It’s New Release Tuesday!

AIR FORCE ONE (1997) 

Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman star in Wolfgang Petersen’s (Das Boot, In the Line of Fire) gripping thriller about a steadfast U.S. President who has just told the world he will not negotiate with terrorists. Now, Russian neo-nationalists have hijacked Air Force One, and the President is faced with a nearly impossible decision – give in to terrorist demands or sacrifice not only the country’s dignity, but the lives of his wife and daughter.  (BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

CAMILLE (1936) (WARNER ARCHIVE)

Beautiful Marguerite Gauthier (Greta Garbo) lifts herself out of her poverty-stricken upbringing by becoming the enchanting “Lady of the Camellias,” well-kept courtesan of the rich and influential Baron de Varville (Henry Daniell). When young Armand (Robert Taylor) falls in love with Marguerite, his sincere adoration causes her to question her comfortable life, and, despite the protests of Armand’s scandal-wary father (Lionel Barrymore), she considers leaving the Baron for him. (BLU-RAY)

EARTH VS THE SPIDER (1954)

Quiet River Falls is the town awakened by the insect’s devastating rampage. Two teens discover the monster, see it temporarily disabled by gas … and then watch in terror as it unfolds its eight arms of doom. Will our heroes survive? Or will the entire town fall prey to this unstoppable fanged horror?!? (BLU-RAY)

FEAR (1996)

When 16-year-old Nicole Walker (Reese Witherspoon) meets 23-year-old David McCall (Mark Wahlberg) at a Seattle nightclub, she falls in love. David is exciting and charming, and despite the wide age gap, he wins over Nicole’s family — except for her workaholic father, Steven (William Petersen), who’s suspicious of David from the start. His concerns are realized when David turns out to be a violent sociopath who sees Nicole as his possession, and her family home a fortress to be invaded. (BLU-RAY)

FILL ‘ER UP WITH SUPER (1976)

Klouk (Bernard Crombey) is a car salesman who has to miss a family holiday to deliver a luxury Chevrolet station wagon to his boss’ wealthy client. He decides to take his friend Philippe (Xavier Saint-Macary) along with him for the ride across the length of France from Lille to the Cote d’Azur. On the way they give a lift to hitchhiker Charles (Etienne Chicot) who also brings along his friend Daniel (Patrick Bouchitey). A buddy road movie that came together from genuine friendship developed throughout the months-long script workshop giving the film a casual and naturalistic quality that pre-dates Richard Linklater’s similar approaches by some decades. A meditation on friendship and masculinity, this was one of the last films Alain Cavalier made before approaching more experimental forms of filmmaking but prefigures his later breaking down of fiction and documentary barriers with the freewheeling approach of Fill ‘er up with Super. (BLU-RAY)

HIGH HEAT (2022)

HOUSE PARTY (2023)

Aspiring club promoters and best buds Damon (Tosin Cole) and Kevin (Jacob Latimore) are barely keeping things together. Out of money, down on their luck and about to lose the roofs over their heads—and freshly fired from their low-lift jobs as house cleaners—the pair needs a huge windfall to make their problems go away.

In a ‘what the hell?’ move, they decide to host the party of the year at an exclusive mansion, the site of their last cleaning job, which just happens to belong to none other than LeBron James. No permission? No problem. What could go wrong? (BLU-RAY and DVD)

HOUSE THAT SCREAMED (1970)

Thérèse (Cristina Galbó) is the latest arrival at the boarding school for wayward girls run under the stern, authoritarian eye of Mme Fourneau (Lilli Palmer). As the newcomer becomes accustomed to the strict routines, the whip-hand hierarchies among the girls and their furtive extra-curricular methods of release from within the forbidding walls of institutional life, she learns that several of her fellow students have recently vanished mysteriously. Meanwhile, tensions grow within this isolated hothouse environment as Mme Fourneau’s callow but curious 15-year-old son Louis (John Moulder-Brown) ignores his mother’s strict orders not to get close to the “tainted” ladies under her ward. (BLU-RAY)

I’LL CRY TOMORROW (1955) (WARNER ARCHIVE)

This acclaimed biopic tells the cautionary tale of Broadway star Lillian Roth (Susan Hayward), who by the age of 20 has risen to fame due to the efforts of her pushy mother. Though a success on stage, Lillian has her hopes of happiness dashed when her fiancé dies tragically, and responds to her loss by drinking. Alcoholism and a string of failed marriages destroy Lillian’s career and ultimately leave her destitute. After a brush with death, however, Lillian resolves to return to the spotlight. (BLU-RAY)

IN FROM THE SIDE (2022)

Minute for minute, you won’t find a more handsome-packed film this year than British rugby drama In from the Side, a surprisingly moving sports-team story slathered in sweat, streaked with mud, and dripping with sexuality. As a “B Squad” of gay athletes tries to overcome inexperience and push past rivalries to score an elusive win, a secret affair simmers among them. Romantic Mark (puppy-eyed Alexander Lincoln) finds himself unable to avoid the blazing appeal of teammate Warren (Alexander King), who sets off every red (or in rugby, yellow) flag: the cocky attitude, the emotional unavailability, the long-term boyfriend. (DVD)

LET IT BE MORNING (2021)

MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS (1987)

Michelle Yeoh stars as a daring secret agent during the Second Sino-Japanese War, who intervenes in a characteristically explosive fashion to defend a remote mountain town from occupying Japanese forces. (BLU-RAY)

MASK OF ZORRO (1998)

When a power-crazed despot schemes to buy California from Mexico, it takes two Zorros–the legendary Don Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins) and his chosen successor Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas), a dashing bandit-turned-hero– to battle the tyrant’s unscrupulous plans. Can even their combined skills, bravado and derring-do be enough to achieve de la Vega’s ultimate goal: revenge against the man who killed his wife, kidnapped his daughter and held him prisoner for twenty years?
(BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

MILDRED PIERCE (1945) (CRITERION)

PROBLEM CHILD (1990)

Ben (John Ritter) is a good-hearted guy who’s always wanted a son of his own, but so far he and his wife have had no success. The couple adopt Junior (Michael Oliver), a redheaded hellion who quickly makes their lives miserable. Disaster follows Junior wherever he goes, from camping trips that require emergency-room visits to birthday parties that turn into Grand Guignol affairs. When Ben’s incensed family tells him to get rid of the boy, he starts to wonder if they might be right. (BLU-RAY)

REDEMPTION (2018)

Menachem, a former frontman for a rock band, is now religious, and a father to a six-year-old. When his daughter is diagnosed with cancer, he must find a creative solution to fund the expensive treatments. He reunites his band for one last tour. The journey to save his daughter exposes old wounds and allows him to reconnect with his secular past. Menachem understands that only a new connection to his past and to his music can pave the road to his own redemption. (DVD)

SLAYERS (2022)

SUPER 8 YEARS (2022)

The French writer and 2022 Nobel Prize awardee Annie Ernaux, whose novels and memoirs have gained her a devoted following (and whose autobiographical L’Événement was adapted into the critically acclaimed film Happening), opens a treasure trove with this delicate journey into her family’s memory. Compiled from gorgeously textured home movie images from 1972 to 1981 – when her first books were published, her sons became teenagers, and her husband Philippe brought an 8mm film camera everywhere they went – this portrait of a time, place, and moment of personal and political significance takes us from holidays and family rituals in suburban bourgeois France to trips abroad in Albania and Egypt, Spain and the USSR. Supplying her own introspective voiceover, Ernaux and her co-filmmaker, her son David, guide the viewer through fragments of a decade, diffuse and vivid in equal measure. The Super 8 Years is a remarkable visual extension of Ernaux’s ongoing literary project to make sense of the mysterious past and the unknowable future. (DVD)

TARTUFFE (1925)

The most gifted visual storyteller of the German silent era, F. W. Murnau crafted works of great subtlety and emotional complexity through his absolute command of the cinematic medium. Known for such dazzling films as Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926), and Sunrise (1927), Murnau was also drawn to more intimate dramas exploring the dark corners of the human mind. In Tartuffe (Herr Tartüff), he revisits Moliére’s fable of religious hypocrisy, in which a faithful wife (Lil Dagover) tries to convince her husband (Werner Krauss) that their morally superior guest, Tartuffe (Emil Jannings), is in fact a lecherous hypocrite with a taste for the grape. To endow the story with contemporary relevance, Murnau frames Moliére’s tale with a modern-day plot concerning a housekeeper’s stealthy efforts to poison her elderly master and take control of his estate.
(DVD)

WHITE CRANE CHRONICLES: KUNG FU KILLER PART I & II (2008)

Westerner White Crane (David Carradine) is a spiritual master of the martial arts and protector of the innocent, but when a mercenary army storms the temple and slaughters the beloved female Grandmaster Myling, Crane rises out of the ashes with vengeance in his heart. In this thrilling and action-packed adventure, Crane tests his limits as a man and as a warrior as he crosses the fine line between justice and revenge. (BLU-RAY)

WOMEN TALKING (2022)

A group of women in an isolated Mennonite religious colony in Bolivia as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a string of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men. (BLU-RAY and DVD)