Blu-ray and 4K Consumer Guide, WInter 2021

So I’m still main­tain­ing this blog, but obvi­ously haven’t pos­ted on it too much. Like Dick Cheney vis a vis Vietnam, I have oth­er pri­or­it­ies. There’s also the fact (not that I pay too much heed to it) that blogs really aren’t a thing any­more; they feel almost archa­ic. Yet here we are.

Some of the afore­men­tioned pri­or­it­ies have dimin­ished recently. I’m not going to get into detail but some of my read­ers at oth­er pub­lic­a­tions may have noticed my con­tri­bu­tions becom­ing less­er in num­ber. This even­tu­al­ity sees with it a dimin­ish­ment in per­son­al rev­en­ue, which led me to con­sider start­ing a news­let­ter, a sub­scrip­tion one even. So, I star­ted gath­er­ing mater­i­als for such an under­tak­ing, includ­ing notes for the Consumer Guide I’m pub­lish­ing below. I made notes for oth­er things, too, most hil­ari­ously an essay about a recent Van Der Graaf Generator box set, which would surely have rock­eted my sub­scrip­tion base past Andrew Sullivan’s and Bari Weiss’s com­bined. All the while, a feel­ing gnawed at me. That feel­ing being: I don’t want to do this. Obviously con­duct­ing a news­let­ter hustle requires the hust­ler to go into it abso­lutely whole­heartedly and (in some respects, not neces­sar­ily the most obvi­ous ones) cheer­fully. Resentful hes­it­ancy sig­nals half-heartedness, and half-heartedness is no way to run a Substack or whatever it would have been.

And again, without going into detail, my anxi­et­ies con­cern­ing rev­en­ue are not what they were a few months ago. So there’s not going to be a Substack, not yet. And there’s prob­ably not going to be an essay about the Van Der Graaf Generator box set either. (Sorry!) But there is, here, a Consumer Guide, now with some 4K UHD titles. And it is ded­ic­ated, for reas­ons he’ll under­stand, to the great Tim Lucas. Thanks for read­ing, as ever.

EQUIPMENT
My pre­dic­tion in the last Guide, which was, “between now and next March I’ll get a god­damn PlayStation 5 and will try and knock out a 4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide for vari­ety and perversity’s sake,” proved highly laugh­able in the PS 5 depart­ment. Have you got­ten yours yet? I just recently got a notice from B&H say­ing, “WE WILL NEVER HAVE THIS.” But any­way. At a cer­tain point, spe­cific­ally upon remem­ber­ing that I hadn’t used my PS 4 for game play­ing in elev­en years, I packed the thing up, sent it to a neph­ew who has four young boys, and got a Sony UBp-X800 multi-region 4K play­er and it’s pretty snazzy. Then there’s the Sony KD50X690E dis­play and Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiv­er. Which doesn’t have Dolby Atmos. For now, I’ll live.

The Damned (Criterion)

I recol­lect this pic­ture being quite a scan­dal on its ini­tial U.S. release — the dis­tin­guished maes­tro Luchino Visconti done gone and made an “X” rated movie. About Nazis! A couple of years later it would turn up at two in the morn­ing on Channel 7 and I nev­er bothered to stay up and watch because I figured it’d been cut to rib­bons. When I finally got around to see­ing it the first time what I was most struck by wasn’t the con­tent but by how crazy Visconti decided to go with the zoom lens. Makes Jess Franco look like Carl Dreyer. Okay, not quite. But thank the cre­at­or that he curbed this tend­ency when he made Death In Venice soon after. Then again, the style here is suited to the movie’s almost hys­ter­ic­al account of Third Reich decadence/degradation/depravity and such. Maurice Jarre’s open­ing music inspires sim­il­ar “what’s got into you?” thoughts. Bearing down hard on the anti-Communism of its Nazi char­ac­ters in its first thirty minutes or so, it then sets in motion a rel­at­ively nuance-free account of fas­cist inter­per­son­al dynam­ics. It’s kinda like Succession, but with actu­al Nazis! And with zero, or hardly any, likable char­ac­ters. In many instances of lay­ing it on with a trow­el, it offers the sight of a naked Ingrid Thulin lan­guish­ing in a bed rhaps­od­iz­ing about power. The movie is pos­sibly best con­sidered as cra­zi­er cous­in to Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero in its unre­lent­ing depic­tion of not just Nazi, but German nihil­ism. In the end, Helmut Berger’s Martin wins out not because he’s wili­est in the batch, but because he’s the most depraved. The trans­fer of the some­times hand­some, some­times Tinto-Brass-level-lurid imagery is ter­rif­ic. — A

Dead and Buried (Blue Underground)

This 1981 oddity has a premise that would be accept­able in a fant­ast­ic black com­edy, which appar­ently this was ori­gin­ally inten­ded to be. But its New Direction, sug­ges­ted in part by the excel­lent effects work by Stan Winston, casts it as a mostly intense, gritted-teeth grind­house hor­ror. In which the premise is pretty laugh­able. But nev­er mind. The movie’s mid­sec­tion is a series of com­puls­ively watch­able scare scenes set in the dark and fog and dis­tin­guished by go-for-broke sen­sa­tion­al bru­tal­ity. As it happened, Winston left the movie after the New Direction was determ­ined, and wasn’t around for the shoot­ing of one late-scenario death, and the crummy effects therein show. (You’ll def­in­itely know it when you see it.) The 4K ren­der­ing has a sub­dued pal­let, plenty of grain, and packs quite a punch, and Joe Renzetti’s score will give your subwoofer/woofers a bit of a workout. The volu­min­ous extras fea­ture four sep­ar­ate audio com­ment­ar­ies, to which I can only say “thanks, but come on.” Your mileage may vary of course.  —A-

Deep Blues (Film Movement)

Dave Stewart, or to be more pre­cise, David A. Stewart, com­mis­sioned, co-produced, and appears in this 1991 doc­u­ment­ary shot largely in North Mississippi, about blues music as a still-vital and every­day prac­tice in those parts. And yes, it’s that Stewart, the Eurythmics fel­low, who’s first seen in black t‑shirt and wire-rimmed dark glasses look­ing at a couple of busk­ing blues men in a Beale Street park on a hot sunny day. But don’t balk — fur­ther inspec­tion reveals Stewart’s got both head and heart in the right place, and in the sup­ple­ment­al out­takes he jams pretty cred­ibly with R.L. Burnside on “Big Boss Man.” On Beale, Stewart is soon joined by Robert Palmer — the music crit­ic, not the “Addicted to Love” fel­low — who acts as docent. Palmer was from the south and relo­cated there after doing time in New York City as, among oth­er things, a music crit­ic for the New York Times. He also made some pretty fant­ast­ic music, in part with the great boho band The Insect Trust. A little less than a dec­ade older than Stewart, the friendly, schol­arly Palmer here looks older than that still — he would die of liv­er dis­ease in 1997. A bad loss in a lot of ways. The movie is simple: Palmer, some­times with Stewart, some­times without, travels to the homes of musi­cians whose roots go all the way back to Robert Johnson — among these fig­ures Johnson is a lot less of a mys­tery than he is in the lar­ger cul­ture — and lets them talk. And play. And dir­ect­or Robert Mugge keeps his cam­era unob­trus­ive. Shot on 35 in a rough and ready style, the Blu-ray looks fant­ast­ic in its way, and the plain old ste­reo soundtrack is vivid and crisp. Along the way you’ll learn who or what “Johnny Cockaroo” is. You’ll also spend a lot of time with Big Jack Johnson, a hel­luva gui­tar play­er, whose nick­name “The Oil Man” derives from the fact that he made his main liv­ing driv­ing an oil deliv­ery truck. An inter­est­ing oddity: the white rhythm sec­tion guys in these Black-led bands all look like George Costanza, or some vari­ant there­of. Mugge’s com­ment­ary is a dry but inform­at­ive pro­duc­tion account, in which he relates, among oth­er things, why the pre-cult-stardom Burnside is seen here play­ing a cherry Telecaster. Inspirational dia­logue: “The musi­cian, he’s usu­ally down on his luck.” Inspirational com­ment­ary line: “One of the tra­di­tions when film­ing or record­ing rur­al blues artists is to bring along a fifth of whis­key as a show of respect, but in our exper­i­ence many south­ern blues artists pre­ferred Crown Royal.”  —A+

Deep Red 4K (Arrow)

The friend who intro­duced me to Argento way back in 1978 at a screen­ing of Suspiria at the legendary Paterson Plaza Theater — where the pro­jec­tion­ist omit­ted an entire reel of the pic­ture, and it made no dif­fer­ence to the nar­rat­ive coher­ence —long ago abjured the director’s work, repelled by its truck­ing in what he called “the por­no­graphy of viol­ence.” Watching this 1975 land­mark, wherein Argento shucked most of his Hitchcock influ­ence in favor of some­thing rel­at­ively new and entirely gar­ish, I felt my pal’s point in a more pro­nounced way than I have in a long while. The bathtub-scalding murder, and the camera’s linger­ing on the victim’s awful burns, really squinched me out. The images seemed com­pletely unne­ces­sary, like that shot of the knife plunging into a beat­ing organ in Suspiria. (On the com­ment­ary track from Troy Haworth and Nathaniel Thompson, one of them notes that in the after­math of the break­up between Argento and Daria Nicolodi, the female lead here, Nicolodi actu­ally accused Argento of being a notori­ous, at-large seri­al killer.)  By the same token, going too far is one of the per­quis­ites of guign­ol, argu­ably. And while Argento’s image-making instincts take him, and you, places where no one ought to tread, it also inspires some truly fant­ast­ic, eleg­antly dis­turb­ing pic­ture. The quick cut to Macha Meril’s mouth as she takes a drink of water and can’t keep it in is oddly beau­ti­ful, prac­tic­ally Magritte-worthy. This too is the sort of thing that wouldn’t occur to most film­makers and shows why Argento was spe­cial in the first place. In any event: this mag­ni­fi­cent 4K ren­der­ing doesn’t present any­thing like a sub­dued col­or pal­let, nosir­ree Bob. The mono soundtrack accept­able, but man, the 5.1 is a kick in the head with the incred­ible Goblin score and such. Story still doesn’t make any damn sense though, and who cares. —A+

Dune 4K (Arrow)

Having sat through the Villeneuve Dune not once but twice (crazy, right? Second time was mainly a cous­in date though, hon­est), and hav­ing long held a com­plic­ated admir­a­tion for this vexed Lynch effort, I approached a re-review of this movie in any format with some trep­id­a­tion. What if it felt more cheesy than Lynchian? This splen­did present­a­tion assured me the unreal­ized vis­ion here was more 60/40, or even 70/30 in favor of Lynch. A trifle overlit in the way of ‘80s Hollywood pic­tures at the time, it’s still packed with sin­is­ter weird­nesses (Robin Wood, a stal­wart Lynch hater, came down hard on the homo­pho­bia of that Harkonnen scene, and I can’t say he didn’t have a point). The dia­logue between Jose Ferrer and that “Navigator” is almost Eraserhead-worthy in its way, as is the sight of Alicia Witt with that dag­ger. As far as that pesky nar­rat­ive is con­cerned, hell, this lays out the whole plot in the first ten minutes! Pas de prob­lem! But as we get fur­ther in, the awk­ward con­dens­a­tion of scenes (dis­solves and such, which are very Lynchian, but not entirely well-judged) becomes highly notice­able. The wonky Star Wars touches are a little blush worthy — “activ­ate a fight­er,” you betcha. In oth­er news, Kyle MacLachlan’s Paul has an iPad, and in this ver­sion, they actu­ally DO say “jihad.” So there. The disc is beau­ti­ful, and the only way you should ever watch this at home.  —A-

The Emperor Waltz (Kino Lorber)

Moderately fas­cin­at­ing Wilder. Released the same year (1948) as A Foreign Affair, this would have been a valentine to Old Europe, coun­ter­ing Affair’s poison-pen let­ter to post WW II Germany. The dir­ect­or envi­sioned a Lubitsch homage but felt he didn’t pull it off. Producer and co-writer Charles Brackett pro­nounced it “in no way out­stand­ing” in his journ­al.  Still there’s Technicolor, which is repro­duced hand­somely here save for the odd out-of-register-looking shot. And there’s Bing Crosby. Where McCarey used Crosby’s insouci­ant, irrev­er­ent per­sona to but­tress piety, here Wilder has him swing into Old Vienna like Stanwyck’s Sugarpuss O’Shea rocked the aca­dem­ic her­mit­age in Ball of Fire. Here Crosby’s char­ac­ter extols the vir­tues of the newly-invented phono­graph and its accom­pa­ny­ing dev­il music.  Joseph McBride’s exem­plary com­ment­ary touches on Wilder’s affin­ity for jazz, first artic­u­lated back when Wilder was a German journ­al­ist. It also explores Wilder’s reas­ons for enlist­ing Der Bingle, and the con­flicts between lead­ing lady Joan Fontaine and her cost­ar. — B+

The Guns of Navarone 4K (Paramount)

At its best, this UHD disc makes you feel like you’re look­ing at a mini­atur­ized ver­sion of see­ing Real CinemaScope, and for the first time. Those Greek columns and var­ied geo­lo­gic form­a­tions have a genu­ine tact­ile qual­ity. When Quinn’s snip­ing at the white-clad Germans from the moun­tain­top, I was like, “Wow! Look at that ROCK!”  Nevertheless Robert Harris, in his post at Home Theater Forum, is right (well of course he is) about the weak­nesses sporad­ic­ally inher­ent in the image over­all. The some­times dupey look is built into the ori­gin­al cam­era neg­at­ive. These are most glar­ingly notice­able almost right away, with the optic­al effects of news­reel insets over the stat­ic shot of the title guns.  My ulti­mate takeaway was: when it’s great, it’s great and when it’s not it makes you appre­ci­ate the great parts. As for the movie’s con­tent, I was slightly sur­prised all over again by some of it. You gotta hand it to screenwriter/producer Carl Foreman for keep­ing the nar­rat­ive in the mire of it’s‑a-helluva-thing-to-kill-a-man pess­im­ism, coun­ter­ing the stand­ard Hollywood hero­ics. Not that those aren’t there, of course, and “fan ser­vice” is cer­tainly evid­ent in the final death tally of the char­ac­ters. For all that, when Peck says “You’re up to your neck,” it really does register. And the movie most cred­ibly demon­strates a ven­er­able World War II pic­ture tru­ism: When you’ve got a really tough job, leave it to the par­tis­ans. — A

 Halloween 4K (Shout Factory)

Inspirational com­ment­ary line: “John Carpenter was so com­mit­ted to real­ism, we actu­ally killed that dog.” — A+

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Criterion)

Once you’ve sat through this 1957 clas­sic in its entirety, you’ll have one ques­tion, that being “So just where did Scott Carey record the nar­ra­tion?” Possibly the same place where Toby Dammit recor­ded his, I reck­on. Anyway. A Universal pic­ture, dir­ec­ted by Jack Arnold and pro­duced by Albert Zugsmith, it of course fea­tures William Schallert in a key sup­port­ing role, that of a doc­tor. The one who has to pon­der the state­ment: “People don’t get shorter…they just don’t get short­er.” And yet Scott Carey does, and at each stage of his shrink­age deals with it in dif­fer­ent ways, like almost hav­ing an affair with a car­ni­val employ­ee. Eventually he gets into a doll house and there has his first face off with the cat. As house­cats go, it’s pretty mangy look­ing. And a real biter too. Lead act­or Grant Williams looks a tad like Aaron Sorkin, really. The trans­fer shows off the movie’s admir­able effects ingenu­ity. But also under­scores the optic­al effects that tend to look dupey. It’s kind of stag­ger­ing this hasn’t been remade — not that I’m recom­mend­ing it — giv­en what effects super­visors could do with LCD back­drops and such. In any event, the over­all present­a­tion of this Existential Nightmare Redeemed (remem­ber, as Scott notes in his recorded-God-knows-where nar­ra­tion, his reduc­tion to near-atom size is in fact the Beginning Of A Great Adventure, maybe) is exem­plary Criterion — respect­ful and thor­ough. In sup­ple­ments, Richard Matheson’s son talks Eisenhower era anxi­ety; there’s a pleas­ing, coher­ent effects break­down; and comedi­an Dana Gould and cine­mat­ic maes­tro Joe Dante dis­cuss the movie in ami­able, divert­ing, often amus­ing style. — A

 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 4K (Paramount)

Good news! My post-teen miso­gyny seems to have sub­stan­tially waned, because I did not bristle with loath­ing over Kate Capshaw’s per­form­ance the way I did when I first saw the pic­ture at the not-all-that tender age of 24. For whatever reas­on her char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of a char­ac­ter who’s sup­posed to be mostly endear­ingly exas­per­at­ing in a screw­ball com­edy way made me just plain exas­per­ated. Watching the movie now I was more inclined to notice that the Willie Scott role is actu­ally anti-screwball in its con­cep­tion: while the exas­per­at­ing females in Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth and what have you are almost uni­formly smarter and more resource­ful than their male counterparts/foils, the nightclub sing­er along for the ride with Indy and Short Round is just an impos­i­tion and bur­den, albeit a phys­ic­ally attract­ive one. Now, as to Short Round…oh nev­er mind. This is one of four films included in Paramount’s 4K UHD set of Jones movies, and it’s the only one I’ve watched so far and I was very taken by its look and sound. And I was largely taken by the movie itself, in spite of all its very mani­fest flaws and objec­tion­able bits (not mutu­ally exclus­ive, these) because the action set pieces are such a kick. I lay blame for the faults (all of them) on screen­writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. Not to gang up on the team behind Howard the Duck — and hey, I think Messiah of Evil is a too-unheralded chef d’oeuvre of sorts — but the bind­ing mater­i­al they con­coct is com­plete plaster com­pared to the story struc­ture that held Raiders togeth­er. Of course it’s ulti­mately Spielberg’s mis­take in accept­ing this flimsy con­triv­ance but I sur­mise he was too excited about put­ting togeth­er the set pieces to really notice or care. Maybe. Anyway, the set pieces: great.— A

Invasion of the Body Snatchers 4K (Kino Lorber)

It’s kind of weird, and cer­tainly against all odds, that (up until Ferrara’s 1993 Body Snatchers, at least) this story has been made into a mov­ing pic­ture three times and all three of the mov­ing pic­tures are in their way excep­tion­al. (At the time I first pos­ted this, I had for­got­ten that the 2007 The Invasion had broken the streak…and why would­n’t I for­get that?) This one, dir­ec­ted by Phillip Kaufman in 1978 from a script by the too-undervalued W.D. Richter, is oft lauded for its satir­ic­al bent (the pods come to San Francisco, then the mecca of self-help and self-realization cult-like pro­cesses, get it?) and that factors into its effect­ive­ness to be sure — Chicago-born Kaufman had been a Frisco res­id­ent since 1960, gets the envir­on­ment with an off­han­ded mas­tery. But the movie is also steeped in an atmo­spher­ic unease that goes far bey­ond satire. It’s a film of genu­inely eccent­ric, unnerv­ing choices. From the open­ing in which the pods leave an ali­en plan­et and jour­ney to earth with truly over­bear­ing music (Denny Zeitlin) accom­pa­ny­ing the action onward. Brooke Adams and Art Hindle are intro­duced by a voyeur­ist­ic cam­era, mov­ing implac­ably down cor­ridors to home in on the reflec­tions of their char­ac­ters rather than the char­ac­ters them­selves. The scen­ario makes an already unhappy mar­riage the ful­crum on which the dis­cov­ery is first hinged. Cinematographer Michael Chapman, only a couple of pic­tures ahead of Taxi Driver, almost repeats the famed lat­er­al dolly from the excru­ci­at­ing Bickle-on-the-pay-phone scene in a shot in which Adams and Donald Sutherland clinch by an elev­at­or, about 24 minutes in. Dig, too, the dis­tor­ted reflec­tion of Jeff Goldblum in the book­store mir­ror, and the fact that Sutherland nev­er repairs the shattered wind­shield he suf­fers at the begin­ning of the movie. The 4K image on this edi­tion is fab­ulous added value to the over­all cine­mat­ic rich­ness. —  A+

Jet Pilot (Kino Lorber)

Howard Hughes wanted a movie about avi­ation and hot­ness. Josef Von Sternberg wanted…work. The hijinks began in 1949, pair­ing a 22-year-old (but look­ing 18) Janet Leigh with a 42-year-old (but look­ing 55) John Wayne. The cast also fea­tures J.C. Flippen at his most suave. No really, he’s very pol­ished here, as befits his ARMY BRASS role. The res­ult, not unleashed on a drool­ing pub­lic until 1957) was one of the most exhil­ar­at­ing movies about noth­ing, or maybe about star cha­risma, ever made. Leigh, as a not-quite-defecting Soviet fly­er (oh those egal­it­ari­an com­mies), doesn’t even try an accent, and I’d bet that Sternberg didn’t even ask her to. A typ­ic­al Hughes touch is the obnox­ious leer­ing jet sound effects as Leigh removes each indi­vidu­al piece of her flight suit after land­ing. The Kino disc does not advert­ise as a new scan, but it looks plenty sharp and we’re offered a choice between 1.37 and 1.85 aspect ratios — giv­en when its prin­cip­al pho­to­graphy began, you know which one to watch. The movie’s depic­tions of American Plenty are prop­erly vul­gar, what with the half-foot-thick steaks, which actu­ally trig­ger Leigh’s ulti­mate aban­don­ment of the USSR. Where there are zero steaks and the bar­racks are in such a poor area they can’t even afford real scenery — the back­drops are remark­ably obvi­ous paint­ings. Its utter, bliss­ful tri­vi­al­ity is so scru­pu­lously hewed to that it becomes tran­scend­ent, and hence Essential Cinema. There’s no com­ment­ary. Make up your own.  Andrew Sarris: “an ecstat­ic flight of speed, grace and col­or.” Jean-Luc Godard: “Chaplin said […] tragedy is life in close-up, and com­edy, life in long shot. I said to myself, I’m going to make a com­edy in close-up: the film will be tragi-comic. Sternberg’s Jet Pilot is also a close-up com­edy. That’s why it didn’t go down well.” Inspirational dia­logue, as Wayne shows Leigh some U.S.-made linger­ie: “That’s one thing we have in com­mon with the Soviets.” “What’s that?” “We both believe in uplift­ing the masses.” And from Leigh, solo: “The water is so hot.” — A

 John Carpenter’s The Thing 4K (Universal)

After watch­ing this in 4K for the first time, I looked up the con­tem­por­ary reviews of the movie and came to the con­clu­sion that film crit­ics, as a class, were then almost as dumb as film act­ors. Maybe dumber. And the situ­ation is, revi­sion­ism on this par­tic­u­lar movie not­with­stand­ing, even worse today. I will not be tak­ing any ques­tions at this time. Anyhow. Image wise, I found this superb; what audi­o­philes call ref­er­ence qual­ity. The actu­al audio has eli­cited some dis­sat­is­fac­tion in cer­tain corners but to my ears the lossless DTX soundtrack gets the job done. Carpenter’s mas­tery of film lan­guage is strongly present through­out, and it’s instruct­ive to keep track of when he and cine­ma­to­graph­er Dean Cundey keep their ana­morph­ic frame in full focus and when and how they go shal­low. In the lat­ter instances they keep the back­grounds dis­tinct but not too dis­tinct. A nice kind of head-fake in the “don’t look behind you” sus­pense column. — A+

 The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster (Kino)

So this is neither a Blu-ray or a 4K release — indeed, with 4K espe­cially you might say super-high-resolution would, giv­en the nature of the mater­i­al, “defeat its own pur­pose” — and it’s not brand spank­ing new and the film­maker is an old friend which is a cru­cial reas­on I’ve not covered this disc. The friend is Michael Schlesinger, a ven­er­able and pas­sion­ate film schol­ar and enthu­si­ast who did a lot of hard time man­aging rep for a mega-corporation that often didn’t know its assets from its elbow. You’ve likely heard his com­ment­ar­ies on fare such as It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Producers and oth­er not-dissimilar titles, in which case you know the kind of mad­cap stuff he likes. The fic­tion­al com­edy team of Biffle and Shooster is a concept that could only have sprung from his mind, and I do mean that as a com­pli­ment. The five pic­ture col­lec­ted here are made-in-the-21^st-cen­tury fake com­edy shorts from the ‘30s, fea­tur­ing the above-named and tit­u­lar fic­tion­al com­edy team. Played of course by real act­ors, Nick Santa Maria and Will Ryan, who shared Mike’s vis­ion to the extent that they’re cred­ited as co-creators of their char­ac­ters.  Santa Maria’s Biffle is the goofy super-nervous one and Ryan is the dys­peptic and rel­at­ively straight-mannish Shooster. On this col­lec­tion they Stooge and Niagara Falls their way through five “mis­sions of may­hem” includ­ing a private-eye spoof guest-starring Robert Forster and an unapo­lo­get­ic­ally Borscht-Belt Bride of Frankenstein send up. Much of the humor is as apt to eli­cit groans as laughs. I don’t think that’s acci­dent­al — the nudging is the point. I was sad to learn last month of the death of Will Ryan, half of the duo of ami­able zanies. It reminded me that one thing about the Biffle and Shooster shorts that was wholly unmit­ig­ated was its abso­lute movie love. And that makes this object worth buy­ing, and cher­ish­ing. —A

New York Ninja (Vinegar Syndrome)

Vinegar Syndrome’s devo­tion to the Grindhouse Dream in all its mani­fest­a­tions is 100 per­cent admir­able even if not every title upon which it expends such exem­plary care gives me the buzz I’m seek­ing. (Volume one of its Forgotten Giallo box had me mut­ter­ing “there are reas­ons these were for­got­ten” more than once.)  I was at least mildly skep­tic­al about this spe­cial pro­ject for the com­pany, an unfin­ished 1984 pic­ture with a self-explanatory title. Abandoned by director/star John Liu before any edit­ing pro­cess began, with no dia­logue or music nor any script to con­sult, it was assembled into a whole by Kurtis Spieler, who provides an inform­at­ive com­ment­ary. A com­pany of clas­sic exploit­a­tion movie act­ors — Leon Isaac Kennedy, Linnea Quigley, Michael Berryman, Cynthia Rothrock, and Ginger Lynn Allen — dubbed in newly-written dia­logue, some of it appar­ently extra­pol­ated via lip-reading. I know what you might be think­ing and I thought it too: “Uh-huh.” It was only after a recom­mend­a­tion from my buddy the writer and artist Bob Fingerman that I sought took the plunge, and I’m rather glad I did. Ninja really does approx­im­ate the True Grindhouse Experience in the Comfort Of Your Own Home (which is a big plus when you get to be my age). The likely wholly unli­censed NYC lens­ing is big on peri­od interest (although a little on the nar­row side — Liu nev­er wastes a chance to get the Twin Towers in his lens), the plot­line (ini­tially con­cerned with a per­son­al revenge story set in a milieu in which “drugged out scum” are roam­ing wild in the city doing hor­rible crimes) dips into some weird sci-fi shit about a half-hour in, the fake news­pa­per head­lines are so bad they’re almost poignant (“Another Lady Vanishes Abductions Continue”) and so on. The music and dub­bing are so apro­pos you’d swear this thing is a fully real­ized 1984 film. And the image qual­ity is shock­ingly good, like straight-from-the-lab good. A unique enter­tain­ment. Inspirational dia­logue: “Looks like we got ourselves a hero!” — A

 A Night at the Opera (Warner Archive)

As a Marxist sour­puss, I used to hew to the party line that Irving Thalberg ruined the broth­ers for film by impos­ing tight­er struc­tures and such on their anarch­ic antics. My memor­ies of Allan Jones in this were par­tic­u­larly cringe. I don’t know if it’s age or Scott Walker who softened me up to the guy, but now I find him entirely tol­er­able and hell, if Zeppo wanted to retire why not. And I also very much enjoy the movie itself, and not just because Harpo doesn’t get to chase any gam­ines around. It’s a focused light com­edy that goes down easy and has a lot of mar­velous high­lights. The music­al inter­lude ship­board is awfully sweet too — Harpo and Chico Among The Children, act­ing like they should. Also: “Boogity boo­gity boo­gity.” The image here has a won­der­ful brisk clar­ity. Yes, the pic­ture was/is at the top of a long down­ward slope for the fel­las but noth­ing in the actu­al film neces­sar­ily indic­ates this. Give it a shot, you may be pleas­antly sur­prised. — A

Operation Burma/Santa Fe Trail (Warner Archive)

I remem­ber read­ing, way back in the day, in some Andrew Sarris volume or oth­er, Sarris aver­ring that the Raoul Walsh/Errol Flynn pic­tures were bet­ter than the Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn pic­tures, so when these came from the Warner Archives at roughly the same time I figured it might be fun to use them to put the idea to the test. Burma is one of the made-during-World-War-II movies (first screened January 1945) in which the Japanese forces are referred to in the racist terms they were likely referred to as by actu­al Allied sol­diers in that was and is addi­tion­ally one of the “Give America all the cred­it” WW II movies. This is the Walsh movie, with a Franz Waxman score, and both craft­per­sons are pulling out all the stops here. This trans­fer is from ori­gin­al mater­i­als so there’s no “Sorry, Great Britain for snub­bing you” dis­claim­er in the open­ing — this was put on prints after Great Britain raised holy hell about it. Way after Great Britain raised holy hell about it — 1952. Despite all the fic­tion­al­iz­a­tion this is a very wonky pic­ture that’s con­sist­ently con­fid­ent in put­ting across the illu­sion that it’s giv­ing you the real story fair and square. That of “Merrill’s Marauders,” such as they are, sli­cing through a “Jap-infested jungle,” yeow. Looks clean as a whistle, with lots of what you could call “good” grain. Contains many linger­ing shots of recon­nais­sance plane equip­ment and such. Featuring Samuel Beckett lookalike Erville Alderson and the future Doberman.  Now. As for Santa Fe Trail. Curtiz in 1940, on a pretty good run as you may recall. You know you’re in for some “fun” when an explan­at­ory open­ing text speaks of West Point’s “bril­liant com­mand­ant” Robert E. Lee. But it gets worse. This phant­asmagor­ic­al slop buck­et of racist ration­al­iz­a­tion and Confederate-coddling is objec­tion­able from start to fin­ish but you almost have to hand it to the ideo­lo­gic­ally blinkered Curtiz — he would have made a great used car sales­man. Curtiz’s flu­id, impas­sioned cam­era nev­er misses a trick, the sta­ging is mas­ter­ful, Sol Polito cine­ma­to­graphy has that good Expressionist redol­ence. The movie also, one has to say, under­scores Curtiz’s weak­nesses as a dir­ect­or — his people are a lot shal­low­er than those of Hawks and Ford. But the leads are great eye candy — Flynn grows and keeps a mus­tache, Olivia de Havilland is abso­lutely charm­ing. Reagan is Reagan, and he’s play­ing George Custer, so you can hap­pily ima­gine his ulti­mate fate. Raymond Massey’s John Brown is intro­duced about 25 minutes in. The act­or dis­plays utter con­vic­tion play­ing an utter nut­job but he refuses to pro­ject vil­lainy, a salut­ary choice. Must have chapped Ward Bond’s ass to play an abol­i­tion­ist, you think? Anti-inspirational dia­logue, from Flynn’s J.E.B. Stuart: “It isn’t our job to decide who’s right and who’s wrong about slavery. Any more than it is John Brown’s.” Oh get stuffed. — A- to both.

The Outsiders: The Complete Novel 4K (Warner)

S.E. Hinton’s nov­el was fois­ted upon me when I was in my early teens as some­thing I “ought to” read (as opposed to A Clockwork Orange or Funeral Rites, both of which I’d per­haps too-enthusiastically con­sumed by this time) and it did noth­ing for me. Not just because its terse, plain prose style didn’t appeal to me at all, but because as a Jersey sub­urb­an­ite I couldn’t get with these relent­lessly sen­ti­ment­al post-greaser mid-Western kids. And des­pite my devo­tion to Coppola, my 23-year-old self couldn’t relate to them onscreen, either. (Rumble Fish is a wholly oth­er story, for reas­ons I explored here.) Watching this new rendi­tion of the film it still speaks to me loudest as a curio of high visu­al interest, espe­cially with respect to the stuff homa­ging Gone With The Wind. I also dig those GIANT clos­eups of Ponyboy as he goes into his rev­er­ie. Helluva cast, too: Tom Waits! William Smith! Melanie Meyrink! Coppola’s new, and rather mov­ing, ten-minute intro to the film reminds you that he is the only dir­ect­or in recor­ded his­tory who made a film at the request of middle school stu­dent peti­tion.  — A+

The Servant 4K (Canal)

Some movies reveal them­selves to you more and more on repeated view­ings, and why wouldn’t they. The uncanny thing about The Servant is that it just gets more nag­gingly mys­ter­i­ous and dis­turb­ing. This spot­less present­a­tion con­veys the film’s frost­i­ness almost too well. You can choose between watch­ing in 1.66 and 1.77 aspect ratios. Given that the com­pos­i­tions are such you’d swear that the movie emerged from Zeus’s (Losey’s, that is) brow in 1.66, I can’t ima­gine why you’d watch in 1.77. Because you can, I guess. — A+  

 Sex World 4K (Vinegar Syndrome)

Certainly some of you out there must be won­der­ing: what does porn look like in 4K? Specifically, what does vin­tage porn, which for a brief span of time was actu­ally shot on 35mm film, look like in 4K? Well. Let me tell you. The col­ors in this 1978 quasi-futuristic yarn of the troubled souls look­ing for satisfaction/catharsis at the title resort are often remark­able vivid. So, too, are the pimples and ingrown hairs on the intim­ate body parts of sev­er­al per­formers. While dir­ec­ted by Anthony Spinelli, the movie suf­fers from Gerard Damiano Disease, that is, a com­pul­sion to get almost sick-makingly self-serious about the dys­func­tions its mot­ley char­ac­ters suf­fer from. Also it really skimps on the Annette Haven con­tent. I abso­lutely cred­it Vinegar Syndrome for being format pion­eers here, while wish­ing they’d have giv­en the 4K treat­ment to some­thing more funsy, like Mary Mary. I’m sure they have their reas­ons.. — B

 Some Came Running (Warner Archive) 

What can I say? I named this damn blog after the movie, which I went into some detail on here.  And a few years later, for Decider, I wrote on it some more. So hell yes, I have been wish­ing and hop­ing that this would make it to Blu-ray for some time. Now it has, and It looks remark­ably fine, crisp and clear with excel­lent col­or val­ues. Director Vincente Minnelli’s mise-en-scene is as on point as ever and his cam­era ever so slightly more notice­ably mobile than usu­al. The pro­scen­i­um is less prom­in­ent than in such oth­er land­mark melo­dra­mas as 1955’s The Cobweb or 1960’s Home From The Hill. The final shot, a grace­ful funer­al scene that closes with the very sig­ni­fic­ant ges­ture of Dean Martin’s Alabama tak­ing his hat off to a char­ac­ter he had pre­vi­ously rather grossly dis­paraged, is an all time. And watch­ing it, I was hit with the naus­eat­ing real­iz­a­tion that the Russo broth­ers were likely pay­ing their own form of homage to it in the ghastly clos­ing shot of Endgame. Anyway, this shot is way bet­ter than the one in Endgame. — A+