The Sound Barrier (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV In lesser hands, The Sound Barrier (1952) might have been trite melodrama, a dated picture about civilian aircraft designers and test pilots pushing postwar technology toward unknowable limits now commonplace. But director David Lean was no ordinary filmmaker, and dramatist Terrence Rattigan's script no ordinary screenplay. It works, and still holds up marvelously well today, because it moves in unexpected directions, with unanticipated emphases. Though it contains elements clearly influential on other later, including Philip Kaufman's stupendous The Right Stuff (1983), the focus of The Sound Barrier is as much a nebulous barrier of another kind, the relationship between an adult daughter and her emotionally aloof father. The story begins near the ...Read the entire review »

Barbara Stanwyck Collection [Internes Can't Take Money / The Great Man's Lady / The Bride Wore Boots] (Blu-ray) by Oktay Ege Kozak The Movies: Internes Can't Take Money: This 1937 melodrama/thriller is actually more of a Joel McCrea vehicle than a Barbara Stanwyck one. This is the first film in a franchise that follows the adventures of Dr. Kildare (McCrea), a headstrong and compassionate man who helps unfortunates in need. Here, Kildare puts his life in line as he assists a repentant woman with a sordid past (Stanwyck) locate her long lost child. The woman's husband was a bank robber, and after one of his jobs went south, a bunch of 30s gangster tropes kidnapped her infant and placed her in an orphanage. Only a handful of the mobsters know the location of the child, and they'll exploit the woman any way they please before they give out that information. That's where Dr. Kildare comes in to save the day. This is essentially a slow moving melodrama with a bunch of superfluous sub-plots. Stanwyck ...Read the entire review »