It’s New Release Tuesday! Ant-Mans, Hong Kong lady cops, Brian Bosworth, Karloff on Criterion, and lots more. 

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA (2023)

Super Heroes Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and The Wasp. Together, with Hope’s parents Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Scott’s daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought possible. (DVD, BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

BLUE CAFTAN (2022)

Halim and Mina run a traditional caftan store in one of Morocco’s oldest medinas. In order to keep up with the commands of the demanding customers, they hire Youssef. Slowly Mina realizes how much her husband is moved by the presence of the young man. (DVD)

CIVIL, LA (2021)

La Civil unfolds with documentary-like precision as it details the human impact of drug cartels in Northern Mexico. Cielo (Arcelia Ramírez, in a galvanizing performance) learns her daughter Laura has been kidnapped when a baby-faced teenager orders her to pay 150,000 pesos if she wants to see Laura again. With no police support, Cielo embarks on her own investigation, peeling back layers of Mexico’s societal corruption in an increasingly desperate effort to save her child. Inspired by true events, Belgian-Romanian director Teodora Ana Mihai delivers a bold and suspenseful debut feature, collaborating with Mexican co-screenwriter Habacuc Antonio De Rosario and world-renowned co-producers Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Cristian Mungiu, and Michel Franco. (DVD)

CONQUEST OF SPACE / I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958)

CONQUEST OF SPACE: Retro sets, atmospheric music and an action-packed story are the highlights of this enthralling sci-fi adventure. The commander of a flight to Mars endangers his crew when he gradually becomes obsessed with their precedent-setting space journey, cracks under pressure, and tries to sabotage the mission. Produced by innovative, Oscar-winning filmmaker George Pal (The War Of The Worlds, The Time Machine) and directed by Academy Award® winner** Byron Haskin (Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe On Mars), this space-exploration odyssey vividly illustrates the premise that no matter how advanced science becomes … human weaknesses remain.

I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE: Something is amiss with the menfolk in this classic 1950s sci-fi thriller. A distraught Marge Farrell (Gloria Talbott, We’re No Angels) is growing increasingly alarmed over the changes in her new husband Bill (Tom Tryon, The Cardinal), who’s been acting strangely ever since their wedding night. And for good reason: Bill – and most of the men in their small town – have been taken over by sinister aliens who have arrived on planet Earth to marry human women with the hope of reviving their dying race. Marge has stumbled onto their terrifying plan and must now convince someone – anyone – to believe her … before the aliens completely inhabit the bodies of the entire male population! (BLU-RAY)

DANGEROUS TO KNOW (1939)

Screen legend Anna May Wong (Picadilly) reprises her acclaimed Broadway role in this romantic crime drama from the pen of Edgar Wallace (Chamber of Horrors). Racketeer Steve Recka (Akim Tamiroff, The General Died at Dawn) rules his town and the sultry, silk-gowned Madam Lan Ying (Wong) with an iron hand. But when he falls for the enchanting Margaret Van Kase (Gail Patrick, Death Takes a Holiday), a socialite not impressed by his power nor his wealth, he makes frantic efforts to win her and turns his back on the loyal Lan Ying. Dangerous to Know comes elegantly directed by Robert Florey (The Crooked Way) with the sparkling supporting cast of Lloyd Nolan (Portrait in Black), Harvey Stephens (The Cheat), Roscoe Karns (Night After Night), Porter Hall (Murder, He Says), Hedda Hopper (Little Man, What Now?), Ellen Drew (If I Were King) and Anthony Quinn (The Ghost Breakers). (BLU-RAY)

ENDANGERED SPECIES (1982)

The Colorado prairie has become a graveyard. Mutilated cattle, their organs surgically removed, litter the high country. Is this the gruesome work of a Satanic cult? Of extraterrestrials? Of conspirators who arrive and leave in mysterious black helicopters? The locals are terrified – and it falls to their new sheriff (JoBeth Williams, Poltergeist) and a troubled cop (Robert Urich, Spenser: For Hire) to unravel an eerie skein of deception and danger to discover the stunning truth. (BLU-RAY)

EVERYTHING WENT FINE (2021)

EXPERTS, THE (1989)

Screen legend John Travolta (Face-Off) and Arye Gross (The Couch Trip) star as two hip but down-on-their-luck New Yorkers who think they’re relocating to a small town in Nebraska to open a nightclub. What they don’t know is that they’ve been abducted by a KGB operative (Charles Martin Smith, The Hot Spot) to the Soviet Union, where they’ll unwittingly serve as “experts” on all things cool in America. The town, created expressly for KGB spies-in-training, includes seductive agent Kelly Preston (SpaceCamp), who gets into a real undercover situation with Travolta. Eventually, the two Yanks realize they’ve been duped and devise a spectacular escape. Directed by comedy great Dave Thomas (Strange Brew), this red-hot Cold War farce also features Deborah Foreman (Valley Girl), James Keach (Moving Violations) and Brian Doyle-Murray (Cabin Boy). (DVD)

FORGER, THE (2022)

IN THE CUT (2003) (UNCUT DIRECTOR’S EDITION)

New York City professor Frannie Avery has an affair with a police detective who is investigating the murder of a young woman in her neighborhood. Before long, Frannie begins to suspect the detective was involved in the murder. (BLU-RAY)

IN THE LINE OF DUTY III (1988)

How do you top the first two In The Line of Duty films? Easy… bigger explosions, wilder fights and even crazier stunts! This time, two Japanese thieves have fled to Hong Kong with a tough J-cop (Cynthia Khan, Blade of Fury) hot on their heels. It’s up to Hong Kong’s finest to stop the villains before too much damage is done. (BLU-RAY)

IN THE LINE OF DUTY IV (1989)

The fourth (and for some fans… the best) of the In the Line of Duty series, sees the return of Cynthia Kahn (The Avenging Quartet) as Inspector Yeung. This time, she’s on the trail of some ruthless international drug dealers, ably assisted by Donnie Yen (John Wick: Chapter 4, Ip Man) and Michael Wong (Royal Warriors, Tiger Cage III). (BLU-RAY)

ISLAND OF LOST MEN (1939)

Screen legend Anna May Wong (Daughter of Shanghai) clashes with J. Carrol Naish (Sahara) in this rousing remake of 1933’s Carole Lombard/Charles Laughton starrer White Woman. Cabaret singer Kim Ling (Wong), the daughter of a Chinese general who has been accused of absconding with government funds, arrives in the Straits Settlements. There she meets Gregory Prin (Naish), a half-caste gunrunner and head of a jungle empire where he treats the Malaysians ruthlessly. She agrees to accompany him in search of her father, as she has several reasons to believe Prin is responsible for the general’s disappearance. Directed by Kurt Neumann (The Secret of the Blue Room, The Fly) and co-starring Anthony Quinn (Road to Singapore), Eric Blore (Road to Zanzibar), Broderick Crawford (Seven Sinners) and Ernest Truex (His Girl Friday), Island of Lost Men is a torrid mix of thrills, mystery and adventure. (BLU-RAY)

KING OF CHINATOWN (1939)

Screen legend Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) co-stars with the “czar of a city of sin,” Akim Tamiroff (Desire), in the ripping crime yarn King of Chinatown. Violence and death stalk the Chinese faction of a big American city, but one man, Dr. Chang Ling (Sidney Toler, Shadows Over Chinatown), and his daughter, Dr. Mary Ling (Wong), defy the gangsters who are responsible, and, against terrific odds, bring peace to their oppressed neighbors. Wong gives a powerful and pioneering performance as a respected surgeon faced with a shocking moral dilemma. Directed by Nick Grinde (Million Dollar Legs), shot by Leo Tover (The Day the Earth Stood Still) and featuring J. Carrol Naish (Beau Geste), Philip Ahn (China), Anthony Quinn (The Last Train from Madrid), Bernadene Hayes (Dick Tracy’s Dilemma) and Roscoe Karns (It Happened One Night). (BLU-RAY)

LITVINENKO (2022)

MADAME BLANC MYSTERIES: SERIES 2 (2021)

MAGIC FLUTE (2022)

Tim (Jack Wolfe, Shadow And Bone) has been dreaming his whole life about attending Mozart All Boys Music School, but already his first days there confront him with a hostile headmaster (F. Murray Abraham, The White Lotus), the stresses of a first love, and serious doubts about the authenticity of his singing voice. When he discovers a mystical gateway in the school’s library, he is pulled into the fantastic cosmos of Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute, where imagination has no limits and the Queen of the Night (Sabine Devieilhe) reigns. (BLU-RAY and DVD)

MOVING ON (2022)

NIGHT AT THE FAMILY DOG / GO RIDE THE MUSIC / WESTPOLE (1969)

Three psychedelic trips down memory lane. All three films were originally produced and created as groundbreaking television documentaries by Ralph J. Gleason [1917-1975] who did more than any other journalist to hip the world to what was shakin’ in San Francisco in the late ’60s. (DVD)

NIGHT RUNNER (1957)

Are mental patients turned loose too soon? Ray Danton (Outside the Law, The Big Operator, The Longest Day) stars as Roy Turner, a man with a violent past who is prematurely released from an overcrowded institution. Realizing that he cannot handle the pressures of big-city life, he moves into a small-town beachside motel and falls in love with Susan Mayes, warmly played by Colleen Miller (Four Guns to the Border, Man in the Shadow, Step Down to Terror), the daughter of the motel’s owner. When her father finds out about Roy, he threatens to have him recommitted unless he leaves his daughter alone. Roy snaps, and commits a crime from which there is no turning back. Abner Biberman (The Price of Fear, Behind the High Wall, Gun for a Coward) directs this black-as-night yet sympathetic look at mental illness. (BLU-RAY)

NOON WINE (1966)

Royal Earle Thompson owns a dairy farm in southern Texas during the late 1890s. His farm is fairly unproductive, due in part to Thompson’s laziness and distaste for most of the required labor on a farm. Thompson lives with his wife, Ellie, and two small sons, and while Ellie is continually ill, she does her best to perform her domestic duties around the farm. One day, Olaf Helton presents himself at the farm and the taciturn Swede asks Farmer Thompson for a job and is hired on the spot. Helton proves to be an invaluable asset and after nine years pass, the dairy farm is thriving, thanks to Helton’s incomparable work ethic One day, an offensive and irritating stranger named Homer T. Hatch shows up at the farm. saying he is there to “locate” Helton. (DVD)

ONE WAY PASSAGE (1932) (WARNER ARCHIVE)

When Dan Hardesty (William Powell) meets Joan Ames (Kay Francis) in a Hong Kong bar, he doesn’t let on that he’s an escaped murderer, nor she that she’s suffering from a fatal illness. After Dan is caught by Sergeant Steve Burke (Warren Hymer), the two head back to America via ocean liner, and spot Joan also aboard. Dan talks Steve into letting him out of the cuffs, and for the duration of the trip, he and Joan indulge in a romance both know can never last. (BLU-RAY)

OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE (2023)

Super spy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) must track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology wielded by billionaire arms broker Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). Reluctantly teamed with some of the world’s best operatives (Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes, Bugzy Malone), Fortune and his crew recruit Hollywood’s biggest movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) to help them on their globe-trotting undercover mission to save the world. (BLU-RAY and DVD)

OPPOSING FORCE (1986)

The only female soldier in a military experiment designed to simulate POW torture conditions falls victim to the commanding officer. He justifies his insidious actions upon her as a training technique. A solider rebels with her and tries to bust out the others. Will anyone survive the opposing force? (BLU-RAY)

ROYAL WARRIORS (1986)

Returning from her holiday in Japan, Inspector Yip (Michelle Yeoh, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Everything Everywhere All At Once) foils a daring mid-air rescue of a gangster being returned to Hong Kong for trial. But Inspector Yip needs to watch her back: that gangster has friends. (BLU-RAY)

SAFE IN HELL (1931) (WARNER ARCHIVE)

Gilda (Dorothy Mackaill) thought she had fallen as far as a woman could fall when she got a call telling her a client was requesting her “services.” But when the client turns out to be the man responsible for her fall from grace, Gilda flies into a murderous rage. Taking it on the lam, Gilda finds shelter in the arms of a sailor boyfriend (Donald Cook) who smuggles her to sanctuary and safety, or so he thinks. In reality he has booked her a bridal suite in hell. This pre-code crime classic, touted at the time as “Not For Children,” is frank, startling and arresting, as gripping today as it was eight decades ago. <br.
Directed by William A. Wellman, Safe in Hell is full of terrors and delights, including the most striking ensemble seen this side of FREAKS and a truly twisted stunner of a finale. (BLU-RAY)

SAMURAI WOLF 1 & 2 (1967)

Samurai Wolf: Isao Natsuyagi stars as Kiba, a charismatic ronin who wanders into a small town and ends up ensnared in a local conflict that’s more than meets the eye. After dispatching a pair of highway criminals seen robbing a courier wagon, Kiba agrees to assist a beautiful blind woman who runs the local shipping company. Double- and triple-crosses ensue, illustrated with savage but economical violence courtesy of famed director Hideo Gosha’s (THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI, VIOLENT STREETS) striking black and white filmmaking. The result is a lean and mean triumph of samurai cinema, cementing Gosha’s status as a master of the genre.

Samurai Wolf II: Hell Cut: Charismatic ronin Kiba (Isao Natsuyagi) returns, once again entangled in a complex web of intrigue, involving a crooked goldmine owner, a cynical swordsman, and an arrogant dojo master. Master filmmaker Hideo Gosha brings his trademark tight pacing and stylish action to this brisk morality play, inevitably punctuated by the explosions of violent swordplay beloved by fans of the genre. (BLU-RAY and DVD)

SPY HUNT (1950)

The manhunt that rocked the world! Noir great Howard Duff (Johnny Stool Pigeon, Woman in Hiding, Shakedown) stars with the beautiful Märta Torén (One Way Street, Deported, Sirocco) in this compelling Cold War thriller. Steve Quain (Duff), escorting two zoo-bound black panthers on a train from Milan to Paris, is unaware that a secret agent, Catherine Ullven (Torén), has concealed an incriminating microfilm in the collar of one of the animals. But when the train is derailed in the Swiss Alps and the panthers escape, she is forced to involve him in her mission, which now includes enemy spies hunting the microfilm, the animals, Catherine and Steve. Directed by George Sherman (Larceny, The Sleeping City, The Raging Tide) from the novel Panther’s Moon by Victor Canning (Golden Salamander, Family Plot, Masquerade). (BLU-RAY)

STEP DOWN TO TERROR (1958)

Step by step…he made a career out of love…and murder! Based on the same source material as Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, this suspense-soaked noir stars Colleen Miller (Playgirl, The Night Runner, Hot Summer Night), Charles Drake (I Was a Shoplifter, Female on the Beach, No Name on the Bullet) and Rod Taylor (The Time Machine, The Birds, Darker Than Amber). Pursued by detectives, killer Johnny Walters (Drake) leaves the city to visit his family in a small California town. Among the household: his dead brother’s alluring widow Helen (Miller), who soon is attracted to him. But ominous events and conflicting evidence leave Helen suspicious of her beloved brother-in-law, as director Harry Keller (The Unguarded Moment, Quantez, The Female Animal) expertly ratchets the tension. (BLU-RAY)

STONE COLD (1991)

When it comes to non-stop action, Stone Cold is red hot! NFL superstar Brian “The Boz” Bosworth (One Man’s Justice, Midnight Heat) makes his movie debut as John Stone, the only cop tough enough to take out a gang of stone-cold killers. Going undercover, he has to pose as an outlaw biker to win the trust of their diabolic leader Chains and his right-hand psychopath Ice, played by screen legends Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Hard Target) and William Forsythe (Out for Justice, The Devil’s Rejects). Stone soon discovers there’s more to these bikers than heavy metal mayhem. They’re plotting a paramilitary assault on the State Capitol, where one of their men has been sentenced to execution. In a spectacular climax, Stone is up against the gang and on his own. And the killers soon discover that if you go up against John Stone, he’ll burn you cold…Stone Cold. From director Craig R. Baxley (Action Jackson, I Come in Peace), it’s a full-tilt, in-your-face thriller packed with explosive effects and breathtaking high-wire tension! (BLU-RAY)

STORM WARNING (1950) (WARNER ARCHIVE)

A traveling dress model (Ginger Rogers) stops in a Southern town to visit her sister, who has married a Ku Klux Klan member. While there, she helps the district attorney (Ronald Reagan) prosecute Klan members after she witnesses them commit a murder. Directed by Stuart Heisler. (BLU-RAY)

SUPERMAN 1941-1943 (MAX FLEISCHER) (1943)

Take flight with the original 1941–1943 animated Superman cartoons! With the initial nine shorts produced by Max Fleischer (and directed by his brother Dave) and the remainder produced by Famous Studios, these 17 animated theatrical shorts were the first to launch Superman from comic books to the screen. The pioneering animated adventures feature the Man of Steel battling mad scientists and giant robots, thwarting the Nazis and saving headstrong reporter Lois Lane. Newly mastered in high definition, these icons of animation look and sound better than ever. (BLU-RAY)

SWEETHEART (2021)

Socially awkward lesbian teenager AJ begrudgingly joins her family on a seaside vacation. She finds herself constantly at odds with her painfully “normal” mother and older sister, neither of whom can understand why she doesn’t smile more or “dress like a girl.” Her anticipated “week of hell” takes an unexpected turn when Isla, a free-spirited and sun-loving lifeguard, catches her eye. Full to the brim with teen angst and romantic fumbling, Sweetheart wryly captures the bittersweet pangs of adolescent yearning, self-realization and personal connections, all against the hilarious ups and downs of the quintessential British family holiday. Praised as an “authentic account of the murky, counterintuitive waters of the queer adolescent experience” (Little White Lies), Marley Morrison’s feature debut is a surprisingly ebullient coming-of-age charmer not to be missed. (DVD)

SYCORAX (2021)

Who is Sycorax? The first of all characters in William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” to set foot on the island of the play. The problem is that Sycorax has no voice. She is barely mentioned by Prospero as a crooked, old, wicked witch who vilely locked Ariel, the spirit of the air, in a tree. (DVD)

TARGETS (1967) (CRITERION)

THERE’S NO TOMORROW (1939)

Edwige Feuillère (From Mayerling to Sarajevo) commands the screen as a woman of bourgeois origin, now reduced to dancing in a disreputable nightclub to support her young son. When her lost love (George Rigaud, I Walk Alone), now a successful doctor, suddenly reappears, she puts on the charade that her life has been far more fortunate. But maintaining such an illusion won’t come easy. A ravishing and tragic screen romance, There’s No Tomorrow glitters with Ophüls’ trademark sophistication and opulent camerawork. (BLU-RAY)

VIOLENT STREETS (1974)

After making his name in the samurai genre, master filmmaker Hideo Gosha (THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI, SAMURAI WOLF) turned his camera to the world of the yakuza, and the violent streets they control. Legendary gangster-turned-actor Noboru Ando plays Egawa, a retired yakuza underboss, now nightclub owner, who gets pulled back into the life when his old comrades demand control of his club. Meanwhile, a gang war quietly roiling behind the scenes erupts into open violence in response to a high-profile kidnapping, lending unimaginably high stakes to Egawa’s reemergence onto the yakuza scene. The result is a kinetic and stylish explosion of deception, mayhem, and death that leaves no one safe – and a masterpiece of 1970’s yakuza cinema. (BLU-RAY and DVD)

WHOSE CHILD AM I? / WEEKEND MURDERS (1974)

A couple attempt artificial insemination in order to have a child in Whose Child Am I? Next up, in Weekend Murders, A family goes to a British estate to hear the reading of a will and while there they are murdered one by one. (BLU-RAY)

WICKED DIE SLOW (1968)

The notorious gunfighter “The Kid” (Gary Allen), and his Mexican sidekick Armadillo (Jeff Kanew, Revenge of the Nerds) saddle their way through the post-Civil War West looking for the 4 drunken and sadistic Indians who raped The Kid’s girlfriend. As they trek, they come upon a band of outlaws who beat up an old man and his daughter and also raped another woman. The Kid and Armadillo decide to take the law into their own hands and first kill the gang of outlaws, and then go after the Indians. No one will survive the bloodbath, and as The Kid defeats the outlaw leader, he makes sure “the wicked die slow”. (BLU-RAY)

YAKUZA GRAVEYARD (1976) (LIMITED EDITION)

When he falls for the beautiful wife of the jailed boss of the Nishida gang, things start to spiral out of control for detective Kuroiwa (Tetsuya Watari, Graveyard of Honour). In a world where the line between police and organised crime is vague, he finds himself on the wrong side of a yakuza war when his superiors favour Nishida’s rivals, the Yamashiro gang. Co-starring the iconic Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood) and featuring Nagisa Oshima as chief of police, Yakuza Graveyard sees director Kinji Fukasaku (Battles without Honour and Humanity) at the peak of his powers. (BLU-RAY)

YES, MADAM! (1985)

Chicks with kicks! When gangsters murder her friend, Inspector Ng (Michelle Yeoh, Police Story III, Tomorrow Never Dies) is drawn into a deadly search for the men who did it. Just as well she’s got backup from British supercop Carrie Morris (the legendary Cynthia Rothrock, No Retreat, No Surrender 2, China O’Brien. (BLU-RAY)

YOUNG IP MAN (2020)

After an escaped convict infiltrates his school and holds all the students for ransom, a young Ip Man confronts the kidnappers head on. However, he soon finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conspiracy involving local authorities as well as some of the last people he would ever have expected to be part of the heinous plot. (DVD)