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Nitrate Online explores a sampling of the most noteworthy, provocative and satisfying video and/or DVD releases for the month of May 2000 (give or take a few weeks). Titles are followed by original country and year of release, as well as release date (if known). Street dates change constantly and often differ from format to format, so check with your favorite online or brick-and-mortar supplier for up-to-date information.

Probably the most unconventional, and comically pungent, films to be showered with multiple Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Original Screenplay, and Cinematography) since The Apartment (and the winners cited Billy Wilder in some of their acceptance speeches). Kevin Spacey plays a husband and father who gets knocked out of the resigned doldrums of his existence by the appearance of a beautiful girl (Mena Suvari) -- who also happens to be the best friend of his estranged teenaged daughter (Thora Birch) -- and the resultant reverberations change both his life and everyone around him. With exceptional performances by Annette Bening, as Spacey's wife, a realtor whose rigorously maintained façade keeps going askew on her, and Wes Bentley, as one of the most unusual boys-next-door in recent cinema. At this writing the film is available only as a tape for rental, and even that can be hard to find at one major chain due to an ongoing squabble over royalties.

When Francis Ford Coppola famously predicted an auteurist future in which masterpieces would be made by "fat girls from Ohio with camcorders," he might’ve been thinking about American Movie, which wasn’t made with a camcorder, in Ohio or by a fat girl but still qualifies as an astonishingly frank and ruefully funny record of art by accident that serves at once as both a cautionary fable and backhanded inspiration to D.I.Y. filmmakers everywhere. "Dude, I see great cinema," is a typical pronouncement from motor-mouthed Milwaukeean Mark Borchardt, whose lifelong ambition has been to make movies as a ticket to the American Dream. Unfortunately, his idealistic energy is matched only by the weary yet lovingly tolerant ennui of those around him, from the ancient and scatterbrained Uncle Bill (who lends him money) to his best friend Mike, a genially inept ex-buddy who turns out to have an awesome talent for screaming. As Mark retreats from an ambitious feature, called Northwestern, and embarks on a full-court press to finish up his previously abandoned horror short Coven, director Chris Smith and producer Sarah Price are right there to show his transformation from gawky slacker to determined auteur (he even enlists his mother to help with eleventh-hour editing chores). One local video chain had but a single copy of American Movie, which is a pity: this brutally candid, often sad and ultimately very American movie should be required viewing for anyone who saw The Blair Witch Project and said, "Hey, I can do that!" The DVD includes a commentary track from Smith, nearly two dozen deleted scenes, interviews with some of the principles, production notes and, of course, Coven.

Mother (Susan Sarandon) and daughter (Natalie Portman) hit the road together to find ever more elusive happiness and contentment. This film version of Mona Simpson's best-selling novel, directed by Wayne Wang from a screenplay by Alvin Sargent, tries to avoid the contrived and familiar and ends up finding no particular style of its own. Even Susan Sarandon seems a little stumped at times with her habitually flighty character, as if she can't rationalize why the woman doesn't just plunk herself down someplace and make something out of her life. Natalie Portman, though, gives a beautifully-conceived performance as her long-suffering daughter -- as if, freed from the turkey-truss costuming she had to wear to play Queen Amidala for George Lucas, she received a flood of inspiration for the role. The VHS is priced to rent (there’s a Spanish subtitled edition as well), and the DVD includes a making-of featurette.

One of the best pictures of 1999, and one of the most surprising: the story is built around the premise that people can have life-altering experiences when they enter a portal that allows them to be inside the head of actor John Malkovich for a short period of time (after which they wind up on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike). John Cusack plays a frustrated puppeteer who goes to work at an office on the thirteenth-and-a-half floor of an office building; Catherine Keener (in a classic performance) plays his unobtainable object-of-desire; Cameron Diaz, in a career-making performance, plays the puppeteer's neglected wife, who at one point finds herself locked in a cage with an ailing monkey. John Malkovich also gets to play himself -- he gets to go into the portal at one point, too. Unmissable. The original- and Spanish-language VHS tapes are priced to rent, and the DVD sports various documentaries, interviews and a photo gallery.

"You never know," Nicolas Cage’s skittish, tortured paramedic says of an iffy patient well into Bringing Out the Dead, Martin Scorsese’s raconteurish descent into nocturnal Hell’s Kitchen on board the ambulances that scrape society’s dregs off the streets and into the overcrowded and chaotic emergency rooms of New York City. Cage could just as well be speaking of the director’s success with films set in his hometown, from the crackling immediacy of Taxi Driver (1976) and GoodFellas (1990) to the dissipated focus of After Hours (1985) and The Age of Innocence (1993). Emotional elements of these and other Scorsese pictures  (check out the jukebox full of popular songs used to typically sardonic effect) lurch out of the darkness like the skells on the street, underscoring the episodic approach of the narrative and the giddy mix of elements both sacred and profane (like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull [1980] and The Last Temptation of Christ [1988, newly available as a Criterion Collection DVD], the film was written by occasional Scorsese collaborator Paul Schrader -- no stranger himself to cinematic grapples between religious and secular issues). The movie’s best sequence comes at about the 74-minute mark, as an alarmingly dissipated Cage hallucinates the mass saving of the infirmed by literally pulling them from the slick cobblestones of a deserted backstreet. Yet as a whole the work feels uneven, with the absurd charisma of Ving Rhames’ fundamentalist ambulance driver nearly cancelled out by Tom Sizemore’s paint-by-numbers psycho colleague. Scorsese himself and Queen Latifah voice the dispatchers, the former making a firm connection with his psychotic walk-on in Taxi Driver. The DVD edition showcases Robert Richardson’s giddy camerawork and features some interview material tracing the genesis of the project. But don’t count the film out of the Scorsese oeuvre: it may look like a lesser work now, but you never know.

Tim Robbins tries, and fails, to make a populist epic. Distantly based on a 1983 screenplay by Orson Welles, about the attempts to stage a Federal Theatre Project production of Marc Blitzstein's proletarian musical The Cradle Will Rock in New York City during the 1930s, Robbins, in his first film since Dead Man Walking, revises and expands the scope to include everything from rising Fascism in Italy to homelessness, police brutality, and John D. Rockefeller. There's too much of everything, and nothing ends up working. The results are confusing, gratingly discordant, and sometimes just plain bad, with oafishly drawn characters and recurring ideas that are almost impossible to watch. Some of the performers stand out nonetheless: Emily Watson as an indigent street singer who finds work as a stagehand; Cherry Jones, who gives F.T.P. administrator Hallie Flanagan a fierce intelligence and concentration; and Hank Azaria, who almost makes the film's portrayal of Marc Blitzstein -- nearly driven mad by creative obsession, yet inexplicably haunted by the specter of Bertold Brecht -- work. As for the rest, approach with caution. The VHS tape is priced to rent, and the DVD includes the trailer and a production featurette.

If you stop counting the swear words on the soundtrack, Kevin Smith's satire turns out to be four-square in favor of religious devotion, questioning only attempts to alter the basic premises of the Gospels to further individual or popular needs. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play angels who would like to continue hanging-out on Earth for a little longer, even if it means wreaking irreversible havoc; Linda Fiorentino is a women's clinic worker who finds herself unwittingly chosen by Providence to carry-out a mission; and Jason Mewes and Smith himself, reprising their roles of Jay of Silent Bob from Smith's three previous films, are emissaries called to help her in her task (illustrating how anyone, from any walk of life, can find themselves capable of carrying out the Lord's work). And, no, I didn't have any problems with Alanis Morrisette's casting (when you see her plain-but-grave expression in the film, you can see why Smith chose her for the role). The Spanish-subtitled and English-language VHS tapes are priced to rent, and the DVD edition is curiously austere.

Although she’s only made a handful of high-profile films to date (one of which, Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown, garnered her an Oscar nomination), Nottingham-born Samantha Morton is among the most promising of new actresses, a quiet yet intense presence reminiscent of Jane Horrocks, Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths. In the dreamy, moody and somewhat aloof melodrama Dreaming of Joseph Lees, she’s a woman in 1958 Somerset (the film was shot on the Isle of Man, where Waking Ned Devine was made) who is torn between her needy, increasingly self-destructive boyfriend, pig farmer Harry (Lee Ross) and the physically scarred second cousin of the title (Rupert Graves), for whom she’s carried a silent torch despite his long absence working as a geologist in Italy. Frank Finlay, who starred alongside the late Oliver Reed in that terrific pair of mid-1970s Musketeers films, has a distinctive supporting role as her forgetful father, and Lauren Richardson is fine as her precocious kid sister. Working from a script by Catherine Linstrum that takes an alarming turn towards the lurid in the third act, first-time director Eric Styles keeps the film in fine balance, wisely allowing Morton’s expressive presence to carry the film. Also worth seeking out is Morton’s first major movie, a lacerating 1997 British drama called Under the Skin. She’s a brave actress whose apparent fearlessness promises work sure to rise above the material, as it does in Dreaming of Joseph Lees. At this writing the film is available exclusively as a priced-to-rent video.

All glossy and sophisticated in the best tradition of British melodrama, Neil Jordan’s remake of the classic 1955 weepie The End of the Affair (itself out in a new DVD edition May 16) benefits enormously from the luminous, Oscar-nominated performance of Julianne Moore, which almost props up another wooden turn by Ralph Fiennes and propels the film through it’s time-shifting structure, which is less complicated than just plain annoying. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Graham Greene (The Third Man), the movie tells of the pre-World War II affair of the married Sarah (Moore) and novelist Maurice (Fiennes), and the five-year aftermath of the writer’s increasing bitterness. Full of the minutiae of adultery (hotel bars, furtive assignations and the like), the film is nevertheless a listless and dour, uh, affair -- particularly since the leads have proven track records with sexually frank material and Jordan’s best work (The Company of Wolves, The Crying Game, The Butcher Boy) proves him a keen and inventive storyteller. Yet the provocative issues of faith and destiny which arise as the war intrudes on their forbidden love never really grab the imagination, and the players come across more surly than noble. Ian Hart is good as a private detective, and Jordan regular Stephen Rea brings an unreasonably plausible gravity to a character conceived as a cuckolded dolt. Costume designer Sandy Powell (who won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love) may be the true star of the film, as these conflicted lovers look as good, if not better, in their clothes than out of them. In a logical yet unique arrangement, the film is available either on the standard VHS and feature-packed DVD editions, or as a DVD double feature with Edward Dmytryk’s 1955 version -- presented in its original widescreen black and white.

The director of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert would not seem to be the likeliest first choice to make a film of Marc Behm's fearlessly bleak 1980 novel, about a washed-out, middle-aged detective who starts to believe that the young woman whom he's been surveilling, and who turns out to be a pathological serial killer, may be the daughter from whom he's been separated for years. In fact, Stephen Elliott does both a good job of updating the material while remaining faithful to elements of the original story -- although you may need to have read Behm's novel to fully understand everything that's going on in the film. Ewan McGregor is too young to play the part of the detective -- though he's given him a weary, tinged-with-Cockney accent that comes across as a nod to Michael Caine's Harry Palmer in the espionage thriller The Ipcress File -- but Ashley Judd is just right as the girl, Joanna, capturing the alternating menace and pathos of the character in a way that makes sense, and k.d. lang does a perfectly fine job playing the detective's contact person, with whom he only communicates through fiber-optic linkups and satellite communication. Look also for Lizzy Gardner, the costume designer who won an Oscar for her work in Priscilla, who plays a coffee shop waitress in several scenes in the film. The VHS tape is currently priced to rent, and the DVD includes a commentary track by Elliott, a making-of featurette and production notes. 

Atom Egoyan's film of the William Trevor novel, about a runaway Irish girl (Elaine Cassidy) whose path crosses that of a respectable Birmingham man (Bob Hoskins), an institutional chef, who just may or may not also prey on young, restless girls. The picture works quite well for about nine-tenths of the way -- before it suddenly falls to pieces just prior to reaching its conclusion. Definitely have a look at it, though, for Hoskins' outstanding performance in a very difficult role -- among other things, his character tries to maintain the disrupted relationship he had with his mother by playing the carefully-stored video tapes made of her old T.V. cooking show. And watch for the utterly chilling part where Hoskins, just for a bit, acknowledges Egoyan's camera in one scene. The VHS tape is priced to rent, and the DVD features Egoyan’s commentary, production notes and a featurette on the film’s making.

One-joke movies have a tough time sustaining momentum through feature length, even if the conceit is as inspired as the one at the heart of Galaxy Quest: the actors in a swashbuckling outer space television program, long since cancelled, are propelled from shopping mall openings to saving the universe when enlisted by a sweet but naïve race of aliens to stave off an evil warlord. The film’s big surprise -- particularly in light of the extensive and elaborate special effect work -- is its almost improvisational feel, a hunch buttressed by the DVD edition’s outtakes, which hint at very different directions for key sequences. As the Shatneresque captain Peter Quincy Taggart (and the egotistical Jason Nesmith, the actor who plays him), Tim Allen continues a big-screen career of much mugging and little distinction, while Sigourney Weaver does a nice, if unacknowledged, spoof of her Ridley character from the Alien franchise. Alan Rickman’s character, the unfortunate Shakespearean actor who found success wearing a rubber head, has the most opportunity for laughs, followed closely by Sam Rockwell as the bit player with a not entirely irrational fear of being offed before the first commercial. Director Dean Parisot keeps things moving at a clip that leaves little time for reflection, which is just as well: as ephemeral as the phenomena it spoofs, Galaxy Quest is at heart an amiable television program that somehow acquired a largish budget and a conspicuous holiday theatrical release. The English and Spanish-subtitled VHS tapes are priced to sell and there are two separate feature-laden DVD editions.

Until he hooked up with screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, emigree Milos Forman had not made a misstep in a career that began in occupied Czechoslovakia with such sublime cultural comedies as Loves of a Blonde (1965) Fireman’s Ball (1967), and continued in America with the likes of the multi-Oscared triumphs One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984). But in both The People vs. Larry Flint (1996) and now Man on the Moon, Forman is working with material from the duo that profoundly misunderstands the periods in which they’re set and the people they’re attempting to portray. So while Woody Harrelson is fun to watch as Larry Flynt and Jim Carrey’s impression of bizarre comic Andy Kaufman is technically interesting, each film becomes lost in a jumble of period set and costume design, lacking any of the broadly painted nuance of character and emotional passion so fundamental to Forman’s work. That Kaufman’s central theme was that there was no there there -- that is, at the core of the comic -- is of no help, robbing the film of the illumination that presumably attracted the mainstream to the real-life conundrum in the first place (cultists could care less whether it was all a put-on or not, and are content to keep the mystery alive with a blind faith that borders on the messianic). Let’s hope Forman can surmount these frustrating misfires and return to the kind of intuitive, freewheeling movies upon which his stellar reputation, still defiantly intact, continues to rest. As for the dubious duo of Alexander and Karaszewski (who, to be fair, also wrote Ed Wood), recent evidence suggests the best they can come up with when freed from historical misrepresentation is the woeful caper "comedy" Screwed. How apt is that? The VHS tape is priced to rent, and the DVD is packed with interviews, outtakes, commentaries, a documentary on Kaufman and other features.

The first half of Mystery, Alaska is as emotionally shrewd and kinetically funny as any American film of the year, positing a remote and quirky-yet-comfortable American village populated by an amiable cross-section of average folk as endearing as anything in the canon of Milos Forman or Jiri Menzel. The sweet little village of the title, nestled in a spectacular mountain range, is all a-dither over the imminent arrival of the New York Rangers, making the trek to play the long-standing town team in an exhibition pond hockey match being tirelessly flogged by the NHL (the gig was arranged by a former resident who left and became a TV producer in the big city). Among those affected by the visit are sheriff John Biebe (Russell Crowe), Judge Walter Burns (Burt Reynolds), Colm Meaney), and local Lothario "Skank" Marden (Ron Eldard). Employing the same casting strategy as his other 1999 release, the equally quirky but far less satisfying Lake Placid, prolific co-screenwriter David E. Kelley (who was the captain of his hockey team at Princeton some two decades ago) has massaged the mood by again assembling a pleasing mix of television actors, international stars and established Hollywood vets. Things flag alarmingly in the second half, however, as the game itself supplants the character-driven narrative and swamps the good will with sports clichés.  There’s a strong Canadian seam running through the proceedings: a heavily prostheticized Mike Myers does an uncredited cameo as a hockey commentator (director Jay Roach helmed the two Austin Powers movies), that’s Canadian-born Maury Chaykin as a rumpled lawyer, and the film itself was shot in Alberta. The newly-released DVD (which follows last October’s VHS edition) is a bare-bones affair sporting only a theatrical trailer and paltry making-of featurette -- but it does showcase Peter Deming’s letterboxed images and Carter Burwell’s evocative music.

The eighteenth James Bond film, and Pierce Brosnan's third time out as the character, makes an attempt to be a very spruced-up affair, but after a while you begin to feel like you've seen everything in it before: the chases, shootouts, explosions, odd villains (Robert Carlyle, playing a rogue espionage agent who feels no pain, and has a bullet in his skull to prove it), even the exotic torture devices. The opening chase, though, is a beaut, and Sophie Marceau brings a great deal of finesse to what turns out to be a magnificently perverse character. Denise Williams received a great deal of unnecessary flak as the film's requisite Bond Girl, a nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones (it's not her fault that she's miscast, but someone like Holly Hunter would have really made something out of the role); Judi Dench also returns to the role of "M," and Desmond Llewellyn puts in one final (and splendid) appearance as gadget-maestro "Q." (The director, Michael Apted, stages his scenes with an almost tender gracefulness.) Available as a sell-through VHS, with Spanish subtitles, or as a feature-laden DVD (note: this is not one of the five titles in the new James Bond DVD gift set volume two. See On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, below).

One particularly gratifying benefit to consumers who never adopted the laserdisc habit is the appearance of that favorite title in the DVD format. Chief among those movies for fans of a certain age is the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which emerges in a pristine widescreen transfer after a generation of ugly, pan-and-scan videotape copies. The pleasures of this disc are many, from the still-fresh tones of Conrad Hall’s cinematography (his two Oscars are for this and last year’s American Beauty [see above, and Visions of Light, below]), to the remarkably candid narration of director George Roy Hill in the production featurette. The latter packs a particular punch, as viewers slowly realize that the director’s commentary, a nice blend of practical filmmaking hints, set gossip and techie jargon, was recorded months prior to the movie’s theatrical release ("If audiences don’t dig it I think I’ll go out of my fucking mind," he concludes with typical candor). Well, the moviegoing public did dig it, primarily due to the chemistry between leads Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who, along with many of the principles, are seen in a mid-1990s documentary remembering the production. And while Hill’s gamble to blend traditional western elements with a contemporary feel and spin on the fabled tale of the outlaws doesn’t always pay off (dig that crazy scat singing during one of the montages), the film as a whole fits in snugly with such elegiac late-1960s American genre successes as Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch while retaining a certain mainstream whimsy and sparkle absent from the general mood of the era.

In a row of dilapidated Quonset huts on an abandoned U.S. Army barracks outside the capital city of Reykjavik, three generations of the eccentric Tomasson family endure triumph and tragedy in 1950s Iceland as American culture -- big cars, rock’n’roll -- invade their lives via precocious teenager Baddi (Baltasar Kormakur), who returns from a trip to America dressed like Elvis and spouting fragments of song lyrics and pop culture slogans. As he did in his acclaimed sophomore feature Children of Nature (1991), director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson shows clear affection and compassion for disenfranchised outsiders and their struggle for dignity and fulfillment. "These outsiders," he has said, "reminded me of my favorite film -- Rocco and His Brothers [Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1960]. With this film I hope to reveal a hidden world that very few people knew existed in Iceland." It’s worked: one of only two Icelandic films produced in it’s year, Devil’s Island was seen by nearly a third of the country’s inhabitants and has received international festival acclaim (including the international critics’ FIPRESCI award at the 1997 Karlovy Vary festival in the Czech Republic). The beauty of Fridriksson’s films comes not only from the rugged landscapes of Iceland, but the durability of his characters, individuals who, through shrewd planning or at least an inarticulated drive to survive, hurtle towards -- and often reach -- a kind of peace. On top of his calm, deliberate style in the face of often oafish chaos, the joy of Devil’s Island is the journey.

The latest item from the Jackie Chan catalogue to see the light of day in the United States is his 1982 period actioner Project A, and it’s one of the best: in the late 19^th century, Jackie’s idealistic Hong Kong Coast Guard cop Dragon battles corrupt officials and the local mob. Joining Jackie is sidekick Sammo Hung (TV’s Martial Law) as Fats, looking for all the world like a cross between Ringo Starr and John Belushi but matching his real-life pupil stunt for stunt. This is the Jackie Chan movie with the terrific bicycle chase through narrow alleyways, the clock stunt in direct tribute to Harold Lloyd’s 1923 silent classic Safety Last (1923), and, of course, those great outtakes under the closing credits. One Jack Maeby, who is credited with "English Adaptation and Dialogue Direction," has overseen a skillful and seamless dubbing process in which the dialogue is peppered with Americanisms such as "say what?," "figure it out" and "let’s do it!," to the point that one very nearly forgets the movie wasn’t shot in English. And while the DVD is a skimpy on the extras, it’s great to have a wide-screen transfer (from the original Technovision) of the movie many fans consider to be Jackie Chan’s best. Newcomers dazzled by Rush Hour and the even better Shanghai Noon are encouraged to begin the process of catching up with Project A.

The folks at the Criterion Collection have done it again, this time with a visually stunning and feature-laden edition of Martin Scorsese’s most controversial film, The Last Temptation of Christ. It’s difficult to imagine the agitation that surrounded the initial 1988 release of this film, as religious and conservative groups around the country refused to watch it yet aggressively picketed the theaters in which it opened (in Washington DC, Joe Gibbs, then the coach of the Redskins football team, put his name on a flier discouraging people from buying a ticket -- while admitting he hadn’t seen the movie himself). A faithful realization of the Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel on which it is based, the movie preserves the rationalist Gnostic reading of Christ’s passion to the extent that the decidedly uncharismatic Christ (Willem Dafoe) has sex with Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey) and is sorely tempted to shuck martyrdom in favor of a normal, secular life. Yet it is this very temptation, mirrored through the life and passions of Scorsese, which charges the film with a zealous urgency. A devout Catholic, Scorsese’s career is an all-too-evident struggle between the sacred and profane, the lure of the flesh and the calling of spirituality himself (see Bringing Out the Dead, above). Seen in this light, the film is brave, bold, and ultimately uplifting. The extras include commentary from Scorsese, Dafoe, screenwriter Paul Schrader and critic Jay Cocks, research materials and on-set footage filmed by the director himself, and a Scorsese-approved digital transfer with newly-mixed Dolby Digital 5,1 channel soundtrack. Those blind to the struggles of contemporary artists might not be swayed by all this (wonder if Gibbs even has a DVD player), but future generations now have the tools with which to make an informed, ultimately personal decision.

Criterion’s May releases include Herk Hervey’s Carnival of Souls (USA, 1962, to be reviewed in the 2000 edition of Nitrate Online’s Fright Festival); Agnés Varda’s Cleo From 5 to 7 (France, 1961) and Vagabond (France, 1985); and René Clair’s Le Million (France, 1931, May 16). If there’s a branded guarantee of quality in the still-developing DVD world, the Criterion Collection is it.

The Douglas Sirk who made the splendid black and white period thriller Lured in 1947 was still some years away from his 1950s success as a director of genre-defining melodramas (Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, Imitation of Life), and the Lucille Ball who starred in the picture was in the midst of an uneasy freelance period following successful contract work with RKO and MGM, still four years away from the creation of I Love Lucy for that new, smaller screen in an increasing number of American living rooms. Thus, while Lured itself can’t approach the more high-profile work of either artist, it remains remarkably fresh today and fairly leaps from the screen in Kino Video’s new exclusive-to-DVD transfer (joining the 1951 Technicolor drama Pandora and the Flying Dutchman [see below] under the banner "Hollywood’s Leading Ladies"). In turn-of-the-century London, feisty young American "taxi dancer" Sandra Carpenter (Ball) is enlisted in the search for a killer whose calling cards include bizarre poems inspired by Baudelaire (the film is a remake of Robert Siodmak’s 1939 French production Pièges [Snares]). The meticulous production and costume design -- a Sirk hallmark -- give the film a palpable immediacy, while the mix of melodrama and thriller creates a uniquely effective mood supported by the intense performances of smooth George Sanders, fatherly Charles Coburn and crazed clothier Boris Karloff (the supporting cast is stuffed with vaguely recognizable character vets). A satisfying glimpse into Sirk’s transition from European styling to American stories, Lured is a splendid example of post-war studio filmmaking for the beginner and a critical footnote for the Sirk and/or Ball enthusiast. Kino promises Sirk’s previous film, A Scandal in Paris (VHS only) June 6.

Let us now praise George Lazenby. Lost in the shuffle once again, this time amidst the hubbub surrounding the DVD release of the James Bond Giftset Volume 2 (they’re available individually and, sans extras, on tape as well), this pristine new transfer of the eternally misunderstood On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, one of the five discs in the box, makes a fresh case for the man who stepped into Sean Connery’s shoes ("this never happened to the other guy," is Lazenby’s self-deprecating introductory bon mot). And a persuasive case it is: not only is this the Bond film with Telly Savalas as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the tremendous ski chase through the Alps and that car stunt on the ice rink (director Peter Hunt pulled the bulk of his crew from the recently wrapped Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), this is the movie where Bond marries, then loses, the love of his life (Diana Rigg, then in the midst of her fame following her stint in The Avengers). From all appearances the David Duchovny of his day, the Australian Lazenby, a model with acting ambitions but only a few television commercials on his resume, was coached on everything from fake fisticuffs to the reigning in his down-under swagger. The resulting performance brings a new rawness to Bond’s legendary suavity, a tension that suits the character well but remained elusive after Lazenby’s departure until Timothy Dalton’s two-film stint in the role (Connery’s immediate post-Lazenby return in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever isn’t yet available on DVD and is out of print on VHS). The copious extras on Majesty’s disc include a detail-packed forty-three-minute Patrick Macnee-narrated production featurette, a tribute to the late Desmond Llewelyn’s Q (both expertly directed by John Cork and written by Bruce Scivally), and an eight-page booklet that should be the model for every DVD package that dares calls itself special. Bond never happened to Lazenby again, but his one stint in the super agent's shoes remains a unique in this durable series.

The extraordinary Technicolor location photography of Jack Cardiff (three years removed from his Oscar for the gorgeous Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger collaboration Black Narcissus) is among the many joys of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, a vivid and romantic adaptation of the legend that tells of a mysterious sea captain (James Mason) cursed to roam until he finds a woman whose love is so strong she’ll die for him -- in this case nightclub singer Pandora Reynolds, whose life in the Mediterranean coastal port of Costa Brava is disrupted by the arrival of the seaman. Although not as well known in the pantheon of Hollywood studio directors, Albert Lewin produced and directed a series of stylized romances that include The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). While the rap on him has always been his pretentiousness, Lewin can be appreciated for the often stylized performances he coaxed from his actors and a flamboyant and often surreal eye for composition and camera movement. With this in mind, Pandora actually feeds off of its own self-consciousness, building towards a torrid climax in perfect sync with the absurdity of its story (it’s a bit reminiscent of Anthony Minghella’s recent misfire The Talented Mr. Ripley). And Kino Video is to be applauded for offering up a first-rate transfer that preserves the sunset hues of Cardiff’s palette, a remarkable example of a now-extinct filming process in which artificial gloss was all.

Looking even more exuberantly surreal than it did when first unleashed on an unsuspecting public, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure remains among the most unsung Hollywood releases of the 1980s, presenting as it did the raw and uncategorizable talents of both director Tim Burton and star Paul Reubens in a cross-genre riot of character-driven goofiness. Sort of a candy-coated spin on the neorealist touchstone The Bicycle Thief (with which it makes a great double bill, incidentally), the movie tells of Pee-wee’s indefatigable search for his beloved two-wheeled conveyance. The journey takes him from the Alamo in Texas (clearing up confusion over the existence of a basement) to a roadside biker bar (and the impromptu "Tequila" dance) to a Hollywood backlot wonderland that features not only a brief glimpse of the original Batmobile but the spectacle of James Brolin deadpanning "I know you are. But what am I?" Warner’s letterboxed DVD is a joy to behold, massaging Victor J. Kemper’s images to a neon sheen and enhancing the package with numerous deleted scenes, production notes, a dedicated music track (with an accompanying track featuring composer Danny Elfman) and among the warmest and most whacked-out commentary tracks in recent memory, a low-key skip down memory lane during which the soft-spoken Reubens and the giggly Burton speculate on the fates of those one-of-a-kind props, compare notes on the movie’s rocky gestation and, in the case of Reubens, shed light on the contributions of the legendary Groundlings comedy troupe (whose members include co-scripter Phil Hartman, seen briefly as a reporter near the end). "I wonder what the Warner Brothers executives thought when they saw this?" asks Burton in one of a multitude of queries he poses throughout the commentary track (another sample: "I wonder if Speck is still alive?), and, from the perspective of a decade and a half, the answer might well be "the future of American comedy." "I never had so much fun shooting anything," says Burton wistfully, and it shows.

Winner of 1999 Cesars (the French Oscar) for Best Cinematography (Eric Gaultier), Supporting Actress (Dominique Blanc) and Director (Patrice Chéreau), Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train is an exhilarating blend of epic emotions and stuttery style, melding the two into a journey to love set against the pilgrimage of a group of friends from urban Paris to far-flung Limoges for the funeral of flamboyant painter Jean-Baptiste (Jean-Louis Trintignant). As the train hurtles towards its destination, the lives of the mourners become increasingly complicated, as the powerful hold exerted over them by the dead artist manifests itself in myriad ways. Correctly described by one New York critic as "a gay, more operatic Rules of the Game," the film thrums with the nervous energy of modern life while at the same time reveling in the quirks and sexual gamesmanship of groups united in a single goal. Kino Video’s letterboxed edition (both VHS and DVD are available) preserves Gaultier’s meticulous camerawork, underscoring the intuitive grasp of cinema as art form that Chéreau brings to his work in opera and theater.

Whether new to the DVD format or already groaning under the weight of discs, the collector’s library is incomplete without Visions of Light. This tremendously informative documentary on the history of cinematography uses exquisitely preserved film clips (each in its proper aspect ratio) to explore and illustrate the development of, and philosophy behind, the last century’s most celebrated art form. From the earliest pioneers, who usually thought of their work as simply "a job, a craft," through the breathtaking and passionate contemporary achievements of Conrad Hall (In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, American Beauty), Gordon Willis (who earned the nickname "Prince of Darkness" for his work on the Godfather trilogy), Vittorio Storaro (The Conformist, Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor) as well as numerous other masters, the movie pieces together the different approaches and results of a veritable who’s who of cinematography. The candor of these men (yes, a few women are glimpsed as well) springs from the probing interviews conducted by Variety Chief Film Critic Todd McCarthy, who wrote and directed the film as part of a team with producer Stuart Samuels and editor Arnold Glassman. The film was produced in 1992 by The American Film Institute and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), and remains to this day among the most dignified historical assessments from the former organization (now apparently committed to moving videotapes off shelves with their glibly subjective series of 100 Years promotional TV specials and merchandising tie-ins). Buyer beware: block out plenty of time to revisit the movies glimpsed here, and prepare to add to the weight of that burgeoning DVD collection.