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Death in Venice
BD - Based on the classic
novella by Thomas Mann, this late-career masterpiece from
Luchino Visconti is a meditation on the nature of art, the
allure of beauty, and the inescapability of death. A fastidious
composer reeling from a disastrous concert, Gustav von
Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde, in an exquisitely nuanced performance)
travels to Venice to recover. There, he is struck by a vision of
pure beauty in the form of a young boy named Tadzio (Björn
Andrésen), his infatuation developing into an obsession even as
rumors of a plague spread through the city. Setting Mann’s story
of queer desire and bodily decay against the sublime music of
Gustav Mahler, Death in Venice is one of cinema’s most
exalted literary adaptations, as sensually rich as it is
allegorically resonant. Blu-ray
Release Date: February 19th, 2019
The Midnight Man
BD - Screen legend Burt
Lancaster stars as Jim Slade, a former Chicago policeman who has
just been released from prison for shooting his wife’s lover.
He’s offered and takes a job as a campus night watchman at
Jordon College. When a coed, the daughter of a prominent
senator, is murdered and the local sheriff (Harris Yulin) tries
to pin the crime on a creepy night janitor (Charles Tyner),
Slade decides to start his own unauthorized investigation that
takes the lid off the hornets’ nest. Lancaster and Roland Kibbee
co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed this top-notch murder
mystery. Kino Blu-ray Release
Date: February 26th, 2019
Horror Express
BD - Horror royalty and
Hammer alumni Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee reunite for this
tale of mad monks, primitive humanoids and bloodthirsty zombies
set aboard a train bound for Moscow all aboard the Horror
Express! Renowned anthropologist Saxton (Lee) boards the
Trans-Siberian Express with a crate containing the frozen
remains of a primitive humanoid which, he believes, may prove to
be the missing link in human evolution. But all hell breaks
loose when the creature thaws out, turning out to be not quite
as dead as once thought! Arrow Blu-ray
Release Date: February 11th, 2019
Monster on the Campus
BD - In this sci-fi film, a
college professor must deal with the cataclysmic consequences
that ensue when a transmogrifying dragonfly bites a prehistoric
fish from Madagascar. Soon after the bite, the strange fish
becomes gigantic and begins passing on its new ability to morph
all it comes in contact with back into their primal forms. When
it bites a dog, the dog becomes a wolf. When some fish slime
ends up in the professor's pipe, the professor put it to his
lips, and he turns into a rampaging Neanderthal with a very
large stone-axe that he freely wields around the terrified
college campus. Bloody mayhem ensues.
Blu-ray Release Date: January 24th, 2019
Berlin Alexanderplatz
BD - Rainer Werner
Fassbinder's controversial, fifteen-hour-plus Berlin
Alexanderplatz, based on Alfred Döblin's great modernist
novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who,
at age thirty-four, had already made forty films. Fassbinder’s
immersive epic, restored in 2006 and now available on DVD in
this country for the first time, follows the hulking, childlike
ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to
"become an honest soul" amid the corrosive urban landscape of
Weimar-era Germany. With equal parts cynicism and humanity,
Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling
to survive in a viciously uncommon time. Criterion
Blu-ray Release Date: February
12th, 2019
Disobedience
BD - When her estranged
rabbi father suddenly passes away, Ronit (Rachel Weisz) returns
from New York to the north London Orthodox Jewish community she
rejected years previously after a scandalous transgression.
Ronit's presence immediately courts further controversy when she
unknowingly runs into Esti (Rachel McAdams), the wife of her
strictly religious cousin Dovid (Alessandro Nivola) and the
woman for whom she shared an illicit attraction in their
childhood. This happy reunion soon reignites the two women s
burning, long-unrequited passions, an act of defiance that could
alter the course of their lives forever.
Blu-ray Release Date: February 4th,
2019
To Sleep With Anger
BD - Paul Butler plays
Gideon who is has retired and lives comfortably in a Los Angeles
suburb with his family close by. He remembers the old-style
traditions and his deep south roots which helped form his value
system. He raises chickens in the back yard and goes to church
regularly with his devout wife. He fears the recent loss of an
old charm will affect his family and current lifestyle. Old
friend Harry Mention (Danny Glover) comes to town and stays with
Gideon. Trouble seems to follow Harry and his indirect meddling
starts to initiate big problems. With no explanation Gideon
falls terribly ill from a stroke unable to move or communicate.
More family trouble ensues as one of his sons finds his marriage
slowly dissolving. With a shamefully joyous ending the old charm
reappears to play a big part in the violent turn of
circumstances. Director Burnett shows a simple family oriented
existence with consistent camera movement and a playful and
subtle narrative. Blu-ray
Release Date: February 26th, 2019
La Vérité
BD - Beautiful, troubled
Dominique Marceau (Brigitte Bardot) came to bohemian Paris to
escape the suffocation of provincial life, only to wind up in a
courtroom, accused of a terrible crime: the murder of her lover
(Band of Outsiders’ Sami Frey). As the trial commences
and the lawyers begin tangling over Dominique’s fate, the
Oscar-nominated La vérité, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique),
delves into her past, reconstructing her struggle to find a
foothold in the city. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of an
impulsive young woman misunderstood and mistreated by those
around her, and of her ultimately tragic affair with an
up-and-coming conductor. With an astonishing performance by
Bardot, Clouzot’s affecting and intricately constructed film—a
huge late-career success for the French master—renders a harsh
verdict against a hypocritical and moralistic society.
Blu-ray Release Date: February
12th, 2019
The Wild Boys
BD - Writer-director
Bertrand Mandico's psychedelic action-fantasy features five male
teenagers (who are all portrayed by actresses) on a voyage of
redemption after collectively murdering their teacher. They find
their authoritative Dutch captain's efforts to tame their wild
instincts intolerable and stage a mutiny, which leaves them
stranded on a mystic island with mysterious properties.
Blu-ray Release Date: December
11th, 2018
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
BD - Sam Peckinpah followed
The Wild Bunch with
this intimate, eccentric, appealing 1970 comedy, which treats
many of the same themes in a soft, regretful mode. As Hogue, the
tapped-out prospector who has no one but God to talk to in the
middle of his yellow desert, Jason Robards puts his theatrical
gestures to good use; he's rarely seemed so at home in a movie.
But the film belongs to Stella Stevens, who, as the prostitute
who moves in with Hogue, shows the kind of warmth and spirit
that would have made her a major star had she not been pinioned
by changing tastes. Blu-ray
Release Date: June 6th, 2017
Super Fly (1972)
BD - Priest (Ron O'Neal), a
suave top-rung New York City drug dealer, decides that he wants
to get out of his dangerous trade. Working with his reluctant
friend, Eddie (Carl Lee), Priest devises a scheme that will
allow him make a big deal and then retire. When a desperate
street dealer informs the police of Priest's activities, Priest
is forced into an uncomfortable arrangement with corrupt
narcotics officers. Setting his plan in motion, he aims to both
leave the business and stick it to the man.
Blu-ray Release Date: June 26th,
2018
Do the Right Thing (Steelbook)
BD - The hottest day of the
year explodes on-screen in this vibrant look at a day in the
life of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Featuring a stellar
ensemble cast that includes Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee,
Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Robin Harris, Samuel L.
Jackson, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez, and John Turturro, Spike Lee’s
powerful portrait of urban racial tensions sparked controversy
while earning popular and critical praise.
Blu-ray Release Date: February
12th, 2019
The Glass House
BD - A taut, tense trip down
nightmare alley and as devastating an experience as one could
stomach, making this film one of the most shocking of its genre.
In grim and often graphic detail, the film follows the
introduction into the system of a new prison guard (Clu Gulager),
a man full of high ideals and moral intentions, but totally
ill-equipped and unable to contain the corruption and
degradation he encounters within. When two new inmates, a
college professor (Alan Alda) and a young teenager become the
target for the brutal and sadistic gang leader (Vic Morrow),
they find nowhere to run and no one to run to.
Blu-ray Release Date: November 6th,
2018
Shoah: Four Sisters
BD - Paula Biren, Ruth
Elias, Ada Lichtman, Hanna Marton: Four Jewish women, witnesses
and survivors of the most insane and pitiless barbarism, and
who, for that reason alone, but for many others also, deserve to
be inscribed forever into the memory of humankind. What they
have in common, beside the specific horrors to which each of
them were subjected, is a searingly sharp, almost-physical
intelligence, which rejects all pretence or faulty reasoning. In
a word, idealism. Filmed by Claude Lanzmann during the
preparation of what would become Shoah, each of these four
extraordinary women deserved a film in their own right, to fully
illustrate their exceptional fibre, and to reveal through their
gripping accounts four little-known chapters of the
extermination. Blu-ray Release
Date: February 18th, 2019
Fangs of the Living Dead
BD - Beautiful fashion model
Sylvia Morel (Anita Ekberg) receives news that she has inherited
a castle from her uncle. Her curiosity leads her to journey to a
remote village to see her new house. Once there, she learns of
her family’s history and soon falls under the spell of her
uncle. He wants her to become the new matriarch of the family …
a clan of vampires! This chilling tale of bloodsuckers was
directed by Spanish horror director Amando de Ossorio.
Blu-ray Release Date: March 6th,
2018
Daughters of Satan
BD - Be careful what you
witch for with this spellbinding thriller that delves into the
realms of ancient covens and the conquistadors who loathe them.
Tom Selleck delivers a commanding performance as James
Robertson, an antique dealer living in Manila. James buys a
Spanish painting dating back to 1592 from an art gallery ...
because the painting depicts three witches being burned at the
stake and one of the witches has an uncanny resemblance to
James’ wife, Chris. But the similarity turns out to be much more
than a coincidence when Chris becomes possessed by the spirit of
her evil doppelganger. Blu-ray
Release Date: April 24th, 2018
Lady Ice
BD - In this stylish caper
drama, Andy Hammond (Donald Sutherland) is a detective working
with an insurance company who is investigating the theft of $3
million in diamonds. While Andy is initially eager to crack the
case and bring the burglars to justice, his attitudes begin to
shift when he meets Paula Booth (Jennifer O'Neill), a wealthy
and beautiful woman who whose father Paul (Patrick Magee) is
well-known as a "fence" for stolen goods -- and is the prime
suspect in the robbery. Robert Duvall appears in a key
supporting role as Ford Pierce, a straight-arrow police
detective working with Andy to find the missing gems.
Blu-ray Release Date: October 23rd,
2018
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