The second to last feature by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti, Conversation Piece is a witty, darkly humorous and ultimately tragic tale of the unwelcome intrusion of modern life onto a wealthy nobleman (Burt Lancaster), who would prefer to…
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A glorious new reconstruction and 4K restoration of Erich von Stroheim unfinished 1929 epic Queen Kelly. This was a dream project actress Gloria Swanson and her lover at the time Joseph Kennedy (who was bankrolling it) brought to director Erich…
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It’s a new year of beautifully upgraded Blu-rays. Not to mention Blu-rays of some above average films released last year. There’s the Italian gothic The Ghost, the thrilling film noir Narrow Margin, the rousing Errol Flynn swashbuckler Captain Blood, the…
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When actress Lizabeth Scott died on Jan. 31, 2015 at 92, the NY Times obituary (beautifully written by Robert D. McFadden) described her as “a sultry blonde with a come-hither voice cut out for the seething romantic and homicidal passions…
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I have to laugh with sardonic joy at the array of oddball Blu-ray stocking stuffers this holiday month. From a perverse Italian “giallo,” The House with Laughing Windows (God, I love that title), to hilariously sleazy wonders like Ilsa, Harem…
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Why is it that anytime I sit down to make a movie “list” I can hear in the background the dulcet voice of movie star Lola Brewster (lustily played by Kim Novak) in The Mirror Crack’d, “I could eat a…
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“X was never like this!” was the tag line for the 1974 softcore erotic box office phenomenon Emmanuelle, which is represented in a staggering 11-disc box set from Severin. The set contains the first three films in the sexy series,…
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There is plenty to be thankful for on Blu-ray this month. Especially the digital reconstruction of some of my favorites- like The Curse of Frankenstein, Eyes Wide Shut, The Descent, Sleepless, A Summer Place and Lovely to Look At. Not…
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Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Oliver Laxe’s nerve-shredding, trippy, nightmarish odyssey begins with a wall of weathered speakers being assembled in a gully surrounded by mountains in the barren Moroccan desert. Soon a wall…
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Ira Sachs’ sublime new film is based on a tape recording that writer Linda Rosenkrantz made of her good friend photographer Peter Hujar, recounting his past day. It was in 1974 and the project of hers was never finished but…
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