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Still one of Tracy and Hepburn’s best, this follow-up to Adam’s Rib works on all levels. It rings the feminist rights gong just hard enough, and drums the notion that women deserve a chance to achieve their potential without sex discrimination getting in the way. Katharine Hepburn is at her most attractive when being athletic. Some fine star-making supporting action adds to the fun, especially the contribution of a young Aldo Ray.

Pat and Mike

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1952 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 95 min. / Street Date August 25, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Aldo Ray, William Ching, Sammy White, George Mathews, Gussie Moran, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Don Budge, Alice Marble, Frank Andrew Parker, Betty Hicks, Beverly Hanson, Helen Dettweiler, Loring Smith, Phyllis Povah, Charles Bronson, Frank Richards, Jim Backus, Chuck Connors, Joseph E. Bernard, Owen McGiveney, Lou Lubin, Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer, William Self, Frankie Darro.

When MGM was almost a ghost town, the Arthur Freed unit hit one last 'special' factory musical out of the park with this strangely melancholy ode to faded ambitions. Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd put in great, memorable work, while the glorious Dolores Gray is practically a living Tex Avery cartoon. And it's designed in wide, wide CinemaScope. It's Always Fair Weather Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 102 min. / Street Date November, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray, Michael Kidd Cinematography Robert Bronner Art Direction Cedric Gibbons, Arthur Lonergan Film Editor Adrienne Fazan Original Music André Previn Written by Betty Comden & Adolph Green Produced by Arthur Freed, Roger Edens Directed & Choreographed by Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Back in the late 1980s, I first became aware of the future of home video when Criterion introduced...

Val Lewton’s third horror film, The Leopard Man (1943) initially seemed promising. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s novel Black Alibi, it had more pedigree than Lewton’s previous movies. He reunited his previous team: director Jacques Tourneur, writer Ardel Wray, even Dynamite, the black leopard from Cat People. Forced again to film on the Rko lot, he sent Wray to photograph Santa Fe, New Mexico and crafted meticulous sets around her snapshots. Despite this attention to detail, The Leopard Man is one of Lewton’s weakest efforts.

The plot is simple enough. Nightclub entertainers James (Dennis O’Keefe) and Kiki (Jean Brooks) arrive in Santa Fe with a leopard in tow; Kiki’s rival Clo-Clo (Margo) scares the cat, which escapes into the city. The leopard kills a Mexican girl, sending the city into a panic. Several other women die, but James grows convinced that the leopard isn’t behind them.