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The Appaloosa
BD -
Buffalo hunter Matt Fletcher (Marlon Brando) plans on starting a
horse breeding farm with his friend Paco (Rafael Campos) in the
border town of Ojo Prieto. But when a Mexican bandit (John
Saxon) steals his prized Appaloosa stallion, Matt crosses the
border determined to get revenge. Blu-ray Release Date:
January 2nd, 2019
Foxfire
BD - Privileged Amanda (Jane Russell) meets and falls in
love with half-Apache, half-Caucasian miner Jonathan Dartland
(Jeff Chandler), while traveling through Arizona. What's
significant about the relationship is that Amanda has always
disliked Native Americans. She gets past her old feelings and
the couple marries. But racial tension continues to intrude from
both whites and Native Americans. Amanda also grows close to a
local doctor, Hugh (Dan Duryea), sending Dartland into a fit of
jealousy. Blu-ray Release Date: December 11th, 2018
Female on the Beach
BD - Screen legend Joan Crawford stars as
Lynn Markham, a widow who moves into a beach house where the
former owner had fallen to her death. What had seemed like an
accident turns to suspicion of murder as Lynn finds herself
drawn into a torrid affair with a handsome beachcomber (Jeff
Chandler) who may be harboring a sinister secret.
Blu-ray
Release Date: December 11th, 2018
Under the Tree
BD - This dark suburban satire tells the story of
a man who is accused of adultery by his ex-fiancée and forced to
move in with his parents. While he fights for custody of his
four-year-old daughter, he is gradually sucked into a bitter
dispute between his parents and their neighbours regarding an
old and beautiful tree that casts a shadow on the neighbours
deck. As the dispute intensifies property is damaged, pets
mysteriously go missing, security cameras are being installed
and there is a rumour that the neighbour was seen with a
chainsaw. Blu-ray Release Date: January 14th, 2019
Berserk
BD - After the huge success of Robert Aldrich's
What
Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hollywood legend Joan
Crawford found herself taking the lead in a series of lurid and
sensational horror pictures in her later years and Berserk was
one of the best and most successful. Crawford stars as a
ruthless circus owner who exploits a series of gruesome murders
for her own ends... until the killer targets her.
Blu-ray
Release Date: December 10th, 2018
The True Story of Jesse James
BD - Wagner and Hunter take over
where Fonda and Power left off in the 1939 version of this
oft-told tale, which shows the circumstances that drove James
and his sibling to a life of crime. Obviously the pair have a
hard act to follow, but they manage it perfectly well, with
Hunter particularly good in the brotherly sidekick role.
Blu-ray Release Date: December, 2018
Oklahoma Crude
BD - Director-producer Stanley Kramer’s hugely
entertaining action-drama, Oklahoma Crude (1973), stars Faye
Dunaway as an independent wildcatter during the pre-World War I
oil boom, and George C. Scott as a rough-and-tumble oil field
drifter who signs on to help her fight the depredations of a big
conglomerate (represented, fiendishly, by Jack Palance) bent on
taking her well away. John Mills is also on hand as Dunaway’s
n’er-do-well dad, and the great Henry Mancini provides the
music. Blu-ray Release Date: December, 2018
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
BD - Mungiu’s film is set over one
afternoon and evening in the late 1980s (although we have to
guess the exact date). There’s no nostalgia on offer here – no
wistful look over the shoulder at Romania’s past: this is a dark
place – literally, when we hit the night-time streets – where
ordinary people are forced to act and suffer as savages under
the perverting influence of the law. Mungiu’s point is crystal
clear: the past is best left behind but never forgotten. His
story is intimate but everywhere in his film there are hints of
a wider malaise, whether it’s the bread queue at the edge of his
widescreen frame, the officious-verging-on-dictatorial attitude
of a hotel receptionist or just the angry bark of a dog at
night. Blu-ray Release Date: January 22nd, 2019
24 Frames
BD - For what would prove to be his final film,
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami gave himself a challenge: to
create a dialogue between his work as a filmmaker and his work
as a photographer, bridging the two art forms to which he had
dedicated his life. Setting out to reconstruct the moments
immediately before and after a photograph is taken, Kiarostami
selected twenty-four still images—most of them stark landscapes
inhabited only by foraging birds and other wildlife—and
digitally animated each one into its own subtly evolving
four-and-a-half-minute vignette, creating a series of poignant
studies in movement, perception, and time. A sustained
meditation on the process of image making, 24 Frames is a
graceful and elegiac farewell from one of the giants of world
cinema. Blu-ray Release Date: January 8th, 2019
Khartoum
BD - In 1880s Sudan, thousands of British-led Egyptian
troops are massacred by the forces of Arab fanatic Muhammad
Ahmad (Sir Laurence Olivier), who believes he is the Mahdi, and
nothing less than Mohammed's chosen warrior in battling against
Anglo-Egyptian rule. Legendary Major General Charles George
Gordon (Charlton Heston) is sent by Prime Minister William
Gladstone (Ralph Richardson) to save the city of Khartoum from
the Mahdi, but given only one aide (Richard Johnson), limited
support from the British government that sent him there, and a
fearless opponent determined to create a new empire, Gordon sees
that further bloodshed is imminent. Blu-ray Release Date:
November 12th, 2018
Mikey and Nicky
BD - Elaine May crafted a gangster film like no
other in the nocturnal odyssey Mikey and Nicky, capitalizing on
the chemistry between frequent collaborators John Cassavetes and
Peter Falk by casting them together as small-time mobsters whose
lifelong relationship has turned sour. Set over the course of
one night, this restless drama finds Nicky (Cassavetes) holed up
in a hotel after the boss he stole money from puts a hit out on
him. Terrified, he calls on Mikey (Falk), the one person he
thinks can save him. Scripted to match the live-wire energy of
its stars—alongside supporting players Ned Beatty, Joyce Van
Patten, and Carol Grace—and inspired by real-life characters
from May’s own childhood, this unbridled portrait of male
friendship turned tragic is an unsung masterpiece of American
cinema. Blu-ray Release Date: January 22nd, 2019
In the Heat of the Night
BD - Passing through the
backwoods town of Sparta, Mississippi, Philadelphia detective
Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) becomes embroiled in a murder
case. He forms an uneasy alliance with the bigoted police chief
(Rod Steiger), who faces mounting pressure from Sparta’s hostile
citizens to catch the killer and run the African American
interloper out of town. Director Norman Jewison splices incisive
social commentary into this thrilling police procedural with the
help of Haskell Wexler’s vivid cinematography, Quincy Jones’s
eclectic score, and two indelible lead performances—a
career-defining display of seething indignation and moral
authority from Poitier and an Oscar-winning master class in
Method acting from Steiger. Winner of five Academy Awards,
including for best picture, In the Heat of the Night is
one of the most enduring Hollywood films of the civil rights
era. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: January 29th, 2019
Notorious
BD - In Notorious, a brilliant allegory
of love and betrayal, Hitchcock fuses two of his favorite
elements: suspense and romance. A beautiful woman with a tainted
past (Ingrid Bergman) is enlisted by American agent Devlin (Cary
Grant) to spy on a ring of Nazis in post-war Rio. Her espionage
work becomes life-threatening after she marries the most
debonair of the Nazi ring, Alex (Claude Rains). Only Devlin can
rescue her, but to do so he must face his role in her desperate
situation and acknowledge that he’s loved her all along.
Stunning performances, Ben Hecht’s excellent script, and
Hitchcock’s direction at its best make Notorious a
perfect film. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: January 15th,
2019
Quatermass and the Pit (1958)
BD - Andre Morell stars as
Professor Bernard Quatermass in this landmark television
classic. Now available on Blu-Ray for the very first time, in a
brand new high-definition remaster from the original film
elements. When a strange capsule is unearthed at an
archaeological excavation in London, an unexploded bomb is
initially suspected. However, with a history of supernatural
events in the area going back many centuries and with events at
the dig site about to take an unexpectedly alien turn, the
origins of the capsule are soon revealed to be far more distant
than anyone could have imagined. When the capsule is finally
opened, something is unleashed upon the streets of London that
nobody can control and mankind's past and future collide with
devastating consequences. Blu-ray Release Date: November
12th, 2018
The Balcony - In a very
special brothel known as the Balcony the customers live out
their wildest dreams oblivious to a revolution that's going on
outside. Directed by the award-winning Joseph Strick and based
on acclaimed French avant-garde dramatist Jean Genet's play this
star-packed film features Shelley Winters as the brothel's madam
and Peter Falk as her occasional lover who enlists her help in
halting the revolution. A young Leonard Nimoy heads the rebels
and Lee Grant is the madam's executive assistant, who longs to
return to her former role as just one of the girls. With its
insightfulness and delightfully fresh sense of humour, The
Balcony continues to provide a great view of the world's
ironies. DVD Release Date: October 3rd, 2018
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie
- Barry McKenzie is a die-hard Aussie who is sent to England by
his family, accompanied by his eccentric aunt Edna Everage.
Loud-mouthed, beer-crazy Bazza encounters a totally alien
culture and becomes embroiled in a series of strange
vicissitudes, from being pressured to marry the unattractive
daughter of an aristocratic-but-penniless family to being
kidnapped by a group of hippies. DVD Release Date: October
3rd, 2018
Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge
- Polish actress Karolina Gruszka stars in this sweeping
biography of the legendary, Nobel Prize winning physicist and
chemist, who courted controversy with both her challenging of
France s male-dominated academic establishment and her
unconventional romantic life. Physicist, chemist, and pioneer in
the study of radioactivity, Marie Sklodowska Curie spent her
life setting precedents. She was the first woman to win the
Nobel Prize and the first person to win it twice. As the first
female professor at the University of Paris, she had to overcome
the condescension and antagonism of France's male-dominated
academic establishment. She also courted controversy of the sort
that still threatens to quash the careers of public figures
today. DVD Release Date: December 11th, 2018
Scarred Hearts - During the
summer of 1937, Emanuel, a young man in his early twenties, is
committed to a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast for treatment
of his bone tuberculosis. The treatment consists of painful
spine punctures that confine him to a body cast on a
stretcher-bed. Little by little, as Emanuel gets accustomed to
the limitations of his new life, he discovers that inside the
sanatorium there is still a life to be lived to the fullest. He
makes friends and engages in conversations, political for the
most part. He reads, he writes, he smokes and drinks, interacts
with doctors, nurses and stretcher-bearers. DVD Release Date:
December 18th, 2018 |
