Billy Wilder's most famous box office flop, the searing 1951 satire Ace in the Hole (once retitled The Big Carnival in a lame attempt to save it) has long been a cult item and now that Criterion's revived it on disc, clearly much more than that, too. "It's dark, funny, ferocious, and vintage Wilder all the way," wrote the Christian Science Monitor's David Sterritt.

"An acquired taste," adds The New York Times' A.O. Scott, "and an unforgettable one."

Also see: An interesting essay on the film by Richard Armstrong in Senses of Cinema. 

Continue Reading Ace in the Hole: Wild Wilder

Something old, something new, something uh, French, something... blue? Well, sort of blue, although the "unrated" edition of Factory Girl, while sexy, isn't all that ribald. We'll have a review of that one up soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the diverse batch of titles out this week.

Continue Reading New on DVD: July 17, 2007

These are the most often turned, or rented, discs in GreenCine's 5 year history. You probably won't be surprised by all of these, but perhaps a few...

1. City of God
2. Battle Royale (Special Edition)
3. American Splendor
4. Dead Man
5. Lost in Translation
6. Dark Days
7. Eraserhead
8. Spirited Away
9. Kill Bill vol.1
10. Bottle Rocket

Continue Reading GreenCine's All-Time Best-Renting (Top Turning) DVDs!

GreenCine Members get a special discount on tickets ($6!) for a fun new series Thursdays and Saturdays at SF's Yerba Buena Center in July and August. Get off your couch and away from your computer! Seeing films projected in a theater does not even resemble the experience of watching at home. This series will showcase twelve remarkable films which have not been released on DVD. All will be presented on 35mm film, and many are pristine studio vault prints.

Films include Love Streams, Urgh! A Music War, Boys in the Band, She's Gotta Have It and Unholy Rollers. Don't miss 'em!

Please visit YBCA’s website for more details. 701 Mission Street, San Francisco. Thursdays: July 12, 19, 26 & August 2, 9, 16. Saturdays: July 14, 21, 28 & August 4, 11, 18
$8 regular, $6 seniors, students, & teachers/ $6 YBCA Members

Continue Reading YBCA Screening Series: Movies You Can't See on DVD

Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark

Those wacky guys from Rifftrax (and Mystery Science Theater 3000), Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, are at it again. Think of Film Crew as MST3K without the silhouettes and robots, but still chock full of snarky comments on bad, obscure films -- serving as a survival mechanism for both commenter and viewer.

Continue Reading Film Crew's first riff: Hollywood After Dark

Finally, a chock-filled DVD releasing week again! We've got new anime, new kids movies, an Oscar-nominated Danish drama and other excellent international seletions, new indie flicks and dramas, a new season of Extras, new old noir, and much more. Enjoy!

Continue Reading New on DVD: July 10, 2007

Sweet Land is "a tale of pure Americana that speaks both to the immigrant experience and the nature of love," (Hollywood Reporter), this poignant film is set in Minnesota farm country in the early 20s. "A movie of extraordinary tenderness," wrote Entertainment Weekly's Owen Glieberman. "If Terrence Malick could ever banish the wispy art clouds from his brain and give in to the storyteller inside, perhaps he might make a movie as stirring. I want to be absolutely clear about what an independent triumph this is."

Continue Reading Sweet Land: A Love Story

Susanne Bier's drama After the Wedding was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and manages to be both sweeping, yet entirely intimate. "A highly original and unusually powerful drama that deserves comparison to the great Scandinavian films of the past," says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "After the Wedding would never pretend to have any answers, but in hands this skilled the act of exploration itself couldn't be more illuminating, or more dramatic," adds the LA Times' Kenneth Turan.

Mads Mikkelsen played the baddie in Casino Royale, but showing an entirely different side here you'll see why he's the biggest star in Denmark.

Continue Reading After the Wedding

interviewed By Heather Johnson

Twentysomething director Cam Archer doesn.t have much interest in conveying the often self-involved dramas of his own generation. The inner lives of teenagers provides much more interesting filmmaking fodder. In our 20s, we discover more fully who we are; in our teens, we struggle to be like everyone else and for everyone to like us. If that doesn.t happen, the results can be brutal, and lead to years of therapy in our 30s.

His new film, Wild Tigers I Have Known, is now out on DVD.

Continue Reading Wild Tigers I Have Known: Cam Archer's Study of Adolescent Angst

A quiet releasing week, of course, given the midweek holiday, so don't expect much today. But there are definitely some winners in the batch found here. Check out this week's releases, and the titles coming out through the summer (new titles added weekly!)

Happy 4th of July!

Continue Reading Going Fourth: New on DVD July 3, 2007