Jeff Heinrich

German-Jewish emigré Ernst Lubitsch became one of Hollywood's best-known and best-loved directors of romantic comedies in the 1930s, and this is one of his best. Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night) and Gary Cooper (Design for Living) star in the story of a wealthy playboy, seven times married, who gets more than he bargained for with his eighth. The union is tempestuous, the screenplay (by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, the first of many hit collaborations) sizzles, and a young David Niven almost steals the show in a case of mistaken identity. On the Indicator-branded, region-B Blu-ray comes a new audio commentary by Australian film curator Eloise Ross and, as an alternate track, an hour-long interview Colbert gave onstage at London's National Film Theatre in 1984. Other extras include a 45-minute, pro-U.S. British propaganda film from 1944 narrated by Niven (uncredited), a gallery of 44 promotional images, and a trailer. An accompanying booklet runs 40 pages and has a new essay by Pamela Hutchinson, archival production reports, contemporary profiles of Lubitsch, an account of a lost 1923 adaptation that starred Gloria Swanson and Huntley Gordon, excerpts of contemporary reviews, critic Fiona Kelly on the propaganda short, and full film credits.

Not a typical Lubitsch picture, this anti-war melodrama has a strong pedigree and a modern-day legacy. It was based on the 1930 French play L'homme que j'ai tué, by Maurice Rostand (adapted the following year for the British stage as The Man I Killed) and was re-made in 2016 by French director François Ozon as Frantz. Phillips Holmes stars as Paul Renard, a Frenchman haunted by the memory of a German soldier he killed during the First World War. Visiting the dead man's hometown, he calls on the grieving family without revealing what he's done, eventually falling for his victim's ex-fiancée (Nancy Carroll) and winning over her father (Lionel Barrymore). Will the truth emerge? The region-B Blu-ray comes with a 2021 audio commentary by Joseph McBride and, as an alternate track, a 70-minute appreciation of Lubitsch by biographer Scott Eyman from 2001. Other extras include a 13-minute video essay by English critic Michael Brooke comparing Lubitsch's and Ozon's versions, and an image gallery of 45 promotional images. An accompanying 36-page booklet has a new essay by Christina Newland, contemporary profiles of Lubitsch and Barrymore, a brief look at the career of screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, an overview of contemporary critical responses and full film credits.

"A travelling circus and its magical feline mascot arrive in a provincial Czech town, unleashing mayhem as they expose the virtues, vices and desires of its unruly inhabitants." So goes the distributor's blurb for this unusual movie. How is the mayhem unleashed, exactly? Through a neat trick, as a New York Sun critic pointed out: "the cat magically colour-codes the townspeople according to their tendencies as liars, lovers," whatever they truly are. Described as part modern fairy tale, part colourful political metaphor, The Cassandra Cat (also known as When the Cat Comes) won the Jury Prize at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and is "a unique, glorious comic fantasy and one of the most visually inventive and uninhibited films of the (1960s') Czechoslovak New Wave." The ultra-widescreen (2.55:1) colour movie runs 105 minutes, has been newly restored in 4K by the Czech National Film Archive, and, in its world debut on Second Run's all-region Blu-ray, comes with an audio commentary by Projection Booth podcasters Mike White, Spencer Parsons and Chris Stachiw, as well as a 14-minute animated short by director Vojtěch Jasný's co-writer Jiří Brdečka from 1963 called "Badly Painted Hen," and a trailer. The accompanying 24-page booklet has a new essay by author Cerise Howard.

"This boldly cinematic trio of stories about love and loss, from (the late, great Polish writer-director) Krzysztof Kieślowski, was a defining event of the art-house boom of the 1990s," The Criterion Collection says in its promotional blurb, and I couldn't say it better. "The films are named for the colors of the French flag and stand for the tenets of the French Revolution – liberty, equality, and fraternity," the New York distributor explains, "but that hardly begins to explain their enigmatic beauty and rich humanity. Set in Paris, Warsaw, and Geneva, and ranging from tragedy to comedy, Blue, White, and Red (Kieślowski’s final film) examine with artistic clarity a group of ambiguously interconnected people experiencing profound personal disruptions. Marked by intoxicating cinematography and stirring performances by Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irène Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Kieślowski’s 'Three Colors' is a benchmark of contemporary cinema." First released on Blu-ray in 2010 in France (by mk2/TF1) and 2011 in the U.K. (Artificial Eye) and the U.S. (Criterion), the trilogy now gets an upgrade to 4K (in Dolby Vision HDR) in Criterion's six-disc boxset: one Blu-ray and one 4K UHD disc for each movie. The 4K UHD discs are barebones (no special features are included), but the Blu-rays come with a slew of extras, with identical audiovisuals and most of the extras reprised from the distributor's 2011 boxset. Missing, unfortunately, are several extras from earlier DVD releases, notably Miramax's special-edition boxset from 2003 that had film scholar Annette Insdorf's audio commentaries, selected-scene commentaries by stars Julie Delpy and Irène Jacob, and more. Each film clocks in at some 90 minutes or so, with notably warmer visuals and boosted, DTS-HD 5.1 soundtracks on the 4K UHD discs, and after that there's a lot of material to get through on the Blu-rays. You can view three cinema lessons given by Kieślowski; interviews with co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz, composer Zbigniew Preisner, and actors Delpy, Jacob, and Zbigniew Zamachowski; a selected-scene commentary with Binoche; video essays by Insdorf and fellow critics Tony Rayns and Dennis Lim; a documentary from 1995 featuring Kieślowski; three short films by the director: "The Tram" (1966), "Seven Women of Different Ages" (1978) and "Talking Heads" (1980, plus the short film "The Face" (1966), starring Kieślowski; interview programs on Kieślowski’s life and work, featuring Binoche, Insdorf, Jacob, film critic Geoff Andrew, filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, cinematographer Sławomir Idziak, producer Marin Karmitz and editor Jacques Witta; behind-the-scenes programs for White and Red; a short documentary on Red’s world premiere; and trailers for each of the three features. The boxset comes with an 82-page book featuring essays by film critics Colin MacCabe, Nick James, Stuart Klawans, and Georgina Evans; an excerpt from the book Kieślowski on Kieślowski; and reprinted interviews with cinematographers Idziak, Edward Kłosiński, and Piotr Sobociński.

Danish writer-director Lars von Trier has long had a reputation as a deeply troubled genius, one who has courted controversy as an alcoholic, depressive, male chauvinist who has treated actresses abominably, abused animals on set and proclaimed himself a Nazi. Nevertheless, as co-founder of the innovative Dogme 95 movement, one-time darling of the Cannes Film Festival, and man responsible for such prized films as Breaking the Waves, The Kingdom, Dancing in the Dark and Antichrist, von Trier has secured a place in modern cinema as an meticulous craftsman and inventor unafraid to break taboos and revel in exhibitionist hubris (even the "von" is pure invention, much like Hollywood's Josef von Sternberg). Now 66 and suffering from Parkinson's disease, the flawed genius is perhaps due some generosity of spirit, and that's what the film curators at prestige New York distributor The Criterion Collection have done in creating an elaborate Blu-ray boxset of the director's first three feature films. Packaged as 'The Europe Trilogy', there's the moody English-language thriller The Element of Crime (1984); a quasi-horror movie within a movie about the creative process (mostly in Danish and co-starring von Trier himself) called Epidemic (1987); and finally, the better-known and more conventional road (or rather, rail) movie Europa (aka Zentropa) (1991) set on a train moving through post-WWII Germany, narrated (in English) by Max von Sydow and starring Jean-Marc Barr, Eddie Constantine, Barbara Sukowa and Udo Kier (as well as von Trier in a brief but intense scene in which he plays a newly liberated Jewish Holocaust survivor). Besides some very fine restorations in 4K and 3K, Criterion's set comes loaded with special features; none are new, but brought together in one place they do deepen and inspire a re-appreciation of von Trier's early work. On The Element of Crime, you get: an audio commentary from 2005 by von Trier with his cinematographer Tom Elling and editor Tomas Gislason; a second commentary track from 2005, this time with experts Peter Schepelern and Stig Björkman; an hour-long documentary by Björkman from 1997 called "Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier"; a half-hour making-of shot on set; 11 minutes of Elling explaining his storyboards in 2005; 20 minutes of reminiscences by other crew members in 2005; two shorts von Trier made in film school, "Nocturne" (1980, 9 mins.) and "Images of Liberation" (1982, 52 mins.); and a trailer. By contrast, the Epidemic disc is comparatively light on extras: an audio commentary by von Trier and co-star Niels Versel from 2005; a half-hour interview with the director shot for Danish TV in 1991; 17 minutes of cast-and-crew anecdotes from 2005; and from the same year a career look-back by veteran cinematographer Henning Bendtsen; there's also a trailer. Lastly, on the Europa disc, there are two audio commentaries (one by von Trier and producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen, the other, of select scenes, by the director with Barr and Kier); a 39-minute making-of, shot on set; 21 minutes of cast-and-crew anecdotes from 2005; 17 minutes of testimonials by von Trier's collaborators and 12 minutes of composer Joachim Holbek describing the movie's score, also from 2005; two 45-minute documentaries (a sit-down interview with von Trier in 2005 and another with him from 1991, with clips shot on set and at Europa's premiere and press conference at Cannes; and a trailer. Rounding out the boxset is a 26-page, stapled, full-colour booklet featuring an essay by American critic Howard Hampton, repurposed from the one he wrote for Criterion's 2008 DVD release of Europa.

Enter the cauldron of the Sonoran Desert along the U.S.-Mexico border, which migrants and refugees try to cross and where many die along the way. For its debut on Blu-ray, coded for all regions, this 94-minute documentary is presented in a new high-definition transfer approved by directors Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki and comes with a new, 25-minute appreciation by writer, curator and producer Gareth Evans, as well as a trailer. English subtitles, alas, are burned-in (you can't remove them). A 16-page booklet with a new essay by film writer Patrick Gamble rounds out the package.

A jewel thief faces jail time but is sprung for the Christmas holidays by a friendly prosecutor, in this moving hybrid of a courtroom comedy, road-movie romance and good ol' fashioned Hollywood weepie starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. Travelling full circle from bustling New York City to rural Indiana, past the Canadian border at Windsor and onto Niagara Falls, Ont., and winding up back in NYC, the movie pairs Stanwyck and MacMurray for the first time, several years before the co-stars' most famous outing in Billy Wilder's 1944 noir Double Indemnity. With a scintillating script by writer and soon-to-be director Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story), the film is helmed by Mitchell Leisen, who coupled a background in costume design and art direction with an intuitive gift for helping actors in his dramedies inhabit their roles, just as he would again in 1941 with another classic road movie, Hold Back the Dawn, starring Charles Boyer and Olivia de Havilland. Despite its Yuletide setting, Remember the Night isn't on the average viewer's (or TV broadcaster's) list of Christmas movies, and that's a shame, because this one has it all: laughs, tears, celebration, forgiveness, and ultimately, love. Now given a proper Blu-ray release complete with 80-page book and colourful cardboard box, the film comes with a number of contextual extras as well. There's a new audio commentary by film historian Adrian Martin; a half-hour appreciation of the movie by veteran critic and author Geoff Andrew ; another half-hour appreciation, this time with critic Pamela Hutchinson, who sketches out the life and times and movies of Stanwyck, born Ruby Stevens; and two Lux Radio Theatre adaptations of the story, the first from March 1940 with MacMurray, Stanwyck and co-stars Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson and Sterling Holloway, the second from December 1941 with Jean Arthur taking Stanwyck's part. There's also an original theatrical trailer and an image gallery of dozens of stills and publicity shots, lobby cards and posters of the film. The illustrated book has a new essay by critic Rick Burin, archival interviews with cast and crew, articles on the careers of Leisen and Sturges, a round-up of reviews from the time, and full film credits. Oh, and there's a foldout poster, which you can hang by the tree or spread out under the mistletoe, take your pick.

In the mid- and late 1950s, just barely 30 years old, Poland's Andrzej Wajda directed a series of three harrowing feature films about his country's brutalization under Nazi occupation in the Second World War that are landmarks not only of postwar East European cinema but of world cinema as a whole. Last issued in an English-friendly DVD boxset by The Criterion Collection in 2005, the trilogy now premieres on all-region Blu-ray courtesy of niche U.K. distributor Second Run, whose promotional material describes these films as "powerful and often harrowing accounts of the Polish Resistance through World War II and after, and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the struggle for personal and national freedom." Transferred from new 2K restorations by Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych (WFDiF), Poland, the set includes all three movies from Wajda's famous opus, including A Generation (Pokolenie, 1955), Kanał (1957), and Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i Diament, 1958). On each disc are several extras, old and new. There are 10-minute clips of interviews done with Wajda late in his career, new introductions by Polish film scholar Michał Oleszczyk, new audio commentaries by film historian Michael Brooke, and three of Wajda's early short films, newly remastered: "The Bad Boy" (1951), "Ceramics from Iłża" (1951) and "While You’re Sleeping" (1953). The three booklets have new essays by critics Ewa Mazierska, Tony Rayns and Peter Hames. One remark on the transfers of the films themselves: Kanal looks best, while A Generation and Ashes and Diamonds often appear, to my eyes, overly contrast-y, with the lovely grey scales of the Criterion transfers now lost in overboosted blacks, from start to finish. This is quite evident in the long, 360-degree opening tracking shot of the first film, where shadow robs clothes of their creases and people disappear momentarily into unnaturally dark alleyways, as well as in the unforgettable final tracking shot of the third film, where star Zbigniew Cybulski's dying Resistance fighter collapses in a blindingly black-and-white field of garbage.

Winter 2022-2023 on Blu-ray

03.2023

02.2023

01.2023

The Best of 2022

12.2022