Happy to be back again with a bundle of absorbing discs, including what I think was last year's best picture (2nd best: Talk to Her). Summer is coming and I'll be back to editing soon. Hope you're having fun ....
Universal's The Pianist is nothing short of a masterpiece. Roman Polanski carefully tempers his signature style, and produces the best dramatic document of the Holocaust yet seen. Adrien Brody is superb as the wistful, delicate musician forced to live an underground existence - for three years - in a Warsaw converted into a Nazi hell.
Fox's The Flight of the Phoenix is another great picture, a male adventure tale of survival that requires a dozen uncooperative types to work together on an insane plan. One of James Stewart's best, this Robert Aldrich film also stars Hardy Kruger and Peter Finch.
Paramount's awesome Is Paris Burning? tells a complicated historical story without cutting corners, as Frenchmen take back Paris from its German occupiers, who have orders to destroy every major landmark upon their retreat. With a stirring Maurice Jarre score to celebrate the survival of France's beloved capital.
Blue Underground gives the royal treatment to Baba Yaga, a weird attempt to convert an erotic Guido Crepax comic strip into an erotic comic book-like film. Carroll Baker and the hypnotizing Isabelle de Funès star as a sensuous witch and the fashion photographer she stalks.
Savant is sort of keeping up with the titles. There's at least one more war and Western film each to cover, a few strange caper and crime films, another Fritz Lang classic, and a long-awaited Sergio Leone epic. Thanks for sticking with me. Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at June 08, 2003 03:35 PM