The art of movie memorabilia, an Agatha Christie mystery, and a John Waters musical round out some of the label’s top releases of the year.
In the world of boutique home video labels, Kino Lorber continues to be one of the best. The company continues to be a champion of forgotten favorites and underrated classics. Recent times have seen Kino expand to streaming and theatrical distribution with an impressive 2024 slate that included the gay drama Sebastian and Paul Schrader’s poetic Oh, Canada.
But home video is first and foremost where Kino’s heart is. Each month the company unveils a new plentiful lineup that runs the gamut, with everything from Doris Day to Chuck Norris included in the mix. With every month that passes, Kino proves itself to be a true cinephile sanctuary. As the year comes to a close, I thought I’d pay tribute to Kino with a look back at my top five releases from one of the best physical media saviors in the business.
Split Image
Few people know if this random 1982 title starring Michael O’Keefe is an average American college student who gets unwillingly recruited into a cult led by Peter Fonda. Split Image is a true celebration of O’Keefe as an actor. The role allows the Oscar nominee to show both all-American boyishness and raw vulnerability in one of his best performances. Meanwhile, the eeriness and the ominous nature of the cult itself creeps through in ways that are stark and weirdly peaceful, which is brought to a halt by a sequence showing the camera spinning around the crowd, turning them into a dizzying array of kaleidoscopic images. It’s the perfect way to illustrate the world O’Keefe now belongs to. As cult movies go, Split Image‘s director Ted Kotcheff does a fair job of showing how the rise of such groups was the result of the economic turbulence of the late 70s and the materialism of the early 80s. But Split Image positively soars at showing how such a world will never let you go.
Witness for the Prosecution
Agatha Christie never shined on the big screen the way she did with the big screen adaptation of Witness for the Prosecution. Adapted from Christie’s classic play, the Billy Wilder-directed movie stars Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Elsa Lanchester in a mystery about a man (Power) accused of murder, his alluring wife (Dietrich), and the man (Laughton) tasked with setting the accused free. The melding of two such distinct artists like Christie and Wilder wouldn’t have been obvious in 1957, but the instincts of both author and director work in harmony to create one of the decade’s most enthralling and entertaining murder mysteries. It helps that the powerhouse cast is one of the best assembled, with each one contributing to the story and leaving their mark, particularly an Oscar-nominated Lanchester. With twists and turns up to the end, Witness for the Prosecution remains a genre best.
Mad Props
The ultimate word in movie memorabilia has come in the form of Mad Props, the Juan Pablo Reinoso-directed documentary that explores the world of movie prop collecting from its different sides. Expert movie prop collector Tom Biolchini travels America and eventually other countries to look at the different iconic props that still exist, talk to the people who seek out such treasures, and what the art of prop collection looks like to them. Numerous famous props, such as the holy grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and one of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costumes, make appearances as do the likes of Robert Englund, Lance Henriksen, and several sculptors responsible for some of the famed creations. But more than just a film about the art of collecting, Mad Props is ultimately a documentary that looks to show these artifacts as universal symbols of unity with each one a testament to a medium and an artform that has given so much to so many.
Starting Over
Another random, but winning, collaboration came to Blu-ray again this year with the release of the romantic 1979 dramedy Starting Over. On paper, the teaming of writer James L. Brooks and director Alan J. Pakula was dicey. The former had never written outside of the television realm before and the latter was more known for his paranoid thrillers than tales of comedic romance. But the pair was a winning combination as evidenced by this film which told the story of a recent divorcee (Burt Reynolds) who finds himself falling for a schoolteacher (Jill Clayburgh) while still holding a torch for his ex-wife (Candace Bergen). Gracefully mixing laughter with pathos, Brooks and Pakula made their film a grounded and relatable document of how hard it is to shed the past and begin anew. The characters of Starting Over are flawed and don’t always know what the right path is, but there’s something so endearingly human about watching them try to figure it all out.
Cry-Baby
John Waters spiked a bidding war following the surprise success of 1988’s Hairspray. The movie was the underground director’s first runaway smash and saw him being given carte blanche to make virtually any film he chose. The result was Cry-Baby, a musical comedy that lovingly spoofs the Rebel Without a Cause/West Side Story genre of the 50s and 60s. Johnny Depp stars as the title character, the leader of the Drapes who represents the bad kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Not long after the movie’s opening number, Cry-Baby falls in love with Allison (Amy Locane), the unofficial teen queen of the squeaky-clean Squares. The usual genre tropes are there but are presented in typical Waters fashion including moments such as Locane drinking a jar of her own tears and Polly Bergen giving her all in a winning performance that makes her character stand out. Cry-Baby never had the kind of lifespan that Hairspray enjoyed, but there are still plenty of Waters’ fans who would readily count the exuberant and infectious musical as their favorite.
Thank you to Kino Lorber for another great year full of incredible releases! All of these titles are now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Kino Lorber.
