Winter 2024 Blu-ray/4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide

Since I’m not yet get­ting rid of this blog I might as well use it. If you’ve been on Substack for a while, I can see why you’d stick with it, but it would feel weird for a non-Substack per­son such as myself to actu­ally JOIN it now. Anyway. Happy New Year.

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

Anna Christie (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

While I’ve seen a few O’Neill plays on stage and of course sev­er­al more-or-less dis­tin­guished film adapt­a­tions of his work I’m far from an expert on the work and hence have no real author­ity with respect to this piece in any edi­tion. The life of the sea, the life of the drunk, the life of the fallen woman, here the inef­fable Garbo is play­ing one and she’s quite good, put­ting her height to excel­lent use in mak­ing her title char­ac­ter gangly and awk­ward. The image qual­ity of the main fea­ture is superb giv­en the cir­cum­stances. The package’s most cru­cial extra is the German-language ver­sion made by MGM, with Garbo play­ing against a dif­fer­ent cast on the same sets. It’s dir­ec­ted by Jacques Feyder, and the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is that it’s more flu­id than the English-language ver­sion dir­ec­ted by Clarence Brown but the dif­fer­ence between the two in terms pf both aes­thet­ic and emo­tion­al impact is neg­li­gible. And unless you’re a Garbo devotee, to be hon­est, most of the movie’s salut­ary qual­it­ies might be obscure. I find it con­geni­al but it’s also no Queen Christina. The present­a­tion of Feyder’s ver­sion looks like a sol­id scan of a good look­ing print, but it doesn’t have a patch on the good (not start­ling, but sol­id, and yield­ing some of what you’ll at least take for nitrate gleam) image qual­ity of the English lan­guage ver­sion. This was Garbo’s first sound film; it also rep­res­ents the single sol­it­ary moment in Charles Bickford’s career in which he could cred­ibly play any­thing even vaguely resem­bling a romantic lead. Inspirational dia­logue: ”Lutherans, is it? Oh, then I’m damned entirely.”  — A

Barbarella (Arrow 4K Ultra)

I have no busi­ness — less than no busi­ness — review­ing and assign­ing a grade to a pack­age in which I am fea­tured in a sup­ple­ment. And yet. This is such an exquis­ite ren­der­ing that I need to bang the drum for it. I’ve nev­er seen this pecu­li­ar film look as good as it does here, and the way it looks good is very filmic — like a MOVIE. You know, the way you and I like it. It’s a won­der­ful thing to behold after years of see­ing it not look all that much bet­ter than the TV promo spot included here. Is it a rev­el­a­tion? Yes! But does it improve the movie itself? A bit, yeah. Tim Lucas’ com­ment­ary is reli­ably spec­tac­u­lar, I’m a little embar­rassed that there’s a bit of over­lap between it and my own video “appre­ci­ation” of the movie (part of the sup­ple­ments disc, sep­ar­ate from the 4K Ultra disc).  Overall though it’s giv­en me only a mild case of imposter syn­drome. The Lucas/Bissette Zoom dis­cus­sion is very macro, there’s about a good twenty minutes about bandes desin­ee, a lot of fun remin­is­cing about the Evergreen Review, etc. There’s also Elizabeth Castaldo Lunden on the cos­tumes, cam­era op Roberto Girometti on work­ing with Vadim and Claude Renoir, amus­ing son Ricky Tognazzi on dad Ugo, Fabio Testi on being John Philip Law’s body double, a good video essay on Dino di Laurentiis. All one could ask for is a new inter­view with Jane Fonda and I don’t think that was ever going to be in the cards, the fact that she atten­ded Vadim’s funer­al not­with­stand­ing.  — A+

The Carpetbaggers (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

The image here is awful pretty — really sump­tu­ous in its col­or and clar­ity and super clean. And the 1964 movie itself is legendary in being pretty awful. It’s inter­est­ing to look at this in tan­dem with Minnelli’s Home From the Hill, which has story and char­ac­ters that are very nearly as pulpy as this, but which Minnelli invests with some hard-fought grav­ity and dig­nity. And makes the most of the mise-en-scene fur­nished by Preston Amre. Edward Dmytryk, the dir­ect­or here, was gen­er­ally com­pet­ent and often bet­ter than com­pet­ent, but couldn’t really be bothered here to invest in the mater­i­al, and it shows. Hence, the fant­ast­ic pro­duc­tion design of Hal Pereira not­with­stand­ing, Dmytryk can’t make any of it sig­ni­fy bey­ond the lur­id sur­faces. There’s not really such a thing as “it’s so bad it’s good” but there is also the truth as artic­u­lated by Vladimir Nabokov that noth­ing is more exhil­ar­at­ing than phil­istine vul­gar­ity, so you may split the dif­fer­ence between those two real­it­ies and come up grin­ning with this item. In terms of enter­tain­ment value, it helps that leads George Peppard and Carroll Baker both seem to be on angel dust, and that Baker is cos­tumed through­out as if the movie has the altern­ate title Chick in Her Underwear. Incidentally, this was the second movie I watched in a single day in which the com­ment­at­or used the phrase “roman à clef.” I don’t want to rat any­one out but I’ll say that Julie Kirgo here is the one who pro­nounces the phrase cor­rectly. Her work is rel­at­ively dis­curs­ive but two hours thirty is a lot to have to fill up. I have not yet listened to the David Del Valle/Dave DeCoteau com­ment­ary but those fel­lows are always enter­tain­ing. Inspirational dia­logue: “How do you like my widow’s weeds?”  Spoken by Baker, in her under­wear, or some­thing like under­wear at least.. — A

Cemetery Man (Severin 4K Ultra)

This exquis­itely executed com­pen­di­um of mor­bid­it­ies really hit my sweet spot when I saw it for the first time in its 1994 U.S. the­at­ric­al release. The Golden Age of Argento was def­in­itely on the wane — 1993’s Trauma had its kicks, includ­ing loc­a­tion shoot­ing in Newark, New Jersey, but was not 100 proof — and Lamberto Bava’s out­put at this point was spotty, and not well-distributed in the U.S. Fulci had reached a kind of apo­theosis in 1990 with Cat in the Brain, but to be hon­est at that point in my life I was too much of a snob to have embraced Fulci any­way. So Michele Soavi was the guy, and this meta-movie just plain stomped. This turned out to be the end of an era rather than the begin­ning of a new one, alas.  Essentially the story of a man who keeps mis­pla­cing his gun, this resource­ful low-budget won­der con­tains cred­ible visu­al allu­sions that range from Magritte to Hitchcock to the Richard Corben cov­er of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell. Anyway, after its the­at­ric­al run it nev­er had an even decent phys­ic­al media release until now and the Severin edi­tion is spec­tac­u­lar. No notes. In extras, it’s grat­i­fy­ing that star Rupert Everett holds the movie in such high esteem and fas­cin­at­ing to learn that the “Dylan Dog” com­ic book char­ac­ter was actu­ally based on him (and that this movie, con­trary to pop­u­lar U.S. belief, isn’t really based on Dylan Dog but a dif­fer­ent graph­ic nov­el by the same author). Overstated yet strangely enig­mat­ic love interest Anna Falchi (there was a rumor when the pic first came out that she was a trans woman; she is not) still looks great and is quite inter­est­ing and frank in her self-assessment: “I have a very comic-book style phys­ic­al­ity, truth be told.”  Inspirational dia­logue: “You’ve got a real nice ossuary!”— A+

Clue (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

Hey, kids, it’s an Intellectual Property movie! Had dir­ect­or Jonathan Lynn got­ten an Oscar nom­in­a­tion for his screen­play (not likely but bear with me), would it be for Adapted or Original? Should we ask Judd Apatow? Moving on, it’s inter­est­ing that this mod­er­ately mis­be­got­ten cine­mat­ic board game adapt­a­tion has acquired a cult suf­fi­cient to war­rant a 4K edi­tion, but that’s the sort of thing that the release cal­en­dar of Shout Factory teaches us on the reg­u­lar. (The cor­por­ate entity known as Sony Pictures Itself has issued a 30^th Anniversary 4K Ultra disc of 1993’s So I Married an Axe Murderer, which my wife and I watched and enjoyed the oth­er night, while at the same time mildly bemused that a film so incon­sequen­tial should be so mar­keted. I think the answer is reas­on­ably obvi­ous; the big stu­di­os are digit­iz­ing EVERYTHING in their lib­rar­ies [see below’s Imprint title] and there are licensors eager for product on the one hand and, in what’s prob­ably the case with Axe Murderer itself, in-house enthu­si­asts who’ll pitch hard for a phys­ic­al release of a fave.) Anyway — the reas­on for the cult, I think, has less to do with the IP and a lot to do with Madeline Kahn and the rest of the expertly amus­ing cast. The divine Madeline and Lesley Ann Warren are the most con­sist­ently funny of the ensemble, but Mull, McKean, Curry and the rest (as the first ver­sion of the Gilligan’s Island theme song would put it) all do their level best with­in a very con­strained and labored story frame.  How the ques­tion of wheth­er Colonel Mustard got sapped in the lib­rary with a length of pipe, or wherever and whatever and by whom, was for cine­mat­ic pur­poses yoked to a story premise focused on the 1950s Army McCarthy hear­ings comes down to Lynn. We learn in a sup­ple­ment that he was approached, in a state not unlike des­per­a­tion, by pro­du­cers Peter Guber and Jon Peters to come up with something/anything in the script depart­ment, and drew on his acquaint­ance in Great Britain with the black­lis­ted screen­writer Donald Ogden Stewart for his idea. Who, indeed, woulda thunk it. The oth­er extra here is ten smart minutes on score com­poser and Mel Brooks stal­wart John Morris. The camera’s leer­ing plunges down faux-French-maid Colleen Camp’s cleav­age is no doubt a Guber/Peters touch. — A

Count Dracula (Severin 4K Ultra)

Watching this, I worked up a the­ory, which was that this is Jess Franco’s most con­ven­tion­ally com­pet­ent film and hence his least inter­est­ing film. Or, as Tim Lucas, who’s got way more mileage than myself with respect to Franco, put it in a lengthy and as far as I can glean un-linkable Facebook post, “one senses it was not to [Franco’s] taste to film a clas­sic story in a clas­sic­al sense.” (Tim then puts the movie’s weak­nesses down to cine­ma­to­graph­er Manuel Merino.)  Nevertheless, there are bits when Franco’s inspir­a­tion rises to the largely staid sur­face here. Soledad Miranda sleep­walk­ing is good. As are the shots of her in Dracula’s embrace, fol­lowed by a shot of a bat shad­ow, and Miranda with her head thrown back in ecstasy and her shoulders slouch­ing, like she’s sus­pen­ded by invis­ible wires. That sort of thing is very start­ling and effect­ive. The sym­phony of stuffed anim­als is rather good too. Christopher Lee seems into it; indeed, this 1970 pro­duc­tion is the pic­ture that inspired Lee to con­fide to me, in an unfor­tu­nately lost 1993 inter­view, that Franco was “a not untal­en­ted man, by the way.” Severin has also issued a Blu-ray of the spec­tac­u­lar Surrealist sort-of doc­u­ment­ary Cuaducu (Vampir) which I already have in a good Second Run edi­tion but which I recom­mend in any form you prefer. As for this pack­age, it’s anoth­er spec­tac­u­lar Severin effort. I don’t know how they do it.  —A+

Danza Macabra 2 (Severin 4K Ultra & Blu-ray)

These are indeed the days of mir­acle and won­der. When I was a kid, I was com­pletely freaked out by an early ‘60s black-and-white Italian hor­ror called Castle of Blood when it screened on WOR 9’s weekly “Chiller” movie pro­gram. This was/is the Antonio Margheriti-directed pic­ture on which a fic­tion­al Edgar Allan Poe and a rich creep pal of his bet a journ­al­ist that he can’t spend the night in this haunted castle without going nuts and/or dying. Barbara Steele plays one of the haunt­ing ele­ments. I can’t begin to ima­gine how washed out it looked on the 12-inch Sony port­able TV I prob­ably watched it on. And yet it dazzled young weird me. In no small part this had some­thing to do with the inef­fable Barbara Steele in a cru­cial role. In sub­sequent years I learned oth­er folks had sim­il­ar epi­phanies. The title became an answer to one of the “Ask Glenn” ques­tions that came my way at Première, just in time for the DVD release of the pic­ture by the ever-great Don May at Synapse. And Don’s ver­sion looked…better than it had in the beat-up print indif­fer­ently tele­cined and then broad­cast by WOR into my home back then. But now. Now. Castle is the center­piece of a box set con­tinu­ing Severin’s lov­ing care of Italian hor­ror mas­ter­pieces and oddit­ies. This pic­ture gets the 4K Ultra treat­ment, while the three remain­ders are Blu-rays. All good. Two ver­sions are here, the Italian-language Danza Macabra and English-dubbed Castle, which I watched first, because nos­tal­gia, right?. The open­ing cred­its of Castle are beat up but the fea­ture itself is the restored ver­sion and it looks pretty incred­ible. It’s a test­a­ment to the film’s power that it came through in com­prom­ised present­a­tions, but hav­ing an edi­tion of this caliber is mind-blowing. The Italian Danza is about six minutes longer and has the nud­ity we’ve been miss­ing, which doesn’t improve the movie as such — those anti-sex-scene prudes are RIGHT! (Actually it’s pretty right­eous.)  And yes, the pack­age has oth­er pic­tures (although I pre­sume down the road Severin will break this up into indi­vidu­al titles for sale.) 1971’s They Changed Their Face is… a very subtle cri­tique of cap­it­al­ism in which Adolfo Celi plays an Italian car mag­nate named Nosferatu. Yes, you read cor­rectly. He announces him­self a pion­eer in “gast­ro­nom­ic social­ism” as he feeds his latest prey a TV din­ner that looks even less appet­iz­ing than what Heywood Floyd slurped down on his way to the moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie is pretty drab visu­ally, although the radical-cinema-pastiche fake TV ads proffered by a pro­pa­gand­ist char­ac­ter are mildly amus­ing. The film will def­in­itely ring chimes with any­one with more than a passing famili­ar­ity with the schiz­oid polit­ic­al cur­rents of Italy in the late 60s/early 70s. 1972’s The Devil’s Lover is more overtly lur­id, not that Faces isn’t lur­id — a movie that more or less opens with a female hitch­hiker top­less under her fur-lined winter jack­et can’t be called not lur­id. But Lover fea­tures act­ress Rosalba Neri, who prac­tic­ally defines lur­id, although the sup­ple­ment called “The Feminism of Rosalba Neri” argues that her lur­id qual­it­ies were for a right­eous cause, and why not. I con­fess I haven’t giv­en more than a curs­ory look at the mini-series Jekyll, a post­mod­ern vari­ant on Stevenson’s tale. But I can still con­fid­ently assign the whole box my highest grade. —A+

eXistenZ (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

Underappreciated at the time of its release, sub­sequently sub­jec­ted to one measly and thor­oughly indif­fer­ent home video release, this 4K edi­tion was a “Secret Title” from Vin Syn and a really wel­come sur­prise. Viewed today, it really synchs up nicely with the maestro’s 2022 Crimes of the Future. This bru­tally meta-textual work is both about and not about gam­ing, or maybe we can say it’s about gam­ing as life. It has affin­it­ies to both Borges and Nabokov — affin­it­ies that both authors might find the film itself to vis­cous to deign to recog­nize. (They’re also not alive, either, which would be a fur­ther imped­i­ment to their poten­tial appre­ci­ation.)  It is also maybe the closest thing to an out-and-out com­edy that Cronenberg has ever made. (All the per­formers get it, but Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm have the most fun with it.) The vast array of sup­ple­ments includes a com­ment­ary by Jennifer Moorman; at one point she pro­nounces “And this is where the film starts to get…rapey. We might say.” We might, as phys­ic­al viol­a­tions of all kinds are the movie’s bread and but­ter, but I don’t know — Moorman’s ana­lys­is, use of col­lo­qui­al­isms not­with­stand­ing, often struck me as labored and humor­less in a typ­ic­ally aca­dem­ic way, although it does offer insights worth turn­ing over. In the depart­ment of my own crit­ic­al short­com­ings, or whatever you want to call them: Is it weird that I think Jennifer Jason Leigh is the hot­test she’s ever been in this movie? First rate image through­out. A real gift. Inspirational dia­logue: “Death to real­ism!” — A+

French Revelations (Flicker Alley)

I wish that more labels had ideas like the one that led to this disc. This is a sort-of thematically-paired double fea­ture of French-language films. There’s 1934’s Mauvaise Graine, co-written and co-directed by Billy Wilder, then freshly emig­rated from Germany to France and soon to head to the States.  It’s a very mord­ant and cyn­ic­al crime com­edy that looks ahead to The Fortune Cookie, except it’s a lot more vicious. It’s fas­cin­at­ing in a more-than-historical way. (It incid­ent­ally fea­tures a black char­ac­ter who’s not depic­ted with abso­lutely hor­rif­ic racism, which is kind of a nov­elty for its time.) Commentator Jan-Christopher Horak notes through­out that Wilder didn’t like dir­ect­ing. Which sort of kept being true (he only star­ted doing it in Hollywood to pro­tect his scripts).  The print here opens with the kind of degen­er­a­tion you get so excited about in Bill Morrison movies. But the image straight­ens out quickly enough. The second fea­ture is 1935’s Fanfare D’Amour, which Wilder had noth­ing to do with…. except that the spine of its plot fed the 1951 German pic­ture Fanfaren der Liebe, which in turn led to Wilder’s own Some Like It Hot. And this film does fea­ture a jaw-dropping racial­ist gag in which the two prot­ag­on­ists, in a mont­age depict­ing their vari­ous guises before join­ing an all-girl band, don black­face to infilt­rate a Black jazz combo. This is a mer­ci­fully short sequence in an oth­er­wise ami­able film co-starring Julian Carette, who went on to play the poach­er who blithely cuck­olds Gaston Modot in Renoir’s Rules of the Game. Fanfare func­tions without the mob ele­ment or the frantic “I’m a girl I’m a girl I’m a girl” gender pan­ic that gives Hot its incred­ible dimen­sion. The very Deco art dir­ec­tion here make the amus­ing but in most oth­er respects ordin­ary pic­ture an almost Lubitschean pleas­ure to behold. Inspirational dia­logue: “Are you sure you’re a man?” “I don’t know…” — A

The Fugitive (Warner 4K Ultra)

The 4K Ultra disc offers a hand­some image to be sure. I do recol­lect that this was some­thing to see in the sum­mer of 1993 while we were all wait­ing for Jurassic Park…and I also recol­lect that In The Line of Fire was some­thing bet­ter to see. Neither pic­ture, for me, has aged into any­thing like a clas­sic, but while Fire still has the edge, Fugitive is a sturdy action/thriller con­struc­tion — and an IP movie, let us not for­get! — with, as it hap­pens, no real point of view about any­thing. That is, it’s kind of imper­son­al.  In a way not dis­sim­il­ar to what Tommy Lee Jones’ U.S. Marshall char­ac­ter con­veys here. It’s also a little pre­dict­able. “As soon as you see Joroen Krabbé’s name in the open­ing cred­its, you know who the bad guy is,” my pal Joseph Failla com­plained at the time. Speaking of the open­ing cred­its, boy are they cheesy: “Harrison […wait for it] Ford” “Tommy […wait for it] Lee…Jones” Except Jones him­self, in the much-maligned com­ment­ary track, doesn’t think so, say­ing to jour­ney­man dir­ect­or Andrew Davis over the phone, “These are really cool titles Andy.” A lot of the movie still holds up bet­ter than well, though, so reser­va­tions not­with­stand­ing, this is the Davis that I’m keep­ing in my lib­rary. — B+

Gentleman Jim (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

It’s Raoul Walsh, it’s Errol Flynn, it’s Warner Archive, how much selling do you need here? Also fea­tur­ing an ador­able Alexis Smith and Jack Carson mani­fest­ing as the Frank McHugh of Ralph Bellamys. Dramatically fine image qual­ity. The box­ing sequences are tight des­pite con­tain­ing plenty of 180 “rule” viol­a­tions. Don’t wait, buy today. — A

Horrors of the Black Museum (VCI Blu-ray)

The res­tor­a­tion here is cour­tesy of Canal +, and it’s suf­fi­ciently vivid to really deliv­er the lur­id goods of this glibly sicko 1959 tale of a dude who’s really into devices of tor­ture and how to use them. The American dis­trib­ut­or tacked on the ridicu­lous “Hypnovision” hook, via a short pro­logue that Canal + has NOT restored but is included here cour­tesy of the mag­pies at VCI. It is a nice thing, as the Red Riding Hood in the Bugs Bunny short would put it, “TO HAVE!” Via the short, you your­self, the view­er that is, are sup­posed to get hyp­not­ized. Didn’t work on me. The pic­ture doesn’t have a patch on the Ormonds’ Please Don’t Touch Me, which treats a sim­il­ar theme. But back to Black Museum. Oh my. Kind of the apo­theosis of Michael Gough in creepazoid mode; he really tears into his role as a true crime writer and mur­der­er. It’s thin line, the movie implies. The movie looks as clear as a bell and the elec­tro­cu­tion of the shrink is noth­ing short of amaz­ing. Two com­ment­ar­ies, the one from co-writer and co-producer Herman Cohen archiv­al, the one from Robert Kelly new. Essential Psychotronic cinema. — A

JFK (Shout Factor 4K Ultra Disc)

About ten minutes into this, when Jack Lemmon and Ed Asner are sit­ting at a bar, and Asner’s char­ac­ter is wax­ing racist/reactionary and Lemmon is doing a “for God’s sake you’re talk­ing about the President” bit, you may have an ink­ling that you’re watch­ing The Greatest Story Ever Told of con­spir­acy the­ory movies. Well, you know, I LIKE The Greatest Story Ever Told. And since Oliver Stone was really gra­cious and gen­er­ous with me for my upcom­ing book, if you think I’m going to use this non-officially-remunerated exer­cise in order to dis one of his films, you are sorely mis­taken. And I mean, let’s face it, like it or not it’s a fas­cin­at­ing arti­fact and it moves along like a pan­ther in whatever cut you’re watch­ing. Gary Oldman as Oswald does inspire poignant thoughts of “Boy wouldn’t he have been great in a film of Libra?” The 4K disc looks fant­ast­ic; by all means do lux­uri­ate in the burn­ished bronze and brown tones of Jim Garrison’s office. (Another incid­ent­al pleas­ure here is wit­ness­ing Michael Rooker’s almost palp­able relief at play­ing a nor­mal dude in these set­tings.) As for the Stone com­ment­ary, which like the oth­er extras dates back to Shout’s 2019 JFK Revisited The Complete Collection, if you think mak­ing the movie exhausted everything he has to say on this top­ic — and actu­ally, why would any­one actu­ally think such a thing — you are sorely mis­taken. — A+

The Last Tycoon (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

This adapt­a­tion of unfin­ished Fitzgerald is a bet­ter and more inter­est­ing (the two descriptors aren’t always mutu­ally exclus­ive) film than its tep­id repu­ta­tion sug­gests, fea­tur­ing a truly fas­cin­at­ing Robert De Niro per­form­ance. As Irving Thalberg stand-in Monroe Stahr, De Niro is not play­ing a com­plete weirdo, but a kinda-sorta weirdo, that is, a film per­son. Lovely char­ac­ter bits abound, from Ray Milland, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson and oth­ers. Teresa Russell is the ideal Celia Brady, and Ingrid Boulting is alas the weak link in the per­form­ance chain. Gorgeous new trans­fer and a con­tinu­ously sharp com­ment­ary from Joseph McBride, who pulls togeth­er a lot of tendrils espe­cially rel­at­ive to dir­ect­or Elia Kazan’s rela­tion­ship to the stu­dio heads por­trayed in dis­guise here, HUAC stuff, and more. The tales of pro­du­cer Sam Spiegel, a rather old-school pig­let chas­ing both Teresa Russell and Ingrid Boulting, are dis­taste­ful. McBride also notes the clash in sens­ib­il­it­ies between Kazan and screen­writer Harold Pinter. Inspirational com­ment­ary quote: “Kazan’s work got bet­ter after he informed.”— A

Madame Bovary (Warner Archive)

The book in ques­tion is con­demned as “a dis­grace to France and an insult to woman­hood” in the open­ing of this 1948 Vincente-Minnelli-directed adapt­a­tion of Flaubert, which uses the book’s pro­sec­u­tion for obscen­ity as a fram­ing device. (James Mason as the embattled author, nar­rat­ing his heroine’s story, is heav­enly albeit slightly ridicu­lous.) The struc­ture is odd and has a hard time get­ting on its feet. Jennifer Jones is very wobbly as the teen Emma but there’s no way she wouldn’t be; as it hap­pens, her per­form­ance gains strength as she resolves to rebel. Maybe she just thought of all the men in her life before each take. Van Heflin as Dr. B. is mis­cast — not so much in terms of type, but his per­form­ance is way too American — but his work has some small power. The blurb on the back cov­er of this beau­ti­ful Warner Archive edi­tion is abso­lutely cor­rect: the ball­room scene, nine minutes total, begin­ning about 24 minutes in (Chapter 10) is one of the best things ever, in Minnelli or in American cinema in gen­er­al. Robert H. Planck is the cine­ma­to­graph­er here. Gene Lockhart as Homais gets a big laugh tele­graph­ing the actu­al punch­line of the book: “perhaps…the Legion of Honor!” The soundtrack itself is pretty clev­er, with a back­ground cry of “we demand manure” as Louis Jourdan is lay­ing it on to Emma. The ques­tion of wheth­er even Renoir or Chabrol, let alone Minnelli, could really cap­ture the spir­it of Flaubert on cel­lu­loid is not one I’m pre­pared to cogently address at this time but I will insist that this Item is two thirds (at least) a poten­tially great and often very good Hollywood melo­drama. Depressing inspir­a­tion­al dia­logue: “I hurt Charles. I hurt inside.”  — A

The Man In Half-Moon Street (Imprint Blu-ray)

A Paramount attempt to outdo Universal in the Gothic hor­ror genre, this is a little more under­stated than what the House of Laemmle was put­ting out but pretty keen. The story of a guy who’s copped an elixir of immor­tal­ity, but of course At What Cost, it’s all foggy streets and Helen Walker in skin­tight vari­ations of Edwardian cou­ture (it’s suf­fi­ciently atmo­spher­ic that until you see the occa­sion­al auto­mobile you’re inclined to think the 1945 film is set in some indis­tinct turn-of-the-century peri­od). Pretty pacey, too.. A cool kind of out-of-nowhere release that makes Australia’s Imprint a label worth keep­ing an eye on at all times. The extra is a typ­ic­ally thor­ough and inform­at­ive Tim Lucas com­ment­ary with much kvel­ling over Miklos Rozsa’s lav­ish score, which Rozsa abso­lutely did not phone in des­pite the mater­i­al almost giv­ing him an excuse to. (Tim does make a for­giv­able error dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings, con­fus­ing an act­or who wasn’t in Vertigo with one who was.) — A

School Daze (Allied Vaughn) 4K Ultra)

This 35^th anniversary upgrade’s 4K boost gets it pleas­ingly close to the­at­ric­al qual­ity. Spike Lee’s third pic­ture and second fea­ture (depends on wheth­er you cat­egor­ize the barber­shop one as a fea­ture) saw him put­ting Columbia’s (mod­est — $6 mil­lion) money into a rel­at­ively elab­or­ate musical-comedy that was the first of his pic­tures to get crit­ics agit­ated over his ostens­ible dis­in­clin­a­tion to apply a con­sist­ent tone to his work. We have since come to under­stand that it is this trait, if you want to call it that, which makes Lee Lee, and which makes Lee great. As for this movie, what’s incon­sist­ent, and again, only if you want to call it that, isn’t tone but styl­iz­a­tion; the dra­mat­ic scenes are rel­at­ively plain and straight­for­ward, and then the mise-en-scene goes low-budget Earth Girls Are Easy for the music­al num­bers. But, fol­low along with me here, is this even a prob­lem really? Have you seen Window Shopping/Golden Eighties? No, it’s not a prob­lem. It’s free­dom. So roll with it people. This is intriguing, troub­ling, enga­ging, and it’s a kick to watch the young cast. The extras are impor­ted from 2018, includ­ing Spike’s sporad­ic com­ment­ary. “I went to school with a lot of mother­fuck­ers like that too. Just ignor­ant.” The music video for “Da Butt” is NOT in 4K, alas — A

Spider Labyrinth (Severin 4K Ultra)

I decided to check this out on the word of the great genre enthu­si­ast and Edwidge Fenech maven Sarah Jane, whose taste for the lur­id is utterly unsur­passed. My trust in her is such that once the pack­age arrived, I wasn’t at all put off by the fact that the first twenty minutes or so of this 1988 Gianfranco Giagni pic­ture was over lit hot-air expos­i­tion absorbed and acted upon by one of the most man­nequinesque male act­ing leads I’ve ever seen, Roland Wybenga, whose career did not get up to much after this. And sure enough, once it got into gear — with a pur­suit and murder in a green-lit room turned into a maze via hanging bed­sheets, the first and abso­lutely mild­est of its set pieces — I knew I was in for some goods. Or rather, I did not know, because the thing just piled one bizarre, non­sensic­al, grot­esque sur­prise on top of anoth­er until it estab­lished itself in a very high pos­i­tion in my pan­theon of what-the-fuck hor­rors. I can­not recom­mend this suf­fi­ciently highly. Inspirational com­ment­ary tid­bit: “We’re gonna talk about that hair­style.” —A+

Tarzan the Ape Man (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

First things first, Warner now has a new “this stuff is racist” dis­claim­er, it’s a little tight­er than the old one, a little less guilt-ridden, and it calls the issu­ing com­pany “Warner Bros./Discovery.” So Mr. Zaslav has been dotting his Is and cross­ing his Ts. For what it’s worth. And if any movie needs a “this stuff is racist” dis­claim­er, Woody Van Dyke’s enthu­si­ast­ic but non­chal­ant lens­ing of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ gonzo tale does. I mean, it’s HELLA RACIST, as they might say in Quincey, but prob­ably wouldn’t. I was startled a lot of the time. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it — and in fact I’m not sure if I ever have watched it in its entirety to be hon­est. My own enthu­si­asm for jungle tales on film (or any­where else, really, unless they’re war movies) opens and shuts with Cooper and Schoedsack and this ain’t Cooper and Schoedsack. No, for me the main attrac­tion of the fran­chise has always been the prom­ise of Maureen O’Sullivan in désha­billé, which is to be hon­est not an attrac­tion that beck­ons to me all that fre­quently. It’s funny about some old-school act­resses though. Looking at O’Sullivan in this, you’d nev­er guess she’d end her career work­ing for Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. Whereas look­ing at Gloria Stuart in The Old Dark House you have no prob­lem ima­gin­ing her throw­ing down for James Cameron. Interesting. Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes, have you SEEN this movie lately? It’s insane. It’s mostly told from the per­spect­ive of Jane, Tarzan is only first heard 24 minutes in and only first seen 32 minutes in. And when C. Aubrey Smith’s char­ac­ter gets a look at him, he enthuses, “He’s white, too!” Jesus. Neil Hamilton (we know, we know, the future Commissioner Gordon on the ori­gin­al Batman TV series, we know) as Jane’s suit­or, gets whinily jeal­ous of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan before even set­ting his orbs on the ape-man’s loin­clothed glory. He’s not wrong but still, what a feeb.  As Robert A. Harris has observed, both this film’s and Anna Christie’s ori­gin­al mater­i­als went up in smoke in the great Warner’s fire — not the one in 2023, but the one in 1934. And in terms of good dupes to work from, this pic­ture came out in not so great shape, but that’s in part due to the nature of the movie itself, a huge cut-and-paste job in some respects. There’s lots of janky doc­u­ment­ary wildlife-footage edit­ing; who knows where the ori­gin­al cam­era neg­at­ives of that mater­i­al were? The image qual­ity is some­times rough and ready but pretty impress­ive all things con­sidered. Van Dyke does like to keep things mov­ing along and doesn’t care about mat­ters going com­pletely bonkers; the Scott of the Antarctic-redol­ent man-and-beast wrest­ling is espe­cially goofy. And hon­estly John Waters could have come up with some of this mater­i­al. The cli­max, in which, among oth­er things a crowd of African pyg­mies (I think they’re pyg­mies) cheer on a guy in an ape suit who’s going to viol­ate Jane, is highly objec­tion­able on grounds mor­al, aes­thet­ic, racial, and spir­itu­al.  Essential American semi­ot­ics stud­ies, to be sure. —A

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra)

Michael Cimino’s dir­ect­ori­al debut is maybe his second-best film (first is Heaven’s Gate, natch) and this 4K ren­der­ing dis­plays gor­geous imagery and tells a gal­van­iz­ing story in which you’ve nev­er hated George Kennedy more. Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges give career high per­form­ances here.  A spec­tac­u­lar com­ment­ary from my friend Nick Pinkerton com­ment­ary spot­lights the pre-Mel-Gibson mas­ochism of Eastwood in the shoulder-repair busi­ness early on, and quotes from both Richard Schickel and Peter Biskind from points in their careers when they both really knew what they were on about. Nick is a fant­ast­ic research­er.  — A+