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By Todd Garbarini

The films of John Cassavetes are an acquired taste. Long considered to be the father of the modern independent film movement, his unorthodox style to acting and filmmaking notoriously drove some of his performers crazy while also receiving kudos and accolades from others. Like most filmmakers of his ilk, his work was best seen in independently owned movie theaters in New York City where films generally played for weeks or even months on end to a combination of both rave reviews and decent box office, two ingredients necessary to ensure securing funding for future projects. His directorial debut, Shadows (1958), depicted a romantic relationship between a white man and an African-American woman and the tumult that their relationship brought to their families. The film was unorthodox not only in its subject matter but in its approach to filmmaking. The film possesses...

John Cassavetes’ breakthrough picture gets the Criterion treatment, with fine new extras that take us back to a moment when the American Independent movement broke through to the big theaters, with bigger stars. It’s 142 minutes of intense improvisation during which Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk challenge, tease and bully fellow performers into the director’s vision of performance artistry. The full title on-screen raises the bar pretty high: Husbands: A Comedy About Life, Death and Freedom.

Husbands

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1029

1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 131 142 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 26, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright, Noelle Kao, John Kullers, Meta Shaw, Leola Harlow.

Cinematography: Victor Kemper

Produced by Al Ruban

Written and Directed by John Cassavetes

Is John Cassavetes coming into style, or is he just being rediscovered for the fifth time? His impassioned films receive strong critical...

Roald Dahl’s marvelous horror thriller for children (the ones ready for it) knows exactly what it is and doesn’t soft-pedal the scary stuff. Horrible (but sexy) witches plot the wholesale destruction of Hansels and Gretels everywhere, and the only kid that can stop them has been changed into a mouse. Nicolas Roeg runs wild with Dahl’s imaginative, refreshingly un-pc book; the usual softening touches are skipped in favor of unadulterated scarifying Fun. It couldn’t be better directed; we wish that Roeg had been able to create a dozen such outrageous fantasies. Star Anjelica Huston is an amazing Grand High Witch, with Mai Zetterling, Anne Lambton and Jane Horrocks providing able witchy support. Recommended!

The Witches

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1990 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date August 20, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jasen Fisher, Rowan Atkinson, Bill Paterson, Brenda Blethyn, Charlie Potter, Jim Carter,...

The star of Antonioni’s The Passenger talks about working with Jack Nicholson, Derek Jarman and John Cassavetes, and the cautionary tale of her friend, Last Tango actor Maria Schneider

Jenny Runacre had an uncanny experience when she saw herself in a 43-year-old film recently. The woman on screen was her, but the voice was not hers.

“Maybe the film had been dubbed into Italian and then dubbed back into English with another actor. Or maybe they didn’t like my voice and changed it to someone else’s,” she says in a voice of a more seductive, deeper timbre than the one I had heard on film.

Mubi in the United Kingdom will be showing four films by John Cassavetes beginning with Too Late Blues (March 9 - April 8), followed by Husbands (March 16 - April 15), Gloria (March 23 - April 22), and Love Streams (March 29 - April 28). “Life is a series of suicides, divorces, promises broken, children smashed, whatever.” — Robert, Love Streams“Love is a stream. It’s continuous. It doesn’t stop.” — Sarah, Love Streams I love a good punch. Not the kind Robert Mitchum could land, or the kind Errol Flynn once received, though the mythmaking breeziness of another era’s gossip columns ensures even these retain an ageless charm. I mean the verbal kind, the hit-you-in-the-belly kind. A gut punch. Putdowns are an art: cadence is a weapon, pithiness a bullet. Brevity bruises: it’s not so much what is said as everything that isn’t. The best knocks hurt precisely because, no matter how brutal they get,...

John Cassavetes died in 1989 at the age of 59, having acted in a number of extremely popular mainstream movies (Martin Ritt's Edge of the City, Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen, Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Brian De Palma's The Fury), which helped subsidise the freewheeling, semi-improvised independent films on which his reputation ultimately rests. The best of these perhaps, and the least improvised, is A Woman Under the Influence (1974), for which he (as director) and his wife Gena Rowlands (as best actress) received Oscar nominations. Most characteristic is Husbands (1970), a much derided study of three well-heeled New Yorkers (Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara) experiencing a shared midlife crisis and confronting the emptiness of their lives following a fourth friend's early death. After the funeral they take off on a drunken, truth-seeking spree in New York and London.

The result is highly uneven, painfully drawn-out, deeply sincere,...

Husbands (1970) Direction & Screenplay: John Cassavetes Cast: John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara in John Cassavetes' Husbands John Cassavetes was a filmmaker who made his independent films in two primary modes: brilliant character-driven masterpieces like Faces, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night, or character-driven mediocrities with "moments," like Shadows, A Woman Under the Influence, and Gloria. Husbands (1970) falls somewhere in between. Husbands is nowhere near a great film, for most of the time it is poorly edited and, surprisingly, poorly scripted. But in the scenes that are not overly long and utterly pointless lie the seeds for what could have been a truly brilliant work. As it is, Sony Pictures' 142-minute DVD version of Husbands plays out more like the opening scene of the Cassavetes effort that came before it, Faces, which began with a depiction of drunken...

Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray version of The Last Starfighter, Dexter Seasons 1-3 on Blu-ray and the debut of season one of Sons of Anarchy on DVD.

Check them out.

Movies

The 5 Deadly Venoms ~ Five Deadly Venoms (DVD)

Hannah Montana The Movie (3-Disc Combo Pack Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy) ~ Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Lucas Till, and Emily Osment (Blu-ray)

Husbands (Extended Cut) ~ Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, and Jenny Runacre (DVD)

Julia ~ Tilda Swinton (DVD)

Kagemusha – Criterion Collection ~ Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenichi Hagiwara, and Jinpachi Nezu (Blu-ray)

Last House on the Left (2009) ~ Garret Dillahunt, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn...