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King of the Hill
BD - For his first Hollywood
studio production, Steven Soderbergh (whose independent debut,
sex, lies, and videotape,
had won the Palme d’Or at Cannes a few years earlier) crafted
this small jewel of a growing-up story. Set in St. Louis during
the Great Depression, King of the Hill follows the daily
struggles of a resourceful and imaginative adolescent who, after
his younger brother is sent to live with a relative and his
tubercular mother to a sanitarium, must survive on his own in a
run-down hotel during his salesman father’s long business trips.
This evocative period piece, faithfully adapted from the A. E.
Hotchner memoir, is among the versatile Soderbergh’s most
touching and surprising films. Blu-ray
Release date: February 25th, 2014
Buffalo 66
BD - The film as a whole is
one half surrealist comedy and one half heart-breaking drama.
Gallo's work as director/writer/composer is both subtle and
bold. Many would argue that there is nothing original about
Buffalo '66. I'm not going to debate that, but I think Buffalo
'66 is more than a film that mindlessly borrows from the past.
It's about an individual who has nowhere that he can feel at
home. The character instead hides behind a wall of false self
confidence that everyone can relate to on some level. It is my
opinion that portions of the film exist only within Billy's mind
and his perception of his surroundings. At the same time the
film rings very true in many ways. Gallo's brilliant dialog is
endlessly quotable and the one thing that lifts the film out of
a place that might have left many viewers feeling either bored
or depressed. Personally, I love just about everything about
this film. From the oppressive Buffalo surroundings to Billy
himself the film remains a very personal statement that most can
find some truth in. Blu-ray
Release Date: January 14th, 2014
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
BD - Alan Burgess' novel The
Small Woman was the source for the British/American
co-production Inn of the Sixth Happiness. Set in the
China of the 1930s, the film stars Ingrid Bergman as real-life
missionary Gladys Aylward. Against the advice of practically
everyone, Gladys heads into the war-ravaged interior to spread
the Christian gospel. She finds a powerful ally in the form of
an elderly Mandarin (Robert Donat) who, despite his early
efforts to rid himself of the troublesome Gladys, eventually
converts to Christianity. Gladys' burgeoning romance with
Chinese army officer Lin Nan (Curt Jurgens) is interrupted when
she is obliged to guide a group of Chinese children to safety
over some of the most treacherous of Northern China's mountain
regions. Inn of the Sixth Happiness retains its entertainment
value some four decades after its production, even allowing for
the preponderance of Occidental actors in Oriental roles.
Blu-ray Release date: February 4th,
2014
Tess
BD - This multiple-Oscar-winning film by Roman
Polanski is an exquisite, richly layered adaptation of Thomas
Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. A strong-willed peasant girl
(Nastassja Kinski, in a gorgeous breakthrough) is sent by her
father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on
a rumor that their families are from the same line. This fateful
visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and
revenge, which Polanski unfolds with deliberation and finesse.
With its earthy visual textures, achieved by two world-class
cinematographers—Geoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret and Ghislain Cloquet
(Au hasard Balthazar)—Tess is a work of great pastoral beauty as
well as vivid storytelling. Blu-ray
Release Date: February 25th, 2014
Fantastic Mr. Fox
BD - Fantastic Mr. Fox is
the story of a clever, quick, nimble, and exceptionally
well-dressed wild animal. A compulsive chicken thief turned
newspaper reporter, Mr. Fox settles down with his family in a
new foxhole in a beautiful tree—directly adjacent to three
enormous poultry farms owned by three ferociously vicious
farmers: Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. Mr. Fox simply cannot resist.
Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s
novel is a meticulous work of stop-motion animation featuring
vibrant performances by George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason
Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Michael Gambon, and Bill Murray.
Criterion Blu-ray Release date:
February 18th, 2014
Blue is the Warmest Color
BD - The colorful,
electrifying romance that took the Cannes Film Festival by storm
courageously dives into a young woman’s experiences of first
love and sexual awakening. Blue Is the Warmest Color stars the
remarkable newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos as a high schooler who,
much to her own surprise, plunges into a thrilling relationship
with a female twentysomething art student, played by Léa Seydoux.
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, this finely detailed, intimate
epic sensitively renders the erotic abandon of youth. It has
captivated international audiences and been widely embraced as a
defining love story for the new century.
Blu-ray Release date: February
25th, 2014
Escape Plan
BD - A structural security
expert must escape from a prison based on his own designs in
order to track down the person who framed him in this gritty
action thriller staring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Ray Breslin (Stallone) has designed some of the
most high-tech, escape-proof prisons in the world. When Breslin
takes the fall for a crime he didn't commit, he's locked up in a
penitentiary of his own making. Desperate to prove his innocence
but unable to accomplish his goal from the inside, Breslin puts
his professional know-how to use by planning the ultimate prison
break. Meanwhile, as tensions among the convicts start to flare,
strict warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel) enlists lead guard Drake (Vinnie
Jones) to maintain order as mysterious inmate Emil Rottmayer
(Schwarzenegger) fights to prevent the volatile inmates from
turning on one another. Blu-ray
Release date: February 4th, 2014
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of
the Apes BD -
What would it be like for a lost child of the British
aristocracy to be reared by apes in the African jungle? Cue for
some skillfully handled action and a vivid realisation of the
ape community in which a man eventually becomes boss-cat. The
film changes gear when our hero returns to Edwardian Britain and
his ancestral home, Greystoke. Torn between two cultures,
confused by his love for Jane, desolated by the loss of his
grandfather (man) and his father (ape), he undergoes...culture
schlock. It is here that Greystoke pops its valves, pushing a
simple yarn to the point of philosophical overload. Rhetoric
apart, the film offers some stirring entertainment, and a
memorable ham sandwich from Richardson, allowed to steal the
show as the grandfather in what proved to be his last film.
Blu-ray Release date: July 16th,
2013
Songs in the Key of Life
BD-Audio - Originally
released in 1976, the prolific Songs in the Key of Life is a
milestone in the career of Stevie Wonder and the last of five
consecutive albums widely hailed as his 'classic period'. From
his sharp commentaries on American social history and pro-peace
supplications to some of his most intimate professions of love,
Songs In The Key of Life cast Wonder's music further beyond R&B,
funk and disco than ever before. More sprawling than Innervisions and Talking Book, the highly ambitious and
experimental double LP became the best-selling and most
critically acclaimed album of his career and it went on to win
four Grammy Awards including Best Male Pop Vocal and Album of
the Year. Highlights include the indelible classics "Isn't She
Lovely", "Sir Duke", "I Wish",
"Pastime Paradise", "Summer Soft" - all found on this Blu-ray audio album.
Blu-ray Audio Release date:
October 30th, 2013
The Long Memory - Phillip
Davidson (John Mills) is released from prison after serving
twelve years for a murder he didn’t commit. He holes up in a
bleak, remote shack on the Marshes, where he plots his revenge
against those who lied at his trial. (A flashback provides us
the details: a smuggling job goes sour, and Davidson is blamed
for the death of a man who, in fact, is not dead. His
girlfriend, Fay—who, in one of the film’s neat little ironies,
subsequently marries a police superintendent)—is coerced by her
father to lie about the identity of the man who was burned in
the boat fire that followed the altercation). DVD Release
Date: August 7th, 2012
Never Let Go - John
Cummings is one of life s near failures. His job as a salesman
is not going well. So, in a last ditch effort to impress his
firm, he buys an expensive car that he cannot afford. The
uninsured car is stolen and he is told by the police that there
is a large car theft racket in the area, and that he is unlikely
to see it again. Cummings loses his job and, near breaking
point, he vows to retrieve his car no matter what the cost. He
begins to delve into a sinister criminal underworld with
potentially lethal consequences. A gritty, violent, British film
noir that features Peter Sellers in a rare dramatic role, as a
ruthless and sadistic crime boss. VCI DVD Release Date: June
19th, 2012
I Used To Be Darker - When
nineteen-year-old Irish runaway Taryn (Deragh Campbell) turns up
on the doorstep of her American relatives Bill (Ned Oldham) and
his singer wife Kim (Kim Taylor), they welcome her presence even
as they are dissolving their marriage. Also just back from the
Hamptons is their daughter Abby (Hannah Gross), an aspiring
actress resentful of her mother's new relationship with a
younger bandmate as well as Taryn's seeming willingness to take
her place as a more agreeable daughter substitute. When they
discover that Taryn has been in the country for the last year
without her parents' knowledge and is pregnant, her American
relatives prod Taryn to mend her fractured relationship with her
mother even as they grow more distant from one another. DVD
Release Date: January 28th, 2014
Mara - Lovely Jenny
(Angelica Jansson) has been suffering from terrifyingly
realistic nightmares since she was a child when her unstable
mother brutally murdered her father; so, naturally she is
perturbed about returning to her old family home in the country
for a get-together with her cousin Cissi (Cecilia Samuelsson)
and her boyfriend Philip (Philip Hansell), nice guy Jakob
(Martin Brandt) and bad girl Stina (Emelie Frantz Nilsson). Her
concerns turn out to be not without merit when she wakes up one
morning covered in blood and surrounded by the police; but is
she really responsible for the possible deaths of her missing
friends, or is her mother - who she has since has not been in
the asylum all this time - responsible for the bloodbath? DVD
Release Date: January 13th, 2014
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