Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

With this compassionate, startling comedy that could have come from no other artistic sensibility, the brilliant Miranda July reveals a world both familiar and strange—an original vision of creativity, sexuality, childhood, and loneliness that emerges from a series of braided vignettes around a pair of potential lovers.

Richard Swersey (John Hawkes) is a shoe salesman and father of two, whose marriage has broken down. He sets up house in a close knit neighbourhood and shares custody of his 14 year old son Peter (Miles Thompson) and 7 year old Robby (Brandon Ratcliff). Christine (Miranda July) is an artist who lives in a world of her own. When she meets John at the shoe shop, she is drawn to him and they begin an unusual relationship. In the meantime, Peter becomes the guinea pig for two teenage girls experimenting with their sexuality and little Robby gets caught up in a sexually permissive internet chat with an anonymous stranger. Then there's little Sylvie (Carlie Westerman), who is secretly stashing all her dreams, along with various useful items, in her hope chest.

Director: Miranda July
Cast: John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson
Country: USA, UK
Genre: Comedy, Drama

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The Byelorussian Station / Belorusskiy vokzal / Белорусский вокзал (1971) DVD5, Blu-Ray

25 years after the end of Great Patriotic War four comrades-in-arms attend the funeral of their friend. He was the only one of them who stayed in the military and rose to the rank of colonel. The rest of them turned to civil professions: locksmith, journalist, accountant and director of the plant.

Being gathered together due to tragic circumstances, during one day they suddenly fall into a variety of situations – both comic and tragic ones. But in each case friends are united by friendship, generosity and willingness to act according to justice, no matter what ...

That difficult day friends complete with a visit to their friend, the former front-line nurse. She sings a lyrical song of the war years, and they cry from the flood of memories as they think back 25 years ago, May 1945, when all of them were alive, young and happy of their victory ...

Director: Andrey Smirnov
Cast: Aleksey Glazyrin, Evgeniy Leonov, Anatoliy Papanov, Vsevolod Safonov, Nina Urgant
Country: Soviet Union
Genre: Drama

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2046 (2004) 2 x DVD

Writer/director Wong Kar Wai has created a dream-like, sci-fi, period reminisce that is a most unusual semi-sequel to his lush love story, "In the Mood for Love".

Consumed by the memory of an unfortunate love affair Chow (Tony Leung) is living in a world where reality is dangerously intertwined with fiction. In a small and dusty room of a cheap Hong Kong hotel Chow is finishing the final pages of a story recalling the women encountered throughout his life. In room 2047 strangers will show up, spend the night, and disappear without a trace barely making an impression on Chow. Except for his neighbor in room 2046, a beautiful prostitute who has captivated his imagination…so much as Chow is ready to follow her in the future where people travel to regain their lost memories.

Beautifully composed, often confusing, yet gently tingling your senses Kar Wai Wong's latest film 2046 is a pleasurable journey to a mysterious world where nothing is what it seems. Populated with stunningly beautiful women, gamblers, and plenty of shady characters Chow's world is indeed the perfect setting for a film which follows anything but a rational storyline. So much that the minute you turn your eyes away from the screen you will fall victim of Kar Wai Wong's deceiving camera and fail to put together the missing pieces in this quite intriguing film.

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Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Pictures Volume 2: Reefer Madness (1936), Sex Madness (1938) Blu-Ray Kino Lorber

Volume 2 presents a double-feature Reefer Madness (1936) and Sex Madness (1938). Both are exploitation films designed to warn teenagers and young adults of the dangers of becoming addicted to, respectively, marijuana cigarettes and the dangers of venereal disease.

Perhaps one of the most infamous exploitation films of all time, Louis J. Gasnier's 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda piece, Reefer Madness (aka Tell Your Children) became a midnight movie sensation in the 1960s due to its unintentionally hilarious depiction of the "dangers of marijuana." The film was designed as a warning to parents about "public enemy number one," and centers around a young man who is made to believe that he committed a murder while high on pot.

Also included on this new release from Kino Lorber is Dwain Esper's 1938 film, Sex Madness (aka Human Wreckage), a film that takes the moralistic lecturing of Reefer Madness to new heights in its crusade against extramarital sex and the scourge of gonorrhea. Featuring graphic depictions of STD wounds, and a plot about a group of teenagers whose inability to say "no" lead to life-long afflictions of venereal disease, ruining marriages and destroying their lives for one night of passion.

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The Roger Lambert Anthology – Coming of Age Vol. 6: Split (1974), I Want to Be Famous (1976), Follow You Follow Me (1979), A Seaside Story (1986) DVD9

There are a great many films out there which follow the pattern of two boys "discovering" their sexual "identity" as they realise their feelings for each other. One wonders how many of them will still be viewed fifty years from now! Fortunately, Lambert's films are a great deal subtler than this, and have grown in stature and importance as the decades have rolled by.

In "I Want to be Famous" Steve is a lonely boy, for whom school seems merely a waste of time and whose home life is little better. His parents, particularly his father, seem incapable of relating to him emotionally. He takes refuge from this hostile social environment by nurturing a violent fantasy world which he shares with fellow loner Stuart.

Lambert's next film, "Follow You Follow Me" (1979) is about two boys, Joseph and Peter, who are inseparable from each other, despite coming from somewhat different social backgrounds. Their fathers are on opposite sides of an industrial dispute, and the various social and peer pressures operating on them places a strain on their relationship.

In "A Seaside Story" two youths visit a seaside resort for a holiday, but are looking for very different things. One is seeking to chat up the local girls, whereas the other, more introverted, seems more interested in fossil hunting and nature.

Split (1974): A young boy with behavioral problems claims to have been possessed by an alien life-force.

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The Prince of Tides (1991) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

"Human pain does not let go of its grip at any one point in time," Robert Veninga writes in Gift of Hope: How We Survive Our Tragedies. "Rather it works its way out of our consciousness over time." The grip of pain and the liberation that comes when it is released is the theme of The Prince of Tides, directed and produced by and starring Barbra Streisand.

The Prince of Tides is all about family: the ties that bind, through thick and thin, good and bad, love and hate. All his life, Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) has been a good "Southern boy," putting on a good show of jokes and banter rather than showing pain... and in the process, pushing away the people who matter most in his life. But when his beloved sister Savannah is hospitalized after a suicide attempt, Tom receives a call for help from her psychiatrist, Susan (Barbra Streisand). Helping Savannah means more than making the trip north to New York to visit her in the hospital; Tom must help Susan understand Savannah's troubled past in order to resolve the issues that prompted her suicide attempt. But Savannah's past is also Tom's past, and during the course of his sessions with Susan, Tom must confront and share his most painful, hidden memories.

For her acclaimed second feature as a director, Barbra Streisand crafted a sumptuous, emotionally wrenching adaptation of Pat Conroy's best-selling novel.

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