By Craig Phillips

Even with all the previously unreleased films coming out on DVD each week, you could nonetheless do a thousand of these lists, alas.

At any rate, as a follow-up to my previous column on MIA DVDs, here is another group of films (with two by John Huston, natch) we're crying out for, in no particular order.

(Click on to see the list!) [Updated as things arrive on DVD.]

Continue Reading The Return of the MIA DVD list (UPDATED! 11/08)

A surprisingly hearty list of new DVD titles out today, including a new set of Mystery Science Theater classics (well, the movies aren't classics, but their commentary makes these episodes classic), comedy from Louis C.K., a new volume of Noein, a harrowing environmental doc and a harrowing Mark Wahlberg actioner - wait, that one isn't harrowing, it's ludicrous, and fun. Plus the Chris Marker two-fer mentioned elsewhere. See all of 'em by clicking below.

Continue Reading New on DVD: June 26, 2007

Black Snake Moan: Craig Brewer's follow-up to Hustle & Flow finds him again in musical mode, but this time for a rather lurid melodrama, which is either exploitative and ludicrous, or "as humorous and raunchy as a good blues refrain" (Austin Chronicle), depending on your point of view - or all of the above.

"As a filmmaker, Brewer doesn't just yank your chain: He forges a bond with his characters and his audience that produces ecstasy and healing," writes critic Michael Sragow.

Continue Reading Black Snake Moan

Chris Marker's short film La Jetee, the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, is paired up with Marker's haunting Sans Soleil, and that is major cause for celebration. Both films are meditations on time and memory, with Soleil ostensibily about the correspondence between a cameraman and a woman who narrates. "No two people will come away from [it] with the same impression," writes Eric Henderson in Slant, "nor will a solitary viewer's multiple viewings yield the same experience." Adds the BBC: "Too rich, complex, and elusive to be digested on a single viewing."

More from Steve Erickson on Nerve: "After watching Sans Soliel, you realize that the paths Marker blazed for documentarians remain largely unfollowed."

Continue Reading La Jetee/Sans Soleil: Chris Marker via Criterion

If...: New from Criterion, this unforgettable drama about a revolution within a British public school, long unavailable on DVD. "So good and strong," wrote Vincent Canby in 1969, "that even those things in the movie that strike me as being first-class mistakes are of more interest than entire movies made by smoothly consistent, lesser directors... Lindsay Anderson, a fine documentary moviemaker, develops his fiction movie with all the care of someone recording the amazing habits of a newly discovered tribe of aborigines."

Continue Reading If...

"It likely goes without saying that Bridge to Terabithia is not the sort of movie you'd generally find discussed on this site. Clearly, no self-respecting cineaste would squander their time on a movie supposedly made for families, right? Why, then, are we running an interview with the co-screenwriter/co-producer of this film? Because David Paterson is (to borrow a memorable piece of dialogue from Freaks) 'one of us'." Jonathan Marlow recently spoke with David Paterson about the film adaptation of his mother's novel, Bridge to Terabithia.

Terabithia is now out on DVD.

Continue Reading David Paterson: The Journey to Terabithia

A decent selection of titles release in this first week of summer - comedies, anime, period dramas, Criterion cult classics, and more. Enjoy!

Click on for titles both out today and coming soon.

Continue Reading New on DVD: June 19, 2007

Better late than never with the updated list of new releases and titles coming soon. This week's batch featured some surprisingly dark stuff, considering we're approaching summertime, but a few good 'uns in that group. Click on for more.

Continue Reading New on DVD: June 12, 2007

Days of Glory is a powerful film about an aspect of WWII previously neglected, Algerians who served heroically for France in WWII. "A kind of a North African Saving Private Ryan," wrote the LA Times' Kenneth Turan, " a taut, involving film that delivers all the things we look for in war movies and does so with intelligence and integrity." GreenCine reviewer Craig Phillips thinks the Private Ryan comparison misses the film's more powerful subtext about racism. "Here it's more moving because the subtext is these men were not given any acknowledgment for their heroism, and the ending while equally emotional, is that much more bitter." Read the rest of his four-star review on Guru.

See also: GreenCine Daily's recap of reviews >>

D.K. Holm on the film (from Portland International Film Fest write-up). 

Continue Reading Days of Glory: Unsung heroes

Claude Berri's wonderful 1967 film The Two of Us (Criterion) was inspired at least in part by Berri's own life story. In 1944, in occupied Paris, a Jewish boy is sent away to live with gentiles, who would claim him as one of their own and protect him from deportation and death. The film features one of the great French actors in one of his final performances, Michel Simon, as the anti-semitic old man who develops a fondness for the boy.

The (director-approved) special features on this new Criterion disc include:

New, restored high-definition digital transfer; Le poulet (1962), director Claude Berri’s Oscar-winning short film; New video interviews with Berri and actor Alain Cohen; Interviews from 1967 with Berri and Michel Simon; An excerpt from “The Jewish Children of Occupied France,” a 1975 French talk-show segment featuring Berri and the woman who helped secure his family’s safety during World War II; Original theatrical trailer; New and improved English subtitle translation.

Continue Reading The Two of Us