a few words about

Robert Z. Leonard's 1940 take on Jane Austen's 1813 novel, is a magnificent M-G-M production, for which they apparently spared no expense. Photographed by the great Karl Freund, and with a cast of M-G-M's top players - Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Edna May Oliver, Maureen O'Sullivan, Ann...

Million Dollar Mermaid, a 1952 production, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Esther Wiliams, Victor Mature and Walter Pidgeon, used to be a breathtakingly gorgeous three-strip show, and now, as released by Warner Archive, it looks better than it has, with the exception of original dye...

Autumn de Wilde, a photographer and video artist, has made the jump to the feature film realm, and we are the beneficiaries. Seeing her work for the first time in Emma, with Anja Joy-Taylor in the titular role, had me thinking of Mr. Kubrick, and his ascendancy from photography to film. Her...

No reason to go anywhere near the production / distribution history of this film, as it takes away from the fact that it's worthy of your time. A good, and interesting film, seemingly afraid of its own turf and the technical issues at hand, it comes across with layers of CG fx and digital...

In early 1917, when Straight Shooting went into production, its star, Harry Carey, had appeared in over 130 films, initially as a Biograph player, and then at Bison and The Universal Film Manufacturing Company. His director on Straight Shooting, a 23 year-old from Maine, Jack Ford, was...

This is based upon my words concerning the new Gladiator 4k Steelbook release. Back in the dark ages of home video, May of 2018 to be exact, I reviewed the 4k releases of Braveheart and Gladiator, and found Braveheart to have been shorn its plastic shackles. Now, a bit more than two years...

I'm not quite certain how to review this set, as it's an extremely important document. It bills itself as "Definitive," "2k/4k From Original 35mm Nitrate Sources," and capping those claims with "The best quality since their original release." Thems big claims! On the positive side, there are a...

I've always loved the theatrical presentations of Hair. The 1979 film, not so much. Of course, it's a filmed record, less or more, of the musical play, but seemingly shorn of spirit. And possibly that spirit had more to do with the the time in which it arrived - off-Broadway in 1967, moving...

UK's Hammer was at an interesting point in its history in the fall of 1963, when it released Don Sharp's Kiss of the Vampire. An Extremely prolific production entity going back to 1935, hitting sci-fi in the early '50s, and then making the leap (to the chagrin of UK censors) into horror in 1957...

Back in the dark ages of home video, May of 2018 to be exact, I reviewed the 4k releases of Braveheart and Gladiator, and found Gladiator to have been shorn its plastic shackles. Now, a bit more than two years later, they arise anew, and there are two differences in Gladiator - a lovely...

A Frank Capra film. 1939. Beautifully shot in black & white by Joseph Walker. I've been asked if I'm prejudiced against older films to which HDR has been added, and I'm not. It generally works fine, if not on projectors. I've worked hard for aeons to get my projectors and panels to play...

A hugely popular film upon release in 1996, Columbia has released Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire in a special 24th Anniversary 4k UHD presentation, as part of the Columbia Collection boxed set. And it's beautiful. The film holds up wonderfully. Color, densities, black levels (further supported...

Politics is a verboten discussion on HTF, but it's virtually impossible to discuss Craig Zobel's The Hunt without at least tiptoeing around the subject. The Universal film was scheduled for release late in 2019, but was pulled because of shootings and other perceived problems. Rescheduled for...

Deanna Durbin appeared in about 20 films between 1936 and 1948. Her first, a Universal production, Three Smart Girls, was directed by Henry Koster, a recent emigre from Germany. Together, the two would be joined in six productions. There's a terrific story here, but I'll leave it to HTF...

Where has this one been hiding, that it never received a Blu-ray release? I'll admit that I had concerns regarding what this might look like, especially had it received restorative efforts, which apparently it has not. Howard Deutch's 1986 coming of age production appears to have a recent...

Strike Up the Band, directed by Busby Berkeley, is a wonderfully entertaining 1940 Paul Whiteman musical, from WB's M-G-M catalog. As a Warner Archive release, it's also a perfect Blu-ray representation of the film. It's also a musical oddly stuck in a very strange time period. It went into...

It's a little known fact that while Ben Kingsley was lauded for his portrayal of Gandhi in Sir Richard Attenborough's epic, he was not the first choice for the lead. Back in mid-1980, with no known Indian actors capable of taking on the role from an international marketing perspective, numerous...

One of my all-time favorite films. It's a bit like one of those wines, that's extremely high quality, and easy to drink. Everything about this film is perfect, which has made it a fan favorite. The new 4k UHD from Columbia, has taken Penny Marshall's (we could use her in our midst right now)...

It's about time. Kudos to Kino for releasing Karel Reisz' 1968 Isadora on Blu-ray, with Vanessa Redgrave in the lead. Originally released at 177 or 168 minutes, with a Director's Cut at 153, this is neither the shorter version, nor longest, at 140. As I have no memory of which version I saw...

The new 4k release of David Lean's epic, Lawrence of Arabia, has seen four versions, and a myriad of home video itinerations, going back to praxinoscope days. Now released in the new Columbia six film boxed set, it has seemingly reached home video nirvana. Everything that one might wish for is...

Paramount has released a 40th Anniversary Blu-ray of James Bridges' Urban Cowboy, a film that fits perfectly within its era at the studio. Think Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance et al. The film looks fine in what was probably the old master used as the basis for the DVD. Color works nicely...

Someone at Blue Underground must have connections with the filmmakers, as original elements have been accessed. The new 4k, in typical Blue Underground fashion, is a gorgeous affair. In this case derived from the original 16mm camera negatives, presented in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. A...

I love discoveries. This one, courtesy of Kino, is a 1933 gender bender of sorts, that if all things ring true, will be copied by an American entity, turned into English, and become a huge hit, rather like Let the Right One In. Actually, the French beat any interlopers to it, with the 1934...

A re-make of the excellent 1952 RKO production with Charles ("You don't like me, do you Spartacus?") McGraw and Marie Windsor, this Peter Hyams directed production for Carolco is a terrifically bad film, but one that I've always enjoyed. For what it is. My go-to film critic, Roger Ebert...

The question will always be considered, should this film, derived from the writing of Mishima, have been moved from Japan to the West of England? I'm not in a position to answer that. However, as written for the screen, and directed by Lewis John Carlino, it remains an interesting, thoughtful...

The name Dorothy Arzner may not be at the fore of many younger cinephile's minds, but it should be. A career going back to the silent era, as an editor on Too Much Johnson (1919). The film was re-made in 1938 any another filmmaker. The first woman director in the DGA, and then there's that...

The Blues Brothers, John Landis' now forty year-old paean to the blues, overkill and music, has always reminded me of the Ray & Irwin's garage sequence from Mad World. Actually shot in Vancouver, dressed as Chicago, saved billions of dollars in the various scenes of destruction, merriment and...

If you're one of those who appreciated Jennifer Kent's previous film, The Babadook, her latest, The Nightingale, goes into different turf. Set in Tasmania in 1825, it centers around a couple, Irish prisoners, with their infant child, who have been sent to the end of the earth. Sometimes a...

John Boulting was half of a British production team (along with brother Roy, responsible for a number of quality films produced between 1939 and 1974. Their act was neatly copied by the Coens, who have used it to some moderate success. Brighton Rock is a wonderful character study of one...

There are certain women in films, who one might wish to think twice before spending time in their company alone. Two of those might be Alex Forrest and Evelyn, the obsessed fan in Play Misty for Me. While we're at it, best to mention Annie Wilkes. I don't have access to the older Blu-ray, of...