Few filmmakers could make a thriller that has the audience biting their nails about whether the champagne will run out before the party is over–or a romance where the hero treats the heroine with contempt, but the villain truly and tenderly loves her. Yet the team of Ben Hecht and Alfred Hitchcock could put all [...]
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How do you top Some Like It Hot? Billy Wilder found the answer in The Apartment, a far more serious comedy about the battle of sexes. Or more precisely, about how powerful men exploit both women and less-powerful men. When The Apartment came out in 1960, critics complained that Wilder didn’t seem to know if [...]
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There are romantic comedies, and then there’s Annie Hall. It’s about a romance, and it’s definitely a comedy, but Woody Allen’s masterpiece works so far outside the genre that it feels like something entirely different. Annie Hall tracks a very realistic relationship–mostly in chronological order. We watch as up-and-coming standup comic Alvy Singer (Allen) and [...]
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20th Century-Fox recently released six classic MGM films on Blu-ray. Except that none of them are originally from 20th Century-Fox, or MGM. Three of the films were originally released by United Artists: Annie Hall, Manhattan, and The Apartment. United Artists and MGM merged in the early 1980s, and for a long time was called MGM/UA. [...]
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Three MST3K veterans add comic commentary to Plan Nine from Outer Space, allegedly the worst film of all time. I laughed so hard I was gasping for breath. When I started reviewing Blu-ray discs on this blog, my policy would be to stick with classics. I’m not sure if this review is a derivation from [...]
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Since I first discovered Buster Keaton almost 40 years ago, I’ve considered Seven Chances one of his best features. That was an unusual opinion in the 1970s, when even Keaton fans barely knew this picture existed. But its status has been rising in recent years, and I’m hoping that Kino’s new Blu-ray release will help [...]
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Alfred Hitchcock’s first masterpiece brings almost as many laughs as thrills. The new Criterion Blu-ray gives this near-perfect entertainment a new polish and some interesting extras. The Lady Vanishes holds an interesting place amongst Hitchcock’s work. It was his penultimate British film before going to America. It is, in my opinion, his first true masterpiece. [...]
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The 1950s–the decade when movies went wide and advertised casts of thousands–also saw three great films that took place at a single location and shot on a single set. Alfred Hitchcock did it brilliantly in Rear Window, Kurosawa pulled it off in The Lower Depths, and Sidney Lumet, for his very first film, triumphed in [...]
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It was meant to be Ingmar Berman’s last film (although he ended up making another), his final statement about life, the theater, and the place of humanity in a possibly Godless universe. It’s unquestionably his most magical, one of his least grim, and in my opinion, one of his best. He also made two versions [...]
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After his two great action comedies (Yojimbo and Sanjuro) and before his last black and white historical epic (Red Beard), Akira Kurosawa made one of the best crime thrillers of the 1960’s. Now Criterion brings a high-definition copy into your home. Toshiro Mifune (who else?) stars as a successful businessman who thinks he’s off the [...]
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