery of ton­al change is prac­tic­ally advert­ised in the reunion dance scene, as the lights go down and the band, The Willies as played by the Feelies, who had pre­vi­ously been play­ing exuber­ant cov­ers of hit songs, trans­mog­ri­fy back into …the Feelies, and begin the some­what sin­is­ter open­ing of “Loveless Love” (later to be heard to not entirely dis­sim­il­ar effect in Assayas’ Carlos). Not for noth­ing, one real­izes now, was Demme a pro­du­cer on the film ver­sion of Willeford’s Miami Blues; the humor and warmth  side by side with venal­ity, cruelty and viol­ence here is very Willeford. There are also nods to Lang’s You Only Live Once…but I’m doing that thing where I’m get­ting into the film, not the Blu-ray. Which is just ter­rif­ic.—A+

El Topo/The Holy Mountain (Abkco/Anchor Bay)

Holy crap, where did these prints of these whacked-out early ‘70s under­ground movies that made Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unusu­al name come from? They look AMAZING. SOMEONE at Abkco has a vault, and a temperature-controlled one at that. Or some­thing. As for the films them­selves, sold seper­ately on Blu-ray, they still remain an acquired taste. I was recently research­ing a piece on A Clockwork Orange, and I looked up Pauline Kael’s review of it in her col­lec­tion For Keeps, and found on a facing page her some­what ter­ri­fied finger-wagging at Jodorowsky and his audi­ence of “heads,” with respect to El Topo: “…for the counter-culture viol­ence is romantic and shock is beau­ti­ful; because extremes of feel­ing and lack of con­trol are what one takes drugs for. What has begun hap­pen­ing, I think, is that the counter-culture has begun to look for the equi­val­ent of a drug trip in its the­at­ric­al exper­i­ences.” Hey, whatever, lady, you can have your trip, just don’t bum out mine, dig? Also: what a priss! But ser­i­ously, the films play even more oddly in the absence of a counter-culture, and seem, frankly, more curios than bits of genu­inely sub­vers­ive art. Still, I’m glad to own these pup­pies, not least because the unclas­si­fi­able and per­haps unen­dur­able Holy Mountain is really one of the great “con­fuse your friends” movies. —A

Topsy Turvy (Criterion)

Beautiful Blu-ray of a beau­ti­ful, enga­ging, utterly immers­ive movie. It would be almost repel­lently reduct­ive to call this a Mike Leigh movie for people who don’t like Mike Leigh movies but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for it to prac­tic­ally func­tion as such, in any event. What makes it a good poten­tial intro­duc­tion to Leigh is the way it shows off the vir­tu­osic tal­ents of his film­mak­ing col­lab­or­at­ors, par­tic­u­larly the cast. Like the best his­tor­ic­al films, includ­ing Tavernier’s The Princess of Montpensier, this attempts to depict people actu­ally liv­ing in their time. The rich, deep col­ors are in a sense informed and defined by this attempt to sim­u­late a liv­able his­tor­ic­al real­ity in which the per­formers can “be” their char­ac­ters. —A+

 Yi Yi (Criterion)

The late great Edward Yang did not have what you’d call a showy, elab­or­ate or baroque visu­al style; what he did have was a cam­era that served both as an observer/recorded and a pen. That these qual­it­ies are only enhanced and deepened by this excel­lent Blu-ray present­a­tion of one of his finest films would of course stand to reas­on. Solid, bet­ter than sol­id in fact,; really just a ter­rif­ic exper­i­ence of a spe­cial, unique, mov­ing film. —A+