In This Issue:

March 2011

What's New on DVD

Kapò (1959)

Drama/Foreign. Brainy/Intense/Moving.
Black & White. 118 mins. Unrated. Directed By Gillo Pontecorvo. Starring Laurent Terzieff, Susan Strasberg, Emmanuelle Riva and Didi Perego.
Susan Strasberg (daughter of famous acting instructor Lee Strasberg) delivers an unnerving performance in this stark, captivating WWII drama, conveying Edith's complex motivations almost entirely ... Read More >
 

Orlando (1992)

Drama. Brainy/Scenic/Witty.
Color. 93 mins. Rated PG-13. Directed By Sally Potter. Starring Billy Zane, Quentin Crisp and Tilda Swinton.
Tilda Swinton's breakthrough performance as the androgynous Orlando is reason enough to see this daringly original film. This gender-bending role launched the career of one of our most unique acting ... Read More >
 

Restrepo (2010)

Documentary/War/Westerns. Blood-curdling/Intense/Moving.
Color. 93 mins. Rated R. Directed By Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Yunger.
From the very first shot of Restrepo, in which a humvee hits an IED while on patrol, you find yourself fully immersed in the world of Battle Company. By the film's end, you'll be surprised that the ... Read More >
 

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Comedy. Moving/Witty.
Color. 107 mins. Rated R. Directed By Lisa Cholodenko. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mia Wasikowska.
Lisa Cholodenko's warm and wise comedy packs a pile of complicated emotions into its slender but well-constructed frame. It's an unalloyed pleasure to watch her central quintet of actors--the adult ... Read More >
 

The Thin Red Line (1998)

War/Westerns. Intense/Moving/Scenic.
Color. 170 mins. Rated R. Directed By Terrence Malick. Starring Nick Nolte, James Caviezel, Sean Penn, Elias Koteas, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, John Travolta and George Clooney.
With his long-awaited third feature, legendary director Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven) delivered perhaps the most lushly beautiful war film ever made, and Criterion's new edition (on both ... Read More >
 

The Way We Get By (2009)

Documentary. Moving/Offbeat/Wholesome.
Color. 84 mins. Unrated. Directed By Aron Gaudet. Starring Bill Knight, Jerry Mundy and Joan Gaudet.
Eschewing the chaos and gore of so many films dealing with war up-close, director Aron Gaudet focuses his lens squarely on the nobler points of the conflict, seen at a safe distance: regular citizens ... Read More >
 

Troubled Water (2009)

Foreign/Mystery/Suspense.
Color. 120 mins. Unrated. Directed By Erik Poppe. Starring Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen, Trine Dyrholm and Ellen Dorrit Petersen.
Erik Poppe's smart, understated puzzler is at once sad, disturbing, and surprisingly gripping. As the film gradually unfolds, two rich layers of mystery are revealed: first, what really happened in ... Read More >
 

You Don't Know Jack (2010)

Drama. Intense.
Color. 134 mins. Unrated. Directed By Barry Levinson. Starring Al Pacino, James Urbaniak, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon and Brenda Vaccaro.
This Emmy-winning film's playful title hints at director Levinson's somewhat unexpected approach to his subject. Rather than allow the seriousness of Dr. Death's divisive actions and demonized public ... Read More >
 

Theme of the Month:

This year, the Oscars got it right. We were pleased to see "The King's Speech win Best Picture. But when did the Academy get it wrong? We thought it might be fun and revealing to go back over all those Oscar ceremonies, and focusing on past recipients of Best Picture, identify - with full benefit of hindsight - just when Oscar fell down on the job.

So here's our own not-so-humble list of movies that lost out and should have won. Feel free to correct, amend, and add your own perspectives.

Capote (2005)

Drama. Spine-tingling/Intense/Brainy.
Color. 114 mins. Rated R. Directed By Bennett Miller. Starring Clifton Collins, Jr., Philip Seymour Hoffmann and Catherine Keener.
Hoffman's uncanny portrayal of brilliant misfit Truman Capote is reason enough to see this vivid, unnerving film, but the focus on his writing of "Blood" lets us peer into the tortured psyche of a ... Read More >
 

Double Indemnity (1944)

Mystery/Suspense. Intense/Spine-tingling.
Black & White. 107 mins. Unrated. Directed By Billy Wilder. Starring Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck.
One of the quintessential noir films, Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" is a masterpiece of stark atmosphere and carefully stylized suspense. The talented Barbara Stanwyck, a familiar face in the ... Read More >
 

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Comedy/Cornerstone Titles/Family. Farr-cical/Offbeat.
Black & White. 93 mins. Rated PG. Directed By Stanley Kubrick. Starring George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden and Peter Sellers.
The most inspired piece of Cold War satire ever and one of the screen's supreme black comedies, Kubrick's 1964 "Strangelove" confronted jittery audiences in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, ... Read More >
 

Fargo (1996)

Drama/Action/Adventure. Farr-cical/Intense/Offbeat.
Color. 108 mins. Rated R. Directed By Joel Coen. Starring Steve Buscemi, William H. Macy and Frances McDormand.
The Coen Brothers' crowning achievement, this twisted black comedy convulses us one minute, horrifies us the next. While satirizing the distinctive accents and conventions of North Dakotans, the ... Read More >
 

Giant (1956)

Drama/Family. Moving/Intense.
Color. 201 mins. Rated G. Directed By George Stevens. Starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.
Based on Edna Ferber's best-seller, Stevens's vibrant, sprawling epic about a rivalry that spans decades is every bit as grandiose, melodramatic, and visually arresting as it was half a century ago. ... Read More >
 

High Noon (1952)

War/Westerns/Family. Spine-tingling/Intense.
Black & White. 84 mins. Unrated. Directed By Fred Zinnemann. Starring Gary Cooper, Thomas Mitchell and Grace Kelly.
Fred Zinnemann's stark revenge tale, told in real time, packs enough intensity into eighty minutes to carry two movies. It's suspenseful in the extreme, but also a morality tale, powerful in ... Read More >
 

My Left Foot (1989)

Drama. Intense/Brainy/Moving.
Color. 103 mins. Rated R. Directed By Jim Sheridan. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker.
Jim Sheridan's immensely moving, inspirational tale is carried by a once-in-a-lifetime performance from Day-Lewis, one of the finest, most painstaking feats of acting captured on film. Fricker is ... Read More >
 

My Man Godfrey (1936)

Comedy. Witty.
Black & White. 95 mins. Unrated. Directed By Gregory LaCava. Starring William Powell and Carole Lombard.
Gregory La Cava's sublime "Godfrey" blends screwball elements with more serious overtones on Depression-era class injustice, to create a wildly entertaining yet thought-provoking movie that holds up ... Read More >
 

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Action/Adventure/Cornerstone Titles. Offbeat/Farr-cical/Fast-paced/Intense.
Color. 164 mins. Rated R. Directed By Quentin Tarantino. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta and Uma Thurman.
A genre-twisting, savagely funny tour de force, with vignettes of bantering hit-men, crooked boxers, petty thieves, and an alluring gangster's wife, all cutting back and forth in time. With its ... Read More >
 

The Apartment (1960)

Drama/Romance. Moving.
Black & White. 125 mins. Unrated. Directed By Billy Wilder. Starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
Wilder seamlessly blends comedy, romance and pathos in this touching tale of a lonely man forced to confront the corruption of his life just as he falls helplessly in love. With winning performances ... Read More >
 

The Exorcist (1973)

Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy. Blood-curdling/Intense.
Color. 132 mins. Rated R. Directed By William Friedkin. Starring Max von Sydow, Jason Miller, Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn.
Director Friedkin's masterful adaptation of William Peter Blatty's best-seller is one of the most petrifying films on record. An ominous mood is established at the outset that quickly escalates to ... Read More >
 

The Hours (2002)

Drama. Intense/Moving/Brainy.
Color. 114 mins. Rated PG-13. Directed By Stephen Daldry. Starring Stephen Dillane, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore.
A subtle, literate meditation on life's hidden detours which direct us away from self-knowledge and fulfillment. Stephen Daldry's ambitious piece succeeds as intense, disturbing drama, ... Read More >
 

Traffic (2000)

Drama/Mystery/Suspense. Fast-paced/Intense.
Color. 147 mins. Rated R. Directed By Steven Soderbergh. Starring Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Scripted by Stephen Gaghan from an acclaimed BBC miniseries, Soderbergh's Oscar-winning "Traffic" is a hard-hitting, superbly stylized exposé of the war on drugs. Visually slick and ... Read More >
 

Spotlight

• March 3 – John is hosting a screening of "The Ladykillers" at the Bedford Free Library in Bedford, NY at 7 pm


• March 6 – John hosts a screening of "The Third Man" at a private club in New York City