The Kid Brother (1927) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Today Harold Lloyd's fame as one of the top film comics of the silent era rests largely on his two most often-screened films, Safety Last (1923) and The Freshman (1925). But many film critics and Lloyd admirers rate The Kid Brother as one of his very best, arguably a masterpiece, and probably his most accomplished all-around performance. Even critics who rate Lloyd below Chaplin or Keaton because they find his films mechanical and lacking in human feeling point to this movie as the exception, an exciting, funny, and touching work that depends on acting and story line more than daredevil stunts.

The Kid Brother, a male Cinderella story, finds Lloyd as Harold, youngest son of the backwoods Hickory clan, treated with contempt by his brutish father and brothers because he's timid and sensitive. Though unappreciated by his family, he's also a clever young man, demonstrated by the way he comes up with various Rube Goldberg-like devices to help him complete his huge burden of farm chores. Harold falls for lovely Mary Powers, who moves in with his family after her traveling medicine show burns down. When thugs from the show steal the town's money, Harold's father is accused. Then the mistreated young drudge springs into action, using his brains rather than brawn to impress his family and outwit the crooks in a hilarious sequence of chases and gags until he restores his father's good name and wins the heart of his girl.

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Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers (1902-1929) 6 x DVD9

There was a time in the last century where a woman ran her own studio, as Alice Guy Blache did when she began her Solax Film Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey. On the West Coast, Lois Weber reigned as one of the top-earning directors of the 1910s. And in that time, Universal Studios once promoted the strength of their women-led workforce. One historian estimated that the scrappy studio north of Hollywood released some 170 movies from women directors from 1914-1919. For comparison, between 2007-2017, only 53 women directed a major studio release that cracked the list of top 100 movies at the box office.

Film fans, rejoice! The true history of the motion picture industry just got a bit more complete. The invaluable film distributor Kino Lorber has assembled a truly eye-opening collection of films from the silent era—all made by women. Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers is a DVD/Blu-ray box set that presents more than 50 silent feature and short films (a total running time of 1,710 minutes) digitally mastered from 2k and 4K restorations from a variety of sources, including the Library of Congress, Academy Film Archives and the New York Women in Film & Television Preservation Fund.

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Midas Run (1969) Blu-Ray

Fred Astaire plays John Pedley, an aging British Secret Service agent who feels that his hard work over the years has remained unnoticed. To get the appreciation that his country owes him, as well as a proper financial bonus that will allow him to enjoy the rest of his life in style, Pedley masterminds a brilliant plan. In Venice, he approaches the ambitious but struggling writer Mike Warden (Richard Crenna) and convinces him to participate in an elaborate heist at the end of which a jetliner owned by the British government will lose $10 million dollars in gold. Soon after, the two are joined by the freshly scorned but ready for adventure wife Sylvia Giroux (Heywood), who instantly adds a great deal of class to the operation and in the process awakens Warden's desire to be in a 'meaningful relationship'. Pedley then hires various shady 'experts' to assist them during the heist and after the gold is removed from the jetliner.

BD25 | 1080p AVC | 01:47:08 | 22.5 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none

Director: Alf Kjellin
Cast: Fred Astaire, Richard Crenna, Anne Heywood
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Romance
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L’une chante l’autre pas / One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Six years after Varda added her name to the Manifesto of the 343 — a declaration by 343 women publicly proclaiming that they had had an abortion, despite the procedure still being illegal in France — she made this remarkable combination of social commentary and musical about a woman's right to choose.

Agnes Varda's very touching film is a bewitching tale about two French women who become friends during a period of rootlessness for each. Pauline leaves home at seventeen to try to make it on her own as a singer; Suzanne is left alone with two small children after her lover commits suicide. Even through the two women have very little in common, they feel good with each other. Theirs is a natural, effortless relationship. At one point, Pauline describes it as "like love, with no heartaches." Over the years they are forced to go in separate directions. Suzanne has to live with her parents on their farm; later she moves to Southern France and sets up a family planning center; Pauline — now calling herself Apple — forms a group of feminist troubadours who practice consciousness raising through their songs.

The two women's interests intersect and they meet ten years later at a rally for women's abortion rights. They pick up where they left off, sharing news of their loves — Apple's for Darius, an Iranian economist, Suzanne's for her lovely children — and their experiences. Through their struggles and successes, director Varda celebrates the particular joys of being a woman. Over thousands of miles (Apple live in Iran for a while) and periods of loneliness and happiness, the two keep in touch with postcards and occasional letters. Their friendship remains a holy bond.

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Blue Velvet (1986) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Written and directed by David Lynch (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive), Blue Velvet is a powerful and hallucinatory film that documents a young man's coming of age against a backdrop of perversion, sadomasochism, and violence. This is a film that delves into the black side of human nature in a way that few films have ever accomplished. It's a film that will stay with you—like the stuttery twitch-memories of a nightmare—long after its end credits scroll. Blue Velvet is about the moral rot underlying the American Dream.

College student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) discovers a human ear in a field. He contacts detective John Williams (George Dickerson), hoping that he would assist him in his search for the owner of the ear, but is quickly told to keep his mouth shut.

Together with the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), Jeffrey launches his own investigation. Soon after, he meets the beautiful night club singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who often sees a drug-addicted loner (Dennis Hopper) who loves hurting people. Without realizing, Jeffrey quickly gets sucked up in a dangerous world where everyone has something to hide and life is cheap.

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The Breaking Point (1950) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

If you know Hemingway's novel, it doesn't take long before you realize that The Breaking Point is the most faithful screen adaptation, and what few key alterations Curtiz and his screenwriters made have actually created a stronger story.
The result is a tense, fast paced, atmospheric and highly watchable thriller, even a neglected little gem.

In the Curtiz version, John Garfield plays Harry Morgan, the owner of a charter boat who is having trouble making enough money to support his wife and daughters. When he accepts a charter to take a man named Hannagan and his mistress to Mexico to do some fishing, his client skips out without paying, leaving Morgan with Hannagan's girlfriend Lenora (Patricia Neal), and a docking fee he can't pay. In order to make enough money to get home, Morgan reluctantly agrees to smuggle Chinese people into the United States, but the Coast Guard finds out about it and impounds his boat. The situation becomes increasingly desperate for Morgan as a gang of crooks blackmails him and kills his first mate, forcing him into a fateful confrontation.

Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter
Country: USA
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller

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The 39 Steps (1935) DVD9 (Reissue) and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

The 39 Steps is a fascinating early film from Alfred Hitchcock, made five years before he left Britain to begin making films in America. It's a loose, free-spirited thriller, ragged around the edges, sloppily plotted, and often unevenly paced, but the director turns it into a near-masterpiece almost in spite of itself. Its subject is pure Hitchcock, an early stab at the kind of "wrong man" thrillers that would soon become his most characteristic works.

Ordinary businessman Richard Hannay (a suavely charming Robert Donat) stumbles into an international espionage plot when he brings home a mysterious foreign woman (Lucie Mannheim) after a vaudeville-style show. She's wearing a black lace veil and speaks with a sinister accent, so of course she turns out to be a mercenary spy, working for the British government to prevent some military secrets from leaving the country in the hands of an enemy spy (Godfrey Tearle). The only thing she manages to tell Hannay before she's abruptly murdered in the middle of the night is that the spy ring's leader is missing the tip of his pinky finger, and that she had planned to meet a man in a certain town in Scotland next. Hannay, quite naturally suspected of his guest's murder, flees towards Scotland with both the police and the spies on his tail.

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