New Releases Index of Titles
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BLU-RAY ONLY RELEASE The fourth feature by internationally acclaimed auteur Jia Zhangke was also his breakout success, an epic with a canvas as vast, and intimate, as its title suggests: a state-of-the-modern-world address, and a look at the insular world of a troupe of Chinese stage-performers dreaming of freedom… Zhao Tao, Jia’s muse, is one of these troupers. For Tao and the larger ensemble of pageant performers at Beijing’s real-life World Park (a sprawling hyper-pastiche of global landmarks — ”famous sites from five continents”), love is respite from work, work is respite from love, and the line that extends from … More Information
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BLU-RAY ONLY RELEASE A rhapsodic celebration of song, a brutal condemnation of wartime mentality, and a lyrical statement of hope within darkness; even amongst the riches of 1950s’ Japanese cinema, The Burmese Harp [Biruma no tategoto], directed by Kon Ichikawa (Alone Across the Pacific, Tokyo Olympiad), stands as one of the finest achievements of its era. At the close of World War II, a Japanese army regiment in Burma surrenders to the British. Private Mizushima is sent on a lone mission to persuade a trapped Japanese battalion to surrender also. When the outcome is a failure, he disguises himself in … More Information
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BLU-RAY ONLY RELEASE René Laloux’s mesmerising psychedelic sci-fi animated feature won the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and is a landmark of European animation. Based on Stefan Wul’s novel Oms en série [Oms in Series / Oms by the Dozen], Laloux’s breathtaking vision was released in France as La Planète sauvage [The Savage Planet]; in the USA as Fantastic Planet; and immediately drew comparisons to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Planet of the Apes (both the 1968 film and Boule’s 1963 novel). Today, the film can be seen to prefigure much of the work of Hayao Miyazaki at … More Information
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A forgotten gem from the legendary Hammer Studios, available for the first time on home video in the UK, this sinister classic spins a gruesome web of unhappy families. It is three weeks before the Ashby siblings Simon (Oliver Reed), a brutish alcoholic, and Eleanor (Janette Scott), a nervous wreck, are to come into their late parents’ inheritance. While Simon plans to have his sister certified insane and locked away, Eleanor keeps seeing the lurking figure of their long-dead brother Tony around the estate. Who or what is this apparition, and does he threaten to reveal skeletons in the closet … More Information
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![Paranoiac [Blu-ray]](/images/films/thumbnails/paranoiac-blu-ray.jpg)
A forgotten gem from the legendary Hammer Studios, available for the first time on home video in the UK, this sinister classic spins a gruesome web of unhappy families. It is three weeks before the Ashby siblings Simon (Oliver Reed), a brutish alcoholic, and Eleanor (Janette Scott), a nervous wreck, are to come into their late parents’ inheritance. While Simon plans to have his sister certified insane and locked away, Eleanor keeps seeing the lurking figure of their long-dead brother Tony around the estate. Who or what is this apparition, and does he threaten to reveal skeletons in the closet … More Information
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Based on the true story of Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) and his murderous rampage which sparked a 78-day nationwide manhunt, Shôhei Imamura’s disturbing gem Vengeance Is Mine [Fukushû suru wa ware ni ari] won every major award in Japan on the year of its release. Both seducing and repelling with its unusual story and grisly humour, Imamura uncovers a seedy underbelly of civilised Japanese society. Unfolding through multiple flashbacks, Ogata delivers a career-defining performance as a day-labourer and smalltime con-artist who, after killing two of his co-workers, embarks on a psychopathic spree of rape and murder. Eluding the police and … More Information
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A marvellous rediscovery from the golden age of French cinema, Jacques Feyder’s <i>Le Grand jeu</i> is a tragic doppelgänger romance, steered by the fate of the tarot card, and set against the dizzying exoticism of 1930s Morocco. When scandalous Parisian playboy Pierre Martel (Pierre Richard-Willm) is forced by his family to leave France and his adored lover Florence (Marie Bell), he begins a new life in the Foreign Legion as Pierre Muller. Drowning his regrets in camaraderie, whores, and hell-raising, he is astonished at meeting Irma (also Marie Bell), a prostitute with an uncanny resemblance to his beloved, and begins … More Information
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BLU-RAY ONLY RELEASE The culmination of Shôhei Imamura’s extraordinary examinations of the fringes of Japanese society throughout the 1960s, <i>Profound Desires of the Gods</i> [<i>Kamigami no fukaki yokubô</i>] was an 18-month super-production which failed to make an impression at the time of its release, but has since risen in stature to become one of the most legendary — albeit least seen — Japanese films of recent decades. Presenting a vast chronicle of life on the remote Kurage Island, the film centres on the disgraced, superstitious, interbred Futori family and the Tokyo engineer sent to supervise the creation of a new … More Information
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After Tammy (Debbie Reynolds – Singin’ in the Rain) and her Grandpa (Walter Brennan – To Have and Have Not) find Peter Brent (Leslie Nielsen – Forbidden Planet) alone and unconscious near their Mississippi home, they take him in and restore him to health. But when Grandpa is arrested for bootlegging, Tammy is forced to leave their riverside shack and goes to stay with Peter and his family in luxurious new surroundings. But will Tammy ever feel at home in high society, and how will she cope with the first stirrings of love? This beloved romantic comedy (originally released in … More Information
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One of the most ambitious and inventive films from legendary animator Ralph Bakshi, Wizards is a dazzling fantasy adventure. Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where technology has been outlawed after nuclear disaster, the film follows the story of Avatar, the kindly, eccentric sorcerer-ruler of Montagar, a rainbow paradise inhabited by elves and fairies. Avatar’s evil brother Blackwolf dominates Scortch, a bleak land of goblins and wraiths. When the power-hungry Blackwolf attacks Montagar, Avatar, accompanied only by a spirited young woman and a courageous elf, must enter the darkness of Scortch to save his world. Stunningly designed and thrillingly dramatised, this … More Information
