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Looking For a Star
BR
- Andy Lau plays billionaire developer Sam, who comes to Macau
for a stay at the MGM Grand where he and his two closest
assistants (Denise Ho and Lam Ka Wah) make a pact to not walk
away from love. It's a hard contract to keep since each of them,
and their would-be counterparts have the usual rationalizations
handy to keep them single and, in a couple of cases, miserable.
Sam meets Milan (Shu Qi), a nightclub dancer and croupier, and
pursues her, keeping his identity secret.
Blu-ray
Release date: April 8th, 2009
Made in U.S.A. - With its
giddily complex noir plot and color-drenched widescreen images,
Made in U.S.A. was a final burst of exuberance from
Jean-Luc Godard’s early sixties barrage of delirious
movie-movies. Yet this chaotic crime thriller and acidly funny
critique of consumerism—starring Anna Karina as the most
brightly dressed private investigator in film history, searching
for a former lover who might have been assassinated—also points
toward the more political cinema that would come to define
Godard. Featuring characters with names such as Richard Nixon,
Robert McNamara, David Goodis, and Doris Mizoguchi, and
appearances by a slapstick Jean-Pierre Léaud and a sweetly
singing Marianne Faithfull, this piece of pop art is like a
Looney Tunes rendition of The Big Sleep gone New Wave.
DVD Release Date: July 20th, 2009
Chamagodo
BR
- As I consider how to put my thoughts and feelings about this
video, I am suddenly taken with the idea of documentary as a
kind of high-tech zoo. Both permit a part of the population,
usually city- dwellers like ourselves who have access to the
means to watch these things, to peer into a world that they are
unlikely to have any contact with otherwise. In the present
case, the subject is ourselves, not so much as we, who are
watching this, are, but we who we once were: people who actually
live their traditions and beliefs, not simply honor them a few
of times a year on designated holidays.
Blu-ray
Release date: November 7, 2008
The Black Book - Anthony
Mann’s The Black Book (1949). One of the great
unacknowledged forms of noir is costume drama. I can’t think of
a better example than this campy, hugely enjoyable thriller
about the French Revolution—-also known as Reign of Terror, with
Robert Cummings, Richard Basehart, and Arlene Dahl--brilliantly
shot by John Alton, the greatest noir cinematographer. I even
prefer it to Mann’s more conventional noirs in contemporary
settings, many of them also shot by Alton. VCI's Noir Double
Feature came out March 31st, 2009
The Amazing Mr. X - THE
AMAZING MR. X is a very misleading title for one of the most
haunting and original film noirs ever released. It gives the
impression of a diabolical criminal genius on the rampage or
perhaps a comedy about a milquetoast with fantastic powers. The
movie is neither of these. It's a stunningly beautiful and
unpredictable look at the phoney spiritualism racket as well as
ghosts both real and imagined. An immediate favorable comparison
can be made to the works of Val Lewton. THE AMAZING MR. X
straddles the line between Lewton's gothic but plausible horrors
and great film noir works like MURDER MY SWEET and OUT
OF THE PAST. Is it a ghost story? A romance? A crime tale?
The answer is, it is all of these things and more. VCI's Noir
Double Feature came out March 31st, 2009
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
- In 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (2 ou 3 choses que je
sais d’elle), Jean-Luc Godard beckons us ever closer, whispering
in our ears as narrator. About what? Money, sex, fashion, the
city, love, language, war: in a word, everything. Among the
legendary French filmmaker’s finest achievements, the film takes
as its ostensible subject the daily life of Juliette Janson
(Marina Vlady), a housewife from the Paris suburbs who
prostitutes herself for extra money. Yet this is only a template
for Godard to spin off into provocative philosophical tangents
and gorgeous images. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is
perhaps Godard’s most revelatory look at consumer culture, shot
in ravishing widescreen color by Raoul Coutard. Criterion DVD
Release Date: July 21st, 2009
Knowing
BR
- "Knowing" is among the best science-fiction films I've
seen -- frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs
to be, rather awesome. In its very different way, it is
comparable to the great "Dark City," by the same
director, Alex Proyas. That film was about the hidden nature of
the world men think they inhabit, and so is this one.
Blu-ray
Release date: July 7th, 2009
The Finances of the Grand Duke
- The 1994 restoration confirms that this is indeed a farce by
FW Murnau, featuring such uncharacteristic ingredients as a
madcap Russian princess, a happy go lucky duke, stolen letters,
disguises and the like; and featuring Max Schreck, Nosferatu
himself, as a comic revolutionary. Murnau takes it all at a fast
clip, combining extensive location shooting with a couple of
elaborate studio sets, and bringing off two or three shots
which, independent of context, are as haunting as any in the
canon. Agreeable yet quite forgettable, except for collectors of
directorial anomalies, and Murnau-ites on the hunt for
correspondences, gay subtexts, etc. DVD Release Date: March
17th, 2009
The Haunted Castle - Though
this counts as Murnau's ninth film, the first person camera eye
and sweeping movements innovated in Der Letzte Mann
(1924) still lay in the future. With none of the flashing
lights, and extravagant tracking shots of the later films,
Schloss Vogelöd offers a different clarity, its subtly
unsettling images resonating especially with its immediate
successor, Nosferatu (1922), cinema's definitive vampire
film. DVD Release Date: March 17, 2009
Tokyo!
BR
- This triptych of short films about Asia's most misunderstood
metropolis features three directors known for cinematically
capturing the uncanny, and showing the individual oddity and
anxiety that lurks beneath the surface of our smooth social
interaction. While the two Western filmmakers, Michel Gondry and
Leos Carax, simply relocate their favorite themes to Tokyo, the
Korean director Bong Joon-ho more successfully allows the city
to dictate the style and content of his segment.
Blu-ray
Release date: June 30th, 2009
À l'aventure - "A sexually
unfulfilled young woman embarks on a series of graphic erotic
encounters and becomes involved with a student of psychoanalysis
who offers to put her under hypnosis. Yes, the notorious
Jean-Claude Brisseau, director of 'The Exterminating Angels'
and 'Secret Things,' is back with his latest provocation.
Another idiosyncratic philosophical meditation on the enigmas of
female sexuality, it features the director's latest discovery,
Carole Brana. Pretentious smut for high-brows, a dirty old man's
fantasies writ large, or a profound and daring exploration of
society's sexual taboos? You decide." DVD Release Date: June
22nd, 2009
Two Lovers
BR
- Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is focused on his inner demons. His
fiancee left him -- dumped him --and he has moved back to his
childhood room, still with the "2001" poster on the wall. He
makes customer deliveries for his dad's dry cleaning business.
Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) is the daughter of another of another dry
cleaner, in the same Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Her father plans to buy his father's business, and both families
think it would be ideal if Sandra and Leonard married.
Blu-ray
Release date: June 30th, 2009
Tokyo Sonata
BR
- The story concerns a Japanese businessman, husband, and father
of two, who unexpectedly loses his job. Unable to break the news
to his devoted wife, he dresses up every morning and pretends to
go to work, instead wasting the days away with a former
classmate who is also unemployed. Although they aren't aware of
his contradictory behaviour, his family begins to disobey him
nonetheless. His teenage son enlists in the Army in order to
fight for the United States, while his adolescent son goes
behind his back to take piano lessons. The longer his charade
goes on, the less control he has as patriarch, creating an even
deeper divide between him and his family.
Blu-ray
Release Date: June 22nd, 2009
Three Films By Marc Isaacs
- A collection of shorts by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Marc
Isaacs. LIFT is a quietly fascinating meditation on the
mundanities of London life. Installing himself inside the lift
of a high-rise block of council flats, Isaacs and his camera
patiently observe the residents as they go about their daily
business. As each of his subjects enters the lift, it's
interesting to note their reactions to him being there; some are
suspicious, others curious, and then there are those who seem
more comfortable in his presence. Also included are the films
TRAVELLERS and CALAIS - THE LAST BORDER, each
revealing a poignant and truly original perspective on modern
British life. DVD Release Date: June 29th, 2009
Flawless
BR
- At the heart of Flawless lies a mystery - one that
takes both the viewer and the characters by surprise and
requires some ingenuity to unravel. While some members of the
audience may guess at what has happened (it is foreshadowed,
albeit in a subtle manner), most will not until director Michael
Radford is almost ready for the "reveal." As is often the case
with heist movies, this one is riddled with minor
inconsistencies and larger holes, but many of these are not
apparent during the initial viewing and don't become clear until
after the end credits have rolled. The rigorous tying of loose
ends is not the goal of Flawless' screenplay.
Blu-ray
Release date: June 30th, 2009
Eldorado - In “Eldorado,”
a road movie that poignantly juggles absurdism and melancholy,
the summertime landscape of the Wallonia region of Belgium is
filmed to resemble a miniaturized American West. The soundtrack
for this story of two mutually suspicious strangers who
establish a tentative bond on a highway to nowhere echoes the
twang of Ennio Morricone with a hint of parody. DVD Release
Date: July 14th, 2009
Home
BR
- The aerial photography of the opening chapter or so is
generally pretty spectacular stuff, but I failed to understand
the connection between what amounts to a series of stunning
graphic designs and the narration. At times, even when the image
content is clear enough, the point of the commentary and the
images don’t line up.
Blu-ray
Release date: June 9th, 2009
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