The Blu-ray review thread

[Aclea]

Since we're all going to be spending a lot more time indoors over the coming weeks and months, now seems a good time to start a regular thread to share our reviews of Blu-ray releases, whether they be novellas of Aclean dimensions or just a paragraph or two from less verbose contributors (basically everyone else). All are welcome and, since there's less traffic on the other international boards, imports are welcome too even though the emphasis is on local releases.

NB: this thread is not meant to supplant the Bluray you last watched/bought thread (so no posting of covers and one-liner comments, please), reviews for titles in individual labels or films threads (though please feel free to post your reviews on those as well) or to solely comment on the 'official' Blu-ray.com reviews, but for those who want to write something a bit more substantial to share their views. And do by all means feel free to comment on the reviews users post here.

[Aclea]

Admittedly the least impressive of director Carol Reed’s many cinematic ‘men’ (The Third Man, Odd Man Out, The Man Between, Our Man in Havana), 1963’s The Running Man is one of those films that seems doomed at birth from its impressive credits – screenwriter John Mortimer, cinematographer Robert Krasker and a host of familiar faces popping up briefly in the supporting cast among them - to disappoint when it would have been given a fairer shake if it had been made by lesser lights. While it’s certainly not a great film, it’s a surprisingly good one for one dismissed as a mere footnote, with a plot that has distinct overtones of Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr. Ripley as Laurence Harvey fakes his death for £50,000 of insurance money only for he and his devoted wife Lee Remick to run into the insurance man who handled the claim (Alan Bates) in Malaga just as Harvey is planning to pull off the same trick again after assuming the world’s worst Orstrylyan accent that must have driven real-life Australian Krasker up the wall and passing himself off as John Meillon’s drunken millionaire sheep farmer after a chance meeting. Cue a game of cat and mouse where it’s teasingly ambiguous what Bates’ motives really are – is he really on holiday and trying to win over the widow or is he trying to trap them? – as Harvey’s once genial and hopelessly optimistic nature (he only pulled off the fraud after a claim for an earlier plane crash was turned down, ruining his business) takes a darker turn as the money and thrill of getting away with it go to his head.

Mortimer never gets quite as much tension or character out of Shelley Smith’s well-reviewed source novel as he could, but the film throws in some good twists and “Why did he just ask that?” moments along the way to its predetermined end, and it’s a pleasingly and appropriately glossy production. Bates and Remick are particularly good, though even when dropping the accent Harvey is basically Harvey, better at selling the increasingly cold and calculated bastard than the better man he once was, and it’s no surprise to discover from the featurette on Arrow’s disc that, as on so many films before and after, Harvey (widely and unaffectionately known in the British film industry as “that ****ing Lithuanian”) took a particular dislike to his leading lady. As a result, unlike her scenes with Bates’ kind and soft spoken third wheel who attaches himself to them, there’s no chemistry there in their relationship and you feel that Remick is being taken from the very beginning rather than her husband being corrupted by the high life. But even if you can see exactly where it’s going, it’s still a surprisingly engaging number.

Arrow’s Bluray is, as you can expect from a Sony/Columbia remaster, an impressive affair that does justice to Krasker’s colourful Scope photography: there are a few white spots here and there, but nothing genuinely distracting. The extras package is decent for a forgotten film, with an audio commentary by Peter William Evans, audio recording of Remick’s 1970 John Player Lecture at the NFT, image galley, isolated music and effects track (while the score is by Odd Man Out’s William Alwyn in his final collaboration with Reed, the main title is composed by Ron Grainer in a style much more akin to his ITC TV shows) and a 24-minute documentary with surviving crew members. Of those only Kits Browning really adds much, but what he offers is choice – Reed and Krasker constantly at odds over the director’s sudden indecisiveness after being fired from Mutiny on the Bounty and suffering health problems, Harvey’s reluctance to leave his hotel to go to work and having to do the interiors in Ireland because of Harvey’s tax exile.

It’s not an essential title, but it’s not the misfire it’s regarded as these days either, and it’s hard to see it getting better treatment on disc.

[Aclea]

“For three years I've hunted Kimbrough, but he didn't know it. Before I settle with him, I want him to know he's bein' hunted.”

A quick glance at the synopsis of Decision at Sundown might lead you to think this is a typical entry in the Randolph Scott-Budd Boetticher canon, with Scott another determined man looking for redress for the wife he lost, but the very opening sequence lets you know that this is going to be the odd man out of their collaborations, with an unshaven Scott pulling a gun on a stagecoach driver. That doesn’t go the way you expect it to, but then very little in Decision at Sundown does, in many ways pulling a complete reverse on their successful formula, not just in eschewing a handful of characters in the wide open spaces of Lone Pine for what develops into a siege in a small town where almost everyone has turned a blind eye for too long and their own choices to make but much more significantly as far as the leading man is concerned. He’s not the chivalrous figure of their other films, and he’s positively glowing with amusement at the prospect of finally getting his revenge after three years of hunting for the man who dishonoured his wife while he was fighting the war (“I'm glad to hear he's doing so well. When a man's riding high, the ground comes up and hits him a lot harder when he falls”). But as the film progresses, the film and the character take an unexpectedly darker turn and the film becomes closer to one of James Stewart-Anthony Mann tales of an embittered man – and Scott is not just bitter but downright mean here – dragged kicking and screaming to redemption all the way.

Which isn’t the way it turns out either: there are things in his past he refuses to face up to and while the object of his revenge may be a hated manipulator who has a whole cowering town under his thumb, by the end

[Show spoiler]he’s the one who finds the first inklings of redemption and self respect and gets to ride off with the girl while Scott is left a shrunken, bitter, drunken figure turning on the townspeople who finally came to his aid.

There’s no doubt at the end of the film that there’s no way back for him, and amazingly for a 50s western from a major studio the film doesn’t even hint at the chance of a happy ending for him at the end of this completely broken man’s lonely trail. It’s probably the most daring and fascinating performance of Scott’s career, and he doesn’t shy away from it. Surprisingly, rather than embracing breaking the mould, Boetticher was particularly dismissive of the film and especially disliked filming the drunk scene. For me it’s one of the standouts of his collaborations with Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown.

The transfers on Indicator’s Five Tall Tales Boetticher set are a mixed bag (only one, Ride Lonesome, was remastered), but while using an older master this is still a more than decent transfer and the extras more than decent – a re-edited version of Eckhardt Schmidt's 1999 interview with Boetticher discussing his career, the Ranown cycle of Westerns and training horses on his ranch, appreciations of the film by Taylor Hackford and Scott by Ed Buscombe, isolated music and effects track, stills and poster gallery and the original theatrical trailer.

[Geoff D]

I've done far too many unofficial 4K reviews to just dump into this thread but someone keeps a list of them here, if anyone is so inclined. And yes, many of them are hefty tomes worthy of being deemed Aclean

Originally Posted by Staying Salty

Dolby Vision Reviews by Geoff D
HDR10 Reviews by Geoff D

[Aclea]

Ah...

[Show spoiler]

.

[nitin]

I know it’s a blu ray review thread but just consolidating some DVD watches from the last few days that I would like to see blu upgrades of:

I hope with Criterion putting out some of Noah Baumbach’s filmography that they get around to Margot at the Wedding (assuming Paramount lets them).

Even though it’s not as polished as his more recent Marriage Story, I prefer its rawness and Baumbach seems much more comfortable with letting the bitterness linger in the air, rather than cut it from becoming too uncomfortable (which I personally found Marriage Story to do quite a few times). Although that means a lot of the characters are much more unlikeable, it also means some of it is more hilarious if you like comedy that bleeds.

And there’s a scene with Nicole Kidman (absolutely superb) and John Torturro that is absolutely heartbreaking, which is quite an achievement considering that in the scene itself, Kidman’s Margot basically goes past the point of no return in terms of likeability.

Paramount’s DVD does an adequate job of conveying Harris Savides’ Rohmer/Almendros inspired cinematography but it really needs a new scan and blu treatment to properly reflected.


I assume the chance of seeing any of the Garbo silents on blu is next to negligible. Which is a bit of a shame as I recently watched The Mysterious Lady via WA’s DVD set and it’s a pretty good movie.

The plot is nothing to write home about but Garbo does well in a Mata Hari type role and the movie is well made with some good tension and moody production design. There is a lot of damage on the DVD, especially in the first 10 minutes, but after that it generally looks pretty sharp and good. A blu might be a pipe dream but it would look and sound glorious (the score on the DVD was tops).


Also checked out Drive a Crooked Road from my Columbia Noir set and it’s a pretty underrated and unheralded noir.

Mickey Rooney and Dianne Foster excel in the two main roles (but the supporting cast is also well cast and performed) and the movie has a terrific buildup and one of the all time great final shots in noir. Where it falters a little and stops short of being a truly great noir is in the execution of the payoffs for the long buildup (trying to avoid spoilers).

Richard Quine’s direction is pretty solid, with great attention to character, and good use of space in his framing. It’s primarily a sunlit LA noir but when the mood gets darker in the last third, the cinematography follows suits.

Sony’s DVD looks pretty good and if the same underlying HD master is upgraded to blu, it should look even better. I was surprised it was not in the Noir Archive sets by Kit Parker so maybe Arrow have it for a release later.

[nitin]

Some more consolidations of recent viewings:

I rewatched Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives after an initial viewing some 15 years ago. I didn’t like it too much then as I found all the characters obnoxious but the rewatch fared much better.

The characters are still all obnoxious but their self absorption and narcissism is obviously deliberate and I guess I have learned over the last 15 years that this is also reflective of most people. What I also enjoyed more this time around are some of the performances, Judy Davis in particular has some hilarious throwaway bits and Lysette Anthony’s character also has some great scenes with Sydney Pollack’s character.

Not peak Allen for me personally, but probably still in the top 10 I have seen so far.

Twilight Time’s blu is from an older Sony master. Detail is good, sound is good, but I thought the colours were off, particularly the amped up black level that throws off the colour balance in most scenes. But a new scan is unlikely, so it’s still the best way to see the film.


Quite enjoy the remake, but McQueen and Dunaway are absolutely tremendous together in the original The Thomas Crown Affair, the epitome of beautiful people doing things together while looking beautiful.

Jewison’s direction is fun, even if some of the techniques feel a little dated. And even though the characterisations aren’t very deep, McQueen and Dunaway just know how to hold a scene and the melancholic ending is much more preferable to me than the changed happy ending in the remake.

Kino’s blu ray is from a 4k restoration (not sure about the source) and most of it looks pretty great. It’s not a full blown restoration as quite a bit of minor damage shows up throughout but, on the whole, it looks very nice.


John Berry’s Tension is an underrated quality noir with one of the best femme fatales in noir history in Audrey Totter’s Claire Quimby. Radiating sexual voracity and a desire for the easy life, Totter scorches the screen every times she is on it.

IMHO femme fatales are more interesting when their actions are based on personal desires rather than just on the need for plot mechanics and Claire Quimby seems to be fighting against the post WWII suburban American dream where her role would be to raise children and be a housewife.

Richard Basehart also plays her cuckolded husband very well, quite removed from his chilling villainous roles in films like He Walked by Night.

Some of the plotting is a little spotty, but the script is otherwise pretty good, with nice characterisations and some lovely dialogue. Berry has a very confident directing style and while the cinematography is not showy, the camera is always in an interesting place to capture the action.

I saw it off the WB DVD which still looks quite good and I would be surprised if a title such as this got a blu upgrade unless WB do some sort of bulk title deal with a company like Kino.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by nitin

I rewatched Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives after an initial viewing some 15 years ago. I didn’t like it too much then as I found all the characters obnoxious but the rewatch fared much better.

The characters are still all obnoxious but their self absorption and narcissism is obviously deliberate and I guess I have learned over the last 15 years that this is also reflective of most people. What I also enjoyed more this time around are some of the performances, Judy Davis in particular has some hilarious throwaway bits and Lysette Anthony’s character also has some great scenes with Sydney Pollack’s character.

Not peak Allen for me personally, but probably still in the top 10 I have seen so far.

That was one that just didn't work at all for me the one and only time I've seen it so far. My thoughts from way back in 1994...

Woody Allen's film has been analysed so much by the critics who read so many aspects of his then-recent stormy private life into it that you could be forgiven at the time Husbands and Wines came out for assuming that it was a matter of international importance rather than the often very irritating film that it is. Following two married couples as their relationships shift, the aftermath of the sudden changes are well observed, but little more. Playing like a Cassavetes' film* with a script where documentary interludes, bad and obtrusive handheld camerawork and scruffy editing that draws attention to the gaps between cuts pass for insight, there is ultimately little to draw you in to the drama.

Allen is for the most part woefully unconvincing and mannered in what comes across as an angry and impatient performance, but there is excellent work from the supporting cast. Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack in particular are outstanding, with even Lysette Anthony surprisingly good in a thankless role. Lazy and amateurish around the edges, Husbands and Wives may have been one of Allen's better films of that awakward period, but it is doubtful that it would have attracted much attention without the reputation he brings to it.

* Cassavettes is one of those filmmakers whose intentions I find easier to admire than the results: I approve of his work, I know what he's doing and why he's doing it, but the films rarely register with me because the technique and repetition can be so relentlessly in your face they smother everything else.

Twilight Time’s blu is from an older Sony master. Detail is good, sound is good, but I thought the colours were off, particularly the amped up black level that throws off the colour balance in most scenes. But a new scan is unlikely, so it’s still the best way to see the film.

I actually have that disc - it's just around the tail-end of when my Woody Allen completism more or less peters out - but I still haven't got round to watching it to see if, like you, I find more in it a second time round. I do recall the VHS master looking particularly rough in what I assumed was a mixture of a bad transfer and a deliberate choice to deglamorize things from the usually reliable Carlo di Palma. I can't imagine they used the same master for the Blu, so maybe it was one of those films that always had an 'off' look?

[Aclea]

1956’s Between Heaven and Hell is one of those okay well crafted studio films that feels like somewhere along the way a much better and more ambitious one fell by the wayside, which in this instance seems to have been the case. One of the veritable tsunami of telling it like it was novels about World War Two from the men who were there spearheaded by the likes of From Here to Eternity and The Naked and the Dead (and written by a friend and comrade in arms of Norman Mailer), Francis Gwaltney’s The Day the Century Ended was quickly snapped up by 20th Century Fox for director John Sturges with Rod Serling providing the script. But it seems Serling tried to fit in far too much of the novel’s big themes that saw its wealthy but bigoted cotton farmer learning to treat his sharecroppers like real people when he has to fight alongside them in an army where officers are either nervous wrecks who kill their own men or paranoid psychopaths who run their units like little kingdoms, turning in a screenplay that would have run nine hours. Sturges departed, Serling was replaced and the film massively scaled down to 96 minutes, and it feels like they threw out much of the baby with the bathwater.

While the film never feels rushed, it sets up situations for dramatic conflict that are skimped over rather than fully developed. Thus we go from a couple of flashback scenes of Robert Wagner callously riding roughshod over his sharecroppers to the dismay of new wife Terry Moore before he’s suddenly treating those in his National Guard unit as equals in the field, making his soul searching when he and poor sharecropper Buddy Ebsen are the only two men left in their foxholes feel an afterthought rather than the resolution of a long-running thread. Broderick Crawford’s psychotic burnt out commander of the unit of misfits he’s transferred to fares even worse. The kind of man who needs to have bodyguards (one of them, an uncredited Frank Gorshin, its subtly hinted may even be his lover) to protect him from his own men, none of whom are allowed to have weapons in his presence just in case, is given a strong introduction and then disappears until the 51 minute mark. He makes an impression with the little he has to work with, but you can’t help feeling he’s sorely underused in a film that never pushes the matierial as far as it could.

If the film feels more casually anecdotal than relentless, with most of the character development being presented after the fact and Wagner’s journey from confident rich boy to bitter and shaky grunt en route to redemption given too little focus in the script, director Richard Fleischer does a solid job, albeit one that owes more to professionalism than inspiration. Aside from Moore overdoing the Marilyn Monroe breathlessness in her swimming pool scene there are no poor performances from a good cast that also includes Brad Dexter, L.Q. Jones, Skip Homeier, Mark Damon, Biff Elliott and a relatively naturalistic Harvey Lembeck, the film always looks good and Oscar-nominated composer Hugo Friedhofer’s militant martial version of Dies Irae gives the film’s climax some real drive, and it fares better on a second viewing than a first. Yet even with a couple of scenes that may have been daring for its day it still feels like a film that’s good enough to be worth a look but is missing too much real meat to live up to its potential.

Signal One’s Bluray is a good but not outstanding 2.35:1 widescreen transfer. Unlike the 1080i French Blu it’s 1080p at the correct speed, but the colour in the first couple of reels feels a little muted (possibly a choice of the filmmakers – the colour becomes more vivid once they hit the Japanese-held island – but possibly also Fox’s modern tendency to tweak the original grading) with an audio commentary by Paul Talbot, enjoyably hyperbolic original trailer (‘Terry Moore as Jenny, who asked her man for a kiss to last the whole war!’) and stills and poster gallery.

[Dailyan]

For an older master "Between Heaven and Hell" doesn't look too bad but would of been nice for a fresher scan. A shame that SO didn't port over the French extras.

[Aclea]

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger has the reputation of being the weakest of Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, though it’s not nearly as bad as many make out: the story is decent enough and there’s a fairly impressive cast of creatures. What constantly lets it down is Sam Wanamaker’s lethargic and uninterested direction that draws weak performances out of some of the cast and shoots much of the film in the least visually interesting ways possible even when given enough resources to come up with something more striking. Some very clumsy editing doesn’t help, though it’s all too easy to believe that Roy Watts was hindered by simply not having the footage he needed because Wanamaker couldn’t be bothered to shoot it. Even Roy Budd’s score takes its lead from Wanamaker’s leaden pacing with a surprisingly low-key and colourless approach to much of the film, barely developing much in the way of themes in a film that really needs a score with some panache to give it a lift.

It didn’t help that the film was rushed into production after the surprise success of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, with shooting started before the film was even cast, leading to a couple of continuity gaffes with the stand-ins on location and some very poor green screen work once the real actors were hired. The script is a bit of a hotchpotch of discarded ideas from the Golden Voyage (the idea of a prince being transformed into a baboon) and the Merian C.Cooper version of She (which featured a frozen sabre toothed tiger that was originally intended to come to life courtesy of Harryhausen’s mentor Willis O. Brien): serviceable enough in more inspired hands, but aside from the beautifully characterised baboon – who gets the best moment sadly reacting to his transformed self in a mirror - and a friendly troglodyte never really finding much for Harryhausen’s creations to do. The biggest disappointment is the Minoton, a golden mechanical man with the head of a bull that is the film’s most potentially memorable creation but who, after a big build-up, does little more than row the villain’s ship for her and is accidentally killed long before it can face off against Sinbad or any of the other creatures.

All of which is a shame, because there’s enough here for a rattling good fantasy adventure even if it doesn’t have the makings of a true classic. Although oft-criticised and a definite step down from John Philip Law’s Sinbad in The Golden Voyage (Law wanted to do the film but was supposedly unavailable, which turned out to be news to him when he found out about it when sharing a panel with Harryhausen at a fantasy convention), Patrick Wayne certainly doesn’t disgrace himself in the lead, Patrick Troughton gets to play a Greek variation on his old Doctor Who role who’s primarily there to handle most of the exposition while the rest of the cast – a young Jane Seymour and Tyrone Power’s daughter Taryn, who was apparently seeing the creatures on set long before Harryhausen added them to the film, among them – get to handle the more energetic scenes and there’s some novelty in setting so much of an Arabian Nights fantasy in the Arctic, though Margaret Whiting’s evil sorceress hams it up to the rafters like she lived in mortal fear of Jewish cannibals. Enough of it does work to make it worthwhile, but it is definitely one of those films that doesn’t live up to fond childhood memories, especially for those who saw it on the big screen in packed-to-the-rafters matinee screenings.

Even on the correct remastered version, Indicator's Bluray release, like Twilight Time's, is hampered by the limitations of the original in the effects scenes where the live action footage in the animated sequences has a heavier grain layer and a flatter dupe quality. It's got a healthy extras package, though few are new to disc - just the Ray Harryhausen 1981 Guardian Lecture that plays as an audio track, a new interview with an enthusiastic but not terribly well informed when it comes to Harryhausen's work Jane Seymour and a stills and poster gallery (the carryovers are The Harryhausen Chronicles documentary, the John Landis interview with Harryhausen from Jason and the Argonauts, the isolated score from TT's disc and trailer).

[nitin]

A few relatively disappointing ones:

The Baron Of Arizona is Sam Fuller’s 2nd film and, for most of its runtime, it’s a super entertaining story with a lively but not over the top performance from Vincent Price as a (based on a true story but exaggerated) conman who goes to great lengths to falsify Spanish grants of land to the whole of Arizona.

Apparently this was shot in a ridiculous 15 days on a very low budget, but it never really shows. James Wong Howe conjures up some terrific cinematography with a couple of very memorable shots.

Unfortunately, it falls just short of an overall recommendation from me as it undoes a lot of its good work in a very un-Fuller like ending that drips with sentimentality and seems like an abrupt shift in tone.

I saw it off Criterion’s DVD from their Eclipse set and it looks pretty good with decent contrast and detail.


Anthony Mann’s Desperate is also one of his earlier films, a sort of noir that has all noirish elements in place but struggles a little bit in juggling various different tones and subplots. It has one of the all time great beatdown scenes, lit primarily by a swinging overhead light and also an excellent and tense last 10 minutes, with Raymond Burr stealing all of the scenes he is in. But in between all of that is a strangely sentimental lovers on the run film that is also anchored by some unremarkable lead performances.

Warner’s DVD from their vol 5 noir set generally looks pretty good and sharp but every now and then a fair bit of noise and pulsing creeps in.


Hitchock’s I Confess might be his most deadly serious film. It certainly lacks any of his usual humorous touches and the tone is definitely in line with his main character’s religiously imposed burden of stoically protecting a constituent’s murderous confession.

But aside from that change in usual tone, I also found a lot of the film to be pretty unremarkably directed outside of a couple of powerhouse scenes. The first of those is a mid film flashback ‘confession’ by Anne Baxter’s character to the police that is fantastically shot and acted. The second is a scene where the protagonist follows the main priest character and taunts him the whole way as if he was his conscience stalking him.

Warner Archive’s blu ray looks super sharp and has a fabulous grayscale.

[jhird2007]

With so much free time now I decided to finally give Berlin Alexanderplatz a go. I had tried it about a year ago and couldn't get through the first episode.

I've now completed it over the course of 3 days. It is quite a challenging experience, but in the end rewarding. The epilogue is like something from a David Lynch film. Surreal.

I think it's a great piece of work but one that demands your attention. Only for these exceptional circumstances, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it.

The picture quality on the Second Sight blu-ray is a mixed bag; probably because of the source material. Many times the quality is excellent and then all of a sudden it's quite fuzzy. At times it's like watching 1080p and then 480p at the same time. However this did not affect my experience at all. I had sort of expected this before watching.

There are a lot of extras which I will watch today.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by nitin

Anthony Mann’s Desperate is also one of his earlier films, a sort of noir that has all noirish elements in place but struggles a little bit in juggling various different tones and subplots. It has one of the all time great beatdown scenes, lit primarily by a swinging overhead light and also an excellent and tense last 10 minutes, with Raymond Burr stealing all of the scenes he is in. But in between all of that is a strangely sentimental lovers on the run film that is also anchored by some unremarkable lead performances.

Warner’s DVD from their vol 5 noir set generally looks pretty good and sharp but every now and then a fair bit of noise and pulsing creeps in.

I probably liked this more than you did, though it's not top tier Mann noir:

Once it gets the bland familiarities of establishing Steve Brodie’s happy domestic life with pregnant wife Audrey Long out of the way and gets down to the nitty-gritty of his inadvertent involvement as getaway driver in a botched heist, Anthony Mann’s Desperate is a good little noir blessed with one of the genre’s most truly menacing villains in the shape of Raymond Burr. Whether he’s chewing a strip off an inefficient henchman (“You must’ve studied to get that dumb!”), talking about a woman’s looks with a broken bottle in his hand or waiting for a clock to strike midnight to pull a trigger, he’s someone who needs a good leaving alone for the rest of your life. And Mann knows just how to showcase his star (and make no doubt about it, Burr’s the real star here), shooting him low but not too low, catching him between the alternating dark and light of a swinging lightbulb while watching a vicious beating, always kept in check and away from histrionics because people as dangerous as him don’t need to exaggerate the danger they exude – it’s implicit in every restrained fibre of their body. Burr may have given his moll a flaming fricassee makeover in Mann’s Raw Deal the following year, but if anything he’s even more violent here without breaking a sweat. And he’s not just brute force, smart enough to hire Douglas Fowley’s disgraced private eye to track down his prey when Brodie and Long go on the run, determined to do anything to put his patsy of choice in the electric chair that will be waiting for his beloved kid brother if the cop they shot getting away doesn’t make it. Nor are the police much help: even after the hero’s innocence is established, Jason Robards Sr’s cop keeps him dangling as bait for the rest of the gang…



Although it’s not one of his collaborations with the legendary John Alton, the film still boasts striking black and white cinematography from George E. Diskant with the kind of deep blacks that seem to limit the characters’ options and shrink the world around them into a place where shadows can swallow a man whole and are filled with unseen perils. Diskant, who started his career as one of the camera crew on the Land Rush scene in the original version of Cimarron, did a couple more classic noirs at RKO, The Narrow Margin and On Dangerous Ground, but never really developed much of a reputation, ending his career on weekly television (earning a couple of Emmy nominations in the 50s), but here, despite his daylight exteriors being less than atmospheric, he certainly delivers the goods when the lights are low, especially in the final staircase shootout that makes ample use of Mann’s love of playing with visual perspective. Make no mistake, Desperate isn’t a classic by any means – much of it is pretty predictable production-line noir fodder - but it’s a perfect example of what could have been a conventional programmer elevated into something better by some inspired work in front of and behind the camera. And you won’t forget Burr in a hurry…

Hitchock’s I Confess might be his most deadly serious film. It certainly lacks any of his usual humorous touches and the tone is definitely in line with his main character’s religiously imposed burden of stoically protecting a constituent’s murderous confession.

But aside from that change in usual tone, I also found a lot of the film to be pretty unremarkably directed outside of a couple of powerhouse scenes. The first of those is a mid film flashback ‘confession’ by Anne Baxter’s character to the police that is fantastically shot and acted. The second is a scene where the protagonist follows the main priest character and taunts him the whole way as if he was his conscience stalking him.

Warner Archive’s blu ray looks super sharp and has a fabulous grayscale.

It's been a while since I saw it, but it always felt a bit like a good prenise and a killer pedigree rather than a particularly good film. if you can find it - it didn't get much of a release when it was new and seems to have vanished off the face of the Earth since - Le Confessionnel is a minor but engaging French-Canadian co-production linking a past scandal set against the filming of I Confess in Canada with a modern-day search to find out the identity of the real father of one of two brothers (the gaping clue is in the mothers name). While the Hitchcock scenes seem more of a hook than an essential part of the narrative (and rely more on Kristin Scott Thomas’ overacted assistant than Hitch himself), it’s a nice little mood piece with some striking moments en route to its denouement. But as Hitch himself says at the end, “That’s not a suspense story. It’s a Greek tragedy.”

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by jhird2007

With so much free time now I decided to finally give Berlin Alexanderplatz a go. I had tried it about a year ago and couldn't get through the first episode.

I've now completed it over the course of 3 days. It is quite a challenging experience, but in the end rewarding. The epilogue is like something from a David Lynch film. Surreal.

I think it's a great piece of work but one that demands your attention. Only for these exceptional circumstances, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it.

The picture quality on the Second Sight blu-ray is a mixed bag; probably because of the source material. Many times the quality is excellent and then all of a sudden it's quite fuzzy. At times it's like watching 1080p and then 480p at the same time. However this did not affect my experience at all. I had sort of expected this before watching.

There are a lot of extras which I will watch today.

I always find Fassbinder's output very erratic - I love World on a Wire, like Maria Braun but couldn't get into American Soldier at all - but that's one of those shows like Heimat and the 80s mini-series version of Das Boot that I always mean to get round to but always just seem too formidable to make a start on, and there's always something else in the to watch pile. I've still got Fassbinder's Eight Hours Don't Make a Day sitting on the shelf waiting for me to watch it, though house arrest may just be the incentive I need to start.

[Aclea]

Few directors are as maddeningly inconsistent as Claude Lelouch, whose career mixes genuine crowdpleasers with self-indulgent messes. Sadly, Ces Amours-La/What Love May Bring – opportunistically retitled What War May Bring and sold as a bloody saga of wartime honour and courage for UK home video – is one of the later. Like his earlier Les Unes et Les Autres/Bolero it’s (at least apparently) a lavishly budgeted but often shapeless jumble of incidents and characters spanning much of the 20th Century with the Second World War the key point of reference but without the strong sense of character and eventual destination that made his earlier Toute une Vie work so much better.

Despite the opening scrawl talking of his love of cinema, the opening montage of half-formed vignettes - rather clumsily scored by a dark bolero that sounds like it was written for a different film altogether - jumping rapidly from the birth of cinema, silent porn, the arrival of talkies and newsreels of Hitler via a brief excursion to WW1 are woefully unconvincing, though from the appearance of Marilyn Monroe in her Seven Year Itch dress and hairstyle in a pre-war scene realism clearly isn’t the idea here. Unfortunately he doesn’t manage to pull off a dreamlike collision of memories and fantasies either, simply coming up with ham-fisted melodrama with decent production values and ample opportunities to display his love for classic songs and their singers. At times it looks like he’s clumsily setting up the characters so he can get down to the story, but no sooner has he introduced a new one than he’s off on another tangent, even going back more than a century to a Texas land rush. The overriding impression is that he’s making every film as if it were his last, but not in a good way that results in a lovingly crafted piece of work but as if he throws in all the things he ever wanted to put into a movie whether they fit in the very loose story he’s chosen to tell or not.

The story is weak melodrama at best, with neither the filmmaking or competent but uninspired cast able to compensate enough for it not to matter when it finally gets going. The clumsy framing device doesn’t help, with co-composer (with Francis Lai) Laurent Couson’s Jewish lawyer defending Audrey Dana’s cinema usher turned trophy wife from a murder charge by launching into a long history of not only his client’s life but also his own, right down to his parents’ courtship and his time as a pianist in the officer’s mess at Auschwitz. Although she later says her problem is that she falls in love too easily, Dana turns out to be a bit of a Paris bicycle, having an affair with the Nazi officer who spares the life of her projectionist and resistance fighter stepfather (Dominique Pinon) before shacking up with both the rich white war correspondent (Gilles Lemaire) and the black G.I. (Jacky Ido) who saved his life in a ménage a trois (meeting cute when they save her from having her hair shaved during a screening of Gone with the Wind) that ends badly when one takes advantage of the confusion of battle to eliminate the competition. Not that it does him any good once he starts having nightmares about the war and she promptly walks out on him and finds yet another lover. According to the behind the scenes featurette on the DVD and Blu-ray she’s a truly modern woman and each of these men fulfils a different need in her, but it’s easy to think of a different description for her.

The resources are there, with large numbers of extras and occasional spectacle even if much of it is borrowed footage from his earlier films, but it's never very convincingly or adventurously staged. Post-Saving Private Ryan the brief combat scenes are performed like something out of a bad "Bang Bang You're Dead" B-movie aimed at schoolkids that somehow could afford Cinemascope, Technicolor and a few hundred more extras, what we see of the concentration camps is rather clean and well fed and even the camerawork is less adventurous than usual for Lelouch, with none of his trademark elaborate tracking shots and all too often staying at a remove from the scene rather than drawing you in. It's only at the end with a couple of unexpected musical numbers intruding on reality and the revelation that the young Lelouch is a minor character whose work will be forever influenced by the first kiss he films while two characters finally come together and sing the same song that's been running through the film that you get some sense of what he was trying to do with it all.



Using archive footage of Charles Denner for one character’s father is a nice touch and there are brief moments from earlier Lelouch films weaved in along the way to place the story firmly in his existing cinematic universe – the Normandy landings from his masterly version of Les Miserables, the liberation party from Les Unes et Les Autres, the land race from Another Man, Another Chance, a boxing bout from Edith et Marcel and a whole Cinema Paradiso montage of all the lovers from his earlier films near the end that unfortunately just reminds you of the days when he could still attract major stars, who are conspicuous by their absence here aside from a thankless bit part for his old Un Homme et Une Femme muse Anouk Aimée. (You almost wonder if Lelouch isn’t all too aware of the fact: near the film’s end one character tells him “I hope one day you’ll film real actors.”)

There are a few moments that almost work: the lawyer who was denounced by his neighbours for playing his piano too loud confronting the woman who denounced a Jewish family who didn’t lend her their sewing machine often enough and asking her if she knows what it really cost, as well as a scene where the music he plays at an audition for a music conservatoire brings unwelcome memories flooding back and there’s a neat symmetry to the film beginning with the first movie camera and ending with an audience leaving the cinema, but they’re passing moments that never have the power intended because the characters never seemed convincing enough to care about in the first place once bad things start happening to them. You never feel you’ve taken the journey with them, more that you’ve glimpsed them briefly from a speeding train passing through the countryside.

Revolver’s region-free UK Blu-ray is as inconsistent as the film itself. While it’s never excellent, much of the film has decent picture quality but some of the darker scenes are very flat and suffer from digital noise, though the 2.35:1 widescreen transfer is at least both in its proper ratio (not always guaranteed with this label) and has a good English subtitle translation. The only extra is the 15-minute featurette. Unless it's going for the same price on both formats you can probably safely get this one on DVD without feeling you're missing out on superior picture quality.

[nitin]

This is more like it. Hitchcock’s Stage Fright seems to be massively underrated amongst his works but I thought it was terrific fun. Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich put in tremendous performances but Alastair Sim almost steals the movie out from under them. Hitchcock’s direction is as assured as usual and although this is one of his lighter films, he still manages to turn the screws when necessary.

Thematically, I liked the everyone putting on an act through line of the film and, all in all, this just left me smiling by the end.

I saw it off Warner’s DVD and the surprising amount of damage throughout is probably a good reason for why this hasn’t hit blu yet. I suspect it needs a fairly thorough restoration. Nevertheless, aside from the frequent damage, Warner’s DVD is quite good with some decent sharpness and grayscale.


I also rewatched Soderbergh’s Solaris. I think this is a good film and appreciate Soderbergh’s attempt to differentiate it from Tarkovsky’s masterpiece by focusing on the personal relationship between Klein and the character of his wife rather than on the metaphysical aspects. Soderbergh also cuts the movie to about half the length of Tarkovsky’s admittedly rather leisurely adaptation.

However, I think he goes too far and even in respect of Soderbergh’s focus mainly on the personal relationship, neither the choices made nor all of the choices available to the characters are given enough room to breathe. Cliff Martinez’s score almost fills in those gaps by itself but I do think this was too brief to have the lasting impact it wanted to have.

I saw it off Fox’s DVD which still holds up pretty well but I hope the 4k remaster that was recently done finds its way to blu and/or UHD to do justice to the movie’s top notch production design and score.


I also saw Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird via Netflix. Quite enjoyed this one, it feels a little like an Aaron Sorkin scripted film with its non stop dialogue scenes but thematically it is as far away from what Sorkin writes as possible. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s script is a delight with its superb dialogue and sharply written characters. Andre Holland laps that quality writing up but it would be nothing without his quality delivery, he is in almost every scene and this would be a star making performance in a fairer world. Zazie Beetz also bounces off Holland well and I wished they had more scenes together.

Soderbergh also directs the hell out of it, moulding the script into his usual heist type narrative but allowing plenty of time for interesting character sidebars. My main complaint with the film was its iPhone aesthetic. Although it looks fantastic for a film shot on an iPhone, nothing here feels like it was enhanced by the iPhone’s use (unlike Unsane ) and it still looks uglier than his regular use of RED digital. I believe he has said that he is going back to the shooting on RED digital again and I hope that turns out to be the case.

[Aclea]

1991 saw one of those occasional races to the screen between two rival projects about the same subject (Christopher Columbus, giant meteors, etc) when two rival studios each came up with their own take on Robin Hood. For a while it looked like 20th Century Fox had the edge with their John McTiernan-directed version only for it to have the wind taken out of its sails when Kevin Costner signed up for Morgan Creek’s Prince of Thieves instead (a third Robin Hood film set up at TriStar to be directed by Ed Zwick threw in the towel). Presumably having spent too much money in the two years they’d been developing it to completely abandon it, Fox brought in Working Title to make a much lower budget version with John Irvin directing and McTiernan taking a producing credit, managing to get to European cinema screens before its big budget rival but doing such poor business it ended up premiering in the US as a TV movie. Yet while it’s certainly neither a blockbuster nor one of the great Sherwood Forest adventures, it’s surprisingly decent time filler despite its limitations, albeit one you have to make a few allowances for.

Chief among the latter is Irvin’s direction, which is only sporadically cinematic and suffers from his habitual weakness staging action scenes: there’s no zest or panache when the film really needs to let rip, his unimaginative camera placement making the least of the stunt work and the reliable William Hobbs’ choreography of the swordplay and making a real pig’s ear of the finale, which is more “Will this do?” chaotic than exciting and coherent. It’s a shame, because the atmospheric opening, with Jason Lehel’s cinematography showing a real feel for cold and misty mornings, and a scene where Patrick Bergin’s Robin tells a disguised Marian (Uma Thurman) a story hint at the potential this had to be something special. As might be expected from a script co-written by playwright John McGrath, the author of The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil and screenplays like The Reckoning (1970) and The Bofors Gun, it has ambitions to be something of a downwardly mobile character-led state of the nation piece that are never fully realised in a film that can’t quite make up its mind what approach its taking to its well-worn subject matter and where the energy levels are highly inconsistent.

Still, Patrick Bergin, still in that brief period when it looked like he might become a star instead of a straight to video fixture, has fun as Robin (he memorably quipped that the casting was ‘the Celts versus the Krauts) even if Jurgen Prochnow is the only Norman who attempts a French accent (a fairly decent Alsatian one as it happens, though undermined by the need to make him a bit foppish at times).

The German Bluray of the theatrical version is a decent transfer in the 1.85:1 widescreen ration with English and German soundtrack options and a behind the scenes stills gallery the only extra.



“I've hardly lost a battle, and I don't know what I've won. 'The day is ours, Robin,' you used to say, and then it was tomorrow. But where did the day go?”

Of the three adventure films that Sean Connery made in the mid-70s, Robin and Marion is the one that people tend to overlook or even passionately hate. Certainly it’s a film whose melancholy tone isn't for everyone - which is possibly why it took so long to get made (it was while researching this that James Goldman stumbled across the antics at Chinon that inspired The Lion in Winter). Returning disillusioned from the Crusades, its Robin is very much a man past his prime struggling to live up to the legend that's grown up around him in his absence and finding it an impossible task. It's at times achingly sad and was probably hobbled by expectations - Audrey Hepburn's comeback, sold as a romantic adventure (they changed the original title from The Death of Robin Hood to make it sound more romantic), Connery crossing swords – literally this time - with Robert Shaw again for the first time since From Russia With Love, from the director of the Three Musketeers movies and what you get is a film about legends past their prime destroying themselves trying and failing to live up to the impossible legends that have grown up around them. Talk about setting up the wrong expectations... Small wonder that, unlike The Wind and the Lion and The Man Who Would Be King, it barely recouped its budget worldwide despite Goldman’s script being one of the finest and most subtly layered of the Seventies (and, like The Lion in Winter, full of great dialogue and a sense for how Medieval life was probably really lived).

It's certainly one of Connery's very best performances: the scene where he recounts a pointless massacre in the Crusades with quiet bitterness yet still seems completely unable to understand how Marian could ask him why he didn’t leave before offering a confused “Because… he was my king” plants him firmly as a man of the 12th Century whose horizons are limited by the social order of the day rather than the idealised Victorian image of Robin that defined most 20th Century interpretations. A simple man, past his prime (it’s one of his earliest non-toupee roles) and gradually realising that he has outlived his moment and has to face up to his oncoming death, the film carries a real emotional charge as he, Marion and his ageing followers try to snatch a few last moments of love and glory after so many wasted years. Similarly Hepburn’s Marian finds herself drawn back to the dreams of youth that she’s spent twenty years in holy orders successfully forgetting, all too aware it’s too late for a happy ending but still slipping into nostalgia and what ifs despite herself. Theirs is a genuine mature love story filled with regret at missed chances as they fall back in love again, Marian’s quiet final declaration of love earning the tears that you’ll shed.

Albeit not quite as bright, like Robin a simple man but not a stupid one, Nicol Williamson’s Little John is no mere third wheel here despite the film being as much about his love for Robin as Marian’s, his relationships with both Robin and Marian well realised even if rarely articulated: it’s a master class in saying everything while doing and saying little. Nor is Shaw’s Sheriff overlooked, no snarling villain but an intelligent man of integrity who will never advance because his illiterate ‘betters’ are suspicious of anyone who can read or write who is aware that this is his own last chance to make his mark. All four actors are at the absolute top of their game here, playing it real rather than to the gallery.

Yet it’s also often surprisingly funny without ever degenerating into the broad slapstick Lester’s other period pieces are prone too: the humour is often observational or subtly behavioural and everything flows naturally from the characters’ humanity and mortality. It’s not without action either, though that is filled with an awareness of age and diminished prowess as well as the savagery of the age: when Robin and the Sheriff finally duel there’s no soaring Korngold score or stylised lighting with giant dramatic shadows and heroic banter in lavish castle sets, just two increasingly exhausted men brutally hacking away at each other with huge heavy broadswords they find it increasingly difficult to lift. Probably the last Richard Lester film that’s especially well directed before he went into a horrendous decline, it also boasts a strong supporting cast - Richard Harris as King Richard, Ian Holm as King John, Denholm Elliott as Will Scarlet, Ronnie Barker as Friar Tuck and Esmond Knight among them – and a beautiful, yearning score from John Barry (one which Lester hated and was a last-minute replacement for a rejected score by Michel Legrand: Barry’s score had to wait until 2008 for an official soundtrack release and Legrand’s until the following year). If only, as Connery often said, they kept the original title instead of selling it as a romantic adventure it might be better remembered today – it’s a film that’s well worth remembering.



Like Sony’s DVD, this is extras-lite – just the original trailer, and non-anamorphic at that – but it’s a, for the most part, particularly lovely transfer that does justice to David Watkin’s superlative but unshowy cinematography and bringing out the throwaway details in Gil Parrondo and Michael Stringer’s use of predominantly existing locations to recreate a convincingly lived-in half-built, half-falling to pieces Middle Ages. Unfortunately it does struggle in the night scene in Sherwood late in the picture where there’s some light fluctuation and DNR is particularly noticeable in the last third (especially one close-up of Little John sitting under a tree) before righting itself.

Trivia note: Ronnie Barker reportedly got the role of Tuck when frequent Lester co-star Roy Kinnear was unavailable and earned much derision at the time for his refusal to ride a horse as required by the script (the one shot you see him seated on a horse it’s held by another actor). Considering what happened to Kinnear on The Return of the Musketeers, his aversion no longer seems so petty.

[Aclea]

“I may look a complete fool, but I’m not, I assure you. Not a complete complete fool.”

Legend has it that Peter Sellers was so hurt by the critical and commercial failure of his only film as director, 1961’s Mr. Topaze aka I Like Money, that, like Stanley Kubrick and Fear and Desire, he acquired every print he could find to keep it out of distribution. As with Fear and Desire he wasn’t entirely successful in his quest, with only Sellers own 16mm print and two faded prints surviving in the BFI’s archives (more of that later). An adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s oft-filmed 1928 play (along with several TV versions there were two big screen versions in 1933 while Pagnol himself directed two versions in 1936 and 1951) with a script credited to Pierre Rouve but part-written by an uncredited Johnny Speight, it’s a wistful morality play that sees Sellers’ quiet and downtrodden provincial French schoolteacher Topaze (at times a dead ringer for a taller Toulouse-Lautrec) suffering for his morals and suddenly flourishing when he is unwittingly used as the front for a crooked scheme and discovers a talent for larceny that soon exceeds that of those who take advantage of him, making him a pillar of the community in the process.

Unfortunately, as critics observed at the time, he makes Topaze such a quiet, serious little man that he’s something of a bore, which is a problem when the film revolves around his moral downfall and social elevation. If his morally and physically upright Topaze is a rather dull fellow until the true ways of the world are revealed to him, the real problem is his direction: his visual framing is fine but his pacing sedate while the performances veer all over the map. Michael Gough fares best as Topaze’s friend living vicariously through the teacher’s faltering romance with the headmaster’s manipulative daughter, Leo McKern’s mercenary headmaster seems to be doing his version of one of Peter Sellers’ minor grotesques and tries to outdo Sellers doing Sellers while Sellers the director accomplishes the inconceivable with Billie Whitelaw, managing to make one of Britain’s best and sexiest actresses clumsily overact without a trace of the allure the part calls for as the object of his infatuation but with a near fatal overdose of the affectation. All three seem to be in different films, with Sellers positioning himself as the calm in the eye of a middling storm.

Thankfully the tone is much more assured with the second act’s introduction of Herbert Lom’s crooked councillor looking for a patsy for his latest misappropriation of council funds (you can certainly see the roots of Lom’s Inspector Dreyfuss here) and the arrival of John Le Mesurier’s blackmailer (“Is this your first blackmail?” “Oh sir, do I look like a beginner?”). Even then it never hits the heights, but makes it at least a more interesting misfire rather than a lost classic that takes its time to get its act together. It’s certainly worth a look for Sellers’ fans but, while nowhere near the depths of some of his early 70s wilderness years work, expectations are best set low to get the most out of it.

The Bluray transfer quality is a very mixed bag. There’s more detail than you might expect from a transfer sourced from a 35mm print rather than a negative but the massive fading on the print has only been partially compensated for, leaving the film with a slightly desaturated look which curiously suits the Autumnal feel of the material rather well even if it wasn’t what was originally intended, and there’s a particularly bad case of the CinemaScope mumps in a panning shot in Herbert Lom’s chateau. More troubling are a few intermittent instances of heavy DNR, most particularly in the scene in Sellers’ apartment where Gough’s face looks like a particularly fluid wax mask, an effect aggravated by the colour fading that renders some skin tones white as snow. That’s thankfully as bad as it gets (McKern is also prone to it in some shots, though they seem magnified by his stage makeup), but it just helps to go into this one knowing it’s had some major work done, and like those ladies who lunch, the work does show. It also helps to accept that, unless a perfectly preserved negative is discovered, this is probably as good as it is ever going to look and the BFI deserve gratitude for rescuing it.



If the film is a decent try that misses the target more than it hits it, it’s still worth picking up not just out of curiosity/completism, but for the excellent extras package BFI Flipside have added: an audio recording of a 1960 NFT interview with Peter Sellers, Richard Lester’s short film The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film and Let’s Go Crazy, a mostly tiresome musical/comedy revue short that does at least offer a young Sellers’ Groucho Marx impression, 1967 documentary Film Star – Peter Sellers, interview with Abigail McKern, featurette The Poetry of Realism and raw interviews from unbroadcast 1967 TV series Now and Then with producer John Boulting and Maurice Woodruff. Ah, Maurice Woodruff…

Woodruff was Sellers’ pet psychic, and he’s seen using his personal knowledge of the actor to make a couple of reasonably on target ‘psychic hunches’ about his future but gets everything else spectacularly wrong – America would suddenly win the Vietnam War in early 1968, Rockefeller would be the next president, David Frost would suddenly become a hugely successful movie producer, politician Manny Shinwell would die within twelve months (he didn’t shuffle off this mortal coil until 1986, outliving Woodruff by 13 years), white rule would not only flourish in Africa but the blacks would learn to love it - providing more laughs than the movie. With the BFI long pricing their stills and poster collection out of the reach of most retro magazines and film buffs alike, it’s good to see they’ve also included what looks like much of their stills collection on the film in an extensive stills gallery, including several from deleted scenes with Joan Sims’ secretary, most of whose part seems to have to have hit the cutting room floor, as well as the film’s press book. There’s also a booklet, though that may only be in the first pressing

[nitin]

A few more non-boutique label watches:

The Gift by Sam Raimi is the perfect example of a film that is eminently watchable and instantly forgettable the moment it finishes. The biggest contributor towards that feeling is the pretty mediocre script as the acting is consistently better than the material warrants, especially from Blanchett. But Raimi’s direction is also pretty sterilised here when perhaps it would have benefited from him going full gonzo instead of giving the script a lot more respect than it deserves and playing it largely straight.

I saw it off the Finnish blu which is Region B and uses an old Paramount master but it holds up reasonably well without ever being anything spectacular for a film of this vintage.


The Bank Job was a lot more enjoyable than I was anticipating given its pedigree. If it stuck the landing at the end a bit more (it is resolved way too easily in a glib everything is fine tone for my liking), it could have been a minor British crime classic. As it is though, it’s a breezy if over kinetic telling of a story that is better than most fiction (although I believe still highly speculative) with Saffron Burrows moving around with classic femme fatale style and some choice supporting characters.

I saw it off the UK blu which looks and sounds spectacular.


Unbreakable was one I had not seen since original release some 20 years ago. My recollection was of a too self serious film that had a good mood but not much substance. Although that is still largely how I feel after the rewatch, I definitely think it has aged quite well in today’s era of overlong and overbearing superhero cinema.

There is actually a fair bit of magic in some of Shyamlan’s staging here, I particularly like the scene towards the end when Bruce Willis carries Robin Wright Penn up the stairs where the camerawork and perspective make it look similar to Superman flying with Lois in his arms, but the emotional payoff in this scene is earned and way it is filmed enhances the emotion. Similarly, I am quite fond of the opening scene on the train and the way it is staged definitely recalls Hitchcock at his best.

I saw it off the UK blu which is decent but could definitely be improved upon with a new scan. The PCM soundtrack is amazing though.


Peter Weir’s Witness has a lot of positive reviews and it’s most definitely a very good film but I also feel he has frequently bested what he has produced here.

The barn raising scene gets a lot of plaudits, and rightly so, but a lot of the quieter moments between Ford and McGillis are equally strong. I just wished they were not bolted on to a standard 80s cop movie. Not that Weir necessarily slackens during those scenes, they are actually quite well staged and genuinely suspenseful but they are also the least interesting part of the movie by far.

I saw it off Paramount’s Australian blu which has a very old master but is definitely quite watchable despite a fair bit of noise and sharpening. If and when it gets a new blu though, would love for the original soundtrack instead of the 5.1 remix to be present as the balance is a little off in the 5.1 track as is usual for most remixes.