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Kagemusha (Special Edition Double-Disc S...

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Cria Cuervos [DVD]

After doing several films with screenwriter Rafael Azcona (GARDEN OF DELIGHTS, MY COUSIN AGNELICA) Carlos Saura made CRIA! from his own script. He continued using actors in dual roles, allowing for easily shifting time frames and multiple points of view. In a dreamy opening scene, Ana (Ana Torrent), a wide-eyed child of about ten, comes down the stairs and sees a half-dressed woman run from her father's room. She quietly and without emotion goes into the room where her father lies dead on the bed and removes a half-full glass of milk. In the kitchen, as she washes out the glass, her mother (Geraldine Chaplin) enters and scolds her for being up so late. But her Mother, we learn later, died earlier, and Ana blamed her father for it and put poison in his milk. When Ana is alone her mother appears to her again, but this time she looks right in the camera and explains that she's Ana, now age 29. Some of what came before was a flashback from her adult perspective. With Chaplin playing both parts, the film shifts between the story of Ana and her mother, and Ana's life as an adult, until what actually happened the night her father died is completely revealed. CRIA! is the most complex and ambitious of the many films that Saura and Chaplin made together.

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$17

Available at 15 stores

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$15

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Kagemusha (Special Edition Double-Disc Set) [DVD]

In this dazzling epic from Akira Kurosawa, a petty thief named Kagemusha (Tatsuya Nakadai) gets saved from a death sentence because he resembles the warlord Shingen Takeda (also Nakadai). The warlord has been fighting two other leaders for control of 16th-century Japan and impersonators often take his place during battles to put him out of harm's way. Because of Kagemusha's strong physical similarities to the warlord, he's a perfect choice for a "shadow warrior." However, the arrangement suddenly changes when Shingen gets fatally wounded while watching a battle. Adhering to Shingen's final wish, the warlord's men keep the death a secret, and Kagemusha struggles to transform himself from a criminal into a leader. KAGEMUSHA marked a welcome return for the legendary director, who had not made a movie since 1974. Nakadai, a supporting player in earlier Kurosawa films, expertly portrays the leading role(s), almost always filled in the past by Toshirô Mifune. KAGEMUSHA also features the final screen appearance of longtime Kurosawa actor, Takashi Shimura. In order to help the film get an international release, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas served as executive producers.

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$15

Life and Nothing But [DVD]

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$13

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Life and Nothing But [DVD]

Two women of differing backgrounds are looking for the missing men they love in the aftermath of World War I. Along the way they encounter two French officers, one detailed to identify the dead and the other assigned to choose a body to be honored as France's unknown soldier.

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$13

Les Compères [DVD]

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$21

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Les Compères [DVD]

After her 17 year-old son disappears, a resourceful and charming woman named Christine enlists the aid of two of her former lovers by convincing each of them that they are the young man's father. It isn't long before both men, François Pignon and Jean Lucas, are bumbling their way around France, looking for their long lost son. Soon, the two happen to meet by chance, explain to each other that they're looking for their lost son, and decide to team up, forming one of the oddest and most inept partnerships France has ever seen.

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$21

The Sacrifice [DVD]

Year of the Quiet Sun [DVD]

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$23

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The Sacrifice [DVD]

Set in Sweden, Andrei Tarkovsky's last film follows the travails of wealthy patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson), a former actor and critic who lives in a remote home on the edge of the Baltic Sea. One year on his birthday, a sudden television announcement interrupts the celebration with news of a nuclear holocaust. His family and guests suffer through violent fits of hysteria and emotional turmoil in the ensuing days, but the previously troubled Alexander finds a clearness of mind when he makes a pact with God--offering himself as a sacrifice in order to redeem the fallen earth for his cherished son. Supremely poetic, THE SACRIFICE is filled with achingly beautiful images, expertly shot by Ingmar Bergman's trusted cinematographer Sven Nykvist. As Alexander goes from self-contented ease to crippling animal fear and existential anguish and finally to spiritual abandon, the troubled journey is illustrated with a haunting succession of images, tableaus, objects, dreams, and gestures--all sewn together in a seamlessly elliptical vision. As in all of Tarkovsky's haunting and mystical films, the characters are forced to come to terms with their own physical and spiritual existence, with redemption coming through faith--in this case, Alexander's faith in his love for his young son.

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$23

Available at 6 stores

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Year of the Quiet Sun [DVD]

During the postwar upheaval in a war-torn German town, a tragic love affair develops between an American sergeant and a Polish woman who has lost her husband in the war.

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Dreams [DVD]

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Dreams [DVD]

Akira Kurosawa's DREAMS consists of eight short films based on actual dreams of the director. The first sequence, "Sunshine Through the Rain," features a young boy sneaking off into the forest on a rainy day to watch a procession of enchanted foxes. In "The Peach Orchard," a slightly older boy witnesses tree spirits performing a delicate dance. Weary travelers in "The Blizzard" face the elemental wrath of a snow enchantress, while "The Tunnel" finds a military officer haunted by the ghosts of his dead regiment. In "Crows," an art aficionado literally walks into the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh (played by Martin Scorsese). "Mount Fuji in Red" and "The Weeping Demon" are both fantastical cautionary tales about the hazards of nuclear power. Finally the gentle "Village of the Watermills" brings the film to a quiet, pastoral end. A highly personal project, DREAMS evinces its labor-of-love atmosphere in every sequence. As with all Kurosawa productions, each short film is meticulously designed and beautifully photographed. While many of the middle sequences are eerie and surreal, the first two films and the finale ("Sunshine Through the Rain," "The Peach Orchard," and "Village of the Watermills") are gorgeously lush and serene.

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A Great Wall [DVD]

The Story of Adele H. (World Films) [DVD...

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A Great Wall [DVD]

A humorous story about the clash of cultures a Chinese-American family experiences on their first visit to meet their relatives on mainland China. Peter Wang wrote, directed, and starred in this first U.S.-Chinese produced film.

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame [DVD]

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The Story of Adele H. (World Films) [DVD]

A drama of a young woman, the daughter of author Victor Hugo, who is obsessed with a soldier who does not return her love. Academy Award Nominations: Best Actress--Isabelle Adjani.

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Bob Le Flambeur (Criterion Collection) [...

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame [DVD]

From its dramatic opening shots to its powerfully heart-wrenching climax, Jean Delannoy's spectacle THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME retells Victor Hugo's remarkable novel with gripping theatrical energy. It is 1492, in and around the imposing Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, where the Festival of Fools has begun. Pierre Gringoire's play entitled "The Quest for Beauty" is being performed; which is ironic because during it, the hideous, hunchback bell-ringer Quasimoto (Anthony Quinn) is tormented and teased by a band of gypsies. Nothing can touch Quasimoto, though, as he is protected by Frollo, the Chief Justice. Frollo has his own problems, the worst being a pious conscience that keeps wrestling with an attraction to sexy gypsy dancer Esmerelda (Gina Lollobridgida). When Frollo sends Quasimoto to fetch Esmerelda for him, the poor hunchback only frightens her and gets arrested, sending Esmerelda into the arms of Phoebus, a confident, though dim-witted and smarmy, army captain. Esmerelda soon pities Quasimoto, attempting to sooth him as he is held in the gallows. But when Phoebus is stabbed to death, there seems to be little any of Esmerelda's admirers can do to prove her innocence. In this film about injustice, prejudice, and obsession, cinematographer Kelber's camerawork finds drama in every crevice, arch, and window of the cathedral itself, and Quinn is heartbreaking as the misunderstood hunchback.

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And the Ship Sails On (Criterion Collect...

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$11

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Bob Le Flambeur (Criterion Collection) [DVD]

A compulsive gambler decides to try for the big time when he attempts to rob a heavily guarded casino. Superior progenitor of the "heroic" gangster/failed heist films popularized in America with RESERVOIR DOGS.

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$11

Autumn Sonata (Criterion Collection) [DV...

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$11

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And the Ship Sails On (Criterion Collection) [DVD]

Fellini takes the viewer on a sea voyage in 1914, complete with a collection of passengers of every description - an Austrian duke, peasant refugees, and members of the cast of an Italian opera company, who are transporting the ashes of a departed friend to her homeland. As it is the eve of WWI, the ship encounters the first war refugees and takes them aboard, thus broadening the classes aboard the vessel. An impressive opening, an unexpected ending and a steady parade of Fellini's trademark set pieces and inconsequential, amusing events color this late work from the director's ouvre.

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$11

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$15

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Autumn Sonata (Criterion Collection) [DVD]

In this drama written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Eva, the meek, seemingly complacent wife of a parson, invites her mother, Charlotte, a world famous pianist, to come for a visit, hoping for a reconciliation after a long period of estrangement and virtually no interaction. Instead, long-repressed feelings of rage toward her mother for repeatedly abandoning her as a child begin to surface and finally culminate in a cathartic confrontation between the two women. Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman (in her final movie role) give excellent and emotionally charged performances as Eva and Charlotte.

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$15

Au Revoir Les Enfants

Cyrano de Bergerac (World Films) [DVD]

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$18

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Au Revoir Les Enfants

This autobiographical recounting of Malle's most tragic memory begins in 1944 at an all-boy Catholic school. A young boy befriends a new student whom the others feel is different. When he discovers the new student is a Jew, he tells no one and remains a true friend. Tragedy strikes when a school employee tells the Gestapo they are hiding Jews and the student is arrested and taken away.

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$18

...And God Created Woman (Criterion Coll...

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Cyrano de Bergerac (World Films) [DVD]

Gerard Depardieu won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance as Cyrano in this lavish adaptation of Edmond Rostand's 1897 play. Academy Award Nominations: 4, including Best Actor--Gerard Depardieu. Academy Awards: Best Costume Design.

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Claire's Knee [DVD]

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Claire's Knee [DVD]

In Eric Rohmer's CLAIRE'S KNEE, Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), a handsome diplomat on vacation in the scenic Alpine village of Talloires, is coaxed into doing a strange favor for his friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu), a novelist working on a new book. Echoing Vladimir Nabokov's novel LOLITA, in which the writer Humbert Humbert falls in love with a budding 13-year-old girl, CLAIRE'S KNEE makes Jerome the researcher for Aurora's novel about an older man who seduces a teenage girl. Jerome and Aurora create mischief together as two friends in their mid-30s who are reminded of their own sexual appetites by watching the teenage sisters Laura (Béatrice Romand) and Claire (Laurence De Monoghan) with their young boyfriends. However, when Aurora challenges Jerome to seduce Laura, he tries but fails. Instead, he develops an obsessive desire to fondle Claire's knee, a notion both ruthlessly perverse and stubbornly innocent. Rohmer's laid-back, pensive style takes in the mountainous lakeside scenery, putting the weight of the film on intimate one-on-one discussions between the characters. With artful camerawork that captures much of the movie from Jerome's motorboat, Rohmer creates one of the cornerstones of his Six Moral Tales series, a pretty film with a naughty undercurrent and a relaxed existential overtone.

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My Mother's Castle [DVD]

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My Mother's Castle [DVD]

The sequel to "My Father's Glory," the story picks up where the first story leaves off. A greater understanding between family members is the outcome of the author Marcel Pagnol's autobiographical recollection.

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$13

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...And God Created Woman (Criterion Collection) [DVD]

In Roger Vadim's directorial debut, his then-wife, Brigitte Bardot, plays Juliette, a sumptuous orphan beauty who sparks an incendiary and erotically charged love triangle between herself and three men who desire her. Spending her days barefoot and barely working in the town tabac, Juliette loves to listen to the jukebox at the local bar and saunter past the men in town; all the while, she has eyes only for local thug Antoine. Millionaire Eric Carradine desires Juliette as much as he desires Antoine's family's oceanfront property. After being coldly spurned by Antoine, Juliette is rescued from a return to the orphanage when Antoine's timid younger brother, Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant), proposes marriage, at the suggestion of Carradine. As the unlikely couple works hard at achieving a semblance of happiness, the dark forces that dwell inside Juliette's restless spirit force her closer and closer to Antoine. Vadim lets Bardot revel in the CinemaScope and Technicolor beauty of the film, and the simmering mambo-infused soundtrack traces the plot's erotic undercurrents as they drive all the characters toward an inevitable climax of erotic and violent explosion, personal revelation, and a New Wave definition of love and romance.

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$13

The Milky Way [DVD]

Available at 11 stores

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$19

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The Milky Way [DVD]

The story of two tramps on a pilgrimage from Paris to Santiago, taking assorted detours through time and space, including a visit to the Marquis de Sade and the times of Christ.

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$19

Indochine