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Wolf Guy
BD - A movie with Sonny Chiba as a
werewolf crime fighter, that also involves the Yakuza and a
supernatural tiger? Uh, yes please. Wolf Guy promises a wild
ride and it delivers, with outlandish moments and just over the
top craziness. The story starts out simple enough, with people
being murdered by an invisible tiger and a werewolf looking into
the case, but, wait what? As off the rails as that sounds, that
is just the start of this movie and trust me, it gets even
wilder. Blu-ray Release date: May 22nd - 23rd, 2017
Almost Human
BD - Guilio Sacchi (Tomas Milian) is a small-time
hood disillusioned with the crime syndicate for which he works.
Looking to make some big money fast, he and some friends kidnap
the beautiful Marilù (Laura Belli), the daughter of a
billionaire and demand 500 million Lira as ransom. However, hot
on his heels is Inspector Grandi (Henry Silva) a hardened cop
who only becomes more hell-bent on catching Guilio and his gang
with each corpse he finds! Director Lenzi reflects on the Years
of Lead in Italy, a time when terrorists caused chaos and police
action was judged as deficient... Blu-ray Release Date: May 1st,
2017
One, Two, Three
BD - Coarse Cold War satire, structured largely
as farce, with Cagney as the aggressive Coca-Cola executive in
West Berlin, trying desperately to win advancement by selling
the beverage to Russia, and simultaneously required to prevent
his boss from discovering that the latter's bird-brained
daughter has married a rabid Commie from East Berlin. Marvellous
one-liners, of course, and Cagney, spitting out his lines with
machine-gun rapidity in his final film until his belated
appearance in 'Ragtime', is superb (and superbly backed by a
fine cast). Blu-ray Release date: May 30th, 2017
Pelle the Conqueror
BD - When his wife dies, Lassefar (Max von
Sydow) takes his 12-year-old son, Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard), from
their home in Sweden to Denmark in search of a better life.
Signing on as laborers at a large farm, father and son undergo
numerous trials, including prejudice against immigrants and
run-ins with those more powerful than themselves in both the
physical and the social sense. Over the course of a year, young
Pelle learns what it takes to survive in a harsh and unforgiving
world. Blu-ray Release Date: May 30th, 2017
Early Women Filmmakers
BD - International in scope, this
groundbreaking collection features over 10 hours of material,
comprised of 25 films spanning 1902-1943, including many rare
titles not widely available until now, from shorts to feature
films, live-action to animation, commercial narratives to
experimental works. Directors include Alice Guy Blaché, Lois
Weber, Mabel Normand, Madeline Brandeis, Germaine Dulac, Olga
Preobrazhenskaia, Marie-Louise Iribe, Lotte Reiniger, Claire
Parker, Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport), Leni Riefenstahl,
Mary Ellen Bute, Dorothy Arzner, and Maya Deren.
Blu-ray Release
Date: May 26th, 2017
Those Redheads From Seattle 3-D
BD - In 1898, in Dawson, Yukon
Territory, Johnny Kisco's proposed Klondike Club comes under
attack by Vance Edmonds, the publisher of The Daily Breeze
newspaper. To silence Vance, Mike Yurkil, Kisco's partner, sets
his warehouse on fire, but Vance manages to get the paper out
despite the setback. Yurkil then shoots Vance as he is going to
mail a letter to his family in Seattle. Later, in Seattle, Mrs.
Edmonds and her daughters, redheads Kathie, Pat and Connie, and
young blonde Nell read the letter, unaware that Vance has been
shot. After Mrs. Edmonds reads that because of financial
setbacks, Vance cannot send for them, she decides to pack up her
family and go to Dawson anyway. By the time they reach Skagway,
Alaska, the women have run out of money but are befriended by
song-and-dance man Joe Keenan. Blu-ray Release date: May 23rd,
2017
The Hearse
BD - Jane Hardy, a recently divorced teacher from San
Francisco, decides to spend the summer at the large old country
home willed to her by her aunt. However, upon arriving in the
sleepy town where her aunt lived, she's met with hostility from
the locals and slowly begins to discover her aunt's dark
connections to witchcraft and the occult, all the while being
menaced by a large black hearse that mysteriously drives near
her house in the dead of night... Blu-ray Release Date: May
30th, 2017
The Sweet Body of Deborah
BD - Deborah (Carroll Baker) and
Marcel (Jean Sorel) return to Geneva from their honeymoon in
Europe. Marcel learns of his former fiancée Susan's suicide, and
is confronted by a man named Philip (Luigi Pistilli) who accuses
him of murdering her. Marcel begins to receive threats from
someone who holds him responsible for Susan's death. His new
bride Deborah also becomes the target of these threats, and a
weird neighbor named Robert with voyeuristic tendencies (George
Hilton) begins fixating on her as well. The film was considered
very sexy for its time, showing brief glimpses of Carroll
Baker's nudity and Ida Galli's fetishistic clothing.
Blu-ray
Release date: December 1st, 2015
Housekeeping
BD - Lucille (Andrea Burchill) and Ruth (Sara
Walker) come to live with their off-the-wall Aunt Sylvie
(Christine Lahti) after their mother kills herself. From
sleeping on park benches to methodically stacking tin cans into
pyramids, Sylvie's quirks are at first hard to get used to.
While Ruth eventually grows fond of the woman's irrepressible
spirit, Lucille starts to resent her aunt's behavior --
especially when it brands them as outcasts among their small
town's perplexed residents. Indicator Blu-ray Release date: May
22nd, 2017
Blackenstein
BD - You may have heard of this infamous
Blaxploitation/Horror hybrid, but the real story is even more
bizarre: In 1973,
criminal-lawyer-turned-wannabe-monster-movie-mogul Frank R. Saletri wrote and produced this grindhouse hit about a Black
soldier mortally wounded in Vietnam transformed into a rampaging
monster by an L.A. mad scientist. Almost a decade later, Seletri
himself would be murdered gangland-style in a crime that remains
debated and unsolved to this day. Blu-ray Release date: May
30th, 2017
The Wild One
BD - "What are you rebelling against?" asks
someone. "What've you got?" responds surly, leather-jacketed
motorcycle punk Marlon Brando. It comes as a disappointment to
discover that The Wild One, the quintessential Brando "rebel"
film, is at base a traditional "misunderstood youth vs. the
nasty system" effort, with a particularly banal finale. Based on
a true incident, the film begins with Brando and his motorcyle
gang invading a small town after having been kicked out of a
cycle competition (but not before stealing the second-prize
trophy). Brando's bikers raise hell all day, but some of the
townsfolk are shown to be little better than the invaders.
Sheriff Robert Keith, whose daughter (Murphy) has gone fond of
Brando, finally responds to the bikers' destructiveness by
jailing Lee Marvin, leader of a rival gang. When Marvin's
buddies goes on a rampage, Brando exhibits his essential decency
by safely escorting the sheriff's daughter out of the melee.
Indicator Blu-ray Release date: May 22nd, 2017
Hardcore
BD - Writer-director Paul Schrader’s brilliant,
horrifying Hardcore (1979) follows the grim pilgrimage of a
Calvinist Midwestern businessman (the great George C. Scott)
searching for his vanished daughter in the scuzzy subculture of
the West Coast porn industry. In his effort to trace the girl,
he joins forces with a young hooker (Season Hubley) he hopes
will help; their growing emotional relationship is the beating
heart of this harrowing film. Shot by Michael Chapman, and with
a score by Jack Nitzsche. Indicator Blu-ray Release date: May
22nd, 2017
Call Northside 777
BD - One of the most impressive of Fox's
semi-documentary noir thrillers shot on location (here Chicago),
this sees Stewart as a hard-boiled newspaper reporter latching
on to a 'human interest' story of a woman slaving away for years
to save the money which may help free her son from prison, and
then setting out to prove the man innocent of murder. Besides
the generally strong performances and Joe MacDonald's fine
monochrome camera-work, what finally impresses about the film is
Stewart's gradual development from skeptical scoop-hunter to a
committed crusader for justice. Add to that the suggestion that
the police are less than willing to be proved wrong in their
conviction of Conte (it was a cop that he allegedly killed), and
you have an absorbingly intelligent thriller...
Blu-ray Release
Date: April 7th, 2017
The Marseille Trilogy
BD - In the 1930s, Marcel Pagnol, a
leading light of the Paris theater, set out for new horizons as
a filmmaker in his native Provence. His early masterpieces
Marius, Fanny, and César mix theatrical stagecraft with
realistic location photography to create an epic love story from
the fabric of everyday life. Gruff, sentimental César
(music-hall star Raimu) owns a waterfront bar in the Old Port of
Marseille where his son, Marius (Pierre Fresnay), wipes down
tables and dreams of a life at sea. The prosperous, middle-aged
sailmaker Panisse (Fernand Charpin) wants to wed Marius’s
sweetheart, Fanny (Orane Demazis), setting up a fateful romantic
triangle whose story unfolds across a generation in the films of
The Marseille Trilogy, which first earned Pagnol his place in
cinema history. “If Pagnol is not the greatest auteur of the
sound film,” critic André Bazin wrote, “he is in any case
something akin to its genius.”
Blu-ray Release date: June 20th,
2017
Two Films By Andrea Luka Zimmerman - Artangel Open
Winner, and the first director to be shortlisted for both the
Grierson and Jarman Awards, the work of filmmaker, artist and
cultural activist Andrea Luka Zimmerman presents tender
portraits of community and solidarity, exhibiting sentiments
almost entirely missing from our contemporary political
vocabulary. Her feature documentary Estate, a Reverie (2015),
celebrates her community's resilience in the face of the
impending demolition of their east London housing estate and the
passing of the utopian promise of social housing it once
offered. Taskafa, Stories of the Street (2013) is a film about
resistance and co-existence told through the lives of the street
dogs of Istanbul featuring text and readings by the late John
Berger. DVD Release Date: May 15th, 2017
Breakdown Lane - Traveling to the city to meet up with
her on-and-off boyfriend, Kirby (Whitney Moore) breaks down in
the middle of the desert. The soothing British voice on her
SUV's navigational system belonging to Max (Stephen Tyler
Howell) promises a tow truck that never comes. The next morning,
however, he more urgently warns her that she is safer insider
her tank-like vehicle than setting off on foot; and she
discovers why when masses of the living dead start dragging
themselves down the road. With Max as her only source of comfort
and guidance - after a butt-dialed bit of poetic justice meted
out to her cheating boyfriend - Kirby braves a band of looting
bikers (who feed on the zombies since actually getting bitten is
the only way to get infected) and an unhinged professor turned
derelict who uses the zombies as carthorses to get to
civilization and find her way to Max. DVD Release Date: May
16th, 2017
The Diary of a Nobody - Hugh Bonneville stars in this
classic BBC 4-part adaptation of one of Britain s best-loved
comic novels, adapted by Andrew Davies. The hapless Victorian
diarist Charles Pooter records the minutiae of life in the
suburbs with a dry wit, sarcasm and mostly misunderstood humour,
as he battles with impertinent tradesmen, exasperating friends
and his wayward son Lupin s various misdemeanours. DVD
Release Date: June 12th, 2017
Utopians - Hins, a dreamy boy who indulges in literature
and thirsts for philosophy, is overwhelmed by his charismatic
teacher, Antonio, who drags Hins and his religious girlfriend
Joey into uncharted erotic territories. The intriguing
appearance of Swan, a beautiful and intellectual lady, only adds
to their entanglement of sensuality and lust. What once seemed
like a path towards a surreal and unrestrained utopia is now
barred by a lifetime secret and a lie of the heart. Will Hins's
love for art and wisdom guide him through or will he lose
himself amid the chaos of eroticism? DVD Release Date: May
16th, 2017
Staying Vertical - Director Alain Guiraudie's follow-up
to his notorious hit
STRANGER BY THE LAKE is shapeless and less
compelling but not entirely without interest. Writer or
writer/director, gay or bisexual, creatively-blocked or looking
for inspiration, Leo (Damien Bonnard) first stops by the side of
the road to proposition handsome young Yoan (Basile Meilleurat)
who is gay but is either not attracted to Leo or put off by his
"have you thought about being in the movies" pick-up line. This
side trip leads to him strolling onto the land of shepherd
Jean-Louis (Raphaël Thiéry) who runs the farm with his restless
daughter Marie (India Hair) who has two children of her own.
Perhaps more fascinated by their way of life than Marie herself,
Leo ends up spending the night in her bed and returning to it
after a trip back to Paris to beg for another advance for a
script that does not exist. DVD Release Date: May 30th, 2017 |
