Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: From the Land of the Moon; Aquarius; The Last Laugh; Kill, Baby, Kill.
From the Land of the Moon
Beautiful cinematography under director Nicole Garcia and fine acting all around, led by Marion Cotillard, combine with an emotionally nuanced screenplay in From the Land of the Moon (2017). The Oscar-winning Cotillard plays Gabrielle, a high-strung and unhappy teen in post-World War II rural France. At a loss, her parents convince her to marry a Spanish refugee; the marriage begins lovelessly as well as asexually but grows complicated as emotions evolve and delusions seep into reality.
Aquarius
Developers who drive out long-time residents is a problem all over. In the 2016 Brazilian film Aquarius, Clara (Kiss of the Spider Woman’s Sônia Braga), is an independent woman stubbornly hanging on to her condo against mounting pressure from a corrupt company with plans to tear down and rebuild. Leisurely, filled with unedited conversations and visual subtlety, Aquarius slowly grows compelling as it meditates on the important physicality of buildings, vinyl LPs—and life itself.
The Last Laugh
One day you are a respected member of society but on the next, stripped of the job that gave life its meaning, you are the butt of jokes. That’s the enduring theme of F.W. Murnau’s superb The Last Laugh (1924), a silent film with virtually no intertitles. The story is told visually. Emil Jannings plays the put upon department store doorman with comedy and pathos. The Blu-ray/DVD release includes two versions of the film.
Kill, Baby, Kill
He’s warned by the coachman not to stop there—that the village is cursed—but the stolid coroner, a scientific materialist, places no stock in superstition. Italian cult director Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill (1966), dubbed in English for the drive-in audience, has some autumnal cinematography worthy of Ingmar Bergman amidst a creaking horror melodrama analogous to what Britain’s Hammer Studio produced at the time. Reason confronts evil in the Hapsburg hinterlands. Guess who wins?
