News

Fiery dame Susan Hayward carries this far-flung ‘women’s epic’ to delirious romantic extremes, as her Irish heroine defies nature and exploits admirers to claim the hunky Dutchman of her dreams. Using apartheid-ridden South Africa as a background for a cheerful white conquest wasn’t as touchy an idea in 1955 as it is now, but it should have been. Just the same, Henry King’s film is an impressive production from the early years of CinemaScope.

Untamed

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 111 min. / Street Date January 22, 2019 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Richard Egan, John Justin, Agnes Moorehead, Rita Moreno, Hope Emerson, Brad Dexter, Henry O’Neill, Eleanor Audley, Kevin Corcoran, Philip Van Zandt.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Barbara McLean

Original Music: Franz Waxman

Visual Effects: Ray Kellogg, Matthew Yuricich

Written by Talbot Jennings, Frank Fenton, Michael Blankfort, William A. Bacher from a novel by Helga Moray.

The Loved One

Blu-ray

Warner Archives

1965 / B&W / 1:85 / / 122 min. / Street Date May 9, 2017

Starring: Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Anjanette Comer.

Cinematography: Haskell Wexler

Film Editor: Hal Ashby, Brian Smedley-Aston

Written by Terry Southern, Christopher Isherwood

Produced by Martin Ransohoff (uncredited), John Calley, Haskell Wexler

Directed by Tony Richardson

Funeral Director: Before you go, I was just wondering… would you be interested in some extras for the loved one?

Next Of Kin: What kind of extras?

Funeral Director: Well, how about a casket?

Mike Nichols and Elaine May – The $65 Dollar Funeral

That routine, a classic example of what was known in the early 60’s as “sick humor”, was nevertheless ubiquitous across mainstream variety shows like Ed Sullivan and Jack Paar. It also popularized the notion of a new boutique industry, the vanity funeral. The novelist Evelyn Waugh, decidedly less mainstream, documented the beginning of that phenomenon over a decade earlier with The Loved One,...

Warners knocks us out with a beautifully remastered Rko noir. Nicholas Ray's crime tale is like no other, a meditation on human need and loneliness. It's a noir with a cautiously positive, hopeful twist. On Dangerous Ground Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date October 11, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Anthony Ross, Ed Begley, Ian Wolfe, Sumner Williams. Cinematography George E. Diskant Art Direction Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino Film Editor Roland Gross Original Music Bernard Herrmann Written by A.I. Bezzerides, Nicholas Ray from the novel Mad with Much Heart by Gerald Butler Produced by John Houseman, Sid Rogell Directed by Nicholas Ray

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Warner Archive is known for pleasant surprises, but this one is a real thrill -- one of the very best Rko films noir, reissued in a much-needed beautiful restoration.

As Turner Classic Movies continues to play the Oscar hits all month long, last night I watched The Caine Mutiny and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfc. The latter I'd seen before and love, but this was my first visit with the former and while I'm sure it has been said before, the comparisons to Aaron Sorkin's screenplay for A Few Good Men are bountiful once you get to the third act court-martial of Lieutenant Steve Maryk (Van Johnson) and Ensign Keith (Robert Francis), charged with conspiring to mutiny. The charges aren't the same as those facing the two U.S. Marines in A Few Good Men and this is obviously the Navy we're dealing with, not the Marines, but the structure of the trial and in particular, the questioning of Humphrey Bogart's Lieutenant Commander Queeg is so similar it's impossible to miss. Before he begins his questioning of Queeg,...