Essential Fellini: Variety Lights (1950), The White Sheik (1952), I vitelloni (1953), La strada (1954), Il bidone (1955), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La dolce vita (1960), 8 1/2 (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Fellini Satyricon (1969), Roma (1972), Amarcord (1973), And the Ship Sails On (1983), Intervista (1987), Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember (1997) 15 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Federico Fellini remains one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of film. He was an artist who crafted a cinematic spectacle all his own, creating an unique but sometimes bleak world full of dreamers, whose desires, fears, nightmares, and hopes all take center stage.

Not only is this monumental Criterion Collection release "essential" Federico Fellini (1920-1993), it also represents the large majority of films in the Italian maestro's oeuvre, missing only I Clowns, Fellini's Casanova, Orchestra Rehearsal, City of Women, Ginger and Fred, The Voice of the Moon, and a couple of segments from anthology films.

The fact that this set is far from complete in terms of Fellini's films does not mean that it is not comprehensive. Titles span from the start of Fellini's career to quite nearly the end, covering all of his major thematic shifts and often wild creative phases. Included are all of the Fellini titles that Criterion has ever released, many of which have not been previously made available on Blu-ray due to having been forced out of print for many years. Not only is it about time, it's the perfect time- the 100th birthday of the director. (Fellini was born January 20, 1920, in Rimini, Italy).
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Fragment of an Empire / Oblomok imperii / Обломок империи (1929) Blu-Ray Flicker Alley

A story which explores the significance of fragmented memories against the backdrop of time, the often revelatory Fragment of an Empire explores the changing landscape in Russia circa the late 1920's as the film follows the course of events surrounding one lone-man's perilous journey forward.

At the center of Ermler's fable-esque tale is Filimonov (Fyodor Nikitin), a soldier who was left shell-shocked by his service in the Russian imperial army. Stuck in a small countryside village in a PTSD-induced haze for a decade, the young man is unaware of who he is and of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the rise of communism. But a series of aural and visual cues stirs him from his reverie—a familiar face on a train, the ringing of a bell, the medallion bearing the image of Cross of St. George that hangs from his neck, and the rapid movement of a sewing machine that reminds him of the firing of a machine gun—and soon he starts to grapple with the ghosts of his past and a world completely transformed by the revolution.

As the environment surrounding him continues to change and develop, Fragment of an Empire transcends its own timestamp as it turns into an imaginative and surrealist experience. The filmmaking excels as a visually-unique silent film with a central protagonist who goes on a haunting journey from start to finish.

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Three Films by Luis Buñuel: Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie / The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Le fantôme de la liberté / The Phantom of Liberty (1974), Cet obscur objet du désir / That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) 3 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Throughout his life, Luis Buñuel disdained reductionist interpretations of the "meaning" of his work, asserting more often than not that there was no meaning, that he included in his films only what amused him. Yet it seems difficult not to see much of what he did as rooted in a lifelong reaction to his early experiences as a child in Aragon, a region of Spain which he stated had remained Medieval until World War One, and to his education by Jesuits. A deeply embedded social order and the formalized rituals and meanings of the Catholic Church remained major elements of his work throughout five decades of filmmaking, always expressed through his resistance to being contained by those social and religious restrictions.

Driven from Spain by Fascists and from New York by commie hunters, he escaped to university in Madrid, befriending the painter Salvador Dali and the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, that ingrained resistance came to include the Modernism which itself was a reaction rigid social and religious rules. With his friends, Buñuel embraced Surrealism, itself a revolt against the constraints of rationalism. Already drawn towards cinema, a viewing of Fritz Lang's Der müde Tod (1921) convinced him that movies were the way to express himself.

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Full Metal Jacket (1987) Blu-Ray + DVD5 25th Anniversary Edition

In 1987 Stanley Kubrick made his first film in seven years – since The Shining – and came up with a brilliant essay on the futilities and dehumanising effects of war. A brutal, incisive anti-war film, it revels in the ugly details of both boot camp and battle. It's set at the time of the Vietnam War, but it could be any war.

Following the pattern of its source novel, The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford, it is a film split into two distinctive acts. In the mesmerizing opening segment of the film, a tough and abusive drill sergeant (Lee Ermey) is attempting to mold a group of Marine recruits into savage fighting men. His message is simple: thinking is a vice and killing is a virtue. Unlike most of his peers, Private Joker (Matthew Modine) resists the programming. In the second half of the film, however, Joker is a combat correspondent for Stars and Stripes and is forced into battle following the Tet offensives. In the blitzed city of Hue, his values are put to the ultimate test.

Albert Camus once urged that men be neither victims nor executioners. This film shows how in Vietnam, American soldiers were both.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio
Country: UK, USA
Genre: Drama, War

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Les demons / The Demons / Die Nonnen von Clichy (1973) 2 x Blu-Ray Wicked-Vision Media (1 Movie, 4 Cuts)

Is it possible that Ken Russell's The Devils might have inspired Jess Franco to shoot The Demons? Yes, it is, but if it was indeed the case, it hardly matters. Why? Because excluding a few very small early projects in Franco's body of work the subject matter has an entirely different function. Essentially, whatever the chosen subject matter might be Franco uses it only as the starting point for the creation of a unique ambience that would provide his film with its direction and identity.

In The Demons, we open upon the trial of a woman being tested involving pokes, prods, and water evaporation leading to her being burned at the stake where she curses Lady de Winter (Karin Field), grand inquisitor Jeffries (Cihangir Gaffari), and their right-hand man Renfield (Alberto Dalbes). Turns out the old hag has two daughters living in a convent, Kathleen (Anne Libert) and Margaret (Britt Nichols), who are charged with being witches after exploiting in sins of their own flesh. Now, the two girls must save themselves and exact revenge against those who killed their mother.

Director: Jesus Franco (as Clifford Brown)
Cast: Anne Libert, Carmen Yazalde, Doris Thomas
Country: France, Portugal
Genre: Horror
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Star Spangled to Death (2004) 4 x DVD9

One of the last surviving giants of avant garde American cinema, Ken Jacobs spent 50 years assembling this six-hour epic video commentary on a half century of US mischief, mistakes and occasional downright madness.
Begun in the '50s, reworked and reshaped for both the national bicentennial and the Reagan '80s, and then "finalized" (or so Jacobs claims) shortly after the Iraq invasion, Star Spangled to Death often seems like it will last forever. (That's a compliment, natch.) Divided into three lopsided parts, the film is an oversized ode to incompleteness or, more specifically, to the last century's cultural detritus. The bulk of the film consists of archaic clips ranging from racist ethnographic studies of 1950s Africa, a CBS doc on scientists experimenting on rhesus monkeys, musical-short subjects, B&W cartoons of questionable integrity and, finally, footage of life during the war on terror. Jacobs shows most of these in their entirety, but only sometimes without direct commentary. When time comes to show all of Nixon's "Checkers Speech," he smears it with snickering, chatter, clips of Eisenhower, a lengthy insert on one man's love for his cat and, when attention turns to silent mascot Pat, sounds of orgasmic moaning. He goes even further with a fluffy campaign doc on Nelson Rockefeller, though Jacobs knows no amount of graffiti is required when showing the jawdropping "Going to Heaven on a Mule" number from the 1933 musical Wonder Bar--wherein a blackfaced Al Jolson plays a dying slave who ascends to a gaudily overwrought heaven featuring other blackfaced whites. Throughout, Jacobs shows pop culture as being at the mercy of society, and society to be terminally sick, racist and cripplingly religious, particularly when ruled by the film's revolving door of national supervillains (Rockefeller, Reagan, Dubya). Individual segments of Star Spangled to Death aren't exactly subtle, particularly when it turns to textual inserts (which he sometimes uses subliminally). But Jacobs lets the audience make the connections, especially as the canvas gets bigger and bigger. Eventually it seems like there's no way to stop the damn thing, and perhaps there's not.
So enjoy!

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