Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (1973): Criterion Blu-ray review

Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) sees yet another woman to pursue in Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (1973)

Criterion’s new release presents a stunning restoration of Jean Eustache’s intimate epic The Mother and the Whore (1973), a bleak epitaph for the failed promise of social change which climaxed and crashed with the May 1968 uprising in Paris: a few years later, the film’s characters are adrift and trying to rebuild a sense of themselves in a society which has rejected them and their dreams.

Grindhouse rediscovery: Christina Hornisher’s Hollywood 90028 (1973)

Working in the darkroom, Mark (Christopher Augustine) seems to be trapped in Hell in Christina Hornisher’s Hollywood 90028 (1973)

Grindhouse Releasing have done a stellar job of resurrecting a little-known low-budget exploitation movie from the early ’70s. Set on the fringes of the film business in Los Angeles, Hollywood 90028 (1973) was the only feature directed by Christina Hornisher who approached the story of a homicidal film cameraman with the cool detachment of a European director and an emphasis on the experience of women being exploited by the industry.

Sam Peckinpah’s final western: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Billy (Kris Kristofferson) breaks out of jail in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Criterion gives Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Sam Peckinpah’s final, unfinished Western, stellar treatment in a two-disk Blu-ray set (also in a 4K UHD edition) with three different cuts plus extensive extras. The original theatrical release is presented alongside Peckinpah’s final preview cut and a more polished 50th Anniversary edit which restores and refines much of the material originally removed after the director walked away from the project.

Roberto Gavaldón’s Untouched (Sombra Verde, 1954) on Blu-ray from Indicator

Yáscara (Ariadne Welter), raised far from society, expresses an unconstrained eroticism in Roberto Gavaldón's Untouched (1954)

Indicator have taken a break from their recent spate of Mexican genre movies by dipping a little deeper into the Calderón family archives. Untouched (Sombra Verde, 1954) is a torrid romantic melodrama with allegorical notes which trades in the urban noir of a movie like Emilio Fernández’s Victims of Sin (1950) for the primal jungle of Veracruz. Both were produced by Guillermo Calderón and show him pushing against the boundaries of censorship and testing how far cinema could push a frank depiction of sexuality in a society still very much under the sway of the Catholic Church.

Resurrecting a disparaged monster: Reptilicus (1961) in 4K

The monster rampages through Copenhagen in Reptilicus (1961)

Frequently derided as the worst giant-monster-on-a-rampage movie ever made, Reptilicus (1961) gets a 4K restoration from Vinegar Syndrome in a three-disk, dual-format set which presents both the more familiar, shorter U.S. cut credited to Sidney W. Pink and the longer Danish-language version directed by Poul Bang. The effects are bargain-basement, but the movie has genuine charm and a few surprisingly impressive sequences.

Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964): Criterion Blu-ray review

Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) joins the outlaw band of cangaceiro Corisco (Othon Bastos) in Glauber Rocha's Black God, White Devil (1964)

Criterion’s two-disk Blu-ray release of Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964) not only presents and impressive restoration of a key film in Brazilian cinema; it anchor’s an impressive survey of the Cinema Novo movement which transformed that cinema in the early 1960s, with two feature-length documentaries – on Rocha himself and the larger movement – a commentary by the film’s restoration supervisor, and a 1964 documentary about the cangaceiro outlaws who formed a crucial element in the background of Rocha’s feature.

Emilio Fernández’s Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951): Criterion Blu-ray review

Emilio Fernández’s Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951), newly restored in 4K from the original nitrate negative, is a Mexican musical melodrama loaded with tragedy punctuated with ecstatic dance numbers from star Ninón Sevilla, who plays a cabaret dancer whose life is upended when she takes responsibility for an abandoned baby. Taut direction by Fernández and stunning photography by the masterful Gabriel Figueroa provide a remarkable showcase for Sevilla’s considerable talent.

Ghosts, demons and cinematic experiments

Cruel doctor Age Krüger (Udo Kier) returns from the dead to sire a son in Lars von Trier's The Kingdom (1994)

The new MUBI seven-disk set of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom provides an opportunity to re-visit the original two seasons from 1994 and 1997 and finally see the elaborate blend of satire, soap opera and ghost story reach some kind of conclusion with the third season made in 2022; while it proves impossible to attain the unique energy of the original, which achieved a perfect balance between horror and comedy, The Kingdom: Exodus does tie up many of the loose ends left dangling for twenty-five years. An even stranger piece of experimental horror has been restored by Le Chat Qui Fume with their 4K edition of Leslie Stevens’ Incubus (1966) in which a pre-Kirk William Shatner confronts demons while speaking Esperanto.

Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964): Criterion Blu-ray review

A crowd bears away a murdered student in the wake of a riot in Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba (1964)

Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964) uses the striking cinematography of Sergei Urusevsky to create a fever dream version of the Cuban Revolution, a series of archetypal moments of oppression and resistance leading to an ecstatic explosion of justified communal violence. Filled with heightened emotions rendered in breathtaking images and seemingly impossible camera movements, the film looks gorgeous in a 4K restoration on Criterion’s Blu-ray.

Blasts from the past

DVD Review: Laddaland (2011)

Peter Yates (1929-2011)

Orson Welles’ Othello (1952/55): Criterion Blu-ray review

Dr. Seuss’ Nightmare: The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)

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