Compassion in Exile and The Last Dalai Lama? (Alive Mind/Kino Lorber)
The Dalai Lama was still a young man when he evaded Chinese patrols and slipped across the mountains on a moonless night with a band of followers. Since 1959, he has reigned in Indian exile as Tibet’s spiritual and secular leader. Since the 1980s, he has also been an esteemed (Nobel Prize-winning) human rights activist as well as a prominent figure in the study of human consciousness. His Buddhist meditational practice has opened a doorway to Western science.
Mickey Lemle filmed one of the first major documentaries on the Dalai Lama, Compassion in Exile (1992), and followed up with The Last Dalai Lama? (2017). Both are out now on DVD. Although a little slower of step, the Dalai Lama changed only little in the intervening years. He remains a man of relaxed manner and an open heart who laughs a lot, especially at himself. His insights into emotional psychology are profound.
The Contractor / The Fan DVD set (Mill Creek Entertainment)
A pair of diverting Wesley Snipes movies have been packaged together on a Blu-ray/DVD set. Snipes was second fiddle in The Fan (1996), whose star, Robert De Niro, plays a baseball cap-wearing, older version of his Taxi Driver role. Snipes shows range as the affably arrogant athlete whose playing disappoints De Niro’s increasingly unhinged, ballgame-obsessed character. In The Contractor (2007), Snipes stars as a steely-eyed assassin on the run in a milieu of double-crossed intrigue.
