Blu-Ray and 4K Consumer Guide, Summer 2024

This one almost killed me so the next will likely be an, um, Fall/Winter guide. Also it’s get­ting well-nigh impossible to get usable jack­et art off the web (either that or Typepad can­’t work with what you’ve got) so there’s not a lot of that here either. Thanks as always for reading. 

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

Alphaville (Kino 4K Ultra) 

The primary film texts of my child­hood were this and Hitchcock’s Psycho, and I was able to see them more or less reg­u­larly on tele­vi­sion in the 1960s. Psycho, oddly enough for a film that would come to carry an R rat­ing, ran on WWOR Channel 9 in prime time. Alphaville was tough­er — it ran about once a year on WABC 7 at two in the morn­ing, in a highly trun­cated ver­sion to fit in a 90 minute time slot. My folks had a 13-inch Sony Black and White port­able set I brought up to my room on those occa­sions and I could watch con­ten­tedly if I kept the sound low enough not to dis­turb my young­er broth­er, with whom I shared a bed­room and was a sound and con­ten­ted sleep­er. How did I even know about the movie? My par­ents used to get the Sunday times and as a small child I’d pore over the movie ads and early on I had a par­tic­u­lar eye for the once-yearly full page ad announ­cing the selec­tions for the New York Film Festival. So maybe through there. Anyway, the point is that I’m really used to see­ing this movie in less-than-optimum present­a­tions. Can a film be shot in a style that’s high-end and lo-fi sim­ul­tan­eously? This film is proof that, hell yes. And this new trans­fer nails that gray scale wheth­er Coutard’s shoot­ing hard or soft. Inspirational dia­logue: “Should I go through the North or South zone?” “What’s the dif­fer­ence?” There’s snow in the North. And sun in the South.” “I’m on a jour­ney to the end of the night, so I really don’t care.” “Reflector Westinghouse 50 Watt” on the villain’s “face” is now very easy to read. — A+

Bad Company (Fun City Editions Blu-ray)

Robert Benton’s dir­ect­ori­al debut is really bleak and viol­ent — Benton did co-write Bonnie and Clyde let us not for­get. But those who asso­ci­ate him mostly with Kramer Vs. Kramer might be a bit sur­prised. On his sol­id, engaged audio com­ment­ary Walter Chaw calls this an “acid Western,” a sub­cat­egory I have little sym­pathy with, and one I think Benton him­self would raise an eye­brow at, but Walter didn’t just make it up. Which makes me a sad panda. It’s “revi­sion­ist,” to be sure, but hardly psy­che­del­ic. It’s whatever the oppos­ite of psy­che­del­ic is. Maybe Hobbesian even.  It looks great and moves like a (bad) dream. Underrated and under­seen essen­tial American cinema.  — A +

The Bat Whispers (VCI Blu-ray)

This stagy and some might con­sider goofy thrill­er is a cine­mat­ic nov­elty on account of being shot in a wide-gauge film format — aspect ratio 2.0 to one, dec­ades later to become the quiz­zical favor­ite of Vittorio Storaro if I’m not mis­taken — called MAGNIFILM. 65 mm to be pre­cise, later to make a more com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful comeback as VistaVision, sort of. The format was pion­eered by this film’s own dir­ect­or, Roland West, bless him. This sweet VCI pack­age includes that ver­sion — which couldn’t be shown every­where — and the Academy ratio ver­sion, which could be shown every­where. (This pack­age actu­ally includes three ver­sions, as the U.S. and British Academy ratio ver­sions were dif­fer­ent.) It wasn’t shown every­where, and while it was some­thing of a sen­sa­tion it wasn’t the kind of hit that con­fers con­ven­tion­al his­tor­ic­al film immor­tal­ity.  What can you say about a cast whose best-remembered mem­bers are Gustave von Seyffertitz and Una Merkel? (Pace Boston Blackie fans re ostens­ible male lead Chester Morris) Also Grayce Hampton giv­ing Margaret Dumont. The ambi­tious Hitchcockian open­ing shot, shows a bell tower; the cam­era sud­denly “drops” down to ground level and a fire house gar­age door. It’s all mod­el work, of which the pic­ture has a good deal of. Trick shots such as this ameli­or­ate the over­all stagy feel a bit. It is stagy because it’s an adapt­a­tion of a play of course, and as to how stagy it ulti­mately is, well there’s even a clos­ing cur­tain at the end. But of course those were in movie theat­ers back in the day too…What am I yam­mer­ing on about, fer chris­sakes. This is a beau­ti­ful pack­age with a clean image and a must for your Novelty Hit lib­rary. Inspirational dia­logue: “There’s enough shrub­bery around to hide a dozen assas­sins” — A+

Chinatown (Paramount 4K Ultra disc)

Actual WOW. The sweat on Burt Young’s brow in the open­ing scene; you can count the beads. Paramount’s track record has not been great but this is a def­in­ite upgrade from the Blu-ray. Really beau­ti­ful. I will quote the expert, Robert A. Harris, and seen on Home Theater Forum: “Paramount’s new 4k is a beau­ti­ful affair, ren­der­ing the film as it was ori­gin­ally seen in the first run of dye trans­fer prints, only struck for the ori­gin­al release, and just before the Technicolor lab went off the dye trans­fer stand­ard, which occurred in December of 1974. From my memory, all addi­tion­al prints struck were Eastman Color.”  The dif­fer­ence from pri­or home video ver­sion is indeed imme­di­ate. I can’t speak too spe­cific­ally for my 14-year-old self, who actu­ally did see the ori­gin­al release, but I do know that in sub­sequent view­ings it nev­er looked bet­ter than the first time. Now it does.  —A+

The Dreamers (Icon 4K Ultra disc)

Well before the story of Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando’s thor­oughly uneth­ic­al and exploit­at­ive beha­vi­or with respect to Maria Schneider on the set of Last Tango In Paris resur­faced and was iter­ated in vari­ous states of rage in “the media” (with Jessica Chastain going so far as to say that if you watch Tango you are wit­ness­ing an actu­al sexu­al assault), people were mad at Bertolucci. They were mad at him over the crick­et at the end of The Last Emperor (“They can’t take poet­ic license?” the one-time poet pro­tested to me in a phone inter­view a couple of days before he won an Oscar or two, which had to have taken the sting out of this issue). They were mad at him over Stealing Beauty for shoot­ing Tuscany, a part of his home coun­try, like a giddy tour­ist. Which he did. And they were mad at him for his “dirty old man gaze” in his pen­ul­tim­ate film, made in 2003 when he was a little over 60. They were mad, too, that he, one of the ’68 gen­er­a­tion, was seem­ing to cel­eb­rate a lack of polit­ic­al com­mit­ment framed against that back­drop. The guy couldn’t/can’t win! Yet he remains, among oth­er things, the maker of The Conformist, a single movie that had almost as gal­van­ic an impact on film form as had the entire French New Wave. This movie can’t touch that one, but it is still very visu­ally ener­get­ic and kind of mov­ing as an old man’s affec­tion­ate look at a tumul­tu­ous past. Based on Gilbert Adair’s puck­ish cinephile nov­el, the movie’s an enchant­ing lark with heavy TCM con­tent. In his com­ment­ary here, Adair insists that BB’s approach is the oppos­ite of voyeur­ism and I think he’s cor­rect. Additionally his under­stand­ing of col­lab­or­a­tion equal­ing trans­form­a­tion is spot on. Smart guy. The Jean-Pierre Leaud cameo, with bonus Kalfon con­tent. A very good movie but of course it’s a movie and not one worth get­ting mad at. But some might still deplore BB’s ulti­mate com­ment­ary declar­a­tion: “The revolu­tion didn’t hap­pen, thank God” — A

Fear City (Shout Factory Blu-ray)

Bad Lieutenant (Kino 4K Ultra disc) 

Dangerous Game (Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray) 

Remember when Abel Ferrara was ALMOST a com­mer­cial film­maker? No? You’re prob­ably too young. By com­mer­cial I mean Grindhouse com­mer­cial, and he was, almost and Fear City is his most main­stream in that respect. A cop-and-serial-killer thrill­er set in the bad old days of Times Square peep shows and strip joints (they weren’t that bad; they could be kind of fun actu­ally) it has the least sub­text of any Ferrara movie, and seem the least per­son­al, but it cer­tainly shows off his facil­ity, eco­nomy, and under­ground art film sens­ib­il­ity. Sweet cast, too: Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ola Ray (remem­ber the “Thriller” video?) and of course Melanie Griffith. Sweet dia­logue from screen­writer Nicholas St. John includes zingers like “It’s a thin line these grease­balls tread.” But also, no real New Yorker says, “St. Vincent’s Hospital,” they just say, “St. Vincent’s,” that must have been a note from a suit. Great loc­a­tion shots, I said “YES” when I spied a Brew and Burger.  The cli­max is a hoot, with Berenger sum­mon­ing THE KILLER BLOW. Inspirational cred­it: “And Rosanno Brazzi.”

Bad Lieutenant and Dangerous Game are dif­fer­ent anim­als, tortured-soul chron­icles star­ring Harvey Keitel. Lieutenant still suf­fers a little on account of Jimmy Page for­bid­ding the use of its most power­ful music­al leit­mot­if, a Spoonie G rap that sampled “Kashmir” without clear­ing it. It’s still Bad Lieutenant, and hoo boy. The VS Cinematographe present­a­tion of inside-filmmaking kit­chen sink explor­a­tion Dangerous Game, fea­tur­ing Madonna’s best film per­form­ance is defin­it­ive. And that pack­age presents an Incredible, emo­tion­al Ferrara inter­view, shot two days after his cine­ma­to­graph­er Ken Kelsch died in December of 2023. Suddenly Ferrara’s’ Blu-ray/4K pres­ence has gone from sparse to sub­stan­tial. Buy all three with con­fid­ence. Inspirational com­ment­ary line: “I tell you it’s the hard­est part of dir­ect­ing. Doing this stuff,” says Ferrara on the Lieutenant com­ment­ary. All discs: A+ 

Invasion USA/Navy Seals (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra discs) 

Back in the day I was a snob who only saw Cannon Films that were dir­ec­ted by Godard. Okay not that bad, but almost. And the charms of Chuck Norris abso­lutely eluded me. In the late ‘90s I dated a young woman whose Italian grand­moth­er, speak­ing not a lick of English, nev­er missed Walker: Texas Ranger because of her Norris enthu­si­asm. It didn’t really help me get the guy. Nor does 1985’s Invasion U.S.A. make me a con­vert, but the movie is a hoot. Joseph Zito’s vis­ion of the tit­u­lar event, instig­ated of course by the Soviets, is rel­at­ively small scale. It’s essen­tially Norris vs. Richard Lynch. The bad­dies blow up houses at Christmas — in Florida, so they don’t have to depict winter actu­ally. Despite hav­ing no mon­sters the movie seems to teem with what Frank Zappa called “cheep­nis,” his fave qual­ity in B pic­ture. The superb Vin Syn edi­tion looks good, has prop­er grain, and. Norris keeps ask­ing “Where’s Rostov” and some­times it sounds like “where’s Roscoe” which is funny.  Inspirational dia­logue: “Didn’t you bas­tards ever hear about the First Amendment?” “They don’t even under­stand the nature of their own free­dom” Lewis Teague’s 1990 Navy Seals is of a some­what high­er grade. The soundtrack opens with a

Bön Jovi cov­er of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” and that’s a per­fect sum­ma­tion of the film’s ersatz gestalt. Joanna Whalley Kilmer’s defense of Islam is divert­ing; the movie could addi­tion­ally be retitled S. Epatha Merkerson: The Early Years. While a 1990 pic­ture it still has that bright ‘80s look.  Lovely present­a­tion again. The anim­ated under­wa­ter bul­lets in one action scene are very Fantasia. Both disc: A+

The Man I Love (Warner Archive Blu-ray) 

This 1947 pic­ture rep­res­ents the apex of Raoul Walsh’s brand of mas­culin­ized melo­drama. Ida Lupino is a nightclub sing­er torn between a heel and a con­flic­ted good guy. Peg La Centra dubbed Ida’s voice here. Contrast with Negulesco’s “Road House,” in which Lupino did her own singing and made Nico sound like Maria Callas. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. The new Archive edi­tion has a lovely image which com­ple­ments the steady reli­able feel of Walsh not miss­ing because Walsh hardly ever missed. The fam­ily drama, fea­tur­ing the inef­fable Martha Vickers, is almost as fore­groun­ded as the romantic one. It’s grand (and unusu­al) how everything works out without any­body fir­ing a shot.  The supps include some fant­ast­ic Looney Tunes (“Rabbit Transit,” a lat­ter Cecil Turtle bit, and the pur­pose­fully incred­ibly annoy­ing Henery Hawk short “Crowing Pains”).  Inspirational dia­logue: “I think it’s a pretty good idea to do ‘Why Was I Born,’ do the boys know it?” “They know everything.” — A

Man’s Castle (Sony Blu-ray)

The Shining Hour (Warner Archive Blu-ray) 

If you ever had a hanker­ing to see Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy go skinny-dipping, Borzage’s incred­ible 1933 pic­ture (co-scenarist: Ogden Nash!) affords you the oppor­tun­ity. It’s not expli­cit, of course, but the foot­age was excised for many years, and the sali­ent fea­ture of this incred­ibly bare-bones Sony issue — there’s not even a menu! — is a com­plete ver­sion of a romantic rad­ic­al vis­ion. The Shining Hour, made in 1938, is rather more down to earth. If one believes Renoir’s asser­tion that Leo McCarey was the Hollywood dir­ect­or who best under­stood people, one might won­der if Renoir was giv­ing Borzage short shrift or if he just hadn’t seen enough of his pic­ture. I shuddered when I saw Hattie McDaniel in the cred­its for Hour, hop­ing she’d be treated right, and she is, rel­at­ively, and rel­at­ively is the oper­at­ive word. Her char­ac­ter gives the lead played by Joan Crawford some advice, and not in that cliched “wiser than us all man­ner;” she’s very human. (Her par­ti­cip­a­tion in the movie’s punch­line is a bit much but it’s also genu­inely funny and warm.) Once Faye Bainter turns up the hos­til­ity here the Borzage expert­ise in melo­drama finds its wings. Extras include good car­toons (all 1938, two col­ors and one b&w) and radio shows. Castle: A+ for con­tent at least; Shining Hour: A+ all around

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

This com­edy tends to get shrugged off in Hitchcock Studies, and this lovely ren­der­ing from Warner Archive is a great oppor­tun­ity to reas­sess as une vraie Hitchcock, rather than an anom­aly he did to give him­self the oppor­tun­ity to work with his friend Carole Lombard. Accounts dif­fer as to how enthu­si­ast­ic­ally Hitchcock pur­sued the project…and one should take his pro­clam­a­tions of indif­fer­ence to Truffaut with a grain of salt. Only Chabrol and Rohmer, writ­ing well before their friend François sat down with the Master of Suspense (and com­edy!) bothered to give it a (brief) form­al assess­ment with­in the con­text of his oth­er work. But the very first shots, com­pris­ing the cred­it sequence, are quint­es­sen­tially Hitchcockian (see Rope and Psycho and so on) in that they gradu­ally approach the res­id­ence of the prot­ag­on­ists. For the remainder, things get a little harder to ID as Hitch; of course the cut­ting pat­terns are typ­ic­ally astute and seam­less. There’s mov­ing cam­era but noth­ing ter­ribly elab­or­ate. But late in the pic­ture our title couple gets stuck in mid-air on an amuse­ment park ride, and the sus­pense is, well, famil­i­ar and effect­ive. Also effect­ive: The Smiths’ stan­doff with the home­less kids at “their” trans­formed Italian res­taur­ant is a crush­ing semi-throwaway. Chabrol and Rohmer’s account of a res­taur­ant scene where Montgomery is stuck at a table with two “Incredible floozies” is astute but neg­lects the full dimen­sion of the scene, with Montgomery fak­ing a chat with the good look­ing woman at the oth­er table. This was Hitchcock’s second-shortest U.S. film by one minute. Rope is shortest at 80, this is 94-ish, I Confess is 95. Extras include a Bogdanovich/Robert Osborne inter­view in old TCM sup­ple­ment; Cinderella’s Fella a 20 minute nar­rat­ive that’s one of those weird live-action shorts that, if you were not an expert on vin­tage stu­dio out­put you would not believe it actu­ally exis­ted, had it not been included here. Inspirational dia­logue: “That cat knows some­thing.” — A

Never Open That Door (Flicker Alley Blu-ray)

Oooh, an Argentine ANTHOLOGY film based on two Cornell Woolrich stor­ies. Fun.  Schrader has spoken of its extremes in noir effects, and there’s a start­ling light­ing effect in open­ing nightclub scene which lets you know you’re in for a good time. The restored image, as George C. Scott says about Julie Christie’s hair in Petulia, GLEAMS. /Raul’s no good blonde sis­ter the degen­er­ate gam­bler Luisa is a treat. The movie has unbe­liev­able levels of smoking. I woulda switched the order of the stor­ies myself, the second one isn’t as strong as the first in this array. But whatever. A real treat.  —A

The Nude Vampire

Demoniacs (Powerhouse 4K Ultra discs)

Jean Rollin’s 1970 second fea­ture, La Vampire Nue, abso­lutely deliv­ers on its title. The tale of a man who fol­lows an intriguing woman and comes to regret his choices looks ter­rif­ic through­out but it’s abso­lutely sub­lime in its blo­wout final five minutes. There’s a very enthu­si­ast­ic com­ment­ary from British mavens Kevin Lions and Jonathan Rigby, who kick off by not­ing “It’s a cliché to say Rollin’s films are bizarre, but they are.” At one point one of the duo invokes “the dread phrase ‘folk hor­ror’” which made me think “ooh snap” and also made curi­ous about interne­cine battles with­ing British genre circles, since, you know, the dread phrase “folk hor­ror” is widely used in reput­able corners these days.  1974’s Demoniacs eschews the super­nat­ur­al for a, um, pir­ate tale, sort of. But it’s just as bru­tal and beau­ti­ful as any­thing in the Rollin can­on, in part because female lead Joelle Couer is almost as potent an erot­ic pres­ence as Rollin stal­wart Brigitte Lahaie. Speaking of stal­wart, Tim Lucas does the excel­lent com­ment­ary here. He sounds like he has a head cold, how­ever. Get some rest, buddy! — A+ 

Off Balance (Cauldron Bly-ray)

I nev­er much rated Ruggiero Deodato; while I am at least a semi-connoisseur of the crass, can­ni­bal movies and stuff with actu­al anim­al cruelty falls on the wrong side of the line for me. Sure. Call me a wimp, I don’t care. But this pic­ture from the auteur of Cannibal Holocaust, in which it appeared that Michael York went mad with some weird aging dis­ease, looked intriguing enough, and Cauldron is def­in­itely an up-and-comer in the good-presentation-of-anarchic-sticky-floor-cinema game. Also Edwidge Fenech is in it. That was the closer. So there we were. Ooh…he plays a con­cert pian­ist and the music is by Pino Donaggio. Better and bet­ter. Not the most rav­ish­ingly shot pic­ture but the trans­fer is good and true and pure. There’s a gap­ing neck wound in the first anonym­ous murder that made me say “yikes!” People watch a live piano recit­al, and then watch it again as the record­ing is played back on a wall of video mon­it­ors. York’s char­ac­ter is the con­cert pian­ist (he plays a Bechstein, nice) who starts get­ting inex­plic­ably old and not lov­ing it. Crass about his romantic life, he ends a sexu­al encounter by sneer­ing “We both got what we wanted, didn’t we?” He soon pan­ics and goes to spend two months in Venice with his mom and one does.

A very sleepy Donald Pleasance’s face wanders out of frame and then there’s a cut and it wanders into frame in pro­file. The cli­mactic reveal is rather fas­cin­at­ing in an inept way.

Once York’s char­ac­ter starts aging vis­ibly it gets pretty gonzo; the makeup is mod­er­ately hil­ari­ous. The char­ac­ter adopts a dog. Discusses mor­tal­ity with it. Oy.  By the end he looks like Brundlefly. Michael York him­self appar­ently developed a con­di­tion not unlike that suffered by his char­ac­ter here, a grisly irony noted by com­ment­at­ors. It’s Fenech’s own voice on the soundtrack, they also tell us, not a com­mon thing. Solid pack­age best appre­ci­ated by, well con­nois­seurs of the crass. — B+

 Possession (Umbrella 4K Ultra disc)

I’ve not much to add to Zulawski dis­course. Guy was a geni­us, that’s all. This is a fab­ulous pack­age with actu­ally very use­ful and attract­ive sup­ple­ments, includ­ing Alexandra Heller-Nichols’ sol­id and new video essay on “The Failure of Language.”  Also a 51 minute mak­ing of. Daniel Bird observes “the so-called science-fiction form was a mask.” The inco­her­ent U.S. cut is also included, as is a stan­dalone earli­er Zulawski inter­view, pro­du­cer Christian Ferry chim­ing it. All you could ask for is a con­tem­por­ary Adjani inter­view and no. The superb 4K image high­lights the cold-as-ice image con­sist­ently and gor­geously con­trived by cine­ma­to­graph­er Bruno Nuytten could be quite sump­tu­ous (he also shot those Claude Berri Pagnol adapt­a­tions, all sunny wheat­fields and stuff) but here his light is cold as ice almost through­out, which is appro­pri­ate to the pro­ceed­ings — A+

The Story of GI Joe (Ignite Blu-ray)

The 2000 Image standard-def DVD of this essen­tial item has served me in good stead for, wow, almost a quarter-century. Wow. Well, this Blu-ray comes from a Film Foundation res­tor­a­tion. I wor­ried that the cleanup work on it would make the rear-projection skies in the open­ing trans­port scenes look more phony. And no, that’s not really the case. What it does it clean up a lot of speck­ling and enhance detail. Still looks like a movie, and an old movie at that — and, as Robert A. Harris has poin­ted out, an old movie made in a kind of piece­meal way. It looks like what it is, but more like what the film­makers wanted you to see when you saw it in its the­at­ric­al release. So: well done, Imprint. Director William Wellman’s lyr­i­cism of the mas­cu­line has nev­er res­on­ated more beau­ti­fully than in this pic­ture. An excel­lent (former) crit­ic of my acquaint­ance simply called it “a spe­cial film” when it came up one day long ago — maybe around the time of the DVD issue. It is. Alan Rode does his cus­tom­ary pro­fes­sion­al and inform­at­ive job on the com­ment­ary. — A+