Disputed Passage (1939) Blu-Ray Kino Lorber, DVD5

From Frank Borzage, the acclaimed director of 7th Heaven, Street Angel, Bad Girl, A Farewell to Arms, Desire, The Mortal Storm and Moonrise, comes this gripping story about the powerful healing ability of the human spirit.

John Wesley Beaven (John Howard, The Undying Monster), an understudy of Dr. 'Tubby' Forster (Akim Tamiroff, For Whom the Bell Tolls), esteemed professor of medicine and surgery, struggles to fully surrender to his teacher's philosophy of keeping the sterility of science separate from the warmth of the human spirit. His views are challenged after he falls in love with Lan Ying (Dorothy Lamour, Road to Morocco), a Chinese woman of American descent raised in Shanghai. Upon completion of paying a personal debt to her Chinese father, she promptly returns to John to accept his marriage proposal but is interjected by Forster claiming that she would ruin his life. When John becomes aware that Forster has interfered, he sets out to find his love in China.

Director: Frank Borzage
Cast: Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff, John Howard, Judith Barrett
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, War
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An Unmarried Woman (1978) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

When writer-director Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman opened in 1978, it had the slogan, "She laughs, she cries, she feels angry, she feels lonely, she feels guilty, she makes breakfast, she makes love, she makes do, she is strong, she is weak, she is brave, she is scared, she is… an unmarried woman." This makes the film sound hokey, but it's actually an unpretentious look at a woman's life turned upside down.

Jill Clayburgh is terrific as Erica, a Manhattan gallery worker who has to forge a new life after her husband (a deliciously self-absorbed Michael Murphy) leaves her for a younger woman. Clayburgh delineates each stage of Erica's transformation into an independent woman – from abandonment and grief to anger, reconciliation, and empowerment – with delicacy and wit, and Mazursky captures the performance with a visual style that alternates elegant, formal compositions and freewheeling handheld camerawork to perfectly accentuate his title character's rollercoaster journey.

Director: Paul Mazursky
Cast: Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates, Michael Murphy
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

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Perfect Friday (1970) Blu-Ray Kino Lorber

Mr. Graham (Stanley Baker, Accident, Lizard in a Woman's Skin) is a manager in a bank somewhere in London who is convinced that he has devised the perfect plan to get rich and retire in a foreign country with beautiful beaches. But to steal the money from the bank Mr. Graham needs two accomplices. This is where the stunningly beautiful Lady Britt Dorset (Ursula Andress, The 10th Victim, Red Sun) and her extravagant husband Lord Nicholas Dorset enter the picture. Both desperately need money to continue living beyond their means, but only Lady Dorset is brave enough to state the obvious. Graham seizes on their difficulties and suggests a bank robbery.

None of the three are to be trusted and a love triangle develops. A sum of 300,000 pounds is to be stolen from the vault under the bank's nose. The plan is clever and intricate, requiring Nick to impersonate a bank inspector on just the right day - the perfect Friday and exchange a box. All three have their own ideas and both men think they're going away with Britt at the end. A flat is rented and costumes purchased. The robbery eventually goes ahead without incident, but who goes away with Britt at Heathrow?

Director: Peter Hall
Cast: Ursula Andress, Stanley Baker, David Warner
Country: UK
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Thriller

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The Man from Morocco (1945) DVD5

When a group of idealistic freedom fighters arrive in France during World War II, following Franco's triumph in the Spanish Civil War, they find themselves being taken as political prisoners by the collaborationist Vichy government. Following two years in a prison camp, they are sent to build a railway in the relentless heat of the Sahara desert. Treated as less than humans, one makes a brave escape to return to London to find his lover who believes him to be dead. She is being romantically pursued by a man who is his greatest enemy – a traitor to the cause of freedom. As he holds the names of some 2000 men who are to be trusted in occupied France to help the cause of freedom, he is in very great danger with plans afoot to relieve him of both the names – and his life!

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 01:51:38 | 4.05 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Action, Adventure

Director: Mutz Greenbaum (as Max Greene)
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Margaretta Scott, Mary Morris
Country: UK
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The Comfort of Strangers (1990) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection, DVD9 and Blu-Ray BFI

Adapting the acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan, playwright and screenwriter Harold Pinter lends his trademark unnerving dialogue and air of creeping menace to this spellbinding study of power, control, and the frighteningly thin line between pleasure and pain.

Colin (Everett) and Mary (Richardson) are second-honeymooning in Venice, warily striving to repair the fissures in their stale relationship. A seemingly fortuitous encounter with the aristocratic Robert (Walken) bemuses them, his evident hospitality sitting uneasily with his unusually frank questions and confessions. But the suave tale-spinner also catalyses what remains of the couple's sexual feelings for each other, and as if mesmerised, they return to the palazzo he shares with his submissive wife (Mirren), only half oblivious to the dangers awaiting them...

Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson, Helen Mirren
Country: USA, Italy, UK
Genre: Drama, Thriller
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Reflections of Evil (2002) 2 x DVD5

Now, there are cult movies and then there are CULT movies. There are movies that gradually find exposure and a dedicated audience. There are movies that barely make a whimper initially and take years to catch on. And, there are movies so notorious and/or scarce they become the stuff of back alley legend.
Damon Packard's Reflections of Evil (2002) may be the first modern, digital equivalent of the underground cult film.

Bob (played by Packard himself) is an obese, sugar addicted, quite possibly insane, street seller of cheap watches. He still lives with his mother, who despite her henpecking complains cannot control her weird son. Given to Tourretes-like screaming fits and gorging himself on sweets, Bob is a seeming magnet for violence, be it from random pedestrians, homeless people, or dogs that assault him as he walks around LA.

Flashbacks to 1971 reveal Bob as a kid with his mother and sister, Julie (Nicole Vanderhoff), taking a Universal Studios tour. Julie gets off the tram, wanders around the backlot, and stumbles upon a young Steven Spielberg making his first film Something Evil. She then meets the Golden Guru and his followers who entice her with drugs. After what can only be described as a 2001ish psychedelic nightmare, she apparently OD's and is sent into the afterlife where her ghostly spirit wanders. And, eventually, we come to find she is looking for Bob.

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Die Russen kommen / The Russians Are Coming (1987), Karriere / Career (1971) DVD9 + DVD5 Edition Filmmuseum 107

In The Russians Are Coming, director Heiner Carow and screenwriter Claus Kuchenmeister tell the story of the final days of World War II from the perspective of a member of the Hitler youth. For this boy, an ardent devotee of National Socialism, the day that will later become known as "Liberation Day" in the GDR brings about the collapse of his entire world.

Originally included in the DEFA production schedule in 1966 as a reserve entry for the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967, the almost-finished film was aborted in 1968. It would not be completed until 1987. A DEFA film about fascism without an anti-fascist hero would have been unusual at any time, but The Russians Are Coming strayed too far from the dominant narrative and was inopportune.

This double DVD presents a new, restored version of the film and allows viewers their first ever opportunity to compare it with Career (1971), in which Heiner Carow made use of parts of the unreleased material from The Russians Are Coming.

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