"Please,…. turn it up" exhorts Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder in the liner notes for this three-hour assemblage of performances from the band’s 2000 American and European tours, and that’s good advice: on a good system, Brett Eliason’s  thunderous sound mix is the next best thing to having been there. Initially reluctant to enter the music video fray, Pearl Jam has followed the 1998 45-minute "Single Video Theory" with this vivid and abundant diary of their adventures on the road, supplementing the tour footage (shot by three crew members) with nearly an hour of behind-the-scenes shenanigans, a trio of "Binaural"-era instrumentals, videos for "Do the Evolution" and "Oceans" (the latter unreleases stateside ‘til now) and a special "Matt-cam"—an unbroken side shot of Matt Cameron’s drumming on a number of songs (including what may be their single best tune, the propulsive "Even Flow"). Although Pearl Jam has always appeared a bit holier-than-thou to the world at large, there’s something to be said for their consistency of sound and image. Seen in that light the disc is nothing less than a global celebration of survival, a valentine to the fans from a band that matters in an era where few do.

Geoffrey Rush gives a fairly terrific performance in Philip Kaufman's Quills, which Doug Wright adapted from his stage play depicting the Marquis de Sade's internment in the Charenton asylum in early 19th century France, during which time he was producing an assiduous amount of writing, including his anti-romantic parable "Justine." The film comes rather close to portraying de Sade as an out-and-out martyr for free expression or a just-plain victim (there were several good reasons why he was thrown into jail, then placed in Charenton), and it takes a hard turn away from the facts towards the end (in real life, de Sade was eventually freed, only to die penniless, spending much of his final years in charity wards), but Rush gets much of what the film would need for a portrayal of de Sade right: conflicted, unrecalcitrant, pitying and pitiless, driven and corrupt but a very human beast not undeserving of pity himself. With fine performances by Joaquin Phoenix as the Abbé who runs Charenton and believes in using kind methods to cure patients; Kate Winslet as a maid who sees nothing wrong with de Sade's writing, gladly helps him smuggle his manuscripts out, yet can take care of herself very well, thank you; and Michael Caine, as a new administrator sent to oversee the asylum and who puts his faith in curative methods such as a dunking chair which is used to administer a primitive form of shock treatment. The Fox Home Entertainment DVD edition features a commentary track with Wright and three production featurettes.

Culled from the writings of Hubert Selby Jr., Darren Aronofsky’s second feature, Requiem for a Dream, tells of the twin addictions of lonely Coney Island widow Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn, who’d have won the Oscar if not for Erin Brockovich) and her son Harry (Jared Leto), and the effects of the drug use and despair on the latter’s girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and pal Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). One of the best -- and certainly the most visionary -- films of 2000, Requiem for a Dream arrives on video and DVD courtesy of Artisan Home Entertainment in one of the most lavish and eye-catching packages in recent memory. The tape is priced to rent, and the numerous extras on the sharp DVD pressing include a clever interactive menu scheme that looks like an infomercial (Christopher McDonald is a hoot as motivational speaker Tappy Tibbons); a lavish brochure with an essay by Ain’t it cool news founder Harry Knowles ("this film should be REQUIRED VIEWING by every friggin' High-School kid in the country," he gushes); commentary tracks from Aranofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique; an off-the-cuff thirty-three-minute production documentary narrated by Aranofsky; nine deleted scenes with optional commentary; an episode of the Sundance Channel’s "Anatomy of a Scene," featuring Aranofsky explaining the movie’s "hip-hop montages"; and Burstyn interviewing Selby in a twenty-minute segment called "Memories Dreams & Addictions". Caveat emptor: apparently, the theatrical cut of the film is now called the "unrated edition" tape and the "director’s cut" DVD, with an edited version (reports give it an "R" rating) going out to rental chains and the like. 

In contemporary Taipei, an initially joyous wedding proves to generate an emotional ripple effect in an extended family, with repercussions in relationships, business and life itself. One of the leading lights of the Taiwanese cinema, Edward Yang has been making these kinds of familial melodramas for nearly two decades. Favoring extended takes and glimpses through windows and across apartments, his style combines minimalism with modern bustle to create a unique world at once serene and urgent. Screenwriter and talkshow host Wu Nienjen gives a masterfully understated performance as NJ Jian, whose liaison with a former girlfriend mirrors the restless nature of his wife and two children, each of whom is searching for something beyond the empty comforts of family life. Yi Yi was showered with awards in 2000; Yang won the Best Director prize at the Cannes festival, and the movie itself won citations from critics’ groups in Boston, Los Angeles and New York (as well as the Best Film award from the National Society of Film Critics). Winstar’s DVD is crisp with unobtrusive subtitles under the Mandarin dialogue, and the principal extra is an absorbing commentary track from Yang, who begins by saying "this is the first time I do this" but settles into an economical and illuminating study of a film that will stay with you far beyond its all-too-brief three hour running time.

About twenty minutes into What Women Want, Mel Gibson does a surprisingly suave little dance number to a recording of Sinatra singing "I Won't Dance." After that, you can check to see what's going on at the W.W.F., because the rest of the film is a leaden bore (and it runs over two hours.) Gibson plays a womanizing ad executive who suddenly develops the ability to hear what women think. Unfortunately, what the filmmakers have him listen to is unremittingly banal. Helen Hunt, miscast but trying to make her role work, plays a new, tough-as-nails executive whom Gibson tries to romance; Valerie Perrine and Delta Burke play Gibson's office assistants (or are they secretaries? Anyway, the movie makes a very sour joke at their expense -- it turns out they don't have any thoughts for Gibson to listen to); and Ashley Johnson plays the teenage daughter with whom Gibson tries to patch things up after years of boorish behavior. Nancy Meyers directed, in a way that suggests she hasn't moved beyond the dull 1980s comedies, like Baby Boom, that she turned out with Charles Shyer. The Paramount Home Video DVD edition includes a commentary track with Meyers and production designer Jon Hutman, interviews with cast and crew, and a behind-the-scenes featurette. 

Beyond the A List

Ramblin' Jack Elliott's life, until very recently, was that of an individual unfortunate enough to be sandwiched, chronologically speaking, between two legends.  Elliott was the protégé of folk legend Woody Guthrie and the mentor of Bob Dylan.  During a stint in 1950s London, Elliott cut several albums that served to influence the nascent, folk-themed skiffle movement (from which sprang, most notably, Lennon and McCartney and Mick Jagger, who admired the way in which Elliott could bury chords within the bass line).  More importantly, however, was Elliott's influence on the psychology of those in the London folk scene. As one producer, then a folk singer, observed with retrospective awe, Elliott presented the possibility of transcending a future predetermined by a rigid class structure; even within that type of social system, you could hope to be and possibly achieve whatever you wanted by your own efforts, and Elliott was living proof. The son of a Brooklyn doctor, Elliott Adnopoz had remade himself into the epitome of the American cowboy. By the time he returned to Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, and its emerging folk scene, Elliott was already a legend, with a young Dylan hanging onto (and copying) his every movement and chord.

However, by the mid 1970s, a combination of bad judgment, lack of focus and (although he would never admit this) bitterness over Dylan's rise led him into a series of broken marriages (four in total), drug use and, eventually, a self-imposed exile from the music industry that lasted nearly twenty years. It is his daughter, director Aiyana Elliott, who tries to pick up the threads of his life after he has finally won acceptance from the music industry (in the form of a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album), and the threads of her own life that resulted from the side effects of having a part-time father who lived the life of a Romantic artist in the best and worst senses of the term. She interviews everyone who knows and knew him, from Kris Kristofferson to Arlo Guthrie (Dylan makes a brief appearance in a black-and-white clip from the mid-1960s, acknowledging Elliott's influences in a brief, almost indifferent, aside), and it is Guthrie who gives her the clearest and most obvious, if perhaps the most unsatisfactory and perplexing, answer to the questions about her father:  maybe she will never know everything. Winner of a Special Jury Award for Artistic Achievement at the 2000 Sundance Festival, Ramblin' Jack is a bittersweet story that will inspire meditations on the real price of practicing art on the fringes, a lifestyle which is at once more mundane and miserable than any Hollywood riches-to-rags-to-riches story. Winstar’s DVD pressing features Elliott’s commentary track, clips from the short film "Ramblin’ Jack in Texas" and a theatrical trailer.

On the bank of the river Swartkops in South Africa, the title characters (Danny Glover, Angela Bassett) speak of their suffering under apartheid. Athol Fugard’s play, originally presented in South Africa in 1969, is now realized as a film by expatriate American director John Berry (Claudine), who died of pleurisy in Paris as he was finishing it. Fundamentally about the loss of identity that comes from being the victim of social injustice and homelessness, the film showcases powerful performances by Glover (uncharacteristically distasteful) and Bassett (disturbed yet dignified). The play was adapted once before, with Fugard in the lead, but Berry, whose career embraces a close working relationship with Orson Welles as well as the McCarthy-era blacklist that forced him abroad, has made a version of it that reflects a life spent working to spotlight the very human toll of prejudice and hatred. Kino on Video brings Boesman & Lena to market in both the priced-to-rent VHS and DVD formats; the latter includes interviews with Glover, Bassett, Berry and Fugard, as well as both letterboxed and pan-and-scan presentations of the film itself .

In the landmark feature-length documentary The Celluloid Closet -- adapted from Vito Russo’s groundbreaking 1981 book -- directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (who won Oscars for their two previous works, The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) enlist the aid of a roster of Hollywood writers and stars to explore the history of gay and lesbian indicators in dozens of Hollywood films, from Thomas Edison’s 1895 short The Gay Brothers to Philadelphia (1993). Along the way clips from Morocco, The Gay Divorcee, Rebecca, The Maltese Falcon, Rope, Victim, Rebel Without a Cause, Spartacus, The Children’s Hour, Advise and Consent, The Boys in the Band, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Cabaret, Cruising, Making Love, The Color Purple, Thelma and Louise, Fried Green Tomatoes and others are used to illustrate the sometimes subversive ways in which filmmakers signaled the presence of gay characters and/or themes. The accompanying booklet amplifies one of the film’s highlights by reprinting the newpaper war between Gore Vidal and a clueless Charlton Heston over the former’s deliberately placed subtext of Ben-Hur and the latter’s stoic denial of it. The most revelatory feature of the Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment DVD edition is some 55 minutes of unused interview footage; turns out scenes with Gus van Sant, Rita Mae Brown, Gregg Araki, Chris Sarandon and scholar Robin Wood never made it to the final cut (and Tony Curtis’ outtake where he dishes on backstage shenanigans from the recently re-released Some Like it Hot is worth the price of the disc alone). The booklet also includes a brief yet illuminating history of the project, and commentary tracks from Epstein, Friedman, narrator Lily Tomlin, producer Howard Rosenman, editor Arnold Glassman and Russo are available. Although the full frame film is preceded by the dreaded green screen of reformatted death, proper aspect ratios of clips seem to be generally faithful and their quality is reasonably good. 

Marcello Mastroianni is Snàporaz, a hapless Lothario whisked from one feminist enclave to another by train, powerless to control his libido yet defenseless against the onslaught of indiscriminate desire. Among the better late-career Fellini films, City of Women is a fine example of Federico Fellini’s lifelong penchant for turning his neuroses into art. With Mastroianni once again onboard as what one critic called the director’s "alter egoist" ("Snàporaz" being the actor’s nickname for Fellini during the production of 8½) City of Women is long, confrontational, self-parodying, provocative, dazzling and, finally, loads of fun. Though slow to move into the DVD arena, New Yorker Video is more than making up for it with detailed booklets and fine extras (which bodes well for the imprint, given their huge catalogue of titles). City of Women is available as a letterboxed tape (a long-time hallmark of New Yorker releases) or on a DVD that includes a printed 1980 Fellini interview; promotional short; the 20-minute production featurette/analysis "Travelling with Fellini Through the City of Women" (with film historian Peter Brunette, director Paul Mazursky and critic Emanuel Levy); profiles of the director and star; and what look to be new and much clearer English subtitles.

In the American heartland, an alien intelligence makes benevolent contact with a shaky alliance of the military and professional UFO-seekers, as well as a random sampling of the citizenry mysteriously drawn to Wyoming’s Devils Tower. As time goes on, Close Encounters of the Third Kind looks more and more like Spielberg’s most complete and thus best film, a canny yet sincere work in which the enthusiasm of a still-young filmmaker and the wisdom of an older man coexist side by side and enhance and already novel storyline. He’s clearly dazzled by the sheer pulpy power of the movies in a way unequaled in many of his more revered titles (i.e., the soulless Jurassic Park), and his take on childhood and the cluttered trappings of the suburban home had not yet become a movie cliché (that would come later, after the huge success of E.T.). And Richard Dreyfuss, who at this writing is about to work in series television for the first time, gives among his best performances as the shabbily noble everyman Roy Neary, whose dogged determination places him at the forefront of the contact. Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment’s two-disc Collectors Edition DVD of CE3K comprises no less than the sixth separate version of the film, Spielberg’s 1999 "definitive directors’ edition" (it’s a long story) on disc one (sans commentary track); and, on disc two, the 1977 featurette "Watching the Skies"; eleven revelatory and unfortunately-deleted scenes (incorporating unseen footage and some cut from the very first theatrical version, including Dreyfuss’ anticlimactic ascension to the Mothership); and Laurent Bouzereau’s 1997, 101-minute production documentary with even more unused footage (including very funny test footage of various rejected alien concepts and interview segments with visionary visual effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull). If in fact Close Encounters of the Third Kind is finally and forever finished, the cumulative effect of this definitive 137-minute cut is one of wonder and naïve enthusiasm, as yet undiluted by the saccharine manipulation that mars so much of his later work.

Abelardo (Dario Grandinetti), who has a long, thin, curling mustache and a bit of the strutting "gadjo" quality that Edward James Olmos had in Blade Runner, rolls into the peaceful Bolivian town of Villaserena in the mid-to-late 1950s, and announces that he is going to set up a local radio station, for "cultural enlightenment." Since nobody in town has electricity, the "radio" station broadcasts are nothing more than something sent through a loudspeaker system, hooked together with wiring. Along with playing music, local residents can transmit greetings, for a small fee, or insults and castigations, for a larger fee, and as if the intrusion of mass media didn't have enough of an effect on the town, the tempers and emotions that begin to flare up among the citizenry certainly do. And that's before Abelardo even gets around to playing Elvis Presley's recording of "Jailhouse Rock" for the first time. There is also Celeste (Maria Laura Garvia), a beautiful young girl who is kept locked up behind the walls of her father's house and yard. Abelardo sees her, and she instantly strikes him as something lovely and pure -- way beyond anything like a meer physical attraction. Celeste's confinement has to do with something that occurred several years earlier when the town received another visit, this time by a troop of traveling players named "Los Chicos de Cresper" ("Cresper" being a derivation of Shakespeare). Director Paolo Agazzi's film has just the right, relaxed pacing to it, and once you ease into the film it can be quite agreeable. An attempt to inject some magical realism into the proceedings by way of the character of Don Oscar (Gustavo Angarita), a writer who lives just outside the town and from whom, it is suggested, the characters and action have been loosed from his head and are even directed by him through his writing, seems extraneous -- you have the feeling that the characters would have acted this way anyhow even if the film didn't keep cutting-back to Don Oscar to suggest otherwise.  And you haven't lived 'till you've heard Dario Grandinetti's way of saying that Elvis is "le Rey de rock and roll," with rolling "r's." The First Run Features Home Video VHS release is priced to rent.

When fidgety and frustrated young piano student Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) falls asleep at the ivories, his resulting dream presents a surreal adventure starring his widowed mother Heloise (Mary Healy), plumber August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes), and the "Happy Fingers Method" of tyrannical piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) that involves 500 little boys banging away on a huge piano. The first live action film written by Dr. Seuss, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. puts last year’s overcaffeinated, barely recognizable yet hugely successful Grinch to shame with its beguiling mix of odd production design, sentimental storyline and clever songs (best bit: the pugilistic ballet/concert in the "non-piano players dungeon"). Rettig went on to star in the original "Lassie" TV show, endure multiple busts for drug possession and play a key role in software development before dying of natural causes in 1996. Baltimore native Conried went on to play Uncle Tonoose in the Danny Thomas TV series "Make Room for Daddy," Professor Pomfritt in "The Dobie Gillis Show," voice Snidely Whiplash in "The Bullwinkle Show" and "The Dudley Do-Right Show" and returned throughout his prolific career to narrate and/or voice characters in various Seuss shows and specials. The Columbia TriStar Home Video DVD release preserves the gaudy color design of the film but exhibits mild bouts of spotting on the picture throughout. Almost worth the disc’s price is the Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoon included as a very special feature. 

A documentary on the writer Philip K. Dick is certainly overdue. In 1973, someone handed this writer a copy of the author's novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, about how Earth colonists on Mars can only keep their wits about them by taking simulated "vacations" where every day is Saturday, with no work, no worries and no obligations -- and it seems like people have been ripping off the novel ever since. In some cases, people seem to have ripped ideas off from the novel before it was published, fitting in nicely with the writer's recurring preoccupation with "multiple realities." And, certainly, nothing in the film Total Recall can match the guess-again twist ending of I Can Remember It For You Wholesale, the short story on which it was (loosely) based. Mark Steensland and Andy Massagi's documentary, which was produced on video and which received a brief theatrical showing this year, touches upon some of the possibly very real paranoia and suspicion which engendered the author's works: When PDK (as his friends and associates called him) contacted the Marin County police (housed in the same building later used as a central setting in the film Gattaca) after a safe in his home had been blasted and burgled in 1972, the police's response was, well, maybe he did it himself. And rather than angrily respond to their impudence, PDK instead (according to writer Paul Williams, who profiled him for a 1975 issue of Rolling Stone) surmised, "Well, is it possible I did it myself, and I'd forgotten, y'know...?" PDK may have suffered from clinical psychological problems, and he stopped writing commercially for many years while he turned out an 8,000 page "exegesis" based on a series of visions which he began to experience shortly after the burglary break-in, and while the documentary offers some interesting anecdotes on the writer's last 12 years up to his death in 1982 (only a few months before the premiere of Blade Runner, which was based on one of his novels), it seriously lacks background material and perspective which could have given its subject more detail. There's nothing on where PDK was born, how he was raised, what drew him to writing in general and to the science-fiction genre in particular, or how he gravitated out to settle in the San Francisco bay area. One of the "visions" PDK experienced provided information that enabled him to save the life of his son, but the son, and where he came from, is never spoken of. Is this because of PDK's predilection towards secrecy (we hear him from time to time in the film, accompanied by some rather charmingly primitive animated renderings), or not? And as to his not experiencing a widespread readership and fame until after his death, much of that has to do with how his works fell out of print rather quickly during his lifetime, in contrast to the constant drumbeats of publicity which accompanied the publishing of new works and collections by contemporaries such as Asimov, Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke. The First Run Features Home Video release is available in both the VHS and DVD formats. -- Gregory Avery

A young princess and a veteran warrior engage in a harrowing journey to safety aided only by a bumbling pair of peasants in Akira Kurosawa’s adventure classic The Hidden Fortress, the film that inspired George Lucas’ plot framework for Star Wars. Kurosawa’s first widescreen production (in Japan it was called Tohoscope) is given a luminous and stunning 16x9-ready transfer, with nary an artifact blemishing the picture after the high-definition Sony Vialta datacine was hosed with the MTI Digital Restoration System. Other than a an optional Dolby Digital 3.0 soundtrack preserving the original Perspect-A-Sound simulated stereo and pungent new subtitles, the disc boasts only only two extras, but they’re extra special: the nearly four-minute, original Japanese trailer looks almost as good as the picture element, and Lucas himself gives an eight-minute video interview -- filmed in January 2001 exclusively for this release -- on the film’s influence on his own style (The Hidden Fortress is "not at the very top of my list, but I liked it," he confesses in typically understated style, admitting that Seven Samurai remains his personal favorite). Kudos for the package as well, a green-tinted cover scheme that gives way to a purple tinted six-panel fold-out brochure with Armond White’s cogent essay on the film and it’s impact. Once again, the Criterion Collection has produced a disc that belongs on the shelf of any serious collector and student of film.

Before and after a lunar eclipse in the remote village of Nomen Tuum, surrounded by waving eucalyptus trees and strange shadows, recovering soldier Marc (William Shatner) is wooed by succubus Kia (Allyson Ames) -- only to be saved by his unwavering love from the title man-beast (Milos Milos). Viewers of a certain age can be forgiven for mistaking the long-lost horror oddity Incubus for an episode of the original Outer Limits, as it was directed by series creator Leslie Stevens and scored by Dominic Frontiere, who composed the lush, nervous and ultimately unforgettable music for the show. Shot in genuinely creepy black and white by Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, American Beauty), Incubus is performed entirely in Esperanto, which gives it a uniquely exotic and disjointed feel, at once familiar and disconcertingly foreign. Incubus was thought lost for nearly thirty years, until producer Tony Taylor was made aware of a print in Paris -- with French subtitles (that’s why the English subtitles appear in an opaque box). Winstar’s fine new DVD pressing exhibits less wear and tear than one might imagine for a film with this kind of storage saga, and the package includes a commentary track with Shatner as well as a track and interview with Taylor, Hall and assistant photographer William A. Fraker (himself an Oscar winner). The name of the town translates as "an unknown time," and the modest but affecting achievement of Incubus is that to this day it looks, sounds and feels unlike any other fantasy title out there. 

Here’s a satisfying discovery for the discerning moviegoer who hasn’t seen a good crime drama since The Usual Suspects: while sitting alone in his sparsely furnished apartment one morning, Eddie Fleming (Hugo Weaving, known to genre fans as Agent Smith in The Matrix) is violently apprehended by Detective Sergeant John Steele (Tony Martin) and Detective Senior Constable Wayne Prior (Aaron Jeffrey). The charge? They initially question him about a stolen car (that baroque police station actually exists), but as the movie progresses it becomes quite clear that the cops think he’s committed a series of murders. For his part, Fleming vehemently maintains his innocence. So, did he, or didn’t he? Built entirely upon a bravura performance by Weaving, this ironically titled chamber thriller doesn’t give away anything until the final shot (nor will this review). As co-written and directed by Craig Monahan, this Australian import is the kind of movie during which you’ll hold your breath, convinced they can’t keep the conceit alive another minute. Yet they do, for the almost two hours it takes to conduct The Interview. The Interview is another New Yorker Video release; the VHS tape is priced to rent, while the DVD includes Monahan’s commentary track and an alternate ending with optional commentary. 

In a career full of little-seen but formidable masterpieces, Jacques Rivette (who will debut a new film at the 2001 Cannes festival) has built a magnificent body of work known as much for its length as its leisurely yet incisive probing into human affairs. At twelve minutes shy of four hours, the 1997 historical epic Joan the Maid followed the American art-house success of La Belle Noiseuse yet failed to capture much of an audience. Now, seventeen months after releasing Joan the Maid in a VHS boxed set, Facets Video unveils a two-disc DVD pressing that adds filmographies and a historical timeline to the package. Distilled from its original six hours, the two films which comprise Joan the Maid tell in meticulous detail the journey of Joan from rural maid to reluctant martyr by focusing on the spaces between the familiar events of the story (viewers wanting to see the trial, for instance, are subtly directed to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc [available from the Criterion Collection]: Rivette purposefully skips the proceedings). Thus, this Joan, played with solemn dignity by Sandrine Bonnaire, is vulnerable, human, headstrong and, finally, empathetic in a way, say, Otto Preminger’s never was (and let’s not talk about Luc Besson’s The Messenger). Movie lovers fascinated by Rivette’s approach to the art form will want to seek out 1974’s Celine and Julie Go Boating from New Yorker Video and Cinema Parallel’s tape set of Up/Down/Fragile (1995); let’s hope the future brings more of his serenely unique films to the American market. 

When successful advertising executive Nelly (Isabelle Huppert) leaves her boyfriend of three years (Guy Marchand) for the thuggish drifter Loulou (Gérard Depardieu), their subsequent relationship struggles to bridge huge gaps of class and temperament. An affecting time capsule of French prosperity in the late 1970s, Loulou caused a stir at the 1980 Cannes film festival for an implied criticism of this proto-yuppie tendency when balanced against a simpler and earthier way of life (movies like Rosetta and Humanite are greeted the same way today). Writer-director Maurice Pialat calls it a "modern melodrama whose mood is also very free and easy," and among the film’s often elusive pleasures are the younger Depardieu and Huppert, then perhaps the most prominent and exciting new French actors. Loulou is available on VHS tape and DVD from New Yorker Video, with the disc featuring a fine transfer supplemented by a printed discussion by Pialat that reads very much like a commentary track. 

French comic icon Jacques Tati (1908-1982) learned his craft as an actor and music hall mime in the 1930s, later developing over three decades and some half-dozen painstakingly constructed post-World War II features an onscreen persona of raincoat, umbrella, hat and pipe that was as identifiable in his era as the physical accoutrements of the everyman performers that inspired him, Charlie Chaplin, Max Linder and, especially, Buster Keaton. His sublimely funny body of work, which escalates into increasing visual complexity from film to film, is an extended commentary on the modernization (read: Americanization) of French cultural traditions, a societal tendency that remains controversial there even today -- more than thirty years after the visionary Playtime. Fiercely independent in the French film industry, Tati raised his own money and spent a lot of time on preproduction, which explains why he only completed six films. Remedying the dearth of decent prints currently available to the home video enthusiast (the fullframe video treatment afforded the astonishing widescreen romp Playtime is particularly hideous), The Criterion Collection’s much-anticipated and stylishly designed new DVD releases serve to introduce Tati’s peculiar and distinctive genius to a new generation of moviegoers. The director’s onscreen alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, is introduced in the luminously black and white M. Hulot’s Holiday, which riffs on the myriad pitfalls of leisure time and is among the very few comedies to have ever won the Cannes festival’s Palme d’Or grand prize. Moving into the color palette, Mon Oncle refines M. Hulot’s ongoing battle with technology as the dexterously befuddled gentleman does battle with the house of the future, 1958 style. Playtime, originally shot and presented in 70mm to the thunderous disinterest of critics and befuddlement of French audiences, is a dense and visually deep masterpiece, a lament for a Paris given over to modernist architecture and westernized bustle in which M. Hulot wanders like a child discovering how to cross the street but not yet grasping the "why" of the endeavor. All three discs are beautiful digital transfers with new and greatly improved subtitles, with each film including an enthusiastic video introduction by former Monty Python trouper Terry Jones (who lovingly proclaims Hulot "a beautiful character"). The M. Hulot’s Holiday disc features René Clément’s twelve-minute 1936 Tati-starring boxing spoof short Soigne ton gauche (Watch Your Left) and a printed essay by veteran film critic David Ehrenstein. Mon Oncle’s package includes the filmmaker’s own marvelously physical directorial debut, the fifteen-minute 1947 short L’ecole des facteurs (The School for Postmen) -- featuring bits later swiped by such disparate comic performers as Jackie Chan and Paul Reubens -- as well as critic Matt Zoller Seitz’ printed essay. The Playtime set encompasses Tati’s twenty-eight-minute 1967 short on the art and education of physical comedy, "Cours du soir", as well as a printed essay by critic Kent Jones. Each feature will also see a May 22 VHS release, sans extras. In a modern visual world dominated by mindless camera movements and frenzied, manipulative editing, this trio of sublime comic gems is a reminder that comedy need not be frenetic to enthrall. 

Actually a collection of six features and two shorts available on seven separate tapes, Facets Video’s collection of films by and about prolific Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf has the umbrella title "Film Revolutionary" -- a fitting description of an Iranian enfant terrible who once said "cinema cultivates man" and has nearly 20 features to his credit since being freed from prison during the 1979 Islamic Revolution (his new work, Safar e Ghandehar, is set to debut at the 2001 Cannes festival). Abbas Kiarostami may be more well-known to American audiences and that’s fine, yet where his work is relatively serene, Makhmalbaf’s is more confrontational. And both men share a fascination with the process and artifice of filmmaking, as evidenced by Makhmalbaf’s period comedy Once Upon a Time, Cinema (Ruzi ruzegari, Cinema, 1992), in which a cinematographer introduces film to the Persian court; and The Actor (Honarpisheh, 1993), which finds a commercial actor sacrificing his family life in the pursuit of more "serious" roles. How committed is Makhmalbaf to the cinema? His 21-year-old daughter Samira has already directed two well-received features, The Apple (Sib, 1998) and Blackboards (Tahkte sia, 2000), while his wife Marziyeh Meshkini helmed the current U.S. arthouse hit The Day I Became a Woman (Roozi khe zan shodam, 2000). Perhaps the place to start here is with Houshang Gomakani’s documentary Stardust Stricken -- Mohsen Makhmalbaf: A Portrait (Gong-e Khab-Dideh, Zendegi, Asar va Andishehaye Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996), a 70-minute portrait on the filmmaker. The director’s fourth feature, Boycott (Baycot, 1985), is the semi-autobiographical story of a leftist who has a change of heart while in a pre-Revolution prison. The Peddler (Dastforush, 1986), is a portmanteau film encompassing three distinct stories set among Tehran’s poor, and his follow-up film, The Cyclist (Bicyleran, 1989), amplifies that theme with its story of an Afghan refugee reluctantly coerced to enter a grueling bicycle marathon to pay his wife’s doctor bills. Makhmalbaf reportedly considers his best film to date to be Marriage of the Blessed (Arusi-ye khuban, 1989), in which a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war can no longer accept the contrast between patriotic martyrdom and the poverty he documents as a photojournalist in Tehran. Two of the director’s short films, one dramatic and one impressionistic, are also available under the title Images from the Qajar Dynasty/The School Blown Away By the Wind. Audiences already familiar with Makhmalbaf’s more high-profile films (1996’s Gabbeh and 1998’s The Silence, both available from New Yorker Films) will want to seek out these uncompromising inquiries into contemporary Iranian life. 

The defining movie moment of actor Bob Hoskins, Irish novelist-turned filmmaker Neil Jordan’s third feature, Mona Lisa, stars the charismatic character pro as George, the newly-sprung low-level racist London hood whose inarticulate love for the "thin black tart" (Cathy Tyson) he’s assigned to chauffeur by sweaty boss Mortwell (Michael Caine) proves to be his undoing. Along with The Long Good Friday -- also starring Hoskins and also available from The Criterion Collection -- Mona Lisa is one of the best British crime films of the 1980s, head and shoulders above most of the genre films being pumped out in England today (although the upcoming Sexy Beast is worth a look). The letterboxed transfer from a 35mm interpositive print is evocative of the utilitarian visual scheme, and the sole extra from the disc is a literate and revealing 1996 commentary track from Jordan -- who sounds like he’s in conversation with you -- in which he explores his early impulses, likes and dislikes and the genesis of the film (Hoskins is occasionally intercut with background on his character and the collaboration with Tyson).

When hunky young law student Martin Bork (Nikolaj Coster Waldau) takes the job of Nightwatch at the local morgue, he thinks he’ll spend his shifts studying and listening to music. But there’s a killer prowling the town preying on prostitutes, and sinister events soon involve not only the young student but his best mate Jens (Kim Bodnia), Kalinka (Sofie Gråbøl, terrific at wide-eyed terror) and cop Peter Wörmer (Ulf Pilgaard, looking like a Mort Drucker drawing come to life) as well. Writer-director Ole Bornedal reenergized Danish film with this slick, mischievous thriller, although fans seeking supernatural horror should look elsewhere as the emphasis here is on more base instincts. Anchor Bay’s DVD pressing includes the director’s commentary track and an English subtitle track. Beware of Bornedal’s inferior 1998 remake for theatrical distributor Miramax (starring Nick Nolte and Ewen McGregor), which has only the dependably weird Brad Dourif in a small but pivotal role to recommend it. 

The not-quite-so-dark side of Apollo 13’s eventful voyage to the moon, Out of the Present is the found footage chronicle of the ten-month odyssey of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who left the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the control of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 for the orbiting Mir space station, only to be stranded there by political machinations below, returning to find one Boris Yeltsin in charge of a significantly smaller and vastly different country called Russia. In the interim, director Andrei Ujica documents the failed putsch in Moscow as well as the Mir crew changes and other administrative challenges, utilizing TV footage, amateur video, archival material and original 35mm footage shot on board the craft by former Andrei Tarkovsky cinematographer Vadim Yusov. Ujica even throws in brief, sly references to Tarkovsky’s Solaris, as well as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Still, Out of the Present isn’t as much about the changes in Russian society as it is a film and video paean to the transfixing beauty of space and the intricate, rickety and altogether mesmerizing machines earthlings construct to get there and stay there as long as possible. Now that Mir has plopped harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean, Facets Video offers a crystalline DVD of Out of the Present, with no extras but a splendidly evocative sound mix that highlights the odd mix of tunes (Sinatra, Malcolm McLaren, Zarah Leander, Bass-O-Matic) onboard the space station that is no more. 

Winner of both the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival and the Best Foreign Film Academy Award, Pelle the Conqueror stars Max von Sydow as a humble Swedish widower who, along with his son Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard), endures all manner of injustice in their fight for simple dignity. After working as a cinematographer and making children’s films for the previous decade, director Bille August reached an international audience with this stately yet moving human saga. In the years since he’s stayed in the arena of big budgets and large casts, although he’s struggled with well-meaning but hopelessly muddled misfires, many adapted from respected novels (The House of the Spirits, Smilla’s Sense of Snow). His best film, the ambitious family epic The Best Intentions (1992), is from a script by Ingmar Bergman and available on VHS only. Anchor Bay Entertainment’s new DVD pressing of Pelle the Conqueror is pristine, with cinematographer Jorgen Persson’s lovely images barely disturbed by the clean subtitles. The disc is enhanced for 16x9 televisions and includes a theatrical trailer. 

Consumptive ex-con Tony (Jean Servais) joins with three of his Parisian mates to rob a jewelry store, only to find the plan go awry after they’ve gotten the loot. The prototypical caper picture, the visceral and brutal Rififi was directed by blacklisted Hollywood filmmaker Jules Dassin (who also appears under the alias Perlo Vita as safecracker César) after years of introversion following in France following the inquiries of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Of course, with such films as Naked City and Brute Force, the director had already proven his mettle with expressionistic film noir, yet for years there’d been nagging rumors that the success was due more to producer Mark Hellinger than Dassin. Rififi proved otherwise, becoming a huge success in Europe, winning Dassin the Palme d’Or in Cannes and supposedly inspiring a number of real-life robberies. Like John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (also 1956), Rififi is the template for nearly a half century’s worth of heist movies. The Criterion Collection DVD presents a luminous digital transfer of the film (fullframe, matching its original aspect ratio), supplemented with a twenty-nine-minute Dassin interview ("I think I’m a crook at heart," he says smoothly during the summer 2000 chat with New York-based programmer and film historian Bruce Goldstein); Alexandre Trauner’s production drawings and set stills; production notes; a theatrical trailer (compare the vastly improved print quality), and even the option of an English dubbed soundtrack -- which isn’t recommended. Everything else in the package is; Rififi is an eye-opening genre triumph. 

In a remote Texas town, sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) has only drunken deputy Dude (Dean Martin), crippled jailer Stumpy (Walter Brennan) and ambitious young singing gunfighter Colorado (Ricky Nelson) to help him fend off the Burdette gang as they try to free their brother Joe (Claude Akins) from the town jail. The second of four westerns Wayne made with director Howard Hawks and the first following the pivotal Red River (1948), Rio Bravo is a perfectly modulated, defiantly stately exploration of many of Hawks’ most important themes, including friendship under stress, generational responsibility and the awkwardness of frontier men around women (a young Angie Dickinson diverts the Duke for a spell). These ideas may seem quaint today, but other than his long collaboration with John Ford, Wayne has never been more masculine and formidable than in the movies he made with Hawks. Martin too is revealing in one of his most interesting and multileveled performances, although seen today Nelson’s pale imitation of Elvis Presley doesn’t really come off as envisioned. The Warner Bros. DVD presents a fine if unspectacular transfer, but sadly there are no revealing extras beyond the boilerplate cast and filmmaker profiles, supplemented by a trailer. Moviegoers new to the Hawks/Ford canon will probably want to see these movies chronologically, beginning with Red River, then Rio Bravo, and the mellow mischief of El Dorado (1967) and Rio Lobo (1970). 

As an historic cinematic sucker punch, Rocky is hard to beat. An unknown quantity when he wrote this triumphantly clichéd story of a down-on-his luck Philadelphia boxer who gets one memorable shot at the big time, the fearfully broke Sylvester Stallone turned down a lucrative payday for his script and insisted on playing the starring role. It was a gamble then and a legend now, a sentimental knockout punch of a movie preserved in the same kind of meticulous DVD package in which MGM showcased their James Bond franchise. Available either as a single purchase or part of a much pricier box set bundled with the subsequent sequels (none of which are as fresh and beguiling as the original), the Rocky disc includes a fine letterboxed transfer of the film; a fact-packed four-page booklet; audio commentary from director John G. Avildsen, producers Irwin Winkler & Robert Chartoff, Talia Shire and Burt Young; a video commentary from Stallone, three different production featurettes; and the usual raft of trailers, advertising material and the like. An underdog of a film from concept to execution, Rocky is among the most genuinely surprising Best Picture Oscar upset stories in AMPAS history and a film that, against all odds, remains perennially fresh in spite of its shameless genre plundering.

At first Antonio (Carmelo Gomez) seems like just another quiet photographer moving through Madrid, but a complex relationship with overripe junkie Charo (Ruth Gabriel) and her gaggle of drug-addicted friends (including Before Night Falls’ Javier Bardem) reveals Antonio to be a Basque terrorist intent on blowing up a police station. A sexy Spanish thriller with acres of skin and a low-key, nasty attitude, Running Out of Time swept the 1995 Goya awards (the Spanish version of the Oscar), winning for Best Film, director, editing, screenplay, special effects and acting prizes for Gomez, Gabriel and Bardem. The movie takes awhile to build a head of steam, yet producer-turned-director Imanol Uribe seems tuned to authentic street style highlighted by a pace that masks a drug-fuelled energy beneath a laconic exterior. New Yorker Video distributes the Tanelorn Films release, and while the letterboxed VHS transfer is priced to rent, the DVD has no additional features.

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The Scarlet Empress Germany, 1934, Released 5.8.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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The Scarlet Empress follows the education and rise of Catherine the Great (Marlene Dietrich), and is told with the expressionistic visuals and "relentless excursion into style" typical of director Josef von Sternberg. "I don’t value authenticity," he told interviewer Kevin Brownlow in the twenty-minute 1967 BBC interview included in the disc’s extras (just the kind of obscure gem for which the Criterion Collection is justly revered), and his penultimate film with Dietrich baffled critics and repelled audiences. Yet seen today it’s a deliriously extravagant spectacle, at once an hommage to epic filmmaking and an exuberant spoof of the form itself (note that most of the plot comes courtesy of intertitles, leaving more time for sets, costumes and melodramatic intrigue). Although possessed of a slight grain, the transfer is as clean as the picture’s looked in years, and the eye-catching twelve-page accordion-style brochure includes an illuminating and apparently original essay by Robin Wood, as well as the 1963 tribute by late avant-garde filmmaker Jack Smith (originally published in Film Culture). With a work like The Scarlet Empress, context is everything (particularly to those just discovering the von Sternberg-Dietrich collaboration), so chalk up another service to film heritage courtesy of The Criterion Collection. 

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Spaceman USA, 1999, Released 4.24.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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"Abducted By Aliens as a Child, He Returns to Earth an Outer-Space Killing Machine!" As cheesy as its tag line promises, Spaceman, the first feature from "the prime comedic force" behind The Onion, Scott Dikkers, is cheap and proud of it. David Ghilardi stars as the titular traveler, whose adventures working in a grocery store and as a hitman (!!!) while searching for his mother lead to love with his stringy-haired neighbor (Deborah King) and a confrontation with an FBI agent (Brian Stack) keen to literally dissect anyone involved with, uh, Spaceman. But don’t get your hopes up for an Onion-ish romp through sci-fi genre conventions. Spaceman is well-written but leadenly paced, and surprisingly conventional for the apparent brainchild of the online satire magazine ("Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes"). Still, it has its moments, including Edward Pearsall’s terrific orchestral score and the final martial arts showdown on a suburban lawn (the film was shot on location in Chicago and Wisconsin). And it did win the Audience Award at the Austin Film Festival… The Palm Pictures DVD includes the option of 5.1 surround or 2.0 stereo, some outtakes, and a booklet essay and commentary track from Dikkers (who, it says here, dropped out of "the prestigious USC Film School after realizing he couldn’t afford to go there"). 

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Spartacus USA, 1960, Released 4.24.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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In ancient Rome, a slave revolt led by the defiant Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) has a ripple effect in the highest corridors of power. The least personal of director Stanley Kubrick’s projects, Spartacus was the brainchild of Douglas, who yearned to make an intelligent sword’n’sandal epic and replaced original director Anthony Mann with his Paths of Glory helmer Kubrick partway through production. Unlike most of the movies in the genre, Spartacus remains to this day an absorbing political chess match punctuated by thrilling action and leavened with smart, literate and cynical humor courtesy of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo -- a period epic for people who think they don’t much care for period epics. And the supporting cast is superb, featuring notable work from Charles Laughton, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis, Jean Simmons, and John Ford regular Woody Strode as Spartacus’ first nemesis. The Criterion Collection 2-DVD set is breathtaking in its scope, offering a 16x9 transfer of the 1991 Super Technirama restoration (by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz), supplemented by a restoration demonstration; commentary from no less than six principals in front of and behind the camera (excluding Kubrick), deleted scenes; newsreel footage; Kubrick production sketches; the 1960 blacklist documentary The Hollywood Ten; and a handful of interviews, prominent among which is a 1992 twenty-four-minute chat with Ustinov (who does terrific impressions of Laughton and Olivier). "I don’t know what to say to people who tell me ‘Boy, I really loved Spartacus,’" confesses Ustinov. Tell ‘em thanks, and be grateful that so many people took so much time to get this release right; Spartacus belongs on the wish list of anyone serious about movies and DVD.

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Tito and Me Tito i Ja Yugoslavia, 1992, Released 5.8.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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In 1954 Belgrade, ten-year-old Zoran (Dimitrije Vojnov) develops dual fixations on charismatic leader Marshal Tito and twelve-year-old schoolmate Jasna (Milena Vukosav), obsessions that distract him from his comically cramped living conditions with his artist parents (regional mainstays Predrag Manoilovic, Anica Dobra) and lead to a walking tour of Tito’s homeland with tyrannical leader Comrade Raja (Lazar Ristovski) that teaches the boy hard truths about the real world. Prominent Belgrade-born writer-director Goran Markovic’s splendid social comedy isn’t without its political jabs, yet the focus is always on the wide-eyed Zoran, a pudgy, wise presence whose undemanding adoration of Tito (seen in voluminous newsreel footage and played as a grinning popinjay by Voja Brajovic) and subsequent disillusionment can in itself be read as a political statement. Yet even without specific knowledge of these nuances, Tito and Me can stand proudly alongside such similar-themed films as Small Change, My Life as a Dog, When Father Was Away on Business and Kolya for its compassionate exploration of the peculiar regional stresses of childhood. Tito and Me is available exclusively as a clean yet unadorned DVD from Winstar; note that the transfer appears to be in the 1:66 letterboxed format (not the fullframe 1:33 ratio listed on the case), and once again they’ve failed to put the year of release in the printed cre

dits (note to Winstar and other companies who follow this practice: proper documentation is crucial, particularly since anyone predisposed to buy this or any of your foreign-language DVD’s probably already know a film’s vintage). 

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Turkish Delight Turks Fruit Solder of Orange The Fourth Man De Vierde Man The Netherlands, 1973/79/82, Released 4.24.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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Before he made a name for himself directing the over-the-top American genre-bending exercises Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers and The Hollow Man, Amsterdam-born Paul Verhoeven was directing over-the-top genre-bending movies in his native Dutch. His second feature and one of the most popular films ever released in the Netherlands, the sexually frank Turkish Delight stars a young Rutger Hauer as a Dutch sculptor whose passionate and freewheeling affair with Olga (Monique van de Ven) ends poorly. Soldier of Orange is one of his best films, an epic story of a half-dozen Dutch men and their fates during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands (note the similarity to martial themes and documentary flourishes later featured in Starship Troopers). His last and most notorious Dutch film before heading to Hollywood, the baroque Fourth Man anticipates Basic Instinct with Renée Soutendijk’s sexual manipulation of Catholic bisexual novelist Jeroen Krabbé (another Verhoeven regular now working in American films). Heavy-handed in the most enjoyable sense of the phrase, Verhoeven combines blunt stories and lusty performances with undeniable technical craft (both of his cinematographers during this period, Jan de Bont and Jost Vacano, have gone on to successful Hollywood careers -- the former as director of Speed and Twister, the latter as Verhoeven’s consistent collaborator). All three titles -- which are sold separately -- are given fine, director-approved transfers via Anchor Bay, with the excitable Verhoeven providing thickly accented commentary tracks on each.  

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The Wolves of Kromer USA, 1976, Released 4.27.01 review by Gregory Avery

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Here's a new one: two young men (James Layton and Lee Williams) are persecuted by the residents of a modern-day village in the British countryside, not because they are gay but because they are wolves (with long tails sticking out from underneath the backs of their outerwear coats). The Wolves of Kromer tries to draw a parallel between the sometimes mindless antipathy demonstrated by human towards wolves with the often mindless antipathy displayed by people towards homosexuals; the local cleric points out "there were no wolves in the Garden of Eden" (The "g" and the "h" words are never used in the film). And the "wolves" in the film aren't vicious in the least -- all they want to do is hang out in the woods, smooch, and have parties on the beach. The central conceit isn't really developed enough to sustain an entire movie, and our attention keeps getting yanked away to a parallel plotline where two wicked old ladies are poisoning a third in order to get hold of her property (the reason for this is not made clear until almost the very end of the film). But the picture is so far out there that it's worth having a look at. Both Layton and Williams give very good performances (the film was made on a small budget, and the locations look like they were cold), suggesting that the director, Will Gould, may have some good pictures up his sleeve in the future; the narration, by Boy George, is delivered very, very early on in the proceedings. The First Run Features VHS is priced to rent, and the DVD pressing has no extra features.

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Box Set Corner:

An occasional exploration of video and DVD’s higher end

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Eisenstein: The Sound Years Alexander Nevsky Ivan the Terrible: Part 1 Ivan the Terrible: Part 2 Russia, 1938/1945/1946, Released 4.27.01 review by Eddie Cockrell

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Back in Moscow in 1936 after the emotionally exhausting collapse of the Qué Viva México! project (Kino on Video’s new DVD of the reconstructed film was reviewed in the April column), director Sergei Eisenstein suffered further indignities when his first sound film, Bezhin Meadow (1935-1937) -- indeed, his first work since 1929’s The Old and the New -- was derailed by the director’s illness and a perceived violation of the Socialist Realism party line. By the time his assignment to the historical epic Alexander Nevsky rolled around, Eisenstein was in dire need of the Russian version of a box office hit. Operatic in scale and vivid in its thrity-minute ice battle, Nevsky delivered with its "symphonic structure" of the thirteenth century hero’s repelling of a German invasion, set to a stirring score by long-time collaborator Sergei Prokofiev. Sailing into his final film on the wave of that success, Eisenstein once again became bogged down by health problems and official censorship in a mammoth, three-part biography of sixteenth century Russian unifier Czar Ivan IV. Ivan the Terrible: Part I was a great popular success, part two was rushed and disliked by Stalin, and part three was never finished; Eisenstein died of a heart attack on February 11, 1948 -- nineteen days after his fiftieth birthday. Remedying the availability of numerous inferior video and DVD copies over the years, The Criterion Collection has finally delivered its long-promised "Eisenstein: The Sound Years" three-disc boxed set, and it was worth the wait. Both transfers were created on a high-definition Spirit Datacine from new 35mm composite fine-grain master positives struck expressly for the imprint by Mosfilm, and each enclosed brochure is built around an essay by critic J. Hoberman. The Nevsky disc features a first-rate commentary by film scholar David Bordwell, a restoration demonstration, the reconstructed Bezhin Meadow and more. The Ivan the Terrible discs include deleted scenes, two multimedia essays by noted scholars and an electronic portfolio of production stills and drawings. A building block in the collection of any serious cineaste, "Eisenstein: The Sound Years" is a DVD set to watch, learn from and live with. Note to Criterion completists: as per their catalogue, the boxed set itself is #86 in the series, Alexander Nevsky is #87 and the two-disc Ivan the Terrible set is #88.

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