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Directed by Philippe de Broca and arriving in the wake of the newly popular James Bond films, these were a riotous cut above the many 007 spoofs that spilled forth worldwide. In the first, set against the beauty of Brazil, Jean Paul Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac are in hot pursuit of a stolen Amazonian statuette, while others pursue them for the same treasure. In the second, Belmondo plays a bored and recently bankrupted millionaire who is convinced to allow someone to murder him so that he can leave the insurance money in his will. He's fine with the plan until he meets a stunning stripper (Ursula Andress).

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Posted by: News Editor - April 2, 2015, 11:04 pm - PR
Keywords: comedy

The film, featuring Jackie Cooper and musicians like Benny Goodman and Harry James in their prime, has been digitally remastered. The romance between a young trumpeter and a New Orleans-born piano player serves as the narrative plot line. But the core of the film is its celebratory history of 'syncopated' music - jazz - tracing it from the turn-of-the-century sounds of ragtime, through Dixieland, the blues, Chicago jazz and the swing era.

A dark and droll thriller with comic undertones about the fine art of killing. Mika Muller (Isabelle Huppert) is the head of a Swiss chocolate company who is not above dispensing a potent blend of hot chocolate and dangerous sedatives to those who get in her way. Isabelle Huppert won Best Actress honors for the film at the Montreal World Film Festival and at France's Lumiere Awards, while director Claude Chabrol won the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc.

Dougray Scott stars as a London doctor and single dad on his way home one night on the high-speed train with his son. He is startled and confused when the train whizzes past his stop - and becomes increasingly desperate to save himself and his mysterious fellow passengers as the train hurtles out of control, without a conductor or brakes but apparently controlled by someone looking to wreak havoc.

In 1942, Fritz Lang decided to make a film that would face the Nazi terror head-on. Working with the famous playwright Bertolt Brecht and the Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, Lang devised a fact-based thriller that would shock and stir audiences.

The story revolves around two objects, a rare set of 18th-century Limoges china, and a 19th century aristocratic portrait. As these items are passed, sold, or stolen from one character to another, a giddy round dance of excess begins to take shape, one which suggests that if history doesn't repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. Co-writer Gerard Brach and director Otar Iosseliani uses a feather-light touch to expose the futility of class and social order, making a bagatelle of the concerns of rich and poor alike.

France, 1572. During an uneasy break in the wars of religion, Catholic King Charles IX (Jean-Hugues Anglade) concludes a marriage of state between his sister, Margot (Isabelle Adjani), and the Protestant Huguenot King Henry of Navarre (Daniel Auteuil). But Margot's skull-faced Queen Mother (Virna Lisi) is already plotting the attack on the Huguenots that would come to be known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and Margot is in the throes of a throbbingly romantic affair with the Protestant La Mole (Vincent Perez).

Middle-aged high school music teacher Keith Reynolds (Guy Pearce) lives a comfortable if unexciting life in a suburb north of New York City with his wife Megan (Amy Ryan) and teenage daughter Lauren (Mackenzie Davis). Keith is an accomplished cellist but he can't seem to progress beyond being a substitute player in a New York orchestra. However, he is reenergized when teenage British exchange student and piano prodigy Sophie (Felicity Jones) comes to stay with the family. The mutual attraction between teacher and student is immediate - despite the fact that Sophie is the same age as Lauren.

Among the finest later films of Claude Chabrol, here he once again uses a murder mystery to expose the underlying tensions and deceptions of a close-knit community. A 10-year-old girl's violated body is found in the woods of a Brittany fishing village. Suspicion immediately falls on Rene (Jacques Gamblin), a painter and the girl's art teacher; he is apparently the last person to have seen her alive.

Director Gilles Legrand creates a powerful and moving drama with echoes of nothing less than King Lear and the novels of Balzac. The elderly Paul de Marseul is the passionate but abusive proprietor of his prestigious family wine estate in the Bordeaux region. Paul lords it over all his employees, and that includes his son Martin, who works at the vineyard in administration and sales.

A modern retelling of the Virgin Birth, Mary (Myriem Roussel) is a student who plays basketball and works at her father's gas station; her boyfriend Joseph (Thierry Rode) is an earnest dropout who drives a cab. The angel Gabriel (Philippe Lacoste) must school Joseph to accept Mary's pregnancy, while Mary comes to terms with God's plan.

From Jean-Luc Godard, this densely packed rumination on the need to create order and beauty in a world ruled by chaos is divided into several distinct but related stories, chiefly the attempts by an idealistic French acting troupe to stage a play in war-torn Sarajevo. Along their journey, they are captured and held in a POW camp. Amid the gunfire of war, an elderly director struggles to complete his film.

A gritty mix of film noir and suspense about Nazis fleeing for South America in a submarine. This rediscovered masterpiece by director Rene Clement (Forbidden Games, Purple Noon) has been remastered and is available for the first time on Blu-ray and DVD. The 1947 Cannes winner for Best Adventure and Crime Film, featuring stunning cinematography by Henri Alekan.

One of biggest blockbusters of the silent era, is a dazzling Arabian Nights adventure fantasy and one of the most imaginative of all movies. The elaborate and lush backgrounds and the massive sets by William Cameron Menzies (who would later design Gone With the Wind) all have an expressionistic quality unique for American films of the time. The amazingly acrobatic and energetic Fairbanks is at his impudent best as the dashing Ahmed, the thief who wins a princess.

Buster Keaton's first feature-length film. He stars as Bertie Van Alstyne, the pampered and spoiled son of a powerful Wall Street broker (played by acclaimed stage actor William H. Crane in a rare film appearance). Bertie has only known a life of privilege, and finds himself involved in a series of misadventures, including an attempt at courtship, visiting an illegal gambling den, and finally tumbling on to the floor of the Stock Exchange, blissfully ignorant of the obstacles that stand before him.

In this documentary, through restored vintage audio recordings, Pickford narrates her own story along with actor Michael York. Classic film clips, rare home movies, and cameo interviews with Adolph Zukor (founder of Paramount Studios), famed aviator Amelia Earhart, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lillian Gish, Buddy Rogers (Pickford's last husband), as well as the only interview ever given by Pickford's daughter, Roxanne Rogers Monroe, give the viewer an in-depth look into the early world of the American cinema.

The memory of silent screen star John Gilbert is not helped at all by the fact that so many of his pictures are no longer extant. But this new set from Flicker Alley helps correct that, with recently-discovered prints of two of Gilbert's major films, which happen to be the only ones of these films known to exist. We're very lucky indeed to have these long-hidden classics unearthed and brought to DVD in lovely restorations.

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