NEW RELEASES - September 20

It's All Gone Pete Tong (2004).

"In It's All Gone Pete Tong, everything that can go wrong generally does, mostly to surprisingly sweet effect," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, noting that Paul Kaye "appears in almost every scene and he carries that weight admirably. He manages the very neat trick of keeping you interested in a character who doesn't merit our affection but earns it nonetheless."

Cowards Bend the Knee (2003).

"I told you this before but I'll mention it again - Cowards is my favorite of your films," Jonathan Marlow said to Guy Maddin in an interview late last year. Replied the director: "I think that it might be my favorite, too. It was my favorite experience."

Raved Manohla Dargis in the New York Times (after praising Maddin's "singular genius"): "There is also something rather splendid about this extended-play peep show, as if Mr. Maddin had stumbled across a hitherto lost archive of cinema's less-than-innocent past. What makes all this nostalgia for a movie history that never happened (as far as I know) is that, as is always the case with Mr. Maddin's work, it's executed with more love than irony and not a whit of derision."

Masculin/Feminin (1966).

Let's first get that famous intertitle out of the way: "The children of Marx and Coca Cola - understand who will."

Now then, take it away, Pauline Kael: "Godard has liberated his feeling for modern youth from the American gangster movie framework... He has made up the strands of what was most original in his best films - the life of the uncomprehending heroine, the blank-eyed career-happy little opportunist betrayer from Breathless, and the hully-gully, the dance of sexual isolation, from Band of Outsiders. Using neither crime nor the romance of crime but a simple kind of romance for a kind of interwoven story line, Godard has, at last, created the form he needed. It is a combination of essay, journalistic sketches, news and portraiture, love lyric and satire."

Turtles Can Fly (2004).

Named Best Film at the San Sebastian Film Festival and winner of a special "Peace Film Award" in Berlin, Bahman Ghobadi tale of puckish children just getting by in an Iraq about to be ravaged by war - again - was the first film to be shot in the country after the fall of Saddam. "This is a bold, impressive film that deserves a wider audience than it's likely to get," sighed Philip French in the Guardian during the film's limited theatrical release in the UK. But fortunately, these days, DVD is giving films like these a second life.

Gabbeh (1996).

Gabbeh, something of an international breakthrough for Mohsen Makhmalbaf, "follows the nomadic Ghashghai people who make colorful carpets that tell stories," writes Jeffrey M. Anderson in our Iranian New Wave primer. "One young woman longs to marry a mysterious horseman who follows their tribe around, but her family's traditions prevent the marriage from being acceptable. The film is more of a fairy tale than a romance. But it's seductive and heartbreaking without being angry, which may be precisely why international audiences took to it."

Grimm (2003).

A sort of contemporary retelling from the Netherlands of the tale of Hansel and Gretel, only with an absurdist sense of both humor and narrative and just a dash of Angela Carter.

How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (1971).

"One of the high points of Brazil's Cinema Novo," notes Facets, "this wicked black comedy inspired a furor at Cannes. A French explorer is captured by an Amazon tribe and tries desperately to be accepted by his captors. The tribe feeds him well - only at the end does the Frenchman realize why. A brilliant satire on the Colonialist mentality."

Born Into Brothels (2003).

"As upsetting as it is to see these children of India's red-light district growing up with so little chance in the world, the movie is equally heartening and disheartening because of the filmmakers' link to the kids and their very real and productive attempts to help half a dozen of them," writes talltale of this winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Inside Deep Throat (2004).

"As with Bill Condon's Kinsey," writes Nick Schager at Slant, "Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's Inside Deep Throat proves that the sexual revolution that began in the '60s was spearheaded not only by daring risk-takers who believed in personal freedom and sexual openness, but also by creeps who had no qualms about cavorting with lowlifes and degenerates to accomplish their libido-liberating goals."

Narrated by Dennis Hopper and featuring members of the cast and crew who worked on the cultural (and ultimately, financial) phenomenon that was Deep Throat as well as Gore Vidal, Erica Jong, Camille Paglia, Bill Maher and Norman Mailer and many, many more.

Divan (2003).

A "charming first-person account of the filmmaker's trip to Hungary to retrieve a family heirloom - a couch upon which, one late 19th-century Sabbath, a legendary rebbe passed the night," writes J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. "Warmhearted but unsentimental, touching but not mawkish, clever but never cute, Divan is almost miraculously modest."

No Direction Home (2005).

It's hard to pick out what's most unusual about this "Martin Scorsese Picture." Its length (three and a half hours), its release schedule (a few theaters, PBS and DVD just about all at once) or that fact that there is so very much footage of Bob Dylan from the dawn of his milestone-littered career up to the infamous motorcycle accident of 1966.

"Some of the footage will startle even the most dedicated Dylanologists," writes Variety. "They've rounded up footage of Dylan performing at a civil rights rally in the South with Pete Seeger, Dylan at the March on Washington, Dylan playing 'Mr. Tambourine Man' on a side stage at a Newport Folk Festival "topical song workshop." Part two opens with Dylan outside a store that sells cigarettes and provides care for pets; it's a hoot to listen to his wordplay as he twists the words on a store sign and it's an insight into the way he can make words dance. No Direction Home is neither pedantic nor a fan letter, although Scorsese has the heart of a Dylan enthusiast."

An Angel at My Table (1990).

"In her 3-volume autobiography Janet Frame repeatedly links the problem of identity to matters of perspective," writes Sue Gillett at Senses of Cinema. "Jane Campion is also a director who understands the intricate circuits of vision between a woman and the world she tries to see. Her films are remarkable for the independence they give to images of women and their gazes. In her adaptation of Frame's autobiography, Campion creates a visual language to match Frame's literary preoccupation with seeing her self from both within and without and placing herself within those frames of vision."

Adds Criterion, which is packing the disc with a doc on the film's making, six deleted scenes, an audio interview with Frame from 1982, audio commentary featuring Campion, cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and lead actress Kerry Fox: "Beautifully capturing the color and power of the New Zealand landscape, the film earned Campion a sweep of her country's film awards and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival."

Naked (1993).

"An unapologetic masterpiece," Edward Champion declared recently, "a brutally honest and almost Doestoevskyian depiction of a drifter (played brilliantly by David Thewlis) and the lives he seems to alter and disrupt (when in fact it may be other lives and class trappings that alter and disrupt him)."

Thewlis won Best Actor at Cannes, Mike Leigh, Best Director.

Over the Edge (1979).

"What we have here," began Roger Ebert in his review, "depressing and harrowing and often very real, is the other side of the coin of Breaking Away. That movie was a celebration of the possibilities involved in coming of age in a small town. Over the Edge is a funeral service held at the graveside of the suburban dream. It tells a ragged story that ends with an improbable climax, but it's acted so well and truly by its mostly teen-age cast that we somehow feel we're eavesdropping."

Ethan Mao (2004).

A coming out story in which just about anything that could go wrong with the coming out, in fact, does. "Quentin Lee presents a finely honed grasp of family conflicts as well as a portrait of a complex and sweet, gay first love story," writes Movie Magazine International.

Blood for Dracula (1973).

The first of two Paul Morrissey films starring Udo Kier and Joe Dallesandro to be released this week is actually a re-release of sorts. In Blood for Dracula, the Count "must leave the safety and comfort of his castle to go to Italy to find a virgin (or 'wirgin'). Udo Kier is brilliant as the pale, frustrated count," writes ZenBones, noting with relish the cameos by Roman Polanski and Vittorio de Sica.

Flesh for Frankenstein (1973).

Paul Morrissey, Udo Kier and Joe Dallesandro, Round 2. "A fun little romp loaded with kitsch value," writes Michael Johnson in Monsters at Play.

Battlestar Galactica. Season 1 (2004).

"The new incarnation differs in many ways from its forbearers," writes the UK's DVD Times. "Gone is the tongue-in-cheek feel of the original, replaced by much darker solid science fiction... Battlestar Galactica is a return to intelligent science fiction."

Desperate Housewives. Season 1 (2004).

One of the breakout hits of the fall of last year; some argue that Desperate Housewives isn't holding up, but few argue that the start it got off here was far more bang than whimper.

Wallace and Gromit in Three Amazing Adventures. (2005).

A Grand Day Out (1989; nominated for an Oscar, winner of a Bafta), The Wrong Trousers (1993; an Oscar and Bafta winner) and A Close Shave (1995; winner: Oscar, Bafta and countless festival awards), all on one disc.

Kodocha. Volume 2: Hayama Hijinks (2005).

"This series has been called "Marmalade Boy on steroids," and that sums it up nicely," says drseid. "This long and "oh so good" shoujo series is super wacky and hyper, but it is so very funny with great characters!"

Very high ratings all around from other GreenCiners as well.

Browse the New Releases Archive for more recent arrivals.