Dirty Dancing 4K UHD (Blu-ray) by Kurt Dahlke Dirty Dancing: 17-year-old Frances "Baby" Houseman (an otherworldly Jennifer Grey) tries to enjoy a final summer at a Catskills resort before starting the life her parents want her to live; joining the Peace Corps, going to college to earn a degree both prestigious and progressive, and marrying rich. When cock-of-the-walk dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze in a steely turn) struts on by, first seeming like a mere ne'er-do-well before we learn of his staff position, Baby gets a little weak in the knees; her coming of age story coming to life to hits from the '60s and contemporary pop songs from the movie soundtrack, which as you've all guessed by now, is Dirty Dancing, here in a 35th Anniversary edition. Dirty Dancing originally debuted in 1987, when I, as a lonely and luckless high-school senior, had nobody to take to the movies. Since this swoony romance wasn't o...Read the entire review »

Eyes of Laura Mars (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV It took 44 years, but here I've finally gotten around to seeing Irvin Kirshner's Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), whose creepy poster and effective coming attractions trailer long intrigued me. Though often described as a neo-noir, the movie is really a slick, big-budget Hollywood stab at the giallo genre, the visually stylish, intricately-plotted Italian thrillers, often-gory whodunits, that flourished earlier in the decade. The story was John Carpenter's first major studio credit, though it was altered by others so whether he, later writer David Zelag Goodman (Straw Dogs) or others were consciously drawing from Italian giallo is unclear. Visually, Eyes of Laura Mars is enormously effective, though let down profoundly, house-of-cards style, by its ruinous ending. Where the best giallo are puzzles that neatly and cleverly come together at the end, Eyes o...Read the entire review »