About this product: Barbet Schroeder, the Oscar-nominated director of Reversal of Fortune, made his debut with this jaundiced view of the European youth drug culture. Klaus Grünberg is a naive German student who falls for blond American junkie Mimsy Farmer and discovers drugs in Paris. He follows the flighty babe to Ibiza, a sunny Mediterranean island paradise, where he falls into the world of former Nazi-turned-heroin-pusher Heinz Engelmann and succumbs to addiction. Part counterculture portrait, part antidrug drama, it's a shaggy little film that suggests the New Wave influence in a rambling pace, gorgeous asides of fun in the sun (our heroes get high and tilt at windmills--literally--in one free and easy moment), and deadpan bursts of intermittent narration. But Schroeder has little affinity with youth culture, and the film more often fits the conservative tenor of American cautionary drug dramas of the 1960s and '70s. To the film's credit, it never succumbs to the druggie clichés of the time. You'll find none of the kaleidoscope lenses, whip pans, sunlight reflections searing the image, or choppy montages to rock & roll hits that fill the drug-culture classics, just the handsome, earthy, intimate photography of Néstor Almendros. Today, More remains most famous for its subdued, moody Pink Floyd score. --Sean Axmaker
About this product: Barbet Schroeder, the Oscar-nominated director of Reversal of Fortune, made his debut with this jaundiced view of the European youth drug culture. Klaus Grünberg is a naive German student who falls for blond American junkie Mimsy Farmer and discovers drugs in Paris. He follows the flighty babe to Ibiza, a sunny Mediterranean island paradise, where he falls into the world of former Nazi-turned-heroin-pusher Heinz Engelmann and succumbs to addiction. Part counterculture portrait, part antidrug drama, it's a shaggy little film that suggests the New Wave influence in a rambling pace, gorgeous asides of fun in the sun (our heroes get high and tilt at windmills--literally--in one free and easy moment), and deadpan bursts of intermittent narration. But Schroeder has little affinity with youth culture, and the film more often fits the conservative tenor of American cautionary drug dramas of the 1960s and '70s. To the film's credit, it never succumbs to the druggie clichés of the time. You'll find none of the kaleidoscope lenses, whip pans, sunlight reflections searing the image, or choppy montages to rock & roll hits that fill the drug-culture classics, just the handsome, earthy, intimate photography of Néstor Almendros. Today, More remains most famous for its subdued, moody Pink Floyd score. --Sean Axmaker
About this product: While The Godfather was making moviegoers an offer they couldn't refuse, La Vallée was wowing art-house crowds with its flower-powered search for paradise in the jungles of New Guinea. It's there that an adventurous diplomat's wife (Bulle Ogier), hoping to find the forbidden feathers of a rare exotic bird, embarks on a deeper, more personal quest when she encounters a makeshift family of hippies seeking an unmapped valley from which visitors are said never to return. Like the structurally similar cult films from its era (including Walkabout and Aguirre: The Wrath of God), La Vallée dazzled the post-'60s subculture with free-spirited adventure and enigmatic beauty, captured here through the peerless lens of cinematographer Néstor Almendros. The hippie vibe seems mildly dated but its sensual context is timeless, and a climactic encounter with the primitive Mapuga tribe retains an intense cross-cultural mystique. Pink Floyd's celebrated soundtrack is mostly heard as background ambience, but it effectively enhances the film's compelling atmosphere of mystery and expectation. --Jeff Shannon
About this product: Barbet Schroeder, the Oscar-nominated director of Reversal of Fortune, made his debut with this jaundiced view of the European youth drug culture. Klaus Grünberg is a naive German student who falls for blond American junkie Mimsy Farmer and discovers drugs in Paris. He follows the flighty babe to Ibiza, a sunny Mediterranean island paradise, where he falls into the world of former Nazi-turned-heroin-pusher Heinz Engelmann and succumbs to addiction. Part counterculture portrait, part antidrug drama, it's a shaggy little film that suggests the New Wave influence in a rambling pace, gorgeous asides of fun in the sun (our heroes get high and tilt at windmills--literally--in one free and easy moment), and deadpan bursts of intermittent narration. But Schroeder has little affinity with youth culture, and the film more often fits the conservative tenor of American cautionary drug dramas of the 1960s and '70s. To the film's credit, it never succumbs to the druggie clichés of the time. You'll find none of the kaleidoscope lenses, whip pans, sunlight reflections searing the image, or choppy montages to rock & roll hits that fill the drug-culture classics, just the handsome, earthy, intimate photography of Néstor Almendros. Today, More remains most famous for its subdued, moody Pink Floyd score. --Sean Axmaker
About this product: A ringing instance of a sequel far outstripping its predecessor, Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More takes the lethal antihero from A Fistful of Dollars, gives him both a rival and an adversary worthy of sharing a gun-blazing corrida, and ratchets up the stylization to something approaching grandeur. This time the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) is a bounty hunter whose desert Southwest killing ground is suddenly crowded by the presence of an older, black-clad shootist (Lee Van Cleef). Individually and together, they terminate sundry grotesques while closing in on their biggest quarry, a memorably insane bandit called El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté is brilliant). There's just enough plot to imbue Van Cleef with genuine mystery, a dark avenging angel from a lost past whose pull would supply the emotional core of Leone's later masterworks Once upon a Time in the West and Once upon a Time in America. Leone's bravura widescreen compositions are breathtaking, and Ennio Morricone's music score--tinged with lunatic religiosity--is his first great one. --Richard T. Jameson
About this product: Portly Charles Coburn makes a cute if unlikely cupid in George Stevens's smart 1943 romantic comedy. Jean Arthur is girl next door and big-city sophisticate rolled up in one bubbly package as Connie Milligan, a single woman in Washington D.C. who sublets a room in her small apartment during the wartime housing crisis. Her new roommate, the deadpan eccentric Mr. Dingle (Coburn, who won an Oscar for his rascally performance), dislikes her stiff, bureaucratic beau and takes it upon himself to find her an appropriate boyfriend, namely the soft-spoken industrial engineer Joe Carter (Joel McCrea), whom Dingle puts up in his half of the apartment. Stevens takes a measured approach to comedy: The first morning with all three in the cramped kitchen turns a painstakingly organized schedule into a chaotic free-for-all that just gets funnier as the anarchy builds. Even more effective is the contrast between the charmingly effusive Arthur and McCrea's sauntering style, which creates not so much sparks as a slow simmer as they continue to spend time together. One of the finest craftsmen of Hollywood's Golden Age, Stevens shapes this lightweight screenplay into one of the most delectable romantic comedies of all time. --Sean Axmaker
About this product: For One More Day revolves around reunions: producer Oprah Winfrey with author Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie) and actors Michael Imperioli with Ellen Burstyn (The Five People You Meet in Heaven). Mostly, it reunites a son with his mother. In this smaller-scale follow-up, alcoholic ex-baseball player Charles "Chick" Benetto (Imperioli) relates his story to a writer (Emily Wickersham, Imperioli's Sopranos co-star). Nine years before, he attempted suicide after his estranged wife, Catherine (Cara Seymour), neglected to invite him to their daughter's wedding. Delirious after an auto accident, he wishes he could've spent one more day with his late mother. A visit to their old house brings back childhood memories (Imperioli's son, Vadim, plays Benetto as a boy). The next thing he knows, Posey (Burstyn) appears before him, looking just as she did the last time he saw her. Benetto wonders if she's a ghost or a delusion. While they reminisce, the narrative shuffles between the three time periods (Samantha Mathis plays the young Posey). Benetto remembers the way his mother doted and his father, Len (Scott Cohen), dispensed the discipline. He also recalls turning against Posey when their marriage went south. Loosely inspired by It's a Wonderful Life and originally broadcast during the holiday season, Albom's adaptation argues that it's never too late to change and that no one ever really knows their parents. The multi-layered structure confuses as first, but For One More Day makes perfect sense by the end, and Imperioli and Burstyn create a convincing mother-son relationship. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
About this product: A Hundred Miles or More: Live From The Tracking Room features Alison Krauss, one of the purest and most original voices in American music, performing songs from her critically acclaimed solo album A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection with members of her highly-regarded band Union Station and special guest musicians. One of the stand out features of this DVD is the only live performance of the country smash hit duet "Whiskey Lullaby" with country superstar Brad Paisley. It also features memorable duets legendary singer/songwriter James Taylor, British rocker John Waite, and an infectious take on "Sawing on the Strings" with bluegrass guitar legend Tony Rice and musicians Sam Bush and Stuart Duncan joining Union Station.
1 You're Just A Country Boy 2 Away Down The River 3 How's The World Treating You - Alison Krauss and James Taylor 4 Sawing On The Strings 5 Shadows 6 Whiskey Lullaby - Alison Krauss and Brad Paisley 7 Jacob's Dream 8 Lay Down Beside Me - John Waite and Alison Krauss 9 Simple Love
About this product: Produced by Emmy-winner David Wolper (Roots), I Will Fight No More Forever powerfully reenacts the heroic and tragic true story of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians, whose land in Oregon's Wallowa Valley was opened in 1877 to white settlement by President Ulysses S. Grant. The Nez Perce are given 30 days in which to relocate to the Lapwai Reservation. Chief Joseph (Ned Romero), a respected leader, initially advocates peace, but over the course of the grueling 1,700-mile journey, Joseph shrewdly outmaneuvers ten pursuing units of the U.S. Army. Academy Awardâ nominee James Whitmore costars as compassionate General Oliver Howard, who is duty-bound to carry out orders he considers unjust. Sam Elliott also stars as his aide, Captain Wood.
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