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The Magnificent Seven
BD - A bandit (Eli Wallach)
terrorizes a small Mexican farming village each year. Several of
the village elders send three of the farmers into the United
States to search for gunmen to defend them. They end up with 7 (Yul
Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson etc.), each of whom
comes for a different reason. They must prepare the town to
repulse an army of over 100 bandits who will arrive seeking
food. An oft recognized Americanization of the Japanese Kurosawa
film Seven Samurai. Blu-ray
Release Date: May 11th, 2010
Carlito's Way
BD - Al Pacino, in first
collaboration with director Brian De Palma since Scarface, plays
a Puerto Rican, Carlito Brigante, an ex-con who, within the
time-honored code of nobility, and tries to go straight. His
character's grace and dignity help carry the duality of the film
and bind us through his honorable noble-thief intentions.
Penelope Ann Miller is uncharacteristically playing a stripper
(the good) and is certainly capable of pulling some strings of
sensuality, but the true star, and continually proven best actor
of his generation, in one of his least recognizable, but most
memorable, roles as dishonest Jewish lawyer Kleinfeld (the bad)
is Sean Penn... Blu-ray Release
Date: May 18th, 2010
Tidal Wave
BD - Tidal Wave is the
Korean remake of Mark Robson's 1974 movie, Earthquake,
complete with the predicted trembler (and ensuing tsunami),
ignored by the powers that be (actually just one particularly
dim bureaucrat) for fear of ending up with kimchi on his face.
There's even a live power line about to electrocute several
would-be victims, a heroic life thrown away for one less worthy,
and people rescued now only to swept away later.
Blu-ray Release date: May 11th,
2010
Elektra
BD - In Marvel's
incarnations Elektra has no superpowers, though she is one hell
of an athlete. Here she is arrayed against several foes that do.
It only makes sense to grant her six-billion dollar abilities,
not that any of them actually level the playing field. Anyhow,
back to her aborted assignment: Elektra is sent to dispatch a
father and daughter (Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout) who live
peaceably for the moment in a nearby cabin. As it happens, those
evil forces we were talking about a while ago, known as The
Hand, are about to descend on said happy family and send them to
kingdom come. "Just who are you" Elektra demands as she fends
off the evildoers. And does she get a straight answer? Not on
your Sai! Blu-ray Release date:
May, 4th, 2010
Emmanuelle
BD - "Emmanuelle" is a
silly, classy, enjoyable erotic film that became an all-time
box-office success in France. It's not remotely significant
enough to deserve that honor, but in terms of its genre
(soft-core skin flick) it's very well done: lushly photographed
on location in Thailand, filled with attractive and intriguing
people, and scored with brittle, teasing music. Now that
hard-core porno has become passe, it's a relief to see a movie
that drops the gynecology and returns to a certain amount of
sexy sophistication. Blu-ray
Release date: March 1st, 2010
Nine
BD - Like Chicago, Nine owes its existence to a
Broadway musical, and both in turn owe theirs to earlier
non-musical movies: Ginger Rogers' 1942 Roxie Hart and Fellini's
quasi-autobiographical study of writer's block and sexual
occupation in 8 1/2. The first is a delicious screwball comedy,
the second: a masterpiece of sight and insight, vision and
dream, performance and character. It took 20 years for 8 1/2 to
gain another half-point and, in the process lose its soul to
vapid music and lyrics, despite which the musical ran for over
700 performances on Broadway and earned a Tony. It even scored a
successful remake in 2003 with Antonio Banderas as Guido.
Blu-ray Release date: May 4th, 2010
City of the Living Dead -
When Father Thomas (Fabrizio Javone) hangs himself, the
sacrilegious act causes the Gates of Hell to open beneath the
Dunwich cemetery. Mary (Catriona MacColl), a medium, witnesses
this event during a séance in New York and apparently dies of
shock but wakes up to find herself entombed in a buried coffin.
Fortunately, meddling reporter Peter Bell (Christopher George)
comes to her rescue (although he nearly kills her in the
process) and together they hit the road in search of Dunwhich to
shut the Gates of Hell before All Saints' Day when the dead will
walk the earth but strange (read: gory) things are already
beginning to happen in the town since Father Thomas killed
himself. Arrow DVD Release Date: May 24th, 2010
Daybreakers
BD - Fresh from the success
of their inventive take on the zombie genre, UNDEAD masterminds
Michael and Peter Spierig direct Ethan Hawke in an ambitious
tale of a futuristic Earth populated entirely by vampires, and
the efforts made by the creatures to ensure that their food
supply doesn't run out as humankind is faced with extinction.
The year is 2017, and a vampire plague has turned most of the
planet's human population into bloodsucking ghouls. As the
population of mortals fast begins to dwindle, a resourceful team
of vampires sets out to capture and farm every remaining human
while simultaneously researching a consumable blood substitute.
Just when all hope seems lost, a secret is discovered that may
provide the key to saving the human race.
Blu-ray Release date: May 11th,
2010
Invictus
BD - It is a very good film.
It has moments evoking great emotion, as when the black and
white members of the presidential security detail (hard-line ANC
activists and Afrikaner cops) agree with excruciating difficulty
to serve together. And when Damon's character -- Francois
Pienaar, as the team captain -- is shown the cell where Mandela
was held for those long years on Robben Island. My wife, Chaz,
and I were taken to the island early one morning by Ahmed
Kathrada, one of Mandela's fellow prisoners, and yes, the movie
shows his very cell, with the thin blankets on the floor. You
regard that cell and you think, here a great man waited in faith
for his rendezvous with history.
Blu-ray Release date: May 18th, 2010
Inland Empire
BD - The question every
artist faces, if they're lucky – or doomed, as the case may be -
is: Where do you go after you achieve success with your artistic
vision? For my money, the most intriguing film of 2001 was
Mulholland Dr. I imagine that David Lynch would have agreed with
me; but more to the point, in Mulholland Dr. Lynch combined his
usual ingredients into a satisfying, extravagant dreamscape of
impressionist and expressionist proportions that seemed to both
fulfill his intentions and please his audience.
Blu-ray Release date: April 19th,
2010
Katyn
BD - In 1940, some 15,000 officers of the Polish
army were rounded up, transported in sealed buses to a forest
named Katyn, shot in the back of their heads by the Russian KGB
and buried in mass graves. That is the simple truth. When the
nation was occupied by both the Nazis and Soviets, their deaths
were masked in silence. Then the Nazis dug up the graves and
blamed the deaths on the Soviets. After the defeat of Hitler and
the Soviet occupation of Poland, history was rewritten and the
official version blamed the massacre on the Nazis.
Blu-ray Release date: March 22nd,
2010
Dolan's Cadillac
BD - As an adaptation of
Stephen King’s short story of the same name, Jeff Beesley’s
“Dolan’s Cadillac” is probably too straightforward and
unambitious for its own good, which may be ironic to hear, as
most of King’s stories that have gone off the rails as movies
have been because of their lack of faith to the source material.
Although it’s been ages since I last read the King story, much
of the movie adaptation feels familiar, and I can’t say if the
cinematic version deviates significantly enough from the story
to crow about. Blu-ray Release
date: April 6th, 2010
The Last Emperor
BD - Bernardo Bertolucci's
The Last Emperor won nine Academy Awards, unexpectedly sweeping
every category in which it was nominated—quite a feat for a
challenging, multilayered epic directed by an Italian and
starring an international cast. Yet the power and scope of the
film was, and remains, undeniable—the life of Emperor Pu Yi, who
took the throne at age three, in 1908, before witnessing decades
of cultural and political upheaval, within and without the walls
of the Forbidden City. Recreating Ching dynasty China with
astonishing detail and unparalleled craftsmanship by
cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and production designer
Ferdinando Scarfiotti, The Last Emperor is also an intimate
character study of one man reconciling personal responsibility
and political legacy. Optimum Blu-ray
Release Date: April 19th, 2010
Stagecoach
BD - This is where it all
started. John Ford’s smash hit and enduring masterpiece
Stagecoach revolutionized the western, elevating it from B movie
to the A-list and establishing the genre as we know it today.
The quintessential tale of a group of strangers thrown together
into extraordinary circumstances, Stagecoach features
outstanding performances from Hollywood stalwarts Claire Trevor,
John Carradine, and Thomas Mitchell, and, of course, John Wayne,
in his first starring role for Ford, as the daredevil outlaw the
Ringo Kid. Superbly shot and tightly edited, Stagecoach (Ford’s
first trip to Monument Valley) is Hollywood storytelling at its
finest. Blu-ray Release Date:
May 25th, 2010
Fish Tank
BD - Mia, the 15-year-old
protagonist of “Fish Tank,” Andrea Arnold’s tough and brilliant
second feature, moves with such speed and fury that she seems to
be trying to flee not only from her bleak surroundings but also
from the movie itself. The narrow, nearly square frame boxes Mia
in, and Ms. Arnold’s on-the-run hand-held tracking shots
increase the sense of panicky claustrophobia. Living in a
cramped apartment in a British housing project that stands like
a cluster of megaliths in the middle of nowhere, Mia is at once
trapped and adrift, unable to contain or to express the feelings
seething beneath the blank, sullen mien she usually presents to
the world. Blu-ray Release date:
March 22nd, 2010
The Delightful Forest
BD - The plot revolves
around a young man named Wu Sung who is sent to prison after he
kills his adulteress sister in law and her lover. Shortly after
his arrival at Meng Chou, the wardens son approaches Wu Sung
with a chance to regain his freedom. All he has to do is remove
the thug who now occupies the warden's son's restaurant 'The
Delightful Forest'. Blu-ray
Release date: April 27th, 2010
Crossroads - With a lovely
new bride by his side and a diplomatic appointment imminent,
David Talbot sees his life on an upswing – if he is really David
Talbot. Blackmailers say he is actually a murderer and thief
named Jean Pelletier. As they present their evidence, Talbot,
whose past includes incidents of amnesia, begins to wonder if
he’s been living a lie. William Powell played an amnesiac for
laughs in I Love You Again, but here he invests Talbot with the
urgency and stunned disbelief of a man whose life is in sudden
upheaval. Hedy Lamarr (as Talbot’s resourceful bride), Basil
Rathbone and Claire Trevor cos-tar in this double- and
triple-cross tale located on a crossroads of uncertainty. DVD
Release Date: September 15th, 2009
Lightning Strikes Twice -
Richard Trevelyan (Richard Todd) was convicted of murdering his
wife, given an 11th-hour Death Row reprieve and freed under
unusual circumstances after retrial. But his past does not
matter to Shelley Carnes (Ruth Roman), an actress visiting the
Texas ranchland that Richard calls home. She’s fallen in love
with him. But after she becomes the second Mrs. Trevelyan,
Shelley is beset by doubts and fear. The director and
screenwriter of Bette Davis’s Beyond the Forest – King Vidor
(The Fountainhead) and Lenore Coffee (The End of the Affair) –
reteam in a richly atmospheric mix of mystery, romance and
murder sparked by a luminous cast that also includes Mercedes
McCambridge and Zachary Scott. DVD Release Date: September
1st, 2009
Walkabout
BD - A young sister and
brother are abandoned in the harsh Australian outback and must
learn to cope in the natural world, without their usual
comforts, in this hypnotic masterpiece from Nicolas Roeg. Along
the way, they meet a young aborigine on his “walkabout,” a rite
of passage in which adolescent boys are initiated into manhood
by journeying into the wilderness alone. Walkabout is a
thrilling adventure as well as a provocative rumination on time
and civilization. Blu-ray
Release Date: May 18th, 2010
The Double Life of Veronique
BD - Krzysztof Kieslowski's
international breakthrough remains one of his most beloved
films, a ravishing, mysterious rumination on identity, love, and
human intuition. Irène Jacob is incandescent as both Weronika, a
Polish choir soprano, and her double, Véronique, a French music
teacher. Though unknown to each other, the two women share an
enigmatic, purely emotional bond, which Kieslowski details in
gorgeous reflections, colors, and movements. Aided by Slawomir
Idziak's shimmering cinematography and Zbigniew Preisner's
haunting, operatic score, Kieslowski creates one of cinema's
most purely metaphysical works. The Double Life of Veronique is
an unforgettable symphony of feeling. Artificial Eye
Blu-ray Release Date: March 22nd,
2010 |
