Fuller, Samuel

A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies

"I can only talk about what has moved me or intrigued me," says filmmaker Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull) at the beginning of this four-hour documentary about his passion for U.S. cinema. "I can't really be objective here." Hallelujah! A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies is the perfect antidote to the forced and artificial doctrine of the American Film Institute's so-called 100 best films. The AFI's English cousin, the British Film Institute, did a brilliant thing in enlisting Scorsese--probably the most famous student of cinema in the U.S.--to open up and speak at length for this project about the history of artistic survival among Hollywood directors. Working with cowriter and codirector Michael Henry Wilson, Scorsese takes a highly intuitive and heartfelt approach in describing how a number of filmmakers--some famous and some forgotten--carefully layered their visions into their work, often against the great resistance or eccentric whims of powerful producers. Film clips are plentiful, but they are also more than window dressing for nostalgia buffs. For instance, it's not unusual for Scorsese to return repeatedly to the same film (such as Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful) in order to make a series of connecting, deepening points. In the end, this work is truly one of Scorsese's most direct bridges to his imagination and personality, and it has the sort of restorative properties that can make a cinephile wearied by today's junk culture fall in love with movies again. A companion book is also available. --Tom Keogh

Martin Scorsese narrates an overview of American film history, beginning with D.W. Griffith and ending in 1969.

Pierrot le Fou - Criterion Collection

Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a man who has married for money and is terribly disillusioned with his life. When forced to go to a dinner party he does not want to attend, he throws a temper tantrum and returns home early. When driving Marianne (Anna Karina), the babysitter, back home, they fall in love and decide to run away from Paris. They embark on a series of escapades that begins with running illegal arms for extra cash and runs the gamut: love, death, ennui, boat chases, murder, betrayal, revenge, lost cash, and almost anything else you can think of, and all with a sense of reality that is an interesting contrast to the typical American film. Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless, Alphaville) blends different genres with great success and achieves moments of cinematic poetry in this quasi-epic of modern malaise. Also a cameo by the Hollywood director Samuel Fuller is something to watch for. Be aware that Godard is for people seriously interested in cinematic art. --James McGrath

Dissatisfied in marriage and life Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina) and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard's tenth feature in six years is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire politics and comic-book aesthetics as well as a violent zigzag tale of as Godard called them "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French new wave and one last frolic before Godard moved ever further into radical cinema. System Requirements:Running time: 110 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN/FRENCH Rating: NR UPC: 715515027823 Manufacturer No: CC1738DDVD

The American Friend

A thriller that's nearly devoid of thrills? That's not a complaint--it's what makes The American Friend one of the most stylish (and, at the time, most expensive) films to emerge from the New German Cinema of the 1970s. Loosely adapting Patricia Highsmith's mystery novel Ripley's Game, director Wim Wenders shifted priority from plotting to character, emphasizing a richly colorful and atmospheric approach to locations in Hamburg, where a picture-framer (Bruno Ganz) is lured into an assassination scheme involving a mysterious Frenchman (Gerard Blain) and the titular American friend, Tom Ripley (played by Dennis Hopper, a far cry from Matt Damon's portrayal of the same character in The Talented Mr. Ripley). The plotting is vague to the point of irrelevance; Wenders prefers to maintain the aura of mystery, as opposed to generating any conventional suspense, and expresses his affection for American movies by casting favorite directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller in pivotal supporting roles. The result is an intoxicating example of cinematic cross-pollination. --Jeff Shannon

The End of Violence

If Wim Wenders falls prey to overambition in this sprawling story of identity, conscience, and voyeurism in modern Los Angeles, it pays off in a richness absent from so many of Hollywood's safe, sterile films. Bill Pullman is the ostensible hero, a Roger Corman-like producer abruptly kidnapped by a pair of dim thugs who prepare to kill him in the shadow of the L.A. freeway. Gabriel Byrne watches, powerless, from on high, a meek Big Brother wired up through surveillance cameras hidden throughout the city. When Pullman disappears into the faceless population of L.A., adopted by a family of Hispanic gardeners, he begins his own covert investigation in parallel with the official inquiry conducted by movie-buff cop Loren Dean. Ostensibly a thriller, the film has little onscreen violence, but shadowy threats prowl around the edges, and echoes of unseen murders permeate the picture. The narrative is a tangle, neglecting characters and leaving the vast conspiracy more a suggestion than a fully conceived plot, possibly the victim of last-minute reworking after a disastrous showing at Cannes. But Wenders's unerring eye for image and color creates a stunning, often startlingly beautiful film of unsettling menace and haunting mystery, and his generosity of character fills this world with vivid personalities. Cult director Sam Fuller and character actor Henry Silva have small roles, and Traci Lind costars as a young stuntwoman with ambitions of an acting career. As always, Ry Cooder's score is superb. --Sean Axmaker

Celebrated director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings Bill Pullman, Andie MacDowell, and Gabriel Byrne together in an electrifying suspense-thriller that is an "audacious and seductive" (Los Angeles Times) tale of paranoia and murder that Gene Siskel calls "one of my favorite filmsof the year!" Manufacturing on-screen violence has created an entertainment empire for fast-lane Hollywood producer Mike Max (Pullman). But when Max comes into possession of details concerning a top-secret, anti-crime satellite surveillance system, the information turns this master of imaginary mayhem into a real-life victim. Escaping into L.A.'s shadowy underworld, Max is forced into a heart-stopping confrontation with forces beyond his comprehension and violence beyond his deadliest fictional creations. Is this the end of violence...or just the beginning?

Hammett

Pierrot Le Fou

Jean-Luc Godard has been called the most self-conscious, the most realistic, and the most modern of filmmakers. To his appreciators this means he owns up to the fact that a movie is a movie, that at any moment in one of his films you know you're watching a film by Jean-Luc Godard. His films are self-aware in a way that films never were before him. Pierrot le Fou achieves a rare spontaneity and naturalness, largely due to the presence of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, but also because of Godard's willingness to let go of any pretense to an illusionary or mimetic style, so-called "realism." What story there is has Pierrot (Belmondo) escaping from his boring life along with Marianne Renoir (Karina), who is chased by gangsters. But this is just an excuse to film a kind of essay to lost love, a poem to Karina that is delightful. If "Pierrot goes wild," then so does Godard, with Belmondo standing in for him in his pursuit of and journey with Karina. Godard is not for everyone, admittedly, but for those with the wherewithal to enjoy his films, they are receiving new life on DVD. Whatever coterie taste survives today has been distributed in multiple across the Internet and via the agency of video rental bins, perhaps all the more potent for that reach. Let's hope so. --Jim Gay

Tigrero

In 1954, legendary filmmaker Samuel Fuller (PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, SHOCK CORRIDOR) was sent by 20th Century Fox to the most remote regions of the Amazon to scout locations for his upcoming film TIGRERO!, a rousing adventure tale that was to star John Wayne, Ava Gardner and Tyrone Power. Fuller brought with him 75 cigars, two cases of whiskey, a gun, and a 16mm camera. There Fuller befriended the Karaja Indians, lived with them, and photographed their ceremonies and way of life. Reluctantly, Fuller returned to Hollywood but the film was never made.

Forty years later, Sam Fuller returns to the Brazilian jungle, bringing with him his friend and fellow filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (DEAD MAN, DOWN BY LAW), a camera crew and the footage he'd shot those many years earlier. The ultimate storyteller, Sam tells Jim about his time with the Karaja, his career in Hollywood and his unique philosophy of life. They show the Karaja the footage Sam shot, conjuring up their friends and loved ones, some who's faces they haven't seen for decades. TIGRERO: A FILM THAT WAS NEVER MADE is priceless travelogue, a meditation on the power of film and the magic of memory, and a loving portrait of a gentle and spiritual culture.

Golem, the Spirit of Exile

Golem: The Petrified Garden

Hammett [Region 2]

Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages: o Spanish (subtitles) o English (Dolby Digital 2.0) o Spanish (Mono) Synopsis: Wim Wenders' film version of Joe Gores' novel, a conflation of elements of the writer's life with episodes from his work, is a fascinatingly stylized artifact which will likely be of more interest to the director's fans than Hammett's. More a meditation on the detective genre than an actual detective film, it bends Gores' novel to the deliberate pacing and meandering plotting of Wenders' characteristic theme of perennial wanderjahre. The casting of an actor with a persona as vulnerable as Frederic Forrest to play the laconic, hard-nosed Hammett of reality is just one of many unusual choices that take one into the realm of cult film and Marilu Henner, Forrest's wife of the time, also seems out of place here. But the rest of the cast, which includes veterans of Hollywood's golden age like Sylvia Sidney, Elisha Cook Jr., and Royal Dano, acquit themselves well. Philip Lathrop, a specialist in noir and crime films, and the 79-year-old Joseph Biroc, whose last feature this was, combine their talents in the film's stunningly dream-like visual texture. Special Features: o Filmographies o Interactive Menu o Photo Gallery o Scene Access o Trailer(s)