NEW RELEASES - FEBRUARY 14 HIGHLIGHTS

Proof (2005).

Gwyneth Paltrow and director John Madden team up again in the wake of their successful collaboration, Shakespeare in Love, this time joined by Anthony Hopkins and Jake Gyllenhaal for an adaptation of an award-winning play by David Auburn.

Metropolitan (1990).

"In Metropolitan, writer-director-producer Whit Stillman elected to explore a few winter weeks in the life of a band of young people who seem as estranged as children shipwrecked on the isle of Manhattan, or the members of a religion so obscure even its adherents have forgotten the Word," David Thomson has written in Movieline. "The film is very funny... less a satire than a gentle comedy of manners and errant love in a tradition that goes back to Lubitsch, Jane Austen, Mozart, and Shakespeare (and Babar)."

And at long last, it's out on DVD - from Criterion, no less.

La Béte Humaine (1938).

"What makes Renoir's work unusual among filmmakers, if not unique, is the diversity of the materials he draws upon during the realization of an individual project, and his ability to blend these elements together so that each works on the viewer but none obtrudes," writes James Leahy in Senses of Cinema. Here, Renoir adapts Zola's novel and casts Jean Gabin, a combo that proved quite a success at the French box office.

Young Mr. Lincoln (1939).

John Ford directs Henry Fonda in this quintessentially American story, and this Criterion disc includes archival audio interviews with both.

Dave Kehr puts it best: "A masterpiece."

Frisco Kid (1979).

So Gene Wilder's a rabbi, a young Harrison Ford is a bank robber and maverick Robert Aldrich directs. "Cuteness is constantly threatened but only occasionally delivered," wrote Dave Kehr of this spoof back when he was still with the Chicago Reader.

Samurai Gun Volume 4: The Bitter End (2004).

"Cross-breed Batman with a classic samurai movie and mate their offspring to Wild Wild West (the Will Smith version) and the result is Samurai Gun, one of the oddest takes on Japanese pseudo-history yet to make it across the Pacific," writes Theron "Key" Martin for the Anime News Network.

Browse the New Releases Archive for more recent arrivals.