by Malakie Peters
It’s New Release Tuesday! This week we’ve got Tony Danza vs. orangutans, Jane Campion in 4K, Greek vampires, cyborg revenge, a gigantic trove of rarely-seen classics of folk horror, and more.
ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR (2022) (BLU-RAY)
Experience 19 of the best-known, least-known, rarely-seen and thought-lost classics of folk horror from around the world, all restored from the best available vault elements with Special Features that include short films, audio commentaries and exclusive featurettes.
AMERICAN MASTERS: BECOMING HELEN KELLER (2021) (DVD)
Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind since early childhood, was a passionate advocate for change, using her celebrity and wit to champion rights for women, people with disabilities, and people living in poverty. The film examines the complex legacy of this author, advocate, lecturer, and human rights pioneer.
ARREBATO (1979) (BLU-RAY)
Horror movie director Jose is adrift in a sea of doubt and drugs. As his belated second feature nears completion, his reclusive bubble is popped by two events: a sudden reappearance from an ex-girlfriend and a package from past acquaintance Pedro: a reel of Super-8 film, an audiotape, and a door key. From there, the boundaries of time, space, and sexuality are erased as Jose is once more sucked into Pedro’s vampiric orbit. Together, they attempt the ultimate hallucinogenic catharsis through a moebius strip of filming and being filmed.
ASSHOLES (2017) (BLU-RAY)
Adah & Aaron, two young recovering addicts, meet in their psychoanalyst’s office, fall in love, relapse on poppers, and become the biggest assholes in New York City. ASSHOLES is a debaucherous romantic comedy of excess for the asshole in all of us!
BAD NEWS BEARS (2005) (BLU-RAY)
A fresh take on the irreverent 1976 comedy hit, BAD NEWS BEARS follows a grizzled former minor league baseball player (Billy Bob Thornton) who is recruited to coach a woefully inept Little League team to a championship against their hated rivals, the Yankees.
BEING NATURAL (2018) (BLU-RAY)
Takashi Uno wants little more from life than to play the bongo under the starlight. When his uncle passes, his freshly divorced cousin inherits their traditional country home and tasks the shy slacker with caring for it. Together with the town’s underdog grocer, the three revert to a joyful childhood dynamic. Leisurely BBQ (the cheapest beef!) and cup noodles, it’s all fun and games until a family from Tokyo led by an unhinged patriarch and his enigmatic wife manifest their desire to open a countryside cafe at all costs.
CLOCKSTOPPERS (2002) (BLU-RAY)
A teenager discovers a mysterious machine that allows him to freeze time. Now, he’s using his new found device to get a few things for himself.
DANCING WITH CRIME (1947) / THE GREEN COCKATOO (1937) (BLU-RAY)
Two early Brit Noirs from Cohen Film Collection, digitized in association with the British Film Institute.
DETENTION (2019) (BLU-RAY)
Set during the Taiwanese martial law of the 1960s, this shockingly gruesome and terrifying coming-of-age drama based on a hugely popular video game sees two classmates who go looking for their missing friends and teachers, all of whom took part in an illegal book club, only to come face to face with ghosts and deformed monsters that have taken over their school.
DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD (2020) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)
This playful, profound, and immensely moving docu-fantasia by Kirsten Johnson is a valentine to the director’s beloved father, Dick Johnson, made as she has begun to face the reality of losing him to dementia. Using the language of cinema both to defy death and to confront it head-on, Johnson mischievously envisions an array of ways in which the man she loves most in the world might die, staging a series of alternately darkly comic and colorfully imaginative tableaux interwoven with raw vérité footage capturing the pair’s tender but increasingly fragile bond. Long live Dick Johnson!
DREAMER: INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY (2005) (BLU-RAY)
Ben Crane was once a great horseman, whose gifts as a trainer were wasted on making other men’s fortunes. Sonya was once a great horse, whose promising career on the racetrack was cut short by a broken leg. Considered as good as dead to her owner, Sonya is given to Ben as his severance pay, along with his walking papers. Now, it will take the unwavering faith and determination of Ben’s young daughter, Cale, to bring these two damaged souls together in a quest for a seemingly impossible goal: to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
EMA (2021) (DVD)
After a shocking incident upends her family life and marriage to a tempestuous choreographer, Ema, a reggaeton dancer, sets out on an odyssey of personal liberation in this incendiary drama about art, desire, and the modern family from director Pablo Larrain.
EYES OF FIRE (1983) (DVD)
A rogue 18th century preacher and his followers make their way downriver to establish a new settlement beyond the western frontier and encounter a forest enchanted by strange spirits that will bring apocalyptic madness upon them.
FINDING ALICE: SERIES 1 (2021) (DVD)
For Alice, Harry, and their daughter, Charlotte, moving into their new home should have been a dream come true, but it quickly turns into a nightmare when Alice discovers Harry dead at the bottom of the stairs. Soon, secrets begin to surface.
THE FIRST TEAM (2020) (DVD)
Our story follows three young footballers, Mattie, Jack, and Benji, and their adventures with terrifying team tough guy Petey, mercurial Italian manager Cesare, and eccentric chairman Mark Crane.
GOING APE! (1981) (BLU-RAY)
A rich man’s son (Tony Danza) must baby-sit three pet orangutans for five years to inherit $5 million.
GOMORRAH: THE SERIES, SEASON 3 (2017) (DVD)
At the start of Season 3, there is a void to be filled in the underworld of Naples. The warring factions are exhausted by violence, massive police pressure, and drastic financial losses, and are ready to make peace. But as Genny takes over North Naples and Rome, Ciro has been cast out to Bulgaria, licking his wounds. Upon his return he forms a powerful partnership with the upstart Enzo and together they begin to take what they feel they are entitled to, ambitions which extend beyond Naples and the borders of Italy.
GORBACHEV. HEAVEN (2020) (DVD)
This intimate portrait finds Gorbachev living alone in an empty house outside Moscow, still carrying the burdens of his past.
THE GREAT POSTAL HEIST (2022) (DVD)
Filmmaker Jay Galione tells the story of his father, a 30-year postal clerk who was harassed, threatened, and fired for standing up for fellow employees. The documentary reveals how the USPS has been systematically dismantled and privatized by the trillion-dollar mail industry and its politicians who seek to raise prices and lower wages.
HER SMELL (2018) (BLU-RAY)
Becky Something is a 90s punk rock superstar who once filled arenas with her grungy all-female trio, Something She. Now she plays smaller venues while grappling with motherhood, exhausted bandmates, nervous record company executives, and a new generation of rising talent eager to usurp her stardom. When Becky’s chaos and excesses derail a recording session and national tour, she finds herself shunned, isolated and alone. Forced to get sober, temper her demons, and reckon with the past, she retreats from the spotlight and tries to recapture the creative inspiration that led her band to success.
KINGDOM OF SILENCE (2019) (DVD)
An in-depth look at Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s life, work, and murder amidst the complexity of U.S.-Saudi Arabia relations. Exclusive interviews explore Khashoggi’s connections with Saudi rulers, Middle Eastern jihadists, and fellow global journalists, as well as his enduring global legacy
THE KINGMAKER (2019) (DVD)
An extraordinary look into the political career of Imelda Marcos. As the former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos is best known for her opulent lifestyle, but it was her behind-the-scenes influence of her husband’s presidency that rocketed her to the global political forefront. A journey through the Marcos family’s long history of corruption, extravagance and brutality, this documentary tells a cautionary tale of a powerful female leader whose questionable sense of reality divided a nation.
THE LAST SON (2021) (DVD)
Sam Worthington stars as Isaac LeMay, a murderous outlaw who learns that he is cursed by a terrible prophecy: that he will be killed by one of his children.
THE LOVER (1992) (4K + BLU-RAY) (DVD)
In 1929 French Indochina, a French teenage girl embarks on a reckless and forbidden romance with a wealthy, older Chinese man, each knowing that knowledge of their affair will bring drastic consequences to each other.
MASS (2021) (DVD)
Two couples meet for a painful and raw conversation in the aftermath of a violent tragedy.
MOFFIE (2021) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)
A young man in 1981 South Africa must complete his brutal and racist two years of compulsory military service while desperately maintaining the secrecy of his homosexuality.
MOMENTS LIKE THIS NEVER LAST (2020) (BLU-RAY)
Dash Snow rejects a life of privilege to make his own way as an artist on the streets of New York City in the late 1990s.
NORWAY (2014) (BLU-RAY)
In 1984, a vampire who dances to keep his heart going arrives in Athens and goes on an adventure into the bowels of the Earth.
THE PIANO (1993) (4K + BLU-RAY)
Holly Hunter is achingly eloquent in her Academy Award–winning performance as Ada, an electively mute Scottish woman who expresses her innermost feelings through her beloved piano. When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter (Anna Paquin) to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her ineffectual husband (Sam Neill) and a rugged frontiersman (Harvey Keitel) to whom she develops a forbidden attraction. With its sensuously moody cinematography, dramatic coastal landscapes, and sweeping score, this uniquely timeless evocation of a woman’s inner awakening is an intoxicating sensory experience that burns with the twin fires of music and erotic passion.
REBELS OF THE NEON GOD (1992) (BLU-RAY)
A cab driver’s son (Kang-sheng Lee) quits his college studies to get revenge on two petty thieves (Chou-jun Chen, Chang-bin Jen) that vandalized his father’s car in Tsai Ming-liang’s feature film directorial debut.
SAVAGE HARVEST (1994) (BLU-RAY)
A legend comes to life when campers unwittingly rouse a pack of bloodthirsty tribal demons.
SLEEP [LIMITED EDITION] (2020) (BLU-RAY)
Marlene, a woman plagued by horrific dreams, suffers a breakdown in a remote village. As her daughter Mona follows, she comes upon a well-kept family secret and an old curse that ultimately threatens her life – a never-ending nightmare.
STAGE FRIGHT (1950) (BLU-RAY)
Jane Wyman plays drama student Eve Gill, who tries to clear a friend (Richard Todd) being framed for murder by becoming the maid of flamboyant stage star Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich).
STEEL AND LACE (1991) (BLU-RAY)
Revived as a cyborg by her scientist brother, a rape victim seeks fitting revenge on lying men.
ZOMBIE COLLECTION (2022) (DVD)