Another Blu-ray/4K Consumer Guide

Equipment: Sony UBP-X800 multi-region 4K play­er, Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiv­er. (I need to upgrade my sys­tem for Dolby Atmos, but it’ll cost me a grand that I don’t have at the moment. I’m also con­sid­er­ing oth­er expenses; see Black Bag review below. There was once a PayPal wid­get over to the right, but on dis­cov­ring it does­n’t func­tion any­more, I took it down and I don’t feel quite right put­ting my Venmo info up here [I don’t know why, just garden vari­ety neur­osi I guess] so, so much for that idea. It vexes me, how­ever. I see that Jeffrey Wells got like nine grand with his Cannes/Venice GoFundMe, and now I have no viable way of determ­in­ing if there’s any­one out there is there who thinks I’m worth a tenth of Jeffrey Wells. Yeesh.)

Update: Oh what the hell, the Venmo is @Glenn-Kenny‑1

Thanks!

Battle Beyond the Stars (Shout! Factory Blu-ray)

This delight­ful sci-fi riff on Seven Samurai has been kick­ing around on phys­ic­al media for a while. And while the ingeni­ous sets and mod­el space­ships don’t exactly look NOT low-budget, they are crafty and fun enough to bene­fit from the 4K boost. They often look rather like sets from DEFA sci-fi pic­tures, which I reck­on were stud­ied by the young James Cameron, who worked on the pic­ture. Also on the pic­ture was John Sayles, in the capa­city of screen­writer, and he con­cocted the whole Samurai lift. The Sayles and Corman com­ment­ary, in which they chat very ami­ably, was recor­ded around 2001, as was Gale Ann Hurd’s. Hurd recalls car­penters and paint­ers build­ing new sets as the shoot was in pro­gress, hav­ing to stop work as scenes were shot in adjoin­ing sets. The crackerjack cast includes Goerge Peppard, John Saxon, John-Boy Walton embod­i­er Richard Thomas (who was busy with the final sea­son of  his The Waltons gig a little after prin­cip­al pho­to­graphy had wrapped, and was hence hard to get for loop­ing), and in his final film, Sam Jaffe.  A two-million, budget, double what Corman’s stu­dio had done before, res­ult­ing in a very pleas­ing slice of good clean fun. — A+

Black Bag (Universal 4K Ultra disc)

I shouldn’t be review­ing this, due to my pos­i­tion in the Soderbergh exten­ded family…in fact in one of our con­ver­sa­tions around the time of The Girlfriend Experience the film­maker men­tioned that he reckoned I ought not ever review anoth­er one of his movies…but that was a long time ago and I really love this movie. I guess anoth­er way I’m biased is that writer David Koepp really helped me out on my Scarface book, which not enough of you have bought, by the way. Anyway. It’s a delight­fully twisty and clev­er cham­ber piece for betray­ers, espi­on­age divi­sion. I don’t know if that’s ACTUALLY Michael Fassbender speed-chopping that gar­lic in an early scene but it does remind me that I really ought to take a knife-skills class. For COOKING. Do you think I should do that before or after I take a Transcendental Meditation course? Anyway. The movie itself is one tight con­struc­tion. The deleted scenes total all of six minutes and twenty-five seconds. The remain­ing extras are EPK stuff but with good com­pany (that is, the fab­ulous cast and some design­ers). Il padrone manned the cam­era here as usu­al and packs the nar­rat­ive with shots of stag­ger­ing nif­ti­ness. Docked down from “A+,” to give the illu­sion of impar­ti­al­ity. — A

A Date With Judy (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

This 1948 pic­ture has Beeeeeooootiful Technicolor. It also has Beeeeeoootiful Elizabeth Taylor, here all of six­teen or so. But the lead here is Jane Powell, who, after pro­du­cer Joe Pasternak left Universal and Deanna Durbin for MGM, became his pet sop­rano. And a very pretty voice Jane has, too (a col­oratura sop­rano was she, a voice apt for light and tricky stuff). She puts her brand on “It’s A Most Unusual Day,” a win­ning song even when heard in dumb con­tem­por­ary TV ads. Leon Ames and Wallace Beery put their best feet for­ward play­ing America’s Dads. There’s a kid named “Oogie” (a deriv­at­ive of Ogden, appar­ently). The whisper-thin plot also accom­mod­ates Xavier Cugat and Robert Stack, as an intim­id­at­ingly adult love interest. Enthusiastic and com­pet­ent dir­ec­tion is cour­tesy of Richard Thorpe, because not every MGM music­al could be by Vincent Minnelli or, later, Stanley Donen. Thorpe and Roy Rowland were MGM’s music­al foot sol­diers and they turned out a hel­luva lot of enjoy­able stuff. — A

Executive Suite (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

In Anthony Mann’s Side Street, con­sidered in our last install­ment, we opened with shots of New York’s low income hous­ing from far above in the sky. In Robert Wise’s grab-you-by-the-lapels-of-your-Brooks-Brothers-suit sus­pense tale of cor­por­ate cloak and dag­ger, we are treated to a mont­age of low-angle sky­scrapers. A nar­rat­or (Chet Huntley, as it hap­pens; some of my fel­low old men must remem­ber him) muses that inhab­it­ants of the title loc­ale are “above and bey­ond the ten­sions and tempta­tions of the lower floors. This” — the movie, that is  — “is to say that isn’t so.” This really is a hum­dinger, with a remark­able cast…in one scene you can just watch ‘em go like a relay race, Nina Foch (Academy Award nom­in­ee for this) to Shelley Winters to Paul Douglas to William Phipps to William Holden to June Allyson, nice. And later, Barbara Stanwyck AND Fredric March and of course the whole thing kicks off with an extra-devious Louis Calhern. In 2002 Warners had the nice idea to ask Oliver Stone to con­trib­ute a com­ment­ary and it’s a good one; Stone is not reti­cent about dis­cuss­ing this picture’s influ­ence on his own Wall Street. In The American Cinema Andrew Sarris com­plained “the click-clack cut­ting of Executive Suite seem[s] to belong in anoth­er era entirely.” Nowadays, same, except in way that makes you long for that oth­er era. In the same book Sarris also allowed “Wise’s con­scien­tious crafts­man­ship is some­thing of a vir­tue in these days of giddy chaos.”  And that goes double nowadays too.  The image qual­ity on the Blu-ray is as sharp as the pin­stripe on the afore­men­tioned Brooks Brothers suit. — A+

Four Sided Triangle (Hammer 4K Ultra disc)

I’ve not yet had the time to get into Hammer’s massive Quatermass Experiment box, which I’m drool­ing in anti­cip­a­tion over, but I checked this out  with haste. Because I was reor­gan­iz­ing my film book­shelves, and saw I still had a copy of this movie’s lead­ing lady Barbara Payton’s I Am Not Ashamed. Barbara, as you may know, had a quite troubled life. So I thought I’d brush up on her work and life at the same time. As it hap­pens, her book barely talks about her film life, nor explain her imme­di­ate motiv­a­tion for skip­ping out on Hollywood and mak­ing this film in England. What it does detail is pretty sad mis­ad­ven­tures with men and drink. Her per­form­ance in this pic­ture, as the love object of two sci­ent­ists who solve their prob­lem by clon­ing her, is com­mit­ted and cred­ible des­pite the holy-moley premise. The straight-ahead dir­ec­tion is from Terence Fisher, who’d later make good­ies such as Curse of Frankenstein. As Tim Lucas has noted, the source mater­i­al shows some dam­age but the trans­fer is first rate and the movie itself is replete with dis­arm­ing moments, as when the Payton clone robot­ic­ally says, “I think I’ll take a swim.” Worth see­ing in a Payton triple fea­ture with Flicker Alley’s Trapped and Kino Lorber’s Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Like Quatermass, this pack­age is stuffed with sup­ple­ments giv­ing about equal shrift to British sci-fi of the ‘50s and Payton’s unfor­tu­nate nar­rat­ive. Not to men­tion the “prob­lem­at­ic” nature of the movie’s own nar­rat­ive. Which, you know, we get. — A

A Girl’s Best Friend (Melusine Blu-ray)

I shouldn’t be review­ing this, either, due to the fact that I was a pro­duc­tion assist­ant on this 1981 “Adult” film and was hence on its set every day of its two-week sum­mer of 1980 shoot (and a really hot sum­mer it was, too). There’s also the fact that for this lav­ish Blu-ray issue of the film I con­trib­uted both a book­let essay and a feature-length com­ment­ary. During which lat­ter I pause awk­wardly almost every time there’s a sex scene. It’s funny. Anyway, I note it here mainly to point out, if you didn’t know already, that Vinegar Syndrome adjunct label Melusine does amaz­ing work with vin­tage smut and that VS is also start­ing to re-issue 1960s “rough­ies” from the same pro­du­cers, work­ing in a pre-hardcore era. One of which is the notori­ous Satan’s Bed, in which young Yoko Ono appears; she was at the time a stu­dent in the U.S. mak­ing extra money in act­ing. I tell a rather eye-opening story about one of this film’s pro­du­cers attempt­ing to make an offer to Ono…well, it’s really some­thing. The movie itself, hon­estly, looks great. (Better than it did the­at­ric­ally — yes, I saw it in a cine­mat­ic den of sin in Wayne, New Jersey; a young woman I was dat­ing was curi­ous, and we went as a lark, and I actu­ally was fre­quently shushed as I rehearsed for this com­ment­ary, so to speak, for her.) It has real pro­duc­tion value, a hall­mark of the post-Deep Throat “aspir­a­tion­al adult cinema” that I write about in the book­let essay. I’m proud, actu­ally, to have con­trib­uted to this time cap­sule. —A+

Ghost of Peter Sellers (Severin Blu-ray)

Severin does a fab­ulous job with a fab­ulous and I feel too-slept on movie, in which ace dir­ect­or Peter Medak (The Ruling Class, The Changeling, and more great stuff) reflects on what happened when he ignored two car­din­al rules of film­mak­ing: nev­er shoot on a boat and try to avoid work­ing with Peter Sellers even though he’s a geni­us. For RogerEbert.com I called this “the most fas­cin­at­ing doc­u­ment­ary about a failed movie since 1965’s The Epic That Never Was,” about the abort­ive Korda-produced, von Sternberg-directed, and Charles Laughton-starring film of Robert Graves’ great nov­el I, Claudius.”  Extras include Medak being inter­viewed for the entire length of the film by the recently depar­ted Australian film crit­ic and his­tor­i­an Lee Gambin, twenty minutes of Medak explor­ing his scrap­books, and a well-done, con­cise if slightly dry video essay by Daniel Kremer. —A

High Society (Warner Archive 4K Ultra disc)

This movie is a fam­ily favor­ite — that is, a fam­ily favor­ite for my in-laws (my own fam­ily didn’t have any favor­ite movies; indeed, they kept me locked in an attic most of the time, and I’d escape via the roof to go to Bergenfield and see Leone triple fea­tures and Planet of the Apes mara­thons, we’ll get into all this more some oth­er time). But I like it fine too. When Claire and I got mar­ried, it was a week­end get­away wed­ding at an upstate resort and the day before we screened the movie in a barn on the grounds for friends and kin and it went over great. And that was just on a standard-issue DVD. We should renew our vows just to be able to show this immacu­late 4K, a movie that is just about the most agree­able ever made. How could it not be with Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby in the front line. Frank Sinatra is on his best beha­vi­or and Grace Kelly is Grace Kelly.  (Wait, did I say “best beha­vi­or?” Honestly, the heat eman­at­ing from Sinatra and Kelly in their dance scene goes bey­ond sug­gest­ive­ness. It’s almost jar­ring.) Lovely image — 4K Ultra really does a job on the largely pas­tel interi­ors — and lovely crisp sound, because the Cole Porter tunes are fore­most. Supplements are min­im­al but really not required. — A+

His Kind of Woman (Warner Archive)

All aboard the Howard Hughes crazy train. This was sup­posed to have been a rel­at­ively routine noir-tinged mis­ad­ven­ture, and John Farrow shot it as such. Robert Mitchum saunters through a Baja California resort as if he’s look­ing for a spot to nap, while Jane Russell struts and pouts in a bunch of gowns that looks painted on. As sup­port­ing lush Jim Backus observes, “It isn’t the place, it’s the people.” Oddly enough, it wasn’t Russell here who was the object of Hughes’ post-production obses­sion. It was Vincent Price, play­ing egot­ist­ic­al Hollywood act­or Mark Cardigan, who cap­tured his fancy, and Hughes wanted more. Farrow balked, and Hughes more or less black­mailed Richard Fleischer (by threat­en­ing to with­hold release of his Narrow Margin) to do the job, which I sup­pose res­ul­ted in, among oth­er things, the delight­ful sight of Price with a plucked goose in his hand. The banter abounds in wit through­out, as when Mitchum’s char­ac­ter refers to him­self in the third per­son to reflect on “the short, unhappy life of Dan Milner.” The disc is pretty great look­ing. You’d nev­er know the movie was such as a pas­tiche simply from the qual­ity of the image. However, once the sweaty clos­eups of Raymond Burr start, you do know you’re not in Kansas any­more. Manny Farber dug it because of course he did. — A

Love Crimes (IFC Films)

Alain Corneau’s best-known movie is 1991’s Tout les Matins du Monde, which touched off a bit of a semi-obscure baroque music reviv­al in the states. If that’s your only Corneau pic­ture you’re in for a shock with this one from 2010. An utterly ruth­less tale of no-room-at-the-top cor­por­ate intrigue cul­min­at­ing in a mid-stream murder that’s pre­ceded by Kristin Scott Thomas per­form­ing the most relent­less neg­ging you’ve ever seen on under­ling Ludivine Seigner. On the oth­er hand, if you’ve seen Corneau’s utterly jaw-dropping Jim Thompson riff Serie Noire, from 1979 and avail­able in the ace box set Hardboiled from Radiance, the bleak­ness here will more than check out, even though it’s delivered with a bright­er col­or palette than what he allowed in the earli­er pic­ture.  “What a movie,” my wife and I said after screen­ing this — which De Palma remade, rather well, in 2012 as Passion. Alexandra Heller-Nichols’ video essay here stresses the dop­pel­gänger theme, and an affin­ity with Ozon’s Swimming Pool. Travis Woods’ enthu­si­ast­ic com­ment­ary stresses ellipt­ic­al struc­ture. —A+

Sabrina (Kino Lorber)

A Joseph McBride com­ment­ary is always news, and this new one for Billy Wilder’s some-say-it’s‑problematic-and-others-don’t‑care-if-it-is 1954 rom­com is a deep dig with lots of tea to spill. One is not sur­prised, neces­sar­ily, to learn that William Holden and Audrey Hepburn had an off-screen romance; one is per­haps a little taken aback that Audrey wanted kids and Holden had had a vas­ec­tomy and that’s what ulti­mately put the kibosh on their uni­on. The movie itself looks lovely; it was shot by Charles Lang, who wasn’t as salut­ary an influ­ence on Wilder’s visu­als as John Seitz was but he got the job done. The deep focus shots of Sabrina look­ing into a swell party from behind a tree are quite nice. Other com­ment­ary tid­bits: the miser­able Humphrey Bogart called Holden a “dumb prick” and was excluded from Wilder and Holden’s post shoot drink­ing ses­sions. Yikes.  — A

Shane (Kino Lorber)

We have here an uncom­monly beau­ti­ful 4k image, and Alan Rode’s com­ment­ary is inform­at­ive right off the bat, explain­ing how the unusu­al let­ter­ing of the open­ing cred­its was cre­ated. This is a new fea­ture, while the com­ment­ary from George Stevens Jr. is vin­tage; it is obvi­ously more per­son­al and first hand and draws from his father’s archive. Rode has a mono­graph on the movie in the works and so this serves as a kind of pre­view. Back to the image:  the aspect ratio 1.37 only, no 1.66 or 1.85 matte ver­sions included. While the movie was shown in those formats the­at­ric­ally at the insist­ence of Paramount, Stevens com­posed the movie in 1.37 and so in my estim­a­tion this is only right. It looks won­der­ful and plays like gang­busters, peri­od. — A+

Splendor in the Grass (Warner Archive)

This sum­mer, for the ever-game web­site Decider, I’ve been writ­ing a loose his­tory of the American sex com­edy, which has allowed me to wax rhaps­od­ic on the divine Natalie Wood, whose work in Sex and the Single Girl and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice bridged the two 1960s poles of the ostens­ible sexu­al revolu­tion. I con­sider Wood, who’s always enchant­ing to behold, almost crim­in­ally under­rated as an act­ress. Three years before Sex and the Single Girl, Wood, to my mind, more than proved her dra­mat­ic mettle in Elia Kazan’s film of play­wright William Inge’s ori­gin­al script, a sex tragedy if ever there was one. If you ser­i­ously think that Celine Song’s Past Lives is the né plus ultra of “what might have been” love stor­ies, you really owe it to your­self to get wrecked by this pic­ture. Which boasts a spe­cial open­ing cred­it: “Introducing Warren Beatty.” You’ll dig the rest of the cast too — is that Gary Lockwood? Sandy Dennis? PHYLLIS DILLER? Yes, yes and yes. (And Diller’s role, as a real-life fig­ure, is, as it hap­pens, entirely apt.) Boris Kaufman, com­ing off Lumet’s The Fugitive Kind, shot; David Amram, com­ing off Frank and Kerouac’s Pull My Daisy, did the music. Barbara Loden plays Beatty’s neg­lected and even­tu­ally way­ward sis­ter. Not too many extras, but they include a stand­ard def ver­sion of Richard Schickel’s A Director’s Journey, about Kazan (well who else would it be about?). If this thing doesn’t break your heart I don’t know what to do about you. Essential cinema. — A+