| |
Cruising
BD - New York is caught in
the grip of a sadistic serial killer who is preying on the
patrons of the city's underground bars. Captain Edelson (Paul
Sorvino) tasks young rookie Steve Burns (Pacino) with
infiltrating the S&M subculture to try and lure the killer out
of the shadows but as he immerses himself deeper and deeper into
the lurid underworld, Steve risks losing his own identity in the
process. Based on reporter Gerald Walker's novel of the same
name, Cruising was the subject of great controversy at
the time of its release and remains a challenging and remarkable
movie to this day, with Pacino's haunted lead performance as its
magnetic centrepiece. Blu-ray
Release Date: August 19th, 2019
Polyester
BD - For his first studio
picture, filth maestro John Waters took advantage of his biggest
budget yet to allow his muse Divine to sink his teeth into a
role unlike any he had played before: Baltimore housewife
Francine Fishpaw, a heroine worthy of a Douglas Sirk melodrama.
Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a
philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a
pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine turns
to the bottle as her life falls apart—until deliverance appears
in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow (vintage heartthrob
Tab Hunter). Enhanced with Odorama™ technology that enables you
to scratch and sniff along with Francine, Polyester is
one of Waters’ most hilarious inventions, replete with
stomach-churning smells, sadistic nuns, AA meetings, and foot
stomping galore. Blu-ray Release
Date: September 17th, 2019
Local Hero
BD - Bill Forsyth put
Scottish cinema on the map with this delightfully eccentric
culture-clash comedy. Riffing on popular representations of
Scottish life and folklore, Local Hero follows the Texas
oil executive Mac (Peter Riegert), who is dispatched by his
crackpot boss (Burt Lancaster) to a remote seaside village in
Scotland with orders to buy out the town and develop the region
for an oil refinery. But as business mixes with pleasure, Mac
finds himself enchanted by both the picturesque community and
its oddball denizens—and Texas starts to feel awfully far away.
Packed with a near nonstop stream of droll one-liners and
deadpan gags, this enchanting cult hit finds Forsyth surveying
the idiosyncrasies of small-town life with the satirical verve
of a latter-day Preston Sturges, arriving at a sly commentary on
conservation, corporate greed, and the legacies we leave behind.
Blu-ray Release Date: September
24th, 2019
Big Bad Wolves
BD - A foul tale foully
told, the Israeli horror flick “Big Bad Wolves” begins on
a dreamy, once-upon-a-time note with three children playing
hide-and-seek. As a boy counts down, two girls, one dressed in
red and the other in blue, enter a derelict building. One stays,
the other leaves; one dies; the other, well, who knows, much
less cares, what happens to her? Certainly not the writers and
directors, Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, for whom
murdered children are just an easy, conveniently blunt and
effectively faceless (and headless) means to a self-satisfied,
jokey and blood-slicked end. 101 Films
Blu-ray Release Date: August 19th, 2019
The Third Wife
BD - In the late 19th
century in rural Vietnam, fourteen-year-old May is given away in
an arranged marriage and becomes the third wife to her older
husband. May learns that she can gain status and security if she
gives birth to a male child. This becomes a real possibility
when she gets pregnant. However, her path is fraught with danger
when May starts to develop an attraction for Xuan, the second
wife. As May observes the unfolding tragedy of forbidden love
and its devastating consequences, she must make a choice, to
either carry on in silence and safety, or forge a way towards
personal freedom. Blu-ray
Release Date: August 19th, 2019
The Circus
BD - In the last film he
made during the silent era, Charlie Chaplin revels in the art of
the circus, paying tribute to the acrobats and pantomimists who
inspired his virtuoso pratfalls. After being mistaken for a
pickpocket, Chaplin’s Little Tramp flees into the ring of a
traveling circus and soon becomes the star of the show, falling
for the troupe’s bareback rider along the way. Despite its
famously troubled production, this gag-packed comedy ranks among
Chaplin’s finest, thanks to some of the most audacious set
pieces of the director-performer’s career, including a close
brush with a lion and a climactic tightrope walk with a
barrelful of monkeys. Blu-ray
Release Date: September 4th, 2019
Fists in the Pocket
BD - Tormented by twisted
desires, a young man takes drastic measures to rid his
grotesquely dysfunctional family of its various afflictions in
this astonishing 1965 debut from Marco Bellocchio. Charged by a
coolly assured style, shocking perversity, and savage gallows
humor, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) was
a gleaming ice pick in the eye of bourgeois family values and
Catholic morality, a truly unique work that continues to rank as
one of the great achievements of Italian cinema.
Blu-ray Release Date: September
3rd, 2019
The Cloud-Capped Star
BD - Ritwak Ghatak is
generally regarded as one of the big three of the Indian New
Wave (and Indian cinema at large), along with Satyajit Ray and
Mrinal Sen, the latter whom is he’s perhaps closest aligned with
given shared political leanings, an artful talent for incisive
social commentary, and most of all, for auteurist
experimentality. With The Cloud-Capped Star (1960),
Ghatak took the melodrama genre along with its coherent,
causally driven plot structures and relegated it as the backdrop
of something much further removed from the conventional.
Throughout, the personal is harmonized with the socio-historical
condition, and this duality is a key component of the film’s
accomplishments. Blu-ray Release
Date: September 10th, 2019
Cluny Brown
BD - Jennifer Jones and
Charles Boyer team up as the plumber's niece (later housemaid)
and the intellectual Czech refugee, who throw English society
into disarray with their disregard for conventions. This
charming satire, aided by a wonderful script taking in snobbery
upstairs, downstairs and in the middle classes, is given a jolly
run around by a cast comprising most of Hollywood's British
stalwarts from Sir C Aubrey Smith and Peter Lawford to Sara
Allgood and Una O'Connor. Blu-ray
Release Date: September 17th, 2019
The Thin Man
BD - Nick and Nora Charles
cordially invite you to bring your own alibi to The Thin Man,
the jaunty whodunit that made William Powell and Myrna Loy the
champagne elite of sleuthing. Bantering in the boudoir, enjoying
walks with beloved dog Asta or matching each other highball for
highball and clue for clue, they combined screwball romance with
mystery. The resulting triumph nabbed four Academy Award®
nominations (including Best Picture) and spawned five sequels.
Credit W.S. "Woody" Van Dyke for recognizing that Powell and Loy
were ideal together and for getting the studio's okay by
promising to shoot this splendid adaptation of Dashiell
Hammett's novel in three weeks. He took 12 days.
Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th,
2019
A Streetcar Named Desire
BD - In the classic play by
Tennessee Williams, brought to the screen by Elia Kazan, faded
Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to visit her
pregnant sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), in a seedy section of New
Orleans. Stella's boorish husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon
Brando), not only regards Blanche's aristocratic affectations as
a royal pain but also thinks she's holding out on inheritance
money that rightfully belongs to Stella. On the fringes of
sanity, Blanche is trying to forget her checkered past and start
life anew. Attracted to Stanley's friend Mitch (Karl Malden),
she glosses over the less savory incidents in her past, but she
soon discovers that she cannot outrun that past, and the stage
is set for her final, brutal confrontation with her
brother-in-law. Brando, Hunter, and Malden had all starred in
the original Broadway version of Streetcar, although the
original Blanche had been Jessica Tandy. Brando lost out to
Humphrey Bogart for the 1951 Best Actor Oscar, but Leigh,
Hunter, and Malden all won Oscars.
Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th, 2019
L'Argent (1928)
BD - Adapted from Émile
Zola's novel of the same name, Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent
[Money] is an opulent classic of late-silent era cinema.
Filmed in part on location at the Paris stock exchange, it
reveals a world of intrigue, greed, decadence, and ultimately
corruption and scandal when business dealings and amorous deceit
combine. Business tycoons Saccard and Gunderman lock horns when
the former attempts to raise capital for his faltering bank. To
inflate the price of his stock, Saccard concocts a duplicitous
publicity stunt involving the unwitting aviator Hamelin and a
flight across the Atlantic to drill for oil, much to the dismay
of his wife Line. While Hamelin is away, the lascivious Saccard
attempts to seduce Line, whose own temptation by the allure of
money puts herself and her husband in danger pawns in a
high-stakes chess game played out by unscrupulous speculators.
Blu-ray Release Date: August
16th, 2019
Fragment of an Empire
BD - Described by historian
Paul Rotha as "the epitome of the Soviet propaganda film,
realized with extraordinary skill of technical achievement,"
Fragment of an Empire was the first important film effort by
director Frederick Ermler. Combining documentary techniques with
straight dramatic narrative, the film focuses on a sergeant in
the army of the Czar who loses track of his lovely wife. By the
time he's discovered that his bride has re-married to an
aristocrat, the sergeant has experienced a political epiphany,
disdaining Imperialism in favor of the burgeoning Bolshevist
movement. The protagonist's turnaround is counterpointed with
spectacular shots of growing social unrest throughout Russia.
Blu-ray Release Date: August 9th,
2019
Dinosaurus!
BD - Alive with thrills that
started a million years ago! From legendary producer Jack H.
Harris and director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., the team behind
sci-fi classics The Blob and 4D Man, comes this
cult fantasy-adventure starring Ward Ramsey, Paul Lukather and
Kristina Hanson. Building a new harbor off the coast of a
Caribbean island, an American engineer (Ramsey) sets off a blast
on the ocean floor that uncovers the frozen bodies of a
Brontosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Neanderthal Man. The
dinosaurs are hauled ashore by the construction crew, who are
unaware that the giants are still alive. Struck by lightning
during a fierce tropical storm, the monsters awaken and prowl
the island jungles! Also restored to life is the caveman (Gregg
Martell), an amiable brute who joins the island boy Julio (Alan
Roberts) in a series of wacky misadventures.
Blu-ray Release Date: August 20th,
2019
Inseminoid (Bloody Terror: The Shocking
Cinema of Norman J Warren, 1976-1987)
BD - When an archaeological
expedition team arrive on a planet to investigate a strange
tomb-like object, things go very wrong indeed. Initially, one of
the crew – Gary - falls victim to some kind of explosion. He is
brought back to base alive but in a Quatermass-style
trance, and soon wrecks havoc but is eventually stopped by
Stephanie Beacham’s ray gun. But it gets worse. If the
cosmonauts aren’t getting wiped out by a largely unseen physical
presence, then they’re committing all sorts of questionable
actions, such as sawing their own feet off. Next, Sandy (Judy
Geeson) is strapped to a table and impregnated by a huge alien
with what appears to be a transparent tube penis carrying mushy
pea semen. Aliens have no sense of romance. From this point
forwards, Sandy goes quite insane. Her mind and body seem to be
possessed by the alien evil and she will stop at nothing to give
birth to the babies, which are developing at vastly accelerated
speed. This of course includes killing and eating her concerned
colleagues. Blu-ray Release
Date: August 12th, 2019
Satan's Slave (Bloody Terror: The Shocking
Cinema of Norman J Warren, 1976-1987)
BD - As her twentieth
birthday approaches, Catherine Yorke (Candace Glendenning)
experiences ominous premonitions that nevertheless compel her to
agree to travel with her parents (James Bree and Celia Hewitt)
to the remote countryside to meet her father's long-lost brother
Alexander (Michael Gough). As soon as they reach the grounds of
Yorke estate, her father suffers a migraine and crashes into a
tree. Catherine gets out to get help only to witness the car
explode, killing both of her parents. Alexander takes her in and
allows her to stay with him for as long as she needs to recover.
Amidst disturbing hallucinations involving witch burnings,
torture, and black masses, Catherine falls in love with her
cousin Stephen (Martin Potter) who likes to mutilate women on
the side. Alexander's jealous secretary Frances (Barbara
Kellerman) clues Catherine in to her family's evil heritage:
she's the direct look-alike descendant of witch Camilla Yorke,
and her uncle and cousin have very special plans for her on her
twentieth birthday. Blu-ray
Release Date: August 12th, 2019
Razzia Sur La Chnouf
BD - Razzia Sur La Chnouf
is based on a novel by the legendary writer Auguste Le Breton
with direction by Henri Decoin — After a spell in the U.S.A.,
master criminal Henri Ferré dit ‘Le Nantais’ (Jean Gabin)
returns to Paris and is recruited by Paul Liski (Marcel Dalio),
head of a major narcotics ring, to oversee and improve the
efficiency of their distribution. Merchandise has been
disappearing and unreliable dealers must be eliminated. For the
latter, Henri is assigned two hitmen, Roger le Catalan (Lino
Ventura) and Bibi (Albert Rémy). Released as Razzia in the U.S.,
Razzia Sur La Chnouf thrillingly explores the criminal
underworld of 1950s Paris. Blu-ray
Release Date: August 13th, 2019 |
Next 2 weeks on the 
