Starring: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin, Ann Miller, Betty Garrett, Vera-Ellen
Fun-loving sailors Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra) and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) have 24 hours of shore leave in New York City, and they want to make every second count. While Chip hooks up with loudmouth cab driver Brunhilde (Betty Garrett) and Ozzie swoons for prim anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller), Gabey falls in love with an actress he sees in an advertisement, Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen). Leonard Bernstein, with lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, provides the music.
Starring: Travis Tedford, Bug Hall, Brittany Ashton Holmes, Kevin Jamal Woods, Jordan Warkol, Zachary Mabry, Ross Bagley, Mel Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg, Daryl Hannah
Mischievous youngsters Spanky (Travis Tedford) and Buckwheat (Ross Elliot Bagley) lead an anti-girl organization, and they pick their buddy Alfalfa (Bug Hall) to represent them in an all-important soapbox car rally. When the boys then find their driver canoodling with schoolmate Darla (Brittany Ashton Holmes), they decide they must break up the couple. Unfortunately, while Spanky and his pals are busy meddling in Alfalfa’s affairs, their prized race car is nabbed by two young toughs.
Starring: Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Passalis, Mary Tsoni, Anna Kalaitzidou
4K restoration
Graceful, enigmatic, and often frightening, Dogtooth is an ingenious dark comedy that won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, propelling Oscar winner Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, The Favourite) to the forefront of contemporary cinema’s most ambitious young filmmakers.
In an effort to protect their three children from the corrupting influence of the outside world, a Greek couple transforms their home into a gated compound of cultural deprivation and strict rules of behavior. But children cannot remain innocent forever. When the father brings home a young woman to satisfy his son’s sexual urges, the family’s engineered “reality” begins to crumble, with devastating consequences. Like the haunting, dystopic visions of Michael Haneke and Gaspar Noé, Dogtooth punctuates its compelling drama with moments of shocking violence, creating a biting social satire that is as profound as it is provocative.
Restored in 4K from the 35mm camera and sound negatives by Boo Productions and mk2 Films at Asterisk* Post and I Hear Voices sound studio. Colour grading by Gregory Arvanitis and Thimios Bakatakis. Digital sound restoration by Landros Ntounis. The restoration process was supervised by the director, Yorgos Lanthimos.
Starring: Angeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris
Actors start a unique business where they impersonate deceased people to help their clients through the grieving process.
Starring: Devon Aoki, Jaime Pressly, Holly Valance, Sarah Carter, Eric Roberts
The best fighters on the planet, including ninja princess Kasumi (Devon Aoki), wrestler Tina (Jaime Pressly), and thief/assassin Christie (Holly Valance), receive invitations to compete for a $10 million prize on a specially outfitted island. However, tournament organizer Dr. Victor Donovan (R<>S favorite Eric Roberts, magnificently quaffed as usual) seems to have a hidden agenda in staging the games.
In the hands of Hong Kong director Corey Yuen (Yes, Madam), this video game adaptation premise overflows with high drama and cartoonish action, the camera in motion as much as the bodies it strives to capture. It’s all shiny, gaudy, color-splattered fun, with a bonus of erstwhile pro-wrestler Kevin Nash (Tarzan to Magic Mike fans) appearing as Tina’s over-protective father.
Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess
Actors (Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent) take on multiple roles in an epic that spans five centuries. An attorney harbors a fleeing slave on a voyage from the Pacific Islands in 1849; a poor composer in pre-World War II Britain struggles to finish his magnum opus before a past act catches up with him; a genetically engineered worker in 2144 feels the forbidden stirring of human consciousness — and so on. As souls are born and reborn, they renew their bonds to one another throughout time.
Starring: Meri D. Marshall, April Stewart, Mary Kohnert, Tony Cox, Jack DeLeon, and The Fibonaccis!
You read that right, ditz-wit: The Deuce don’t make mistakes! This ain’t the Cage-y gag-me-with-a-spoon rom-com we’re talkin’ about – no, narbo – these VALET GIRLS are in a class of crass all to themselves… and San Ferno’s a maj bore compared to the bo-coup Bonkersville these gals get knee-high socks deep into!
A car-parkin trio of Hollywood-hopeful-y, totally un-LA-y ladies – Brooklyn wanna-be pop-princess toughie, her very British college-grad academically-minded BFF, and a Southern Belle with stars in her eyes for stardom – take a gig auto-handling at the Malibu mansion of manic music impresario “Dirk Zebra” with the master plan of it being a gateway to each’s dreams of success… What they find instead is a wackadoo den of various depravities, worthy of a midway freak show! Totally nutzo! Totally killer!! Totally!!!
Mermaids! Master/Slave screenwriting duos! Musical numbers! Pool parties! Pervy producers! Porn stars! A New Wave Art-Rock party band! And a marvel of a manager who’s a midget!! VALET GIRLS has got the goods!! Considered by “many” to be director Zielinski’s masterwork (the “many” not including Zielinski, himself, however – The Deuce will leave that one for more reputable repertories)… What title-wise sounds like a cheap imitation/cash-in copy-cat is instead its own singular slice of goofy that loonily lampoons and harpoons a litany of Hollywood types… And with a straight-to-video VHS box promising tight clothes and titillating T&A – the sweaty-palmed patrons of Times Square’s storied tape-slinging Video Shack (as well as while-the-fam’s asleep Skin-emax-fan dads) were more befuddled than fuddled by its sleight-of-hand slide into bouncy feminist bravado and a surprisingly sweet take on the usually dead-from-the-head-down “humor” found in most of the glut of 80s college sex comedies… Like, totally radical, for sure!!
Starring: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman
To be young and carefree amid the blue waters and idyllic landscape of sun-drenched Italy in the late 1950s; that’s la dolce vita Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) craves- and Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) leads. When Dickie’s father asks Tom to bring his errant playboy son back home to America, Dickie and his beautiful expatriate girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow), never suspect the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make their lifestyle his own.
Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman, Oliver Smith, Doug Bradley
4K restoration
Sexual deviant Frank (Sean Chapman) inadvertently opens a portal to hell when he tinkers with a box he bought while abroad. The act unleashes gruesome beings called Cenobites, who tear Frank’s body apart. When Frank’s brother (Andrew Robinson) and his wife, Julia (Clare Higgins), move into Frank’s old house, they accidentally bring what is left of Frank back to life. Frank then convinces Julia, his one-time lover, to lure men back to the house so he can use their blood to reconstruct himself.
Starring: Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Javier Cámara, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lluís Homar, Francisco Maestre
When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer (Gael García Bernal) who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.
