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 Élite 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 première 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 coördin­a­tion (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-