The Price of Everything (Kino Lorber)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Moving Parts, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, The Price of Everything and Black Angel.
Moving Parts (IndiePix)
Zhenzhen arrives by boat in Trinidad and gazes pensively, apprehensively, into an uncertain future. Her family already paid $10,000 to smuggle her from China—and now the hard-faced men demand more money. The feature debut by Emilie Upczak is a quietly moving film about the virtual slavery endured by millions across the world, heads down and trapped in low-end or illicit jobs. Their desperation is palpable. Will the young woman escape the downbound spiral?
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Kino Lorber)
Fire is the opening image. Blazing fire. The documentary’s subtitle tells the story: We’ve entered an era when humankind has reshaped not only the surface but the systems of our planet. Thus far, the wisdom to reshape it for good isn’t apparent. Anthropocene is a visual poem of destruction, narrated matter-of-factly by Alicia Vikander. In a bonus interview, Edward Norton aptly compares Anthropocene to a Terrence Malick film for its hypnotic beauty and horror.
The Price of Everything (Kino Lorber)
An auctioneer offers the most plausible excuse for today’s grossly inflated art market: “It’s very important for good art to be expensive—you only protect something that has value.” But who decides value? The artists interviewed in this documentary shrug off money as their motivation. As painter Larry Poons quips about his career: “You don’t choose who you are.” Explanations for art inflation include globalization (more collectors!) and the shortage of old masters, hence millions for Basquiat.
Black Angel (Arrow Academy)
A femme fatale with a handgun in her sweater drawer becomes a fatality. The cops pin it on her blackmail victim (John Phillips). But before he walks to the gas chamber, his wife (June Vincent) joins with the dead woman’s alcoholic ex (Dan Duryea) to find the truth. Peter Lorre skulks in the shadows of this 1946 film noir directed by Roy William Neill (who helmed Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes) from Cornell Woolrich’s hardboiled novel.
