Five DVD/Blu-ray picks from those released through
September worth adding to your collection.
In The Dark Mirror, Olivia DeHavilland plays that
favorite role of actors; twins, one good, one evil. One Olivia has murdered her
boyfriend, both have alibis, and when a shrink is called in to sort the thing
out, both sisters fall in love with him, setting off a major struggle. These were
the days they knew how to make the movies short (eighty-five minutes) yet packed with quality
and story. DeHavilland does wonders in both roles opposite Lew Ayres, so good
she easily overcomes the then trendy Freudian nonsense, in this tense psycho thriller
by noted noir director Robert Siodmak.
A Double Life, art is life, talk about losing yourself in
a character; Ronald Colman plays a talented thespian who lets Othello go to his
head, and if you know your Shakespeare, there's a bit of murderous jealousy
involved in that play. Though Colman made a lot of great movies playing a
swashbuckler, distinguished gentleman, roguish thief and sophisticated romantic
hero, this almost uncharacteristic role is his darkest, and the performance he
won the Oscar for, and the movie's a must see not only for Colman but also for great
work by Shelley Winters, Signe Hasso, and Edmond O'Brien.
Bond 50, meaning fifty years, twenty-two movies on Blu-ray, nine of
them for the first time ever, plus one hundred and thirty hours of bonus features including
never before seen footage, illustrations of the posters, and do I really have
to tell you what it's about? No, didn’t think so.
Back in the 1950s when those newfangled televisions were
hurting box office, and threatened to keep everyone home glued to the set and
away from the cinemas, studios were desperate to offer something bigger, wider,
grander, louder, more colorful and eye grabbing than your home screen. One of
the many technologies was a seventy-five foot wide massive curved screen, the IMAX
ancestor Cinerama. This is Cinerama is that introduction film fully and
beautifully restored, the movie version of a world tour meant to capture and
show you the grandest sights on the globe, on what was then the grandest of
screens.
From sprawling screens, go back, back, back in time to smaller,
silent time with Buster Keaton in The Navigator, in which Keaton and the girl
he wants to marry are the only people on a giant yacht cut loose and drifting
on the ocean. First they comically keep missing each other in board and then
when they do discover they’re not alone, set to figuring out this navigation
thing, run the vessel aground, perform underwater repair and have to fend off a
cannibal attack. A must for fans of Keaton and near perfect comedy.
Find me at the Speakeasy for much more classic entertainment.
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