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This meticulous docu-drama is still the best show about the Titanic, the awesome disaster that has never lost its grip on the imagination. Roy Ward Baker leads an enormous cast of Brit character actors through 2.5 hours of true-life terror in the icy Atlantic — Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, David McCallum, Laurence Naismith, Anthony Bushell. No stupid subplots and no insulting anachronisms, just an awful sinking death trap and 1600 passengers facing the freezing water. [Imprint] brings some new extras to the mix, too.

A Night to Remember

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #135

1958 / B&w / 1:66 enhanced widescreen / 123 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from / 39.95

Starring: Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, David McCallum, Laurence Naismith, Anthony Bushell, Alec McCowen, John Cairney, Michael Goodliffe, Ronald Allen, John Merivale, Jill Dixon, Kenneth Griffith, Frank Lawton, Tucker McGuire, Ralph Michael, George Rose, Joseph Tomelty, Jack Watling, Michael Bryant, Bee Duffel, Thomas Heathcote, Andrew Keir, Jeremy Bulloch, Desmond Llewelyn, Derren Nesbitt, Beth Rogan,...

Any WW2 action adventure involving the Norwegian resistance is Ok in my book, and this big-star saga about sabotage efforts to stop the Nazis’ atom research is a natural — much of what happens in the story is true. The show can boast marvelous locations and excellent action scenes but the script and characters aren’t very strong. Did Columbia curb epic director Anthony Mann’s greater ambitions, or did star Kirk Douglas interfere to enhance his leading character into a combo scientist, playboy and sure-shot action man? Also starring Ulla Jacobsson, Richard Harris, Michael Redgrave, and every over-fifty English name actor not nailed down.

The Heroes of Telemark

Blu-ray

Sony Home Entertainment

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 130 min. / Street Date January 8, 2019

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson, Michael Redgrave, David Weston, Roy Dotrice, Anton Diffring, Ralph Michael, Eric Porter, Karel Stepanek, George Murcell, Mervyn Johns, Barry Jones, Geoffrey Keen, Robert Ayres,...

Dead of Night

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1945 / 1.33 : 1 / 102 Min.

Starring Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave, Googie Withers

Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe

Directed by Basil Dearden, Alberto Cavalcant, Charles Chrichton, Robert Hamer

Anthology films have been a reliable Hollywood staple since D.W. Griffith’s time-traveling Intolerance and Paramount’s depression-era dramedy If I Had a Million. The short story format has proved especially popular with horror movie fans who prefer their thrills lean, mean and straight to the point.

That humble subgenre contains multitudes – from Masaki Kobayashi‘s elegant Kwaidan to the comic book stylings of Freddie Francis’s Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors to the state of the art shocker Nightmare Cinema – but the great-granddaddy of them all is surely the 1945 classic from Britain’s Ealing Studios – Dead of Night.

Mervyn Johns, the eternal Everyman, plays Walter Craig, a restoration expert whose newest project – a provincial manor called “Pilgrim’s...

The Upside Down of “Stranger Things” became an apt metaphor for this divisive year, and, maybe not so strangely, “Stranger Things,” along with several other Best Drama Emmy contenders, offered unifying themes to combat the forces of oppression, hate, and turmoil.

These included “Westworld,” “The Crown,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Feud: Bette and Joan,” and “Big Little Lies.” And, not surprisingly, they all offered stellar craftsmanship in support of their unifying themes.

“The Crown”

Showrunner Peter Morgan told IndieWire that his biggest takeaway has been the realization of the necessary bond between the monarchy and Parliament. “Sometimes the monarchy screws up and sometimes the politicians screw up,” he said. “And it takes one or the other to fix the problem.”

In Season 1, that unity is forged between young Queen Elizabeth II (nominated Claire Foy) and that old war horse, Prime Minister Winston Churchill (nominated John Lithgow). Together, they help Great...