Physical Specimens: New 4K Reviews, Including Barry Lyndon, Shane and Oliver Stone’s Alexander
This week in Physical Specimens, our monthly monthly round-up of new physical media and 4K reviews, we tackle one of Stanley Kubrick’s most jaw-droppingly beautiful movies, Oliver Stone’s critically reviled Alexander, and an iconic western in Shane.
Barry Lyndon
The critical response to Stanley Kubrick’s epic adaptation of Thackeray’s novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon wasn’t ecstatic when it came out in 1975, but in the decades since it’s become one of his most highly regarded films—perhaps second to only 2001. Maybe the critics were on to something back in the day, though? It’s a visual wonder, one of the most amazing looking pictures of all time, but criticisms about the film’s coldness, and its clinical approach to emotion and relationships, aren’t off base. Yes, it looks like a series of 18th century paintings, with its natural lighting and elaborately crafted tableaus, making it a gorgeous film to look at and visually study. And yes, the formalness of its storytelling and the distance it keeps from its characters reflect the literary style that Thackeray was parodying, and the etiquette of its setting. That makes Barry Lyndon a genuinely fantastic aesthetic experiment—something that even its more caustic critics at the time admitted. (Yes, it’s no surprise that not one but two legendary critics basically called it a coffee table book of a movie when it came out.) It’s telling that its four Oscar wins were for its costumes, cinematography, art direction, and music—and that it lost for Best Picture, Screenplay, and Director.
Kubrick’s calculated distance makes it a bit of a slog, though. Ryan O’Neal, an actor of considerable charisma in Paper Moon, gets to show little of it here, even though Redmond Barry is a constantly striving schemer who plots and talks his way through life. Barry’s flatness and emptiness is intentional—this is a movie about a man who starts off callow and remains vapid and always self-serving throughout, essentially summing up the entirety of the class system that he works his way up (and down)—but it’s not exactly easy to watch a walking void for more than three hours. Whenever O’Neal threatens to spark to life, the film immediately throws a blanket on him. Of course that does mean the one time Kubrick doesn’t avoid or quickly pull back from emotion—when a furious Barry beats his wife’s son in front of an assortment of Britain’s high society—the scene lands with tremendous impact; the movie’s so bottled up for so long that it absolutely bursts the one time it’s allowed to. Barry’s actions feel exactly as ugly and dirty and shocking as they no doubt would’ve seemed to a bunch of 18th century stuffed shirts, so you can understand why Kubrick approached the material this way. That makes this a movie that’s far easier to admire than actually like—and given its ample running time, there’s a lot of movie that’s more admirable than enjoyable.
Still. This is all done in service of the movie’s major (and pretty much only) theme. All this lifelessness has a point. It’s a movie so committed to its vision, and which depicts that vision so unlike any other film of that (or any subsequent) era, that Barry Lyndon pretty much has to be seen. And Criterion’s new 4K edition is the best way to see it. If you think its painterly visuals are impressive in a One Perfect Shot post, you might weep at how amazing they look in 4K on a 60 inch TV. Almost any random still from Barry Lyndon could hang in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. If only it was as emotionally vivid as its imagery.
Barry Lyndon
Original Release: 1975
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Format: 4K UHD Blu-ray
Label: Criterion
Release Date: July 8, 2025
Danger: Diabolik
Speaking of incredible imagery … Mario Bava’s take on Angela and Luciana Giussani’s comic book superthief Diabolik is one of those beautiful pop art films whose aesthetic just screams “the ‘60s!” The movie’s real world looks real and real boring, but everything related to Diabolik jumps off the screen like a lightning bolt—his secret base and the amazing wardrobe of his lover and partner Eva Kant are all candy colors, Tomorrowland architecture, and Willy Wonka crossed with The Prisoner. Imagine the earliest Bond movies but even less tethered to reality and with maybe 20% more comic book energy—and with the obvious dubbing and implacably European feel of a giallo or spaghetti western—and you’ll know what makes Diabolik so dangerously entertaining. It’s light, fizzy, an unabashed B-film, and that’s why it remains so fun, almost 60 years later–it’s also why it ended up as an episode of the original run of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you’re a suburban white kid of a certain age you’ll immediately recognize it as the inspiration for the Beastie Boys’ “Body Movin’” video—which is included (with its own commentary track) on Kino Lorber’s excellent new 4K release.
Danger: Diabolik
Original Release: 1968
Director: Mario Bava
Format: 4K UHD Blu-ray
Label: Kino Lorber
Release Date: July 22, 2025
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