Summer 2023 Blu-ray/4K Ultra Consumer Guide

Equipment: Sony UBP-X800 multi-region 4K play­er, Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

Angel Face (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Of all the amour fou film noirs out there, this one is abso­lutely the fou-est. Only Alain Corneau’s Serie Noire comes close, and that needed almost thirty years and being actu­ally French to top this 1952 Otto Preminger lulu. If you’ve seen it you know what I’m talk­ing about. If you ain’t seen it, grab this disc pronto. Very clean black and white image. The bags under poor belea­guered Herbert Marshall’s eyes have nev­er spoken more elo­quently. He plays the (spoil­er alert) doomed dad of (not too much of a spoil­er alert) psy­cho heir­ess Jean Simmons. Robert Mitchum, of course, is the ambulance-attendant sap who falls hard for her upon see­ing her tickle the ivor­ies and imme­di­ately throws over his Nice American Girlfriend for her after she, um, stalks him to his favor­ite diner. The cad. But any­way — TOGETHER THEY GO TO HELL. Preminger tells this hot tale with exem­plary cool, the bet­ter to blow your mind at the finale. Beyond essen­tial. As with Land of the Pharaohs (see below) the com­ment­ary from the stand­ard def edi­tion is included in…a stand­ard def edi­tion, as for some reas­on it couldn’t be impor­ted on to the new trans­fer. It’s by Eddie Muller and it’s good. — A +

The Circus Tent (Second Run Blu-ray)

Second Run is almost unique among labels in that every single title it puts out is worth your time. Not just a cinephile’s time, not just a collector’s time; but your time as in you, a human being pre­sum­ably inves­ted in life on this earth. Taste doesn’t come into it. Okay, that’s an exag­ger­a­tion, but I think a rhet­or­ic­ally use­ful one, as a chal­lenge. Someone name me a title in the label’s cata­log that doesn’t meet my exag­ger­ated claim. Whether you’ve heard of the pic­ture before or not, you’re going to get some­thing good out of watch­ing it. This 1978 Indian film, for instance, presen­ted in the restored form in which it went to Cannes last year. It was not dreamt of in my philo­sophy pri­or to my acquir­ing a copy. And here it is, a sin­gu­lar and great film. And by sin­gu­lar I do mean a film unlike any oth­er. It is a fic­tion com­posed of doc­u­ment­ary com­pon­ents, or some­thing like doc­u­ment­ary com­pon­ents — there are pro­fes­sion­al act­ors in the mix. The premise is simple: dir­ect­or Aravindan Govindan hires an actu­al cir­cus and brings that cir­cus to a riverb­ank vil­lage that has nev­er seen such a thing. First there’s mys­tery, won­der­ment. Then there’s hard­ship, dis­sat­is­fac­tion, bore­dom. Some people change their lives. Others bemoan that they’re incap­able of chan­ging theirs. The black and white imagery is poesy in a rich but nar­row register. Startling. The extras stress the res­tor­a­tion work for the most part and are illu­min­at­ing. — A+

Creepshow (Scream! Factory 4K Ultra)

This was, in a sense, George A. Romero’s first unim­port­ant pic­ture. That’s not a dis­missal. But con­sider that the likes of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies and Martin were not just incred­ibly effect­ive genre films but also sig­ni­fic­ant state­ments, both aes­thet­ic and social. As also was, I’ll insist, Season of the Witch. And Knightriders. Okay, maybe not There’s Always Vanilla. But don’t ruin my thes­is. Let’s just iter­ate that this 1982 movie is focused on serving up not too much more than a nasty good time, and it does, pro­pelled of course by Stephen King’s script. Critics who com­plained about the pre­dict­ab­il­ity of the scen­ari­os in this EC–inspired omni­bus kind of missed the point. A cer­tain amount of pre­dict­ab­il­ity is built-in by con­ven­tion. As it hap­pens, I was a little sur­prised to be reminded that the open­ing scene, estab­lish­ing the frame story, is pretty genu­inely dark for an ostens­ibly “fun” movie, but then again, have you read an EC com­ic lately? Romero was a fan of Tales of Hoffmann and this film is the closest he got to mak­ing a pic­ture akin to that Powell/Pressburger eye-popper. Not just the mul­tiple stor­ies, but the gar­ish col­ors! And anim­a­tion! And frames com­posed to look like com­ic book pan­els! Diopter shots! The shim­mer­ing water in the bathtub in the seg­ment in which Stephen King acts in fact looks like a dir­ect homage to Tales. This is a damn good look­ing 4K Ultra disc kit­ted out with cus­tom­ary Shout! Factory abbondanza. THREE soundtrack audio tracks (7.1, 5.1, 2‑channel) Three com­ment­ar­ies (Horror people can­not get enough details) And more. — A+

DuBarry Was A Lady (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

People used to say, “Wait, was Red Skelton ever a thing” and now I guess they say, “What’s Red Skelton?” So, that’s either pro­gress, or not. I say not, at the risk of sound­ing like a “square.” The silly styl­ings of the bene­vol­ent “little guy” comedi­an have cer­tainly dated, we can­not deny. Nor can we do much of any­thing about it even were we inclined to. In any event, this curio from 1943 show­cases Skelton at the rel­at­ive height of his thing­ness, but wait, it also rep­res­ents one of the biggest cinema vehicles for, um, Lucille Ball, who’s still a thing. So maybe I’m miss­ing the lede here. In any event, this irre­press­ibly fluffy MGM music­al is about ordin­ary Yankee doo­fus nightclub types who dream them­selves into the reign of Louis XV. Singing Lucy is dubbed (mostly) by Marsha Mears. Relatively svelte but irre­press­ibly brash Zero Mostel doing a wacky Charles Boyer imper­son­a­tion sets the over­all comed­ic tone right out of the gate. Oh, it’s a Cole Porter music­al too, or rather it’s based on one, and as it hap­pens one of its standout num­bers is “Salome,” which is an Edens and Harburg song and per­formed by Virginia O’Brien, who’s a pip. Keep your eyes peeled for an unusu­ally pleasant-looking Buddy Rich, who’s the drum­mer in Tommy Dorsey’s band. Consider that an out­fit called The Oxford Boys was once at least a minor thing. Jo Stafford sings “Katie Went To Haiti” as part of the Pied Pipers. I like the pre­ced­ing sen­tence here, because any­one born after 1980 might think it’s in Esperanto. This Warner Archive disc boasts spec­tac­u­lar Technicolor; Karl Freund, later hired by Ball to pion­eer sit­com film­ing for I Love Lucy, was the cine­ma­to­graph­er. You’ll note that the focus puller is fre­quently chal­lenged dur­ing the “I Love An Esquire Girl” num­ber, which has a won­der­ful cameo punch­line.  Delightful in all its par­tic­u­lars, a movie actu­ally so insub­stan­tial as to be kind of monu­ment­al — A+

East of Eden (Warner 4K Ultra)

For its 100^th Anniversary, the entity still known at least par­tially as Warner is put­ting out sub­stan­tial upgrades of a good num­ber of its clas­sic titles. Their mani­fest­a­tions as phys­ic­al con­sumer products are, we ought to remem­ber, a side bene­fit to the fact that these digit­al ver­sions are what’s going to be dis­trib­uted to rep theat­ers from here­on in, repla­cing phys­ic­al prints, which in a sense is a shame, but as the man said, you can’t stop what’s com­ing. This edi­tion of Elia Kazan’s 1955 pic­ture, James Dean’s debut in a lead role, is a real revi­sion of the Blu-ray in the pri­or Dean box set, right down to the open­ing. The typeface des­ig­nat­ing the over­ture, for instance, here matches the type on the ori­gin­al open­ing cred­its, where­as on the box set disc it was just rendered in blocky orange let­ters.  And that rendi­tion of the film kicks off with imagery that’s really brown and sun­baked. Yes, a title card speaks of the Santa Lucia moun­tains as being “dark and brood­ing” but… The new ver­sion gets some accur­ate green into the imagery. Not just in the open­ing shots, but check out elev­en minutes in, when Dean jumps a train and walks across a green field; it’s prop­erly lush. In that same shot there’s a dis­solve to future Smiths cov­er star Richard Davalos walk­ing with Julie Harris, and that trans­ition is smooth­er than on the Blu-ray. The whole thing looks prop­erly fant­ast­ic. Sound is also excel­lent. Boy oh boy is it a shame that Timothy Carey’s voice was dubbed by cost­ar Albert Dekker, because Kazan didn’t like Carey’s own cadences, which the stub­born act­or insisted rep­res­en­ted “the way pimps talk” and Kazan decided no it wasn’t. The sole extra is Richard Schickel’s old com­ment­ary. — A

From Hollywood To Heaven (Powerhouse/Indicator Blu-ray)

I haven’t made it all the way through this eight-disc, thir­teen film col­lec­tion yet and who knows when I will. And I can­not tell a lie to sens­it­ive souls out there: one of the films in it, 1968’s The Exotic Ones, fea­tures foot­age of rocka­billy sing­er Sleepy LaBeef appear­ing to actu­ally bite the head off of a chick­en. So maybe don’t watch that one, although the movie is quite the thing oth­er­wise so maybe you can just skip the scenes when you get close to it. Or not. Its whole gestalt kind of relies on that scene. So I don’t know what to tell you. Anyway. This set rep­res­ents a sub­stan­tial, one might say rep­res­ent­at­ive per­cent­age of the film out­put of Ron, June, and later son Tim Ormond. Ron got off the ground at Monogram, formed an alli­ance with Western B star Lash Larue, branched out into mak­ing Southern-fried exploit­a­tion pic­tures show­cas­ing, in some cases, a truck­load of coun­try music stars. And after a plane crash in 1966 exper­i­enced a Road To Damascus reli­gious con­ver­sion and star­ted mak­ing whacked out evan­gel­ic­al tracts on film. If you know that Negativeland album Escape From Noise, you’ve heard preach­er Estus Pirkle intone “Christianity is stu­pid! Communism is good;” the source of this sample, the eye-opening satan­ic Cold War apo­ca­lypse now item If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971) is here. Many of the trans­fers here are upgraded stand­ard def (a flood in Tim Ormond’s home messed up a great deal of ori­gin­al mater­i­al) and they’re done well. ANYWAY. The main reas­on I’m list­ing this here is the set con­tains the 1959 sex-trauma-and-hypnotism pic­ture Please Don’t Touch Me, which is just one of the most start­ling films I’ve ever seen and one that I’ll include in my Ten Greatest List if I’m invited to par­ti­cip­ate in the next Sight and Sound poll. To say it’s as if Straub and Huillet attemp­ted a grind­house pic­ture doesn’t quite cov­er it. But it does make so many self-conscious attempts at sur­real­ity look limp as hell. It’s worth the price of the whole box. And the rest of the box is pretty extraordin­ary any­way.   — A+

Hugo (Arrow 4K Ultra)

Two things: Blu-ray and 4K discs have their short­com­ings — which almost always stem from the qual­ity of the res­tor­a­tion or trans­fer, rather than the formats them­selves — and you may notice that the ones I’m review­ing are all get­ting high grades and it’s because they’re really good. Luck of the chosen draw — noth­ing I’ve been look­ing at in this batch has, to my eye, bad blacks or blown out whites. There is per­haps no bet­ter time to be a phys­ic­al media per­son than right now. And anoth­er thing, I should admit that a lot of the labels I’m review­ing here are ones for which I’ve done sup­ple­ment­al work. Or that my friends have. As it hap­pens my good friend Farran Smith Nehme wrote an essay for this new, 2D-only edi­tion of this, one of the greatest in Martin Scorsese’s end­less series of gang­ster films. (Ar ar ar.) So I’m eth­ic­ally com­prom­ised. Which is why this fea­ture goes on my blog and not on a pay­ing web­site. (Actually I could PROBABLY get away with put­ting it, con­flicts and all, on a pay­ing web­site, but since no pay­ing web­site wants it, that’s kind of put­ting the cart before the nonex­ist­ent horse.) Christopher Lee’s in it. Funny how the things you want to see in cinema work as time passes. At the time of this movie’s release I was so stoked for Christopher Lee that he got to work with Scorsese, and now that Christopher Lee is gone I’m still stoked that Scorsese got to work with Christopher Lee. The disc is gor­geous, beau­ti­ful pas­tel col­ors through­out. I’m still explor­ing the COPIOUS extras. I listened to and liked Méliès bio­graph­er Jon Spira’s com­ment­ary, which con­cen­trates on what’s on screen, and not the hil­ari­ous pro­cess of the movie’s mak­ing, which cost pro­du­cer Graham King so much money that he took some revenge for the over­ages when Scorsese was try­ing to make Silence. You can read about that in my book about Goodfellas. I know, it sounds con­fus­ing, but it isn’t. Also. People who com­plain that there’s not enough CGI in Scorsese movies really need to check this out. There’s plenty, and it’s really well done. — A+

 Invaders From Mars 4K (Ignite 4K Ultra)

So many com­pon­ents made this 1953 inde­pend­ent pro­duc­tion such spe­cial night­mare fuel for chil­dren of all ages. The unique col­or, cour­tesy of a two-strip, stand­ard cam­era pro­cess called SuperCinecolor. It’s obvi­ously less rich in sat­ur­a­tion than three-strip Technicolor was, and the ever-so-slight sense of mut­ing con­trib­utes migh­tily to the movie’s eer­ie feel­ing. As does dir­ect­or William Cameron Menzie’s sense of cine­mat­ic space, derived of course from his unique, idio­syn­crat­ic set design aes­thet­ic. The plot anti­cip­ates Invasion of the Body Snatchers but the hook is here applied to a kid, eager little Jimmy Hunt, who’s con­vinced that ali­ens have replaced his lov­ing par­ents with mean sorta-zombies, because, well, that’s what’s happened. Leif Erickson in par­tic­u­lar really digs deep for his Evil Dad side — he’s lowkey ter­ri­fy­ing.  Extras include an inter­view with Menzies bio­graph­er James Curtis; it’s dry but inform­at­ive. Child lead Jimmy Hunt, now an ador­able old man, is delight­ful. The altern­ate scenes are weird: Euro dis­trib­ut­ors reques­ted a dif­fer­ent end­ing and more, and they were shot and edited most per­func­tor­ily, and they appear here pre­faced by a long text explain­ing how they’re so bad and why. And the stand­ard stuff on res­tor­a­tion, which is a little more unusu­al than usu­al because of the mater­i­als them­selves. Anyway, a must-own.  — A+

Joy House (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

One rarely hears the words “I need to bone up on my Rene Clement” in this house­hold, although as of this writ­ing I do rather look for­ward to Kino’s upcom­ing Blu-ray of Is Paris Burning? This title just happened fit the bill one ran­dom movie night, and one thing that Claire K. and I enjoy on a ran­dom movie night is get­ting kicked in the head by an unex­pec­ted whack job of a 1960s movie. Which this is. “This is kind of Losey-esque, isn’t it,” Claire observed mid­way through this some­times goo­fily moody thrill­er in which an on-the-run Alain Delon finds him­self cooped up in a French man­sion with Lola Albright (!!!) and Jane Fonda and a cranky dude in a hid­den room (André Oumansky). And a cat. Anyway, the image qual­ity is sol­id — the 2K Gaumont res­tor­a­tion yields a nice, sharply detailed widescreen black-and-white frame —the soundtrack options slightly chal­len­ging (seems as if its nat­ive lan­guage is, indeed, International Coproduction English, with the actu­al voices of at least Fonda and Albright; and the lip move­ments sync up in the case of both lead act­resses; it’s hard to tell who’s dub­bing Fonda in French, but it often doesn’t really sound like her, des­pite the fact that she could have done a French dub rather cred­ibly; over­all I recom­mend the English ver­sion frankly), and the com­ment­ary from Howard Berger and Nathaniel Thompson a little more focused than these often dis­curs­ive (but always enga­ging) gen­tle­men some­times man­age. Look for future Boss Hogg and Commandant Lassard (that’s Sorrell Booke and George Gaynes to nonini­ti­ates of The Dukes of Hazzard and Police Academy) as a couple of the tough guys pur­su­ing Delon. — B+

Land of The Pharaohs (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Helen Of Troy (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Ah, the mid-1950s, when widescreen col­or epics set in the ancient world were in Tribble-like pro­fu­sion. John Ford didn’t suc­cumb to the fad, but Howard Hawks did, and so pro­duced what pretty much every­one acknow­ledges as a fail­ure, Land of the Pharaohs. And when cit­ing that fail­ure, pretty much every­one repeats some­thing that Hawks told Joseph McBride about start­ing the script with William Faulkner: “I don’t know how a Pharaoh talks,” Faulkner said to the dir­ect­or. But they don’t repeat the rest of the story, in which Faulkner asks, “Is it all right if I write him like a Kentucky col­on­el?” After which co-screenwriter Harry Kurnitz protest that he doesn’t know from Kentucky col­on­els, he wants to do it King Lear style, and Hawks tells them to go their own ways, he’ll rewrite what they come up with, and then Hawks admits that in so doing, “I messed it up.” And the final truth of the mat­ter is that you can almost nev­er win with this kind of peri­od stuff, at least not with some people. Witness the ridicule Scorsese got in some quar­ters for mak­ing the Apostles talk and walk some­thing like con­tem­por­ary urb­an, um, mooks in The Last Temptation of Christ. Still. Watching the Hawks film, the first thing you might think is BOY DID THEY EVER NOT KNOW how a Pharaoh talks. But the prob­lem isn’t so much the dia­logue as it is it deliv­ery, and the act­ing in gen­er­al — it’s too stiff, too stately. Only a few times does Jack Hawkins show the spark of a, say, Jack Hawkins. As it hap­pens the movie has a lot to recom­mend it.  A truly adven­tur­ous Dimitri TIomkin score. Spectacularly sens­ible com­pos­i­tions that don’t resemble the tableaus of De Mille. And unlike a lot of oth­er films of this ilk, it really does move right along, and is pretty thought­ful on a few inter­est­ing top­ics: ritu­al and cere­mony, slave labor. That kind of thing. The disc looks great too. Inspirational dia­logue from Joan Collins: “Perhaps my Lord would PREFER it if I were OLD?” Her per­form­ance is a bit much but then again Dewey Martin’s no Montgomery Clift, let alone a Ricky Nelson. The only act­or who appears com­fort­able is James Robertson Justice. None of the act­ors in 1956’s Helen of Troy, not even the at this time usu­ally insouci­ant Brigitte Bardot, look par­tic­u­larly com­fort­able. (She does not play the title role, by the way; rather, she is ser­vant to Helen, played by Continental Beauty [as they used to call such fig­ures] Rossana Podestá.) Robert Wise’s pic­ture opens with an over­ture, Max Steiner bor­row­ing heav­ily from Ludwig van, and then dips into some nar­ra­tion delivered by a Paul Frees wan­nabe, inton­ing non-Homeric phrases like “Today known as the Dardenelles.” These com­pon­ents are gen­er­ally nev­er good signs. The movie winds up being a lot more watch­able than you’d think, though, provided you’ve a high tol­er­ance for Cinecitta-itis. Those who know, know. The battle scenes are bet­ter than com­pet­ently dir­ec­ted, although they do suc­cumb to cliché, as in a cut­away to a single wounded sol­dier stag­ger­ing about with a fatal sword wound. The psychedelic-lighted orgy and of course the Trojan horse bits are oth­er highlights.

Land — A-

Helen — B+

The Nutty Professor 4K (Paramount 4K Ultra)

Consider J. Hoberman on Robert Bresson: “Bluntly put, to not get Bresson is to not get the idea of motion pictures—it’s to have missed that train the Lumiére broth­ers filmed arriv­ing at Lyon sta­tion 110 years ago.” Now con­sider Gilbert Adair on a par­tic­u­lar image derived from Jerry Lewis’ aston­ish­ing 1963 pic­ture: “For if it’s pos­sible, even easy, to dis­like Jerry Lewis, pos­sible to dis­like The Nutty Professor, pos­sible, even, to judge the image oppos­ite as kitschy, down­right ugly, I would nev­er­the­less sub­mit that, if you can­not under­stand how such an image might ever be judged beau­ti­ful, even as it rejects, or insults, every vir­tue in the can­on of high-art pictori­al­ism, if you can­not under­stand how its gar­ish col­or ton­al­ity, so very vul­gar on the prin­ted page, may be trans­figured with­in the con­text of the medi­um to which it owes alle­gi­ance, then you do not under­stand the cinema.” Anyway so there. The trans­fer on this new edi­tion is very…accurate. Which some might take for sub­dued, but as you get fur­ther into the film its candy-colored clown­ing becomes more vibrant. The gray-pink pas­tels of the gym walls…well they’re some­thing else. The whole thing is really beau­ti­ful.  Frankly, all of Lewis’ films, at least all of those from his Paramount run, war­rant this treat­ment. Fat chance. Extras include the com­ment­ary Lewis recor­ded around 2003 with his good buddy Steve Lawrence and is exactly what you’d hope/expect it to be. Lawrence singing “Stella By Starlight” over the instru­ment­al ver­sion in the open­ing cred­its. “Victor Young!” Yes it was. “Unbelievable. This is before Eddie Murphy was born!” “Shelly Manne on drums!” Praise of Kathleen Freeman, good for those guys. And so on. A brand new extra is a 48 minute phone call between Lewis and Frank Tashlin in which Lewis hashes out the script and its gags with his ment­or. Tashlin opens his remarks by say­ing ”I’m read­ing this like an idi­ot pro­du­cer does.” Classic.  A mas­ter­piece with a mes­sage: “You might as well like your­self. Just think about all the time you’re gonna have to spend with you.”— A+

One False Move (Criterion 4K Ultra)

Man, Carl Franklin shoulda made more movies. He’s still around, so maybe he will, but he really ought to have racked up a big­ger filmo­graphy by now. He’s got the goods — sens­it­iv­ity with act­ors, great attun­e­ment to mood via mise-en-scene and more, the whole pack­age. If you’re look­ing for spe­cif­ic proof, check out the way this movie intro­duces Bill Paxton’s ingenu­ous law­man, a guy who’s about to get into a situ­ation that’ll sink him way over his head. It’s an all-time great thematic/narrative dove­tail that’s palp­able in its power.  This is an unspar­ingly tense crime thrill­er, soci­olo­gic­ally per­tin­ent and emo­tion­ally wrench­ing, and yeah, I guess it IS some­thing like a noir (I tend to be prac­tic­ally paro­chi­al in what I’ll term a noir or not), although Billy Bob Thornton emphas­izes in a con­ver­sa­tion with Franklin that’s a primo extra in this pack­age, he and co-writer Tom Epperson that they nev­er thought in terms of genre while con­coct­ing this.. The image qual­ity is pretty much sub­lime. Inspirational dia­logue: “Good to meet you, Chief Dixon.”  Poor schmuck. — A+

Rio Bravo 4K (Warner 4K Ultra)

As with East of Eden, this Howard Hawks Actual Classic (he made it right after the above Land of the Pharaohs! Robin Wood fam­ously stated, “If I were asked to choose a film that would jus­ti­fy the exist­ence of Hollywood, I think it would be Rio Bravo!’ [Is “fam­ously” still right? – who knows?]) was a pretty brown Blu-ray, and again, in this 4K ren­der­ing, the green of the fauna in its land­scapes is more prom­in­ent right from the start. And again, one feels that the stu­dio res­tor­a­tion people expen­ded extra care on this upgrade because for bet­ter or worse THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MOVIE from now on. There’s more detail, indi­vidu­al col­ors are more prop­erly dif­fer­en­ti­ated. The bright­ness of the day when Ward Bond rides into town is very bright but doesn’t wash out; the impres­sion you get is of, well, heat. The whole thing is as much of a pleas­ure to watch as it’s always been, and for many it will be more so. The Richard Schickel com­ment­ary is enhanced by the pres­ence of John Carpenter. They don’t inter­act; it appears they were recor­ded sep­ar­ately, which must have been nice for Carpenter. Ar ar ar. In fair­ness to Schickel, with whom I had an unpleas­ant per­son­al inter­ac­tion once upon a time (and many share my exper­i­ence), he doesn’t lay on the pom­pos­ity here, com­ing off as a relaxed and smooth pro, and is very inform­at­ive. Essential. — A+

Rules of The Game (Criterion 4K Ultra)

How do we see this film now, in the his­tor­ic­al con­tinuüm that has led us to this pre­cise and rather awful moment? Taking place between two 20^th cen­tury dis­asters, what does it give us in the here and now which can be con­sidered a farcical/horrific coda to that cen­tury. I’ll be damned if I know. Except I didn’t know wheth­er to laugh, cry, or just be grate­ful when the title card read­ing “Restoration of this film was sponsored by CHANEL” came up. I’ve been fol­low­ing the home video releases since the laser disc, which I wrote up in Video Review in the late 1980s. Spine num­ber 50 in that format. Spine num­ber 216 in this. Anyway, I keep say­ing the same thing: it nev­er looked bet­ter. And so it is with this 4K edi­tion. The thing that always gets me about the movie and has been get­ting me well before spine num­ber 50, is not just its pro­fund­ity, whatever that may amount to nowadays (and I believe it amounts to a lot, but oth­ers, not so much, poor benighted souls as they might be) but its fluid­ity, its utter watch­ab­il­ity. The sta­ging and the cam­era move­ment always just per­fect and the act­ing bey­ond per­fect. It’s funny, it’s tra­gic, it’s hard to watch (the scene of the hunt, gawd), truly an Everything Movie. — A+

Showgirls (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

Is this a “Murican  Rules?  No, ser­i­ously. Just as Rules pres­ci­ently closed the door on and rang a death knell for a cer­tain idea of Europe, Showgirls can be per­ceived per­haps as a final and pos­sibly defining-by-damnation gob of spu­tum from the coughed up by the expir­ing American Century. As Jerry Lee Lewis would say, “think about it.” This irra­di­ated vari­ant of All About Eve takes that film’s pro­fes­sion­al rivalry into a fer­al neon realm that’s much more “Made In U.S.A.” than the refined milieu of 1950s Broadway. The motif here is along the lines of what Iggy sang in our nation­al anthem, “Death Trip” (see Raw Power): “I’ll rip you/you’ll rip me/baby we’re goin’ down in his­tory.” Is the dia­logue “awful?” Kinda. Did non-native-English speak­er dir­ect­or Paul Verhoeven know it was awful? Hard to say. But it is also wrong to say that the movie is poorly acted, espe­cially by its lead. If we can praise Crispin Glover’s baroque per­form­ance in River’s Edge, we can work up some admir­a­tion for Elizabeth Berkley’s styl­ized hyper-expressiveness here, as it’s entirely them­at­ic­ally apt. And on the level of, you know, mise-en-scene and that kinda thing, this is incred­ibly well ‑made. Great light­ing, great shots, great cuts, incred­ible sta­ging of everything. (By the way, look­ing over the con­tem­por­ary reviews of the movie, I see that my own per­spect­ive lines up with that of, well, Stanley Kaufmann’s.) And it looks incred­ible in 4K Ultra. The back­stage stuff with the strip­pers clearly inspired the much more well-liked (mis­takenly, for sure) Hustlers, cer­tainly, but the sta­ging and shoot­ing of the club mater­i­al reveals Hustlers as the dead-ass piece of film­mak­ing it really is. Newly pro­duced extras include an inter­view with bad dia­logue scribe Joe Eszterhas, he’s hella old now, and mildly con­cili­at­ory rel­at­ive to his pri­or com­plaints about the movie. Good inter­views, too, with the cine­ma­to­graph­er and one of the light­ing guys, the edit­ors, and Penny por­tray­er Rena Riffel. The ostens­ibly comed­ic com­ment­ary from David Schmader includes his belch­ing up some Diet Coke. And then drip­ping sporad­ic and unin­spired dis­dain for the pic­ture. Judging from the ten minutes I listened to, the fea­ture as a whole is pathet­ic and arrog­antly stu­pid and unfunny, all in a par­tic­u­larly obnox­ious Seattle-based-“liberal” way. The package’s grade is docked two whole notches for its inclu­sion. — A-

Something in the Dirt (XYZ Blu-ray)

Brothers-from-other-mothers film­mak­ing team Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead should be as cel­eb­rated and awar­ded as “Daniels,” and in fact a lot more so, but life is unfair. This 2022 grab­ber is not their best movie (for me that’s still the mind-blowing The Endless), but among oth­er things it’s an inspir­ing demon­stra­tion of pan­dem­ic pro­duc­tion resource­ful­ness — most of the film is just the two of them, freak­ing out their con­vo­luted con­spir­acy plot in a safely restric­ted loc­a­tion. How do they make it sing cine­mat­ic­ally? They’re very elo­quent with insert shots, like our friend Martin Scorsese, for one thing.  The film­makers take the lead act­ing chores (which they have done before) and make the most of con­stric­ted space — a house shared by the two that starts behav­ing oddly. It’s essen­tially the story of the world’s greatest self-cleaning ash­tray.  It’s also a very funny quasi-allegory of ambi­tion and the lure of “suc­cess;” as the char­ac­ters chron­icle the seem­ingly super­nat­ur­al phe­nomen­on, one of them asks, “How much do you think, um, Netflix pays for these kinda doc­u­ment­ar­ies?” For all that, the out­stand­ing tid­bit of Inspirational Dialogue is “Stop being para­noid, it’s weird.” The extras include two com­ment­ar­ies and a “watch party” (which I guess means commentary-only-goofy) with social media something-or-other Henry Zebrowski. I don’t like “watch parties,” I just learned.  — A

There’s No Tomorrow (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

Critic Adrian Martin, on his com­pre­hens­ive com­ment­ary, recounts a late career inter­view with Ophuls con­duc­ted by Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut, in which the maes­tro, when asked about this movie, pro­nounced it “Not bad.” Martin’s point being that for the painstak­ing Ophuls to be so kind to one of his own pic­tures meant it was some­thing spe­cial. And this — a first time view­ing for me — really is. This 1939 melo­drama has story ele­ments you’ll recog­nize from Blonde Venus and Stella Dallas and even Lady For A Day. And since it’s French, it’s a lot less coy than even Sternberg had to be about its milieus — the cab­aret in which lead act­ress Edwidge Feuillère works is an actu­al top­less joint, just like in Showgirls. Feuillère plays Evelyn, a down-at-heels single mom who, upon meet­ing a love from the past, con­cocts what is, to be hon­est, a truly hare-brained scheme to retrieve hap­pi­ness. The cine­ma­to­graphy by long­time Ophuls col­lab­or­at­or Eugen Schüfftan (he did Metropolis, too. And The Hustler!) is quite pur­pose­fully dark, and the Gaumont res­tor­a­tion looks good; there’s not too much vis­ible in the way of digit­al cleanup arti­fact but the image is very clean over­all. Ophuls’ style here is mature but not wholly advanced — that is, the mov­ing cam­era is present but not dom­in­ant. He does make it count, as when dolly­ing back from the para­dis­ic­al auberge the lov­ers shared.. Or dolly­ing in and out at the train sta­tion near the end. Immaculate over­all, and the end­ing is remark­able. Inspirational dia­logue: “I’d like to drift into the fog” — A+

To Live And Die In L.A. (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra)

It was quite crit­ic­ally drubbed upon it 1985 release (future screen­writer Paul Attanasio called is “over­heated and reck­lessly viol­ent” what a bunch whiny mor­al­ist­ic twaddle) but this late Friedkin is not only great but it really is an ideal com­pan­ion piece to the early Friedkin mas­ter­piece The French Connection. The filthy cold bore­dom of being a cop in NY versus the filthy hot squal­or of being a cop in L.A. When the guys in this movie are doing under­cov­er stak­ing out, they’re hos­ted and fed by Jesuit fri­ars, or some­thing. That’s as close to nor­mal like as they really see. The intens­ity of Friedkin’s dir­ec­tion, and of William Peterson’s A‑1 per­form­ance as Secret Service loon Chance, really helps you for­get how hack­neyed the whole open­ing gam­bit of “my part­ner got killed three days before retire­ment and now I must avenge him” is. Other points of interest, aside from the almost relent­less action, the over­all atmo­sphere of sleaze and cor­rup­tion — per­di­tion, even — include great sup­port­ing bits from Robert Downey, Sr. AND Valentin Vargas (whom you may remem­ber as “Pancho” in Touch of Evil) and the fact that Willem Dafoe’s def­in­itely evil coun­ter­feit­er char­ac­ter is nev­er­the­less on high­er mor­al ground than the cops. This 4K Ultra present­a­tion is without a doubt super­i­or to the pri­or Blu-ray (which wasn’t bad) — def­in­itely an upgrade in terms of sickly orange sun­set mood­i­ness, sharp­ness and detail, skin tones, all that. Just a com­puls­ively watch­able pack­age. The extras are old and include Friedkin say­ing “I’m gonna do this com­ment­ary for the film without ref­er­en­cing the film itself.” Oh, the exper­i­ment­al com­ment­ary days. — A+

Trouble Every Day (The Film Desk Blu-ray)

“They are jeal­ous,” Catherine Breillat said to me in February of 2002, when I brought up to her the neg­at­ive reac­tion that had greeted this Claire Denis movie in Toronto the pri­or fall. “The film is too beau­ti­ful, they know they can nev­er fathom a film so beau­ti­ful.” Okay, the last part I’m para­phras­ing a bit, I pre­sume, as my memory may not be entirely accur­ate. But you get the idea, and right on. And so this beau­ti­ful film’s long over­due beau­ti­ful Blu-ray present­a­tion is finally here. Which is all you need know. The sup­ple­ments are not copi­ous but they’re intel­li­gent and coher­ent. Commentary by Alexandra Heller Nicholas; she starts right off on the open­ing credit’s use of Comic Sans. She recalls that the boos began not in Toronto but in Cannes.

Melissa Anderson’s book­let essay is cogent and sharp. The video essay from dir­ect­or Zack Clark tells us “the pace is lan­guid,” which you know upon actu­ally watch­ing the movie, but the visu­al cross ref­er­ences to Franco and Herzog and Kenton and Browning and all those guys are sol­id. But the movie’s the thing, and it’s essen­tial. Inspirational com­ment­ary obser­va­tion: “What level of abso­lutely insane pearl-clutching bull­shit is that?” — A+

Undefeatable (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

This Godfrey-Ho-directed Hong Kong film (made in English with almost entirely Occidental per­formers) is a weird unself­con­scious hybrid. The Cynthia Rothrock vehicle is a little dis­in­ter­ested in its mar­tial arts ele­ments — the most impress­ive stuff in this respect is Rothrock doing solo sword exer­cises — and favors serving up queasy latter-day grind­house lur­id­ness, what with its rap­ist seri­al killer vil­lain who gouges the eye­balls out of his vic­tims for his coup de grâce. It’s only eight years after Rothrock’s big-splash debut with Yes Madam! and she seems kind of tired here to be hon­est I don’t know, maybe the real prob­lem is that everyone’s very caky face makeup is prom­in­ently vis­ible in this 4K trans­fer. (You can also see the knee pads under Rothrock’s jeans in the first fight sequence, but that’s not a 4K arti­fact, it’s just…you know.)  So much of this really doesn’t work, and yet I had some­thing like fun. The eye­ball gou­ging effects are rather amus­ingly sub-Fulci. Because I was amused in this way, I may need help. Anyway. The final fight scene is appar­ently on a lot of social media mar­tial arts “worst” lists and on the com­ment­ary Rothrock is good-humored in response to the japes, and even throws some shade at dir­ect­or Ho’s idea “let’s have you do a cartwheel with your hand in a sling.” Also note­worthy is the really ludicrous mul­let on bad guy Don Niam.  Inspirational dia­logue: “You know the rules: no knives, guns, bricks…or any­thing else” For addicts, mostly.  I may be one. — A