The Idea of North (1995) DVD5

Rebecca BARON (1968, USA) is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and media artist with a specific interest in the construction of history and in still photography and its relationship to the moving image. Her work, which mainly consists of lyrical essay films, has been screened at various international film festivals and media venues.

A unifying feature of Baron's art can be found in her engagement with the fault-lines of memory and history, and with the processes by which they are constructed through modern media. For Baron, the images that connect us to the real and to the past become most compelling – and problematic – around the edges: where fact and imagination intersect (as in her 1995 film "The Idea of North", the chronicle of a failed 19th century polar expedition).

Based on photographs taken in 1897 by polar explorers Nils Strindberg and Salomon Andree who were marooned on an ice floe, the film explores the limitations of images and other forms of record as a means of knowing the past.

DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 | 00:14:33 | 0.8 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Experimental, Short

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David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981), Stereo (1969) DVD5 MGM, 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

David Cronenberg's (A Dangerous Method; Videodrome) 1979 sci-fi cult classic Scanners has all the earmarks of his style – it's cool, sleek, thrilling, and visceral in its horror and imagery. From the opening shots we are thrust into an alternate cloak and dagger universe of glittering shopping malls and suspicious characters. The story is an unusual one that just about anticipates that bastion of '90s paranoia, The X-Files, involving a war between two chemical companies who have been covering up the existence of people in the population who have abilities that can become dangerous.

Scanners are a group of individuals blessed – or cursed – with incredible psychic powers, the ability to read thoughts and kill with the mind. A shady corporation known as ConSec has been working on turning these people into weapons, a programme led by Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), who claims to understand scanners better than anyone else. His latest protege is Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), a young man with few memories, tormented by the voices in his head. Vale is dispatched to track down and kill Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), a scanner who has been recruiting others for his own army, and murdering those who refuse to join.

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The Hit (1984) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

If you like Euro-crime and haven't seen this one you're in for a real treat. English killers are on the road in Spain, executing a hit on a 'Supergrass' who's spent ten years in protective custody. The brilliant cast give the criminal twists extra credibility. The suspenseful show is one of Stephen Frears' best, and it builds to a highly satisfying conclusion. It's also the feature debut of Tim Roth, and as such shouldn't be missed.

After ratting out his criminal associates on the witness stand, Willie Parker (Terence Stamp) has spent ten years under police protection in a small town north of Madrid. That's when freelance hit man Braddock (John Hurt) shows up to take Willie to Paris, where the mob is waiting to repay him for his treachery. The pitiless Braddock is assisted by Myron, a street thug on his first big job, who has a bad habit of talking too much (Tim Roth of Rob Roy and Pulp Fiction). In swapping out their getaway car, the killers end up kidnapping a young Spanish bargirl, Maggie (Laura del Sol). Braddock is a fastidious detail man who thinks nothing of killing a stranger to ensure the security of the mission. Thanks to missteps made along the way, he comes realizes that they have little chance of reaching the French border. The only question is, who to kill? And when?

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Wandafuru raifu / Wonderful Life / After Life (1998) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

The people materialize from out of clear white light, as a bell tolls. Where are they? An ordinary building is surrounded by greenery and an indistinct space. They are greeted by staff members who explain, courteously, that they have died, and are now at a way-station before the next stage of their experience.

They will be here a week. Their assignment is to choose one memory, one only, from their lifetimes: One memory they want to save for eternity.

Then a film will be made to reenact that memory, and they will move along, taking only that memory with them, forgetting everything else. They will spend eternity within their happiest memory.

That is the premise of Hirokazu Kore-eda's "After Life", a film that reaches out gently to the audience and challenges us: What is the single moment in our own lives we treasure the most?

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Cast: Arata, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima, Takashi Naito, Kyoko Kagawa, Kei Tani, Taketoshi Naito, Toru Yuri, Yusuke Iseya
Country: Japan
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
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The Ladykillers (1955) 2 x Blu-Ray Studio Canal

The film was one of the final comedies produced at Britain's Ealing Studio in the years leading up to the invasion of home televisions. Written by Academy Award winner William Rose (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner), and directed by American-born Alexander Mackendrick, the production gathered a wonderful cast of well-known actors for an experience that's one part tragedy and three parts comedy. If you've never seen The Ladykillers, you're missing an important piece of film history.

Living a stone's throw away from London's Kings Cross Station, Ms. Louisa Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) is the widowed owner of a large house with rooms to rent. One day a potential tenant bearing the title Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness) arrives on her doorstep with plans to rent the upper apartment for his incoming band of amateur musicians. Intrigued with the idea of welcoming artists into her home, the naive old lady ushers Marcus and his motley crew of would-be thieves into her home, allowing them the perfect location for an upcoming bank heist. Taking advantage of Ms. Wilberforce as a key pawn in their scheme, the shady characters pull off the caper and believe they're in the clear. However, an unfortunate accident involving a cello case full of bank notes soon reveals the true identity of the thugs, sending the elderly landlord's conscience reeling. Filled with a sense of duty despite the ominous presence of five criminals, Ms. Wilberforce allows the men a brief opening to collect their thoughts while she contemplates how to handle the delicate situation with the police..

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Oberst Redl / Colonel Redl (1985) Blu-Ray Kino Lorber

István Szabó's Colonel Redl is an unmissable masterpiece. Based loosely on a true story, it won the Best Foreign Language Film BAFTA and was nominated for the Foreign Language Film Oscar and Golden Globe, plus the top award at Cannes. Its failure to win is up there with the Best Picture Oscar going to Shakespeare In Love over Life Is Beautiful.

The film tells the story of a young boy who is selected to go to a military academy despite his poor origins as a working-class Hungarian of Jewish origin. Quickly making friends with the son of a baron and impressing the school's director with his patriotism by preferring to celebrate the Emperor's birthday to returning home for his own father's funeral, Redl rises quickly through the ranks until he finds himself stationed on the Russian border. However, it becomes quickly apparent that his nationalism and moral Puritanism serve only to alienate Redl from his fellow officers and in trying to compensate for his lower origins with excessive zeal he only manages to make an enemy out of the man who used to be his best friend. Promoted again, this time to the general staff to be the head of Austrian military intelligence, the colonel naively blunders into the intrigues of the Archduke Ferdinand who might well be trying to start what would later come to be known as World War I

Brandauer's towering performance minutely marks the gradual disintegration of Redl's mask and his final exposure at the point of death. Szabó's film is visually magnificent, shot with a crisp clarity which never succumbs to romantic nostalgia. The suicide of the real-life Redl was the subject of John Osborne's notorious A Patriot for Me. But where Osborne revelled in the decadence and debauchery, Szabó gives an extraordinary, chilling, complex account of a man's betrayal of himself.
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Bless This House: The Movie (1972) DVD5, Blu-Ray

Comedy legend Sid James reprises his role as the perpetually bewildered head of a dysfunctional family in the hit film adaptation of the hilarious '70s sitcom!

All Sid Abbot (Sidney James) wants is a quiet life, well that and his own secret distillery in his shed, but everything seems to be working against him. His wife Jean (Diana Coupland) and her best friend Betty (Patsy Rowlands) are filling up the house with junk from jumble sales as well as from their neighbours so they can open an antiques shop. Then there is his art student son Mike (Robin Askwith) who has brought a noisy clapped out banger and on top of that there is Mike's sister Sally (Sally Geeson) who is concerned about the environment. And to make matters worse there are the new neighbours next door Ronald (Terry Scott) and Vera Baines (June Whitfield) along with their daughter Kate (Carol Hawkins).

Director: Gerald Thomas
Cast: Sid James, Diana Coupland, Sally Geeson, Robin Askwith, Peter Butterworth, Terry Scott, June Whitfield, Patsy Rowlands, Carol Hawkins, George A. Cooper
Country: UK
Genre: Comedy, Romance
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Une balle au coeur / Devil at My Heels / A Bullet Through the Heart (1966) DVD5

Holding an old resentment against Montelepre, a Sicilian aristocratic family, an influential gangster named Rizzardi (Vasilis Diamantopoulos) takes possession of the palace of the last member of the family, Francesco Montelepre (Sami Frey), who he plans to kill. Stripped of his property, Francesco flees to Athens to find a witness for Rizzardi's crimes so that justice is done. Despite the help of Carla (Jenny Karezi), a nightclub singer, his search is in vain. And now Rizzardi's henchmen, led by Navarra (Spyros Fokas) are in pursuit. Fleeing from village to village, Montelepre manages to kill them one by one. Meanwhile, he finds love with Anna (Francoise Hardy), a French tourist, with whom he decides to take refuge on an island. Still, Navarra finds and pursues them...

DVD5 | PAL 16:9 | 01:20:55 | 3.65 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Francais
Subtitles: English
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance

Director: Jean-Daniel Pollet
Cast: Sami Frey, Francoise Hardy, Jenny Karezy, Spyros Fokas, Vasilis Diamantopoulos, Lucien Bodard
Country: France, Greece
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Copie conforme / Certified Copy (2010) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Artificial Eye, 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

From acclaimed director Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us) comes the story of a couple's apparent chance meeting in beautiful Tuscany.

James Miller (William Shimel) is a British author who is in Italy to promote his controversial art book. He contends that copies are often as good as the original and challenge us to see creativity in a fresh way. As he speaks, an unnamed woman (Juliette Binoche) arrives late with her bored son (Adrian Moore). She is a gallery owner eager to talk about art. The woman leaves her number.

They meet the next day and drive to Lucignano where original art and copies abound. He autographs several copies of his book and then she takes him for a coffee. When Miller exits to talk on his cell phone, the coffee shop proprietor assumes that he is her husband and begins a lecture on the mysteries of love and the challenges of marriage. When Miller returns, the woman speaks of him as her husband of 15 years. He does the same and soon we are wondering, Are they really husband and wife? Has their meeting as strangers been a concocted drama to bring some adventure to their marriage ?

Captivating and hugely entertaining, this romantic tale playfully and provocatively blurs the lines between reality and imagination.
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Spalovac mrtvol / The Cremator (1969) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

A journey through the mind of a macabre and twisted individual. This is a film that is studying the horrors of a human mind gone astray, and how even the simplest of thoughts can take on new meaning inside such a mind.

"The Cremator" is set during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in the early days of World War II. Karl Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrusinski) is a cremator working at the time, who believes he is cleansing souls through his job, ridding them of the fear of death in a humane way. He also has high ambitions for himself and longs for success, feeling inadequate for his wage not bringing in as much money as his wife's dowry. When an old friend approaches him who sides with the Nazis and describes them as ambitious pure citizens in line with Kopfrkingl's views of the world, the cremator decides to assist. This causes his already rather delusional mind to reach breaking point, leading to a shocking series of events in the final act.

Horror films aren't only about vampires and goblins — Czech director Juraj Herz's mind-chilling study of a Fascist opportunist communicates truths about aberrant psychology and Fascists, that audiences would never read in print. A bourgeois burner of cadavers leverages his Reich-useful trade into his own little warped empire of evil. Karl Kopfringl's modus operandi hardly needs to change, to conform to Nazi standards — the elitist hypocrite already has both his family and employees passively accepting his sick ideas about cremation as the solution to all human ills. Cinematically brilliant, this late picture from the Czech New Wave is one of the best movies ever about conformists, collaborators, and assorted other ghouls.
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Nightmare Sisters / Sorority Succubus Sisters (1988) DVD5 Retromedia, DVD9 and Blu-Ray Vinegar Syndrome

Because he had so much fun making his previous horror-comedy, "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama" (1988), and had leftover 35mm short ends from that shoot, DeCoteau decided to make a companion film starring the same three main actresses. Only this time the budget was significantly lower and the shooting schedule was significantly shorter (just 4 days), resulting in lots of long, static camera setups, minimal plot, minimal special effects and most of the action having to be shot in a small house. Thankfully none of that really diminishes the fun factor here thanks almost entirely to its three entertaining stars: Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer (billed here as "Michelle McClellan") and Brinke Stevens.

This time around, they mutate into monstrous but marvellously sexy male-hunting mutants in this low budget wonder that features ample flayed flesh and an equal enthusiasm towards sublime set-pieces of splatter movie madness!

Director: David DeCoteau
Cast: Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer, Brinke Stevens, Dukey Flyswatter
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
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Love (2015) 2 x Blu-Ray Wild Side 2D & 3D

If you cut out all the sex scenes in Gaspar Noe's Love, what's left is a wistful, some might say sappy, story about heartbreak — made with impressive cinematic elan but somewhat shallow emotional depth despite all its tragic posturing.

Much like Noe's Irreversible, which also left a lot of people fuming, Love has a rather unconventional narrative structure. It begins in the past and constantly jumps forward and back until it eventually settles down in the present. The chronology of the events, however, isn't difficult to follow.

His name is Murphy (Karl Glusman) and he is a young American who is studying film in Paris. Here he has fallen in love with Electra (Aomi Muyock), a beautiful French girl who also tells him that she loves him. When they are together and make love, they seem to connect in a way only two people who were meant to be together can. Their bond seems so strong that they share everything, even their most intimate desires.

One such desire, however, is the reason why Murphy loses Electra. A lot of the film is dedicated to Murphy's struggle to come to terms with the reality of the situation while revisiting past events and trying to reassess their significance.
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Her Name Was Lisa (1979) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Vinegar Syndrome

Beautiful, innocent Lisa (Samantha Fox) has been found dead of a heroin overdose. At her funeral, the people in her life gather to memorialize her, reflecting on how their own deeds sent her down a path of self-destruction and death. As each memory unfolds on screen, Lisa is seen to transform from a naive model who's forced to use her body to achieve her goals, to a manipulative vixen capable of luring men into her web of carnal abuse, to a tragic victim of her own insecurities and victimization.

1979's "Her Name Was Lisa" is notable is some circles due to its director, Roger Watkins, who previously created the vicious "Last House on Dead End Street." This awareness of helming intensity is important to retain while watching "Her Name Was Lisa," which, unlike many adult movies, has no interest in titillation. It's anti-erotica in many ways, and while it features all manner of sexual activity, the film is surprisingly grim, striving more to be a dramatic effort than an X-rated one.

Directors: Roger Watkins (as Richard Mahler), Robert Michaels
Cast: Vanessa del Rio, Samantha Fox, Bobby Astyr
Country: USA
Genre: Adult, Drama
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A Life at Stake (1955) Blu-Ray

Doris Hillman, the wife of wealthy L.A. businessman Gus Hillman (Douglass Dumbrille), approaches struggling architect Edward Shaw (Keith Andes) with a proposal approved by her husband, one that would earn them all plenty of dough in the real estate market. However, the Hillmans raise Shaw's suspicions when they insist he take out a key man insurance policy, which declares that the partners would be compensated were something unfortunate to happen to the principal player — in this case, Shaw. Are Shaw's suspicions well-founded, or is he merely being paranoid?

This independent production from the golden age of film noir was described by the Los Angeles Times as "a study in fear". It also shows Angela Lansbury, already a double Oscar nominee, as you've never seen her. She's a charming femme fatale. But is she as bad as she seems?

Director: Paul Guilfoyle
Cast: Angela Lansbury, Keith Andes, Douglass Dumbrille, Claudia Barrett, Jane Darwell, Gavin Gordon, Charles Maxwell, William Henry
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, Film-Noir
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