World Cinema-HD: Dark Habits ** (1984, Drama)
Aspect ratio 1.66 : 1
Summary: Who but Pedro Almodóvar would make a movie in which a nightclub singer named Yolanda, whose boyfriend has died from a heroin overdose, hides from the police in a nunnery--only to discover that the nuns have more perverse lifestyles than her own? The nuns of Dark Habits use drugs, write lurid pulp novels, design high-fashion habits, and keep a tiger in their courtyard. Yolanda (Cristina Sanchez Pascual) gets caught up in the head nun's scheme to regain the patronage of a wealthy noblewoman, but betrayal, illicit love, and a campy musical number are waiting in the wings. Dark Habits features Almodóvar regulars Carmen Maura and Marisa Paredes, as well as a bit part by Cecelia Roth of All About My Mother. Fans of Almodóvar's magnificent later films (like Habla Con Ella (Talk to Her)) may find Dark Habits a bit thin, but it offers its own charms and comic delights. --Bret Fetzer
Epics-HD: Cimarron **+ (1960, Westerns)
Aspect ratio 2.35 : 1
Summary: The 1960 remake of Cimarron manages a slight improvement on the worst Best Picture (1931) in Academy Award history. Not that Edna Ferber's novel of pioneer Oklahoma was ever a movie natural. There's a plethora of themes--several species of prejudice, capitalism vs. charity, sons unhappily following in fathers' footsteps, and the irreconcilable tensions between a stability-craving wife and her footloose hero-husband--but the action is front-loaded and the husband (Glenn Ford) is offscreen for years at a time. Anthony Mann gets solo directorial credit, yet the movie seems more typical of his replacement, Charles Walters, a maker of pastel musicals. Most of the large cast comes and goes without establishing identities; Maria Schell's Sabra Cravat is tiresome as both ditz and pill. Photographed in CinemaScope and Metrocolor by Robert L. Surtees, the Oklahoma land rush is properly spectacular--though less impressive than John Ford's in Three Bad Men. --Richard T. Jameson
