Quote:
Desire as persistent and intense as the sunshine on a bright summer day is what teases out madness in Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. The objects, or goals, of these desires are disparate, though they all spiral out following the 1900 disappearance of three young women and a teacher from the Appleyard School during a trip to the small titular ridge on St. Valentine’s Day. The vanishing of these women is central to the plot, but Weir’s film is never as fascinated with the reasons for this absence as it is with the characters left in its inexplicable wake. Cliff Green’s script, adapted from Joan Lindsay’s novel of the same name, never goes about teasing what could have happened to these women at Hanging Rock, instead focusing on the wild cupidity that erupts in the surrounding community in reaction to the mystery.Read More »

Quote:
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN is set in Vienna at the turn of the century, an era Ophüls loved and had used in LA RONDE and LIEBELEI. Joan Fontaine gives a moving, heartfelt performance as Lisa Berndl, a romantic young woman who falls in love with the handsome concert pianist Stephan Brandt (Louis Jourdan).

After a brief affair, which she takes for love, not seeing that he is just a philanderer, he leaves for a concert in Italy and never returns to the now-pregnant Lisa. She bears the child herself and later enters into a stable marriage, although one lacking the passion and love she still feels for Stephan. Ten years later, when he returns to Vienna, Lisa attempts, at the risk of her marriage, to see if he loves, or even remembers her. Fontaine and Jourdan perfectly project the feelings of a woman in love and a man too selfish to notice or care.Read More »

Quote:
At the climax of the spirited teen gangland film, one that unevenly blends together nostalgia and a story of urban angst, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'” blares out of a Folk City club and signals the beginning of a possibly new enlightened era for the country. The episodic rock’n’roll film passionately directed by Philip Kaufman (“The White Dawn”/”The Right Stuff”/”Quills”) is good at getting at the symbolic changes that took place in its Bronx, Fordham Road, setting, in 1963, and the swagger of teen gangs and their problematic upbringing and aimless street-life existence, but its character depictions, gang rumbles and racial healing scenes are pure Hollywood hokum. The crudely entertaining cultish comedy/drama, strongly driven by a great golden oldies score (including songs such as Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “You Really Got A Hold On Me,” The Contours’ “Do You Love Me,” the Shirelles’ “Soldier Boy,” and the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out”), is based on the novel by Richard Price and is co-written by Kaufman and his wife Rose.Read More »

Staggeringly simple films: a man itching his back, a man thinking, a man yawning, but like the works of Samuel Beckett, these minute gestures stand in as grand statements of the human condition, akin to the films of Bas Jan Ader and Marcel Broodthaers.Read More »

The “Rolls-Royce Baby” is an irresistible Erotic Diva who rides around in a Rolls-Royce in search for simulated sex with strangers. She is chauffeured by the great and multi-talented Eric.Read More »

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
The notorious final film from Pier Paolo Pasolini, Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic . . . It’s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker’s transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s eighteenth-century opus of torture and degradation to Fascist Italy in 1944 remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in.Read More »

Roy Stuart continues to innovate and surprise with his iconic Glimpse series, bringing you Glimpse 25 Alpha Vol. 2, more audacious, sexual, and subversive than ever before! Liberated from the shackles of conventionality, this second installment of Alpha continues to push the boundaries of contemporary erotic art.Read More »

Synopsis:
A fantasy story based on the relationship between Kenji Miyazawa and his younger sister Toshi. This is the first 35mm film written and directed by Isao Yamada, who has created a unique world with his 8mm and 16mm short films. Tomohiro Aso is in charge of photography, and Simon Turner of “The Garden” is in charge of the music.Read More »

Immanuel Rath is a stuffy, disciplinarian professor who is shocked to discover his students passing around a postcard of Lola-Lola, a singer at The Blue Angel cabaret. Hoping to catch his students there, Professor Rath visits the nightclub and witnesses Lola-Lola’s performance. Entranced by her dissolute charms, he gets drunk on champagne and spends the night with her. The ensuing scandal causes him to lose control of his students and he is terminated from his position. Returning to Lola, he agrees to marry her and joins the troupe. His humiliation at having to play a clown onstage is compounded by Lola’s attraction to the strongman Mazeppa. To make matters worse, the troupe returns to the professor’s hometown, forcing him to acknowledge how far he has fallen.Read More »