Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons (Criterion)
When it comes to Criterion, when you’ve got it, you’ve got it. In this case, what you’ve got is a French quartet of 1990s films that place pretty characters in the context of the year’s seasons.
As our PopMatters review states, “If film buffs dwell under the notion that France is full of breezy, scintillating conversationalists who are easy on the eyes, blame Éric Rohmer. Aside from his sideline in gorgeous historical films, he concentrated on movies about sexy people talk-talk-talking to each other. It takes care and talent to make a dialogue-based cinema cinematic; Rohmer perfected a style to pull it off.”
Rohmer’s camera stages conversations artfully in open spaces or apartments, shifting the scene frequently as his characters collide in visual rondelets, combining and re-combining in new atomized groupings. With a preference for keeping all participants within the shot, Rohmer’s approach doesn’t seem stuffy, although it’s a matter of taste. – Michael Barrett
Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XVII (Kino Lorber)
Kino Lorber’s long-running series of wonderfully mastered film noir three-packs is currently hitting Volume XXIII. Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XVII is an especially outstanding and rewarding example because all three films showcase the brilliance of Edward G. Robinson, who never gave a bad performance and usually knocked it out of the park.
As PopMatters wrote, “He may have resembled the offspring of a frog and a fireplug, but Robinson was at home in any role. Playing a criminal, a cop, a man in the street, or anything else thrown at him, his mastery rivets our attention. Even his most flamboyant roles betray the depth of a human living inside the character’s head – someone who hears, thinks, and responds with fear, anger, humor, or love.”
The films in Volume XVII are Arnold Laven’s Vice Squad (1953), Hugo Fregonese’s Black Tuesday (1954), and Maxwell Shane’s marvelous Nightmare (1956). That last is a story from the sweaty-palmed master of paranoia, Cornell Woolrich. See the entry below for Never Open That Door.
Another trio of gangbusters worth your attention can be found in Volume XIX: Willliam Dieterle’s claustrophobic Dark City (1950) starring Charlton Heston; Mitchell Leisen’s outstanding No Man of Her Own (1950) with Barbara Stanwyck, from a Woolrich story; and Harry Horner’s dark Christmas tale Beware, My Lovely (1952) with Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan. Ho ho ho. Then take a look at Volume XXI with Fritz Lang’s Cloak and Dagger (1946) starring Gary Cooper; Edward Dein’s Shack Out on 101 (1956) with Lee Marvin; and the only film directed by James Cagney, Short Cut to Hell (1957). You’ll get your noir fix. – Michael Barrett
Godzilla – Director: Ishirô Honda (Criterion)
In the 70 years since the monster first appeared on the big screen, the Godzilla franchise has terrified, tittered, and entertained audiences across the globe. With the release of Takashi Yamasaki’s Godzilla Minus One, the creature won an Academy Award. Sure, the statue was for Best Visual Effects, but it shows the series’ monstrous footprint on Hollywood.
This is the perfect time for novices to discover—and nostalgists to rediscover—the original 1954 Godzilla from director Ishirô Honda. Now digitally restored, it is featured in an impressive Criterion package featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman, interviews with actors Akira Takarada and Haruo Nakajima, and a feature about the innovative effects.
Godzilla is a product of its time: the landscape is dotted with memories of a war that devastated Japan. In this context, the monster represents something grander, leading one character to ruefully note that another Godzilla might emerge from nuclear testing. The Criterion package includes Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, the 2019 “Americanized” version of the same story which lacks the bite of Honda’s film, which spawned a franchise that continues to intrigue fans with new and spicy interpretations of the titular character and all he implies. – Eoghan Lyng
Hitchcock: The Beginning (Studio Canal)
The name “Alfred Hitchcock” is synonymous with cinema, but for many, be it cineastes, film critics, or the public, dark corners in the great director’s filmography hide those lesser-known films. Studio Canal’s Blu-ray box set collection, Hitchcock: The Beginning, explores those dark corners with ten newly restored early works with new scores: The Ring (1927), The Farmer’s Wife (1928), Champagne (1928), The Manxman (1929), Blackmail (1929), Juno and the Paycock (1930), Murder! (1930), The Skin Game (1931), Rich and Strange (1931), and Number Seventeen (1932). The set includes Laurent Bouzereau’s new 72-minute documentary, Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail, narrated by film critic and filmmaker Elvis Mitchell.
This collection, featuring some of the films Hitchcock directed for British International Pictures, bridges his silent cinema and talking pictures and includes the first talkie in British cinema history—1929’s Blackmail. It might not feature those iconic latter films that branded Hitchcock as “The Master of Suspense”, but Hitchcock: The Beginning is an important, if not essential piece of the Hitchcockian puzzle. Together, these films, which follow from his 1927 Jack the Ripper-esque thriller The Lodger, reveal Hitchcock’s formative years were just as dramatic offscreen. Rich and Strange was a financial disaster, and the final film in the box set, Number Seventeen (discussed by Michael Barrett on the Film by Numbers podcast), was assigned to Hitchcock as a punishment. Hitchcock never cared much for the picture, which was the final time he’d direct for British International Pictures. The following year, he began his relationship with the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, for whom he directed some of his classic British films: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938), before being lured away by American producer David O. Selznick to America to direct Rebecca in 1939.
Hitchcock: The Beginning comprises a historically significant group of films coupled with an interesting array of extras. Director and film historian Noël Simsolo introduces each film and features an archival audio interview from Hitchcock’s conversations with French filmmaker François Truffaut. Meanwhile, six of the films feature commentaries, including film historian Tim Lucas’ for Blackmail and Nick Pinkerton’s for Murder! The set includes Mary (1931), the German version of Murder!, and an alternative ending. – Paul Risker
The Hitcher – Director: Robert Harmon (Second Sight)
Virtually ignored upon its 1986 theatrical release, The Hitcher picked up a steady following when it aired on cable throughout the ’80s. A road-film thriller that took the maxim of never talking to strangers to a hyperbolic hilt, this slice of Americana-from-hell gave ‘80s cinema one of its most ruthless villains in Rutger Hauer. Now a deserved cult classic, The Hitcher makes a case for simple, uncomplicated stories that don’t rely on any particular narrative invention or twist to get the job done of keeping people in their seats.
Eric Red’s spare script pits two characters, played by C. Thomas Howell (as Jim) and Hauer (as the homicidal hitcher, John), against one another in a deadly cat-and-mouse chase across the West Texas desert. The nightmare begins when Jim (a young man barely out of his teens) picks up stranded hitcher John one rainy night along a deserted highway, a soft-hearted act he soon regrets. Managing to overpower John when he shows a murderous hand, Jim speeds off, simply dismissing his act of kindness as a bad decision on his part. But John isn’t through with Jim yet, and over the next terrifying days, the two will be locked in a gruesome struggle for survival, which lays waste to anyone who dares get in their way.
Robert Harmon’s The Hitcher benefits from a script that features two enigmatic characters, with a third towering silently in the background: the magnificent Texas desert – a vast and empty Eden of mountains and sand that soon putrefies into a blazing hell. The lashes of dark humor further accent the morbid and sulfurous airs that hover thickly in the film. Hauer would go on to make films of varying quality, but he earned his cult status with this one – a horror film favorite for those who like their thrills lean, unpredictable, and always bloody. Second Sight Films releases this Blu-ray chock full of extras that will satiate the hunger of any of the film’s devotees and a transfer that superbly renders the Texas desert’s colors in all its arid beauty. – Imran Khan
Laurel & Hardy: Year Two (Flicker Alley)
This follow-up to Laurel & Hardy: Year One gathers painstakingly restored and resurrected new editions of ten silent shorts released in 1928, cementing the hilarious stardom of Stanley Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Supervised by Leo McCarey for producer Hal Roach, these films set the stage for the duo’s breakthrough into talkies. The shorts were sometimes released with music tracks and, in any case, now have new scores and commentaries.
Films such as The Finishing Touch (don’t hire the boys to build your house), Should Married Men Go Home? (don’t play golf with them), Two Tars (don’t let them drive), Habeus Corpus (don’t hire them as grave robbers!), and We Faw Down (don’t let them step out on their wives) prove dialogue was unnecessary to the escalating hysteria. Bonus films include the masterpiece A Pair of Tights with the female team of Anita Garvin and Marion Byron. We hate to sound like old fogeys, but these essential films put today’s alleged comedies to shame. – Michael Barrett
La Femme Nikita – Director: Luc Besson (Sony)
A hard-edged thriller starring a female vigilante skirting the lines between lawful and remorseful? No, this isn’t David Fincher’s 2011 psychological thriller, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but an Anne Parillaud vehicle that beat Rooney Mara to the punch by two decades. Whether or not The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo borrowed elements from the French filmmakers is a question for another day, but it’s to La Femme Nikita‘s credit that it still holds up all this time later, incorporating feminist themes among the violent setpieces. Parillaud plays the part with a mixture of sadness and playful abandon; Éric Serra’s jaunty score undulates beneath the surface with a combination of spark and allure.
It’s common to describe a film as “ahead of the curve”, but La Femme Nikita certainly stands out among French thrillers of the 1990s. This is no damsel, and whatever distress the viewer discovers is primarily the protagonist’s work.
Beautifully restored, this 4K Ultra HD release exhibits a colour grading style that makes the feature look slicker and more modern. Luc Besson, who thrives on blues and reds in his work, demonstrates a striking palette in its aesthetics and by virtue of the narration. There are no additional features in this Blu-ray from Sony, but the restoration is formidable. – Eoghan Lyng
Never Open That Door – Director: Carlos Hugo Christensen (Flicker Alley)
If you labor under the delusion that film noir is exclusively a Hollywood thing, check out this revelatory release that rescues and restores two forgotten Argentine films from Carlos Hugo Christensen, based on the writings of anguished noir maestro Cornell Woolrich.
Never Open That Door is an anthology of three stories “adapted by Spanish playwright Alejandro Casona, photographed in sinuous and gorgeous high-contrast chiaroscuro by German refugee Pablo Tabernero, and designed in jaw-dropping detail by Spanish refugee Gori Muñoz”, as reported in PopMatters‘ review. The door is the one between good and evil, and of course, the characters in all three stories open it, for isn’t that what the viewer wants?
Christensen originally intended the anthology to have four segments but removed the longest and released it separately. It’s here, too, and may have the strongest punch. Called If I Should Die Before I Wake (Si muero antes de despertar), it’s about a boy who saw a classmate’s killer and, of course, isn’t believed. Both black and white films are restored beautifully by The Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive and presented in a Blu-ray/DVD combo. – Michael Barrett
Nothing But a Man – Director: Michael Roemer (Criterion)
Director Michael Roemer’s sobering look at systemic racism in 1960s America is a quietly bold venture into a kind of cinema that makes its impression through a series of stark images often seen in Italian neorealist works. Roemer’s film is undeniably American – the airs and soils of its scenery are rooted forever in the gothic firmament of Richard Wright and William Faulkner’s South. But the film is stylistically fashioned by a scope first envisaged by a doyen like Visconti, whose unsympathetic portrayals of Italian working-class life brought to the screen a certain vision that forced upon viewers the plainness and simplicity of everyday life.
Nothing But a Man is an uncomfortable and unromantic look at Black life just at the end of segregation (the film was released the year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came into effect). It at once commands and rewards our engagement with its clear-eyed storytelling of the real struggles and joys of human life.
– Imran Khan
Ocean’s Trilogy – Director: Steven Soderbergh (Warner Bros.)
Steven Soderbergh‘s stylish crime Oceans trilogy is perhaps best remembered for the quips and back and forth between George Clooney and Brad Pitt, a double act they tried to revive this year for the otherwise underwhelming John Watts thriller, Wolves. Yet that does Matt Damon a disservice, who enjoys a character arc as Linus, an aspiring bank robber who grows from enthusiast to mastermind throughout the Oceans series. Andy Garcia enjoys his role as cigar-chomping baddie Terry Benedict, while Casey Affleck’s turn as Virgil Malloy was a sign of Oscar-winning performances to come. There’s no need to mention Don Cheadle’s London accent, however.
Packaged as a 4k Bluray set, the films boast a polish that brings new life to the works, and Ocean’s Eleven – now 23 years old – benefits most from the improved ratio. Some of the colours that cemented Ocean”s Thirteen are better highlighted this time around, and Ocean’s Twelve, nominally the black sheep of the triumvirate, utilises the new technology as a means of showcasing the spectacle and beauty that surrounds Italy, Clooney’s adopted home. Although it’s a shame Clooney and Pitt could not revive the magic for Wolves, the camaraderie felt in the Ocean’s Trilogy should satisfy fans of both actors. – Eoghan Lyng