The week between Christmas and New Year’s is always a balance of wanting to relax and racing to fulfill social obligations with family and friends. This year, we encourage you to find some time for yourself to relax and sit back for a good old-fashioned movie day. Here are some recent DVD and Blu-ray releases that you may not have released are now available (given that you’ve been a bit busy with the holidays of late, this is totally understandable). Check out these recent releases that you may have missed!
Laugh…or Steve Martin will blow your lips off. He’s a private detective called on to solve a mystery that involves a lovely femme fatale (Rachel Ward). While on the case he meets up with such famous 1940s faces as Alan Ladd, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart and Fred MacMurray from such film classics as “The Bribe,” “White Heat,” “Double Indemnity,” and more.
Unjustly convicted and deported to 19th-century Australia, proud Irish soldier Michael Fury (Brian Aherne) is consigned for slave labor to ruthless land baron Arnold Trist (George Zucco). Swiftly having his fill of his new employer’s inhumanity to the “help”–and to neighboring settlers–Fury engineers a prisoner escape, and whips the convicts into a vigilante force protecting the locals from Trist’s thuggery. Long-sought historical swashbuckler from producer/director Hal Roach co-stars Victor McLaglen, Paul Lukas, John Carradine, June Lang.
“The City of Lights” becomes “the City of Laughs” when screen comic Robert Leslie Hunter (Bob Hope) travels to Paris, looking to buy a scenario from a noted French playwright. The script may be light on jokes, but it’s loaded with coded messages for a dangerous gang of counterfeiters…so Bob find himself pursued (and not complaining about it) by a sly femme fatale (Anita Ekberg). Lively farce co-stars Fernandel, Martha Hyer, André Morell, and Preston Sturges.
Yearning to escape small-town life in Texas, factory worker Jodie (Kim Basinger) gets an opportunity to see the world when she lands a job as a flight attendant. When her training requires her to relocate to Los Angeles, however, it’s her devotion to her set-in-his-ways boyfriend Kyle (Jan-Michael Vincent) that may slam the brakes on her dreams. Affecting drama co-stars Tanya Tucker, Daryl Hannah, Michael Parks, Ted Neely.
With her Milanese therapist/lover Luca (Horst Frank) gone missing, and her dreams plagued by violent imagery, Julie (Rosemary Dexter) headed for the seaside resort town where he was last spotted. Arriving at the villa of an artisan commune, she discovers that many of its eccentric occupants had their grudges with Luca…and that one of them is willing to kill to keep their secrets. Gripping, hard-to-find giallo also stars Adolfo Celi, Alida Valli, Sybil Danning, Elisa Mainardi.
Rosalind Russell, Peggy Cass, and Yuki Shimoda re-create their triumphant performances on Broadway for this blockbuster Hollywood version of author Patrick Dennis’ runaway best-seller. Russell stars as the blithe and lovably eccentric socialite Mame Dennis, who takes her orphaned nephew under her wing and shows him around the madcap world of the Roaring ’20s. Co-stars Forrest Tucker, Coral Browne, and Jan Handzlik and Roger Smith as Patrick; directed by Morton DaCosta (”The Music Man”).
Thrilling, special effects-filled fantasy about two orphaned kids who find a mysterious board game in an attic. Once they begin playing, a gateway is opened to a jungle-like world filled with stampeding elephants, mischievous monkeys, and man-child Alan Parrish (Robin Williams), who was trapped in the game as a boy decades earlier. Now, it’s up to Alan, his childhood friend (Bonnie Hunt), and the kids to finish the game and restore reality. With Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, David Alan Grier.
Writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s unusual psychological horror tale is set at a secluded house where a writer (referred to only as “Him”) and his wife (called only “Mother”) live a quiet life. A succession of strangers begins to unexpectedly arrive at their home and are invited to stay by Him, much to Mother’s consternation. But just who are these bizarre houseguests and what sinister purpose has brought them to the couple’s doorstep? Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kristen Wiig star.
Monterey Pop (Criterion Collection)
On a beautiful June weekend in 1967, at the beginning of the Summer of Love, the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll. Monterey featured career-making performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, but they were just a few performers in a wildly diverse lineup that included Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas, the Who, the Byrds, Hugh Masekela, and the extraordinary Ravi Shankar. With his characteristic verite style and a camera crew that included the likes of Albert Maysles and Richard Leacock D. A. Pennebaker captured it all, immortalizing moments that have become legend: Pete Townshend smashing his guitar, Jimi Hendrix burning his, Mama Cass being blown away by Janis Joplin’s performance. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this timeless document of a landmark event.
Two of the cinema’s legendary leading ladies, Bette Davis and Lillian Gish, are teamed in this moving drama, based on the play by David Berry. During one summer at their family home on the coast of Maine, elderly, widowed sisters Libby Strong (Davis) and Sarah Webber (Gish) look back on their long lives and try to come terms with their strained relationship and very different views on getting older. Vincent Price and Oscar-nominee Ann Sothern (in her final film role) co-star in this engaging tale of love and devotion.
When his father’s ranch was threatened with foreclosure, Ross McEwen (Joel McCrea) tried to secure a bank loan…and wound up taking what he needed at the end of a six-iron. As the reluctant bandit makes his way across New Mexico, he earns the friendship of a nurse (Frances Dee) and a Mexican businessman (Joseph Calleia)–as well as the determined pursuit of lawman Pat Garrett (Charles Bickford), who was unimpressed by the I.O.U. he left behind. Unusual oater co-stars William Conrad.
Taking place mainly between late 2010 and early 2011, season three finds financially strapped Minnesota parole officer Ray Stussy (Ewan McGregor) and girlfriend Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) plotting to rob Ray’s brother, Emmit (also played by McGregor). The plan sets in motion a chain of events involving mistaken identity, a few homicides, a dangerous British businessman (David Thewlis), and a small-town cop (Carrie Coon) investigating her stepfather’s murder. Goran Bogdan co-stars. All 10 episodes from the third season are included in this four-disc set.
One Day at a Time: The Complete Series
Notable for depicting a self-sufficient single mother, this pioneering 1975-84 sitcom starred Bonnie Franklin as Ann Romano, a divorced woman trying to raise two teenage daughters (Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli) in Indianapolis while pursuing a career. Orbiting Ann’s world are David Kane (Richard Masur), Ann’s marriage-minded love interest; her mother, Katherine (Nanette Fabray); and Dwayne Schneider (Pat Harrington), the building’s ever-present super. Glen Scarpelli, Michael Lembeck, Shelley Fabares co-starred.
Space Ghost and Dino Boy: The Complete Series
Hanna-Barbera’s first Saturday morning superhero cartoon featured the interplanetary exploits of the mysterious Space Ghost (voiced by Gary Owens), who used his power bands to battle evildoers with help from young sidekicks Jan (Ginny Tyler) and Jace (Tim Matheson) and their pet monkey Blip, as well as Dino Boy (John David Carson), a youngster befriended by Ugh the caveman and pet brontosaurus Bronty in the primeval Lost Valley. Other voices include Don Messick, Ted Cassidy, Keye Luke. All 20 episodes from the series are included in this three-disc set.
For a complete list of our new and upcoming releases, click here.