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Vincere
BD - If you thought
Mussolini’s record as a statesman was patchy, wait until you see
how he treated his lovers. Italian veteran Marco Bellocchio
delivers an operatic slice of historical muckraking which
exhumes the tale of Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), spurned
wife of the lantern-jawed lothario who would become Il Duce (Filippo
Timi). Smitten by the rhetoric of the young socialist firebrand,
Ida’s courtship with Benito takes place in the shadows until he
is drawn into national politics and she is left destitute but
certain she can win him back. Blu-ray Release date: June
27th, 2010
The Maltese Falcon
BD -
Huston's first film displays the hallmarks that were to
distinguish his later work: the mocking attitude toward human
greed; the cavalier insolence with which plot details are
treated almost as asides; the delight in bizarre characterisations, here ranging from the amiably snarling Sam
Spade ('When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it') who
opened a whole new romantic career for Bogart, to Lorre's
petulant, gardenia-scented Joel Cairo, Cook's waspishly effete
gunsel, and Greenstreet's monstrously jocular Fat Man ('By gad,
sir, you are a character'). What makes it a prototype film noir
is the vein of unease missing from the two earlier versions of
Hammett's novel. Filmed almost entirely in interiors, it
presents a claustrophobic world animated by betrayal, perversion
and pain, never - even at its most irresistibly funny, as when
Cook listens in outraged disbelief while his fat sugar daddy
proposes to sell him down the line - quite losing sight of this
central abyss of darkness, ultimately embodied by Mary Astor's
sadly duplicitous siren. Blu-ray Release Date: October 5th,
2010
The Omega Man
BD - Welcome
to the future. Biological war has decimated life on Earth. Los
Angeles is a windswept ghost town where Robert Neville tools his
convertible through sunlit streets foraging for supplies. And
makes damn sure he gets undercover before sundown, when other
"inhabitants" emerge. The Omega Man adapts Richard Matheson's
novel I Am Legend into a high-impact, high-tension saga of a
fate not far removed from reality. Charlton Heston is Neville,
fending off attacks by The Family, sinister neopeople spawned by
the plague. He also becomes a man with a mission after meeting
Lisa (Rosalind Cash), another unifected survivor - and guardian
of some healthy children representing our species' hope.
Blu-ray Release date: December 18th, 2007
The Haunting - Francesca
(Ana Torrent, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE) has never gotten over the
death of a child ten years before. The birth of her son has her
anxious over his well-being (she gets up in the middle of the
night to check his breath with a hand-mirror and is glued to the
baby monitor). Her husband Pedro (Francisco Boira) decides they
need to get out of the city so they purchase a massive house in
the country that used to belong to a recently-deceased bishop.
Coincidentally, Blanca (Maria Alfonsa Rosso, VOLVER) has woken
from a sixty-year coma just as the sanitorium in which she is
staying is shut down by miracle-busting Jesuit psychiatrist
Father Miguel (Héctor Colomé, MAD LOVE). She recovers quickly
and leaves behind a clue for the priest that implicates her
involvement in a film experiment to capture supernatural
phenomena on film. DVD Release Date: September 28th, 2010
Mickey One - Considered
ahead of its time — and perhaps it still is — this unusual
drama, inspired by the French New Wave, brought Warren Beatty
and producer-director Arthur Penn together for the first time —
two years before their landmark Bonnie and Clyde. Beatty stars
as a Detroit night club comic who incurs the wrath of The Mob
(he doesn’t know why) and flees to Chicago to start life anew —
but still living in fear. But the plot is secondary to the look
and sound of this film (a favorite of Martin Scorsese), which
boasts a score by Eddie Sauter and stunning photography by
Academy Award-winner Ghislain Cloquet (1980, Best
Cinematography, Tess). Alexandra Stewart, Hurd Hatfield,
Franchot Tone and Jeff Corey co-star in this one-of-a-kind
motion picture. Incidentally, much of it was shot in what is now
Oprah Winfrey’s studio. Newly remastered. DVD Release Date:
September 21st, 2010
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
BD - For once, Bogart plays a really vicious bastard, Fred C
Dobbs, in this, the first of two movies he made in 1948 with
Huston. It's a sort of lifeboat drama for three, with Holt the
young innocent and director's dad Walter as the wise old
buzzard, flanking Bogart's bravura paranoia. Director Huston
tries to yank the basic elements - gold lust in a Mexican
wilderness - into the spare eloquence of a fable, and tends to
look pretentious rather than profound. In any case, outrageously
Oscar-seeking performances like actor Huston's, coupled with
director Huston's comparative conviction with action sequences,
work against any yearning for significance. There's a quite
enjoyable yarn buried under the hollow laughter.
Blu-ray
Release Date: October 5th, 2010
Fragile - Mercy Falls, a
secluded children's hospital on the coast of the Isle of Wight
is being closed down and the children transferred to the new
hospital in the middle of the island. Temp nurse Sarah (Calista
Flockhart) has arrived to assist in the move which has been
delayed by a massive train accident that has filled up the new
hospital with patients. Working as the night nurse, Sarah
discovers that the children live in fear of a "mechanical girl"
called Charlotte. After her predecessor dies, Sarah starts to
believe this unseen presence might be responsible for the
mysterious fractures a child patient developed and various child
deaths over the years. Another mysterious death has Sarah
believing in a ghostly, evil presence living on the closed off
second floor that means to hurt the children and she must
convince head nurse Folder (Gemma Jones), skeptical Dr. Marcus
(Richard Roxburgh), and concerned nurse Helen (Elena Anaya).
DVD Release Date: April 25th, 2006
The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael
- In a depressing village in Northern England, Robert Carmichael
(Dan Spencer) is a social misfit. He plays the cello, is teased
by the girls in his class, and gets stoned with two expelled
friends Joe (Ryan Winsley) and Ben (Charles Mnene) who are first
introduced bullying a Muslim kid on his way to school (Robert
and his mother's involvement in the arts makes them something
akin to middle class in contrast to his classmates). DVD
Release Date: February 26th, 2007
Morgiana - Morgiana, based
on a short story by Aleksandr Grin, (the 'Russian Poe'), is the
story of two sisters, Klára and Viktoria who live a life of
decadent excess stranded somewhere between the mid-19th and
early 20th century. Klára is blonde and beautiful, whilst
Viktoria is ugly, sadistic, bursting with hate and jealousy -
and hatches a terrible revenge by slowly poisoning her more
popular sister. As the poison takes hold, Klára begins to lose
grip on her sanity... DVD Release Date: October 11th, 2010
Planet Terror
BD - That Mr.
Rodriguez and Mr. Tarantino are motivated by a sincere love of
the movies they send up can hardly be doubted, but the affection
is expressed in different ways. Mr. Rodriguez revels in badness
for its own sake. Planet Terror is intoxicated by its own
absurdity; it tries to raise incompetence to the level of craft,
if not art. The random close-ups, the lurching cuts, the
off-kilter framing -- all of this is obviously intentional. So
is the hodgepodge story, which is like a stew made of the
contents of every can in the cupboard. Gindhouse SE
Blu-ray
Release Date: October 5th, 2010
Across the Universe
BD -
Across the Universe, from director Julie Taymor, is a
revolutionary rock musical that re-imagines America in the
turbulent late-1960s, a time when battle lines were being drawn
at home and abroad. When young dockworker Jude (Jim Sturgess)
leaves Liverpool to find his estranged father in America, he is
swept up by the waves of change that are re-shaping the nation.
Jude falls in love with Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a rich but
sheltered American girl who joins the growing anti-war movement
in New York's Greenwich Village. As the body count in Vietnam
rises, political tensions at home spiral out of control and the
star-crossed lovers find themselves in a psychedelic world gone
mad. With a cameo by Bono, Across the Universe is "the kind of
movie you watch again, like listening to a favorite album."
Blu-ray Release date: February 5th, 2008
Hard Candy
BD - A smart,
charming teenage girl, Hayley probably shouldn't be going to a
local coffee shop to meet Jeff, a 30-something fashion
photographer she met on the Internet. But before she knows it,
she's mixing drinks at Jeff's place and stripping for an
impromptu photo shoot. It's Jeff's lucky night. But Hayley isn't
as innocent as she looks, and the night takes a turn when she
begins to impose a hard-hitting investigation on Jeff in an
attempt to reveal his possibly scandalous past.
Blu-ray
Release Date: October 5th, 2010
High Tension
BD -
Universally heralded by genreheads as either the red knight
savior to the genre it rests in or a downright demeaning insult,
Haute tension is still leaving viewers divided around the world.
On one hand, it's technically and aesthically magnificent. The
acting by the principles, direction, and composition are par
excellence. The score melds with the screen so well it harkens
back to a time when music was integral to setting mood and
suspense. It's truly a Horror film of pedigree.
Blu-ray
Release Date: October 5th, 2010
Seven Samurai
BD - One of
the most beloved movie epics of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven
Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) tells the story of a
sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the
eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits. This
three-hour ride—featuring legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and
Takashi Shimura—seamlessly weaves philosophy and entertainment,
delicate human emotions and relentless action into a rich,
evocative, and unforgettable tale of courage and hope.
Blu-ray Release Date: October 19th, 2010
Crippled Avengers - Right
off the bat this film establishes a brutal tone through its gory
dismembering sequences. The fight scenes are all exceptional.
Another area where this film excels are the training sequences
where the four cripples get ready to for their showdown verse
those responsible from making them cripple. Even though the film
does rely a lot of its action sequences. The more character
driven moments are very satisfying and help propel the story
forward. When all is said and done, Crippled Avengers is a
highly entertaining film that culminates in an explosive finale
that solidifies this films place as one of the greatest martial
arts films of all time. DVD Release Date: September 14th,
2010
All Men Are Brothers -
All Men are Brothers is a sequel to the 1972 Shaw
Brothers production The Water Margin. This film like its
predecessor was adapted from a 14th century Chinese novel titled
'Outlaws of the Marsh'. The opening act in which the
alliance between the Liang Shun warriors and Emperor is
flawlessly laid out. Unfortunately after this opening set up the
film quickly settles into a series of grandiose action
sequences. And while I didn't expect there to be a lot of
character development. I was still disappointed that after each
of the main characters introductions, little if any attempt was
made at building up the characters. The predictability of the
story and lack of character development aside. There are a few
areas where this film does deliver, the action sequences and the
performances from its entire cast. This film's most surprising
performance and arguably its best performance comes from Yue
Fung in the role Sun Erh-niang (the only female chosen out of
the seven assassins).. DVD Release Date:
September 14th, 2010
The Maid - Filipino maid
Rosa (Alessandra de Rossi) arrives in Singapore to work as a
maid for the Teos, a family of Chinese opera singers. She has
arrived during the seventh month of the Chinese calendar when
the gates of hell supposedly open and offerings are made to
appease the dead. There is also a strict code of conduct to be
followed during this time. Of course, Rosa is unaware of this
and breaks several rules and unleashes supernatural forces upon
herself. Will she suffer the same fate as the Teos' previous
maid Esther who mysteriously disappeared? DVD Release Date:
September 12th, 2006
A Passage to India
BD - New
York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote in 1985, “A Passage
to India is the kind of movie that people think they are talking
about when they insist that ‘they’—meaning Hollywood in the
generic sense—don’t make movies the way they used to.” Indeed,
it is an epic echo to the way movies used to be made, as
demonstrated by director David Lean’s own previous epics, such
as Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Based on
the novel by E. M. Forster, the film is set in colonial India in
1924. Adela Quested (Judy Davis), a sheltered, well-bred British
woman, travels to the subcontinent to visit her fiancé, a
British magistrate posted in a small town; her traveling
companion is his mother Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft).
Blu-ray
Release date: April 15th, 2008
Three Days of the Condor
BD
- 1975 was a banner year for cinema, and Condor may have gotten
a little lost alongside the likes of One Flew Over the Cukoo's
Nest, Shampoo, Dog Day Afternoon, Toute une vie, Barry Lyndon,
Amarcord, Nashville, Jaws, L'histoire d'Adele H., and The Man
Who Would Be King. Yet today I think the movie holds up quite
well. The spy thriller machinations of the story do not
embarrass; Owen Roizman's cinematography is state of the art in
the truest sense and never brings attention to itself as was
common in the early seventies (what with the love affair with
the zoooom lens in bloom); there are no out of place
Oscar-reaching songs; Sydney Pollack's direction of Robert
Redford (this would be their 4th of 7 films together) and Faye
Dunaway make the impossible: plausible. Studio Canal
Blu-ray
Release date: September / November 2009
I Am Legend
BD - The time
is our near future. Dr. Alice Krippen has just announced a
vaccine cure for cancer. Three years later, the planet’s human
population is either dead or running amuck in disorganized rapid
packs, intolerant of light and hungry for whatever they might be
able to feed on. One man, Lt. Colonel Robert Neville, appears to
be the only human immune to the virus. Being both scientist and
military, he rigorously and obsessively searches for a cure,
gathering specimens of small animals and “darkseekers” by day;
and holing up in his home at night – a fotress that he has
carefully kept secret and well-defended from the infected.
Blu-ray Release date: March 11th, 2008
I, Robot
BD - In the year
2035, technology and robots are a trusted part of everyday life.
But that trust is broken when a scientist is found dead and a
skeptical detective (Smith) believes that a robot is
responsible. Bridget Moynahan co-stars in this high-tech action
thriller that questions whether technology will ultimately lead
to mankind's salvation . . . or annihilation.
Blu-ray Release
date: March 11th, 2008
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