| |
A Prophet
BD - Malik El Djebena, the
Arab teen protagonist of his latest film, A Prophet,
faces the toughest trial yet: a Darwinian struggle for survival
inside a brutal French prison. Sent down for six years,
19-year-old Malik can't read or write, hasn't a family on the
outside nor a friend on the inside, and on his first day in jail
is violently mugged for his trainers. If only that was the worst
of it. We don't know what crime Malik was sentenced for, but it
obviously wasn't murder, because he almost combusts with panic
when the prison's Corsican gang boss Cesar Luciani (Niels
Arestrup) coerces him into bumping off an Arab inmate who is due
to testify against his interests. "I can't kill anyone," Malik
mutters forlornly to himself – but he must, and soon, otherwise
they are going to kill him. Blu-ray
Release Date: August 3rd, 2010
The Ghost Writer
BD - "The Ghost Writer"
is handsome, smooth and persuasive. It is a Well-Made Film.
Polanski at 76 provides a reminder of directors of the past who
were raised on craft, not gimmicks, and depended on a deliberate
rhythm of editing rather than mindless quick cutting. The film
immerses you in its experience. It's a reminder that you can
lose yourself in a story because all a film really wants to do
is tell it. Blu-ray Release
Date: August 3rd, 2010
Brewster McCloud - Though
it bears more than a few traces of the forced outrageousness
that marked Doran William Cannon's previous screenplay, for
Preminger's lamentable comedy Skidoo, Altman's unexpected
follow-up to MASH is pitched fairly successfully between
escapist fantasy and satirical comment on the same. Cort is the
Icarus figure attempting to become airborne in the Houston
Astrodome, Kellerman the sort of guardian angel who appears to
have wandered in from a Dennis Potter play, and Murphy the cop
mulling connections between bird shit and murder. DVD Release
Date: July 13th, 2010
Behind Convent Walls - The
fervent Mother Superior (Gabriella Giacobbe) oversees her
convent with a firm hand. When a little musical accompaniment to
the chapel cleaning turns into dancing and a little cuddling in
the confessional, she smashes a nun's prized violin. When she
discovers that a sister from an aristocratic family has been
seeing her lover, she shaves the girls head and makes her retake
her vows. She makes the butcher (Alessandro Partexano) wear
chastity goggles when he visits weekly and barely tolerates the
presence of the confessor's virile nephew Rodrigo (Howard Ross)
in the convent to study the folio. DVD Release Date: March
30th, 2010
Goto - Island of Love - The
island of Goto was separated from the mainland by a seaquake in
1887 and has remained isolated since. Goto III (Pierre Brasseur,
EYES WITHOUT A FACE) rules the island and its inhabitants
live and die at his whim. His wife Glossia (Ligia Branice of
Borowczyk's BEHIND CONVENT WALLS) falls in love with
handsome riding instructor Gono (Jean-Pierre Andréani, THE
STORY OF O) and they plan to flee the island on a rowboat
that has washed ashore (their hopes are dashed when Goto
childishly shoves it back into the sea after he loses his
balance trying to show off to his wife and falls into the
water). Meanwhile, court fly killer Grozo (Guy Saint-Jean) has
been killing his way up the social ladder (his coveting of
Glossia is evident when he tries to get a look-alike prostitute
to wear some of her gowns that he has pilfered) sees the
opportunity to seize the throne when he discovers Glossia's and
Gono's affair. DVD Release Date: May 25th, 2009
Road to Perdition
BD - Directed by Sam Mendes
and based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard
Piers Rayner, the Depression-era crime epic ROAD TO PERDITION
stars Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan, a quiet hit man who is duty
bound to Mafia boss John Rooney (Paul Newman). The mobster's
close bond with Sullivan, however, leads Rooney's jealous blood
son, Connor (Daniel Craig), to orchestrate a tragic series of
events that results in Sullivan on the run with his 12-year-old
son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin). Soon an unscrupulous crime
photographer/assassin named Maguire (Jude Law) is sent after
Sullivan and his son, and Sullivan must decide on a course of
action as young Michael comes to terms with his father's violent
way of life. Meticulously directed by Mendes and brilliantly
photographed by Conrad Hall, each scene of ROAD TO PERDITION
has the composition of an expertly rendered painting.
Blu-ray Release date: August 3rd,
2010
Eclipse 23: The First Films Of Akira
Kurosawa - Years before Akira Kurosawa changed
the face of cinema with such iconic works as Rashomon, Seven
Samurai, and Yojimbo, he made his start in the Japanese film
industry with four popular and exceptional works, created as
World War II raged. All gripping dramas, those rare first films—Sanshiro
Sugata; The Most Beautiful; Sanshiro Sugata,
Part Two; and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail—are
collected here and include a two-part martial arts saga, a
portrait of female volunteers helping the war effort, and a
kabuki-derived tale of deception. These captivating films are a
glorious introduction to a peerless career. DVD Release Date:
August 3rd, 2010
Louie Bluie - Crumb
director Terry Zwigoff’s first film is a true treat: a
documentary about the obscure country-blues musician and
idiosyncratic visual artist Howard “Louie Bluie”
Armstrong, member of the last known black string band in
America. As beguiling a raconteur as he is a performer, Louie
makes for a wildly entertaining movie subject, and Zwigoff
honors him with an unsentimental but endlessly affectionate
tribute. Full of infectious music and comedy, Louie Bluie is a
humane evocation of the kind of pop-cultural marginalia that
Zwigoff would continue to excavate in the coming years. DVD
Release Date: August 10th, 2010
Hotel - When Irene takes a
position at a hotel deep in the woods of the Austrian Alps, she
soon discovers the girl she replaced vanished without a trace.
Is there a murderer on site, or are there even darker forces at
work? Jessica Hausner's follow up to the critically acclaimed 'Lovely
Rita' draws the audience into a disturbing journey through
mystery and anguish reminiscent of the works of Alfred Hitchcock
and David Lynch. DVD Release Date: July 26th, 2010
Lovely Rita - Hausner's
first feature focuses on a gauche teenage schoolgirl. The
younger daughter to lower middle class parents who're slightly
more disciplinarian than usual, she's misunderstood by her
teachers and largely ignored by her schoolmates. Though she's
still able to enjoy childhood japes with a fragile boy a few
years younger than herself, she's also sufficiently curious
about the adult world to start falling for a bus driver who
barely notices her deliberately applied make-up. Try as she
might (which isn't always very hard), she can't stay out of
trouble, so she decides to take control. DVD Release Date:
July 26th, 2010
Piranha
BD - While searching for
missing teenagers, novice skip tracer Maggie McKeown (Heather
Menzies) and local town boozer Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman)
stumble upon a top-secret Army laboratory conducting genetic
research on piranha fish for the purpose of developing
biological warfare. When the deadly eating machines are
accidentally released from the compound, they are soon headed
downstream and consuming everything, and anything, in their
path. Blu-ray Release date:
August 3rd, 2010
Father of My Children - “The
Father of My Children” is a tale of cinema, a story about
the agonies of trying to work outside the cinematic mainstream
(even in France!). Yet what makes the movie so affecting is that
it’s also a love story about a family. Throughout the film,
acquaintances and advisers urge Grégoire to sell his film
catalog to save his company. He refuses, insisting that if he
does, there will be nothing left. Of course he’s wrong, as Ms.
Hansen-Love’s repeated and heartfelt images of his daughters and
wife forcefully insist. DVD Release Date: June 21st, 2010
Metamorphosis - In 14th
Century Hungary, aristocrat Thurzo (Gábor Koncz) betrays
Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Adél Kováts) who curses his lineage.
In the present day, Constantine Thurzo (Christopher Lambert,
HIGHLANDER) returns to Hungary upon the death of his brother
(making him the last of the line). Constantine objects to his
brother being buried in the local cemetery and digs him up to
bury him on the grounds of the family estate but is himself
attacked. Meanwhile, a trio of American students - Keith (Corey
Sevier), J.J. (Charlie Hollway), and Kim (Jennifer Higham) -
have made arrangements to stay at the Bathory monastery and get
lost in the woods. Mysterious Elizabeth (model Irena Hoffman)
appears out of nowhere and offers to direct them to the
monastery. DVD Release Date: August 24th, 2010
The Man Who Lies - First
seen running from soldiers and being shot, Boris Varessa
(Jean-Louis Trintignant) arrives in a small French village (the
film was shot in Czechoslovakia) where the local hero is one
Jean Robin who was supposedly taken prisoner and killed by the
occupying troops during the war a few years before. Boris
infiltrates the chateau occupied by the dead man's elderly
father along with his widow, sister, and a maid. He says he is a
friend of Jean's who collaborated with him during the war. He
seduces each of the women with a different story about Jean that
portray him (and himself) alternately as a hero and traitor (as
well as his possible murderer). Soon another man arrives in the
village who may be the real Jean Robin.
Crumb
BD - Terry Zwigoff’s landmark 1995 film is an
intimate documentary portrait of the underground artist Robert
Crumb, whose unique drawing style and sexually and racially
provocative subject matter have made him a household name in
popular American art. Zwigoff candidly and colorfully delves
into the details of Crumb’s incredible career and life,
including his family of reclusive eccentrics, some of the most
remarkable people you’ll ever see on-screen. At once a profound
biographical portrait, a riotous examination of a man’s
controversial art, and a devastating look at a troubled family,
Crumb is a genuine American original.
Blu-ray Release date: August 10th, 2010
I'm Gonna Explode - The
boredom and nagging discontent that drive Roman (Juan Pablo de
Santiago) and Maru (Maria Deschamps), the fugitive teenage
sweethearts in Gerardo Naranjo’s small, jagged melodrama “I’m
Gonna Explode,” is palpable enough to make you squirm at the
memory of being trapped in the limbo of early adolescence.
Roman, the neglected son of a Mexican government official in
Guanajuato, has grandiose outlaw fantasies of assassinating
authority figures. Maru, who is pretty in an unformed way,
latches on to Roman as the catalyst for which she has been
waiting to give direction to her empty life. Put these two in a
stolen car with a gun, and they turn into Bonnie and Clyde with
baby fat. DVD Release Date: April 12th, 2010
Scorpion With Two Tails -
Joan (Elvire Audray) dreams of an Etruscan ritual where the
sacrificial victims have their necks broken and their heads
twisted completely around. The next day in Volterra, her husband
Arthur (John Saxon) discovers the tomb from her dream. While
talking to Joan long distance (she's in New York), he is
murdered in the same manner after telling her that he will not
ship some crates unless her father sends him a telex with money
to excavate the tomb. Not content with her father's (Van
Johnson) reports, Joan flies to Italy with Mike (Paolo Malco),
who was doing research for Arthur. DVD Release Date: February
24th, 2009
IP Man
BD - Donnie Yen seems tailor
made for the role of Ip Man – proud, assured, and
confidently kick-ass in his newly learned wing chun kung fu
skills. But even more than another excuse for Donnie Yen to show
off his stuff is the unabashed pride that the Chinese take in
the way this story unfolds, even though it may be liberally
fictionalized. I don't expect that Western audiences would find
the story quite as engrossing for this reason, even though its
themes are not unfamiliar. It is not so much of a stretch to see
in Ip Man echoes of High Noon or Destry Rides Again – the idea
of a lone man who only fights when provoked beyond endurance,
and then he takes his six-shooters out of mothballs and
courageously stands to face his fate.
Blu-ray Release date: July 29th, 2010
Batman: Under the Red Hood
BD - DC Comics goes back to
the mid-1930s, having given us over the years such superheroes
as Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman, among
others, first as comics, then in animated forms. Over the past
couple of years Warner Bros Entertainment, who has been right
there alongside DC Comics since forever, has been putting out
animated direct-to-video “episodes” featuring characters from
the DC Universe on the Blu-ray format every few months (Batman:
Gotham Knight; Superman/Batman: Public Enemies;
Wonder Woman, Green Lantern: First Flight, Justice
League: Crisis on Two Earths). Alas, none of those made use
of lossless, uncompressed audio, an oversight that the new
Batman episode corrects, and which we expect will continue with
Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, coming in September.
Blu-ray Release date: July 27th,
2010
Life During Wartime -
Daring the discomfited viewer to laugh at shame and suffering,
and then wonder why we're laughing, Todd Solondz is back. Life
During Wartime, which won Best Screenplay at Venice and had its
local premiere at the New York Film Festival, shows the
misanthropic moralizer as confounding and trigger-happy as ever,
his big clown thumb poised over a garish assortment of hot
buttons—race, suicide, autism, sexual misery, self-hatred,
Israel, and, his old favorite, pedophilia. DVD Release Date:
July 12th, 2010
The Big Knife - A dynamite
portrait of a man on the verge of total psychological and moral
collapse, Robert Aldrich's 1955 indictment of Hollywood stars
Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, and Rod Steiger. Adapted from a series
of plays by Clifford Odets, Aldrich's film focuses on the ways
in which a man's freedom is systematically denied him by the
forces that control his world, whether that world is the arts,
business, or politics. Palance is superb as the Hollywood star
who now has to be blackmailed to continue starring in the
dreadful films produced by Rod Steiger (in a magnificent
portrayal of Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, and Jack Warner rolled
into one). Electric, exciting, and ultimately very depressing.
DVD Release Date: October 15th, 2002
|
