Ortega, Chick

Two Days in Paris

Julie Delpy, having spent the entirety of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset walking around European cities and talking, decides to take hold of the reins herself in Two Days in Paris. For this somewhat similar gabfest, Delpy writes, directs, and casts herself as one half of a neurotically fun couple, who stop over to visit her parents for a couple of days in (duh) Paris. Adam Goldberg brings his shaggy worrywart persona as Delpy's better half--and why shouldn't he worry? Her parents seem happy to play pranks on him, and Delpy's ex-boyfriends materialize in every arrondissement. Despite their differences in style, these two have enjoyable chemistry together, and Goldberg is gifted with razor-sharp timing. Good to see Delpy, who has often been tapped for ethereal types, playing a feistier character than usual. It doesn't hurt anything at all that they are walking and talking through Paris, a city with an inexhaustible number of attractive angles. At some point you may begin to realize that the movie doesn't seem to be about very much, and without Linklater's ingenious fixed-time structure, there's little urgency to the ongoing conversation. If you haven't seen the Linklater films, absolutely check those out first, and consider this a photogenic side dish. --Robert Horton

Beyond Two Days in Paris on DVD

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Stills from Two Days in Paris (Click for larger image)

Adam Goldberg delivers "an uproarious study in transatlantic culture panic" (MTV) as Jack an anxious hypochondriac-prone New Yorker vacationing throughout Europe with his breezy free-spirited Parisian girlfriend Marion (Delpy). But when they make a two-day stop in Marion's hometown the couple's romantic trip takes a turn as Jack is exposed to Marion's sexually perverse and emotionally unstable family her coarse temperament with cab drivers and her ex-lovers... her many ex-lovers. Culture-shocked and ego-bruised Jack finds himself hoping that their relationship can survive as their love is revealed in surprising ways.System Requirements:Running Time: 100 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/ROMANTIC COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 024543486688 Manufacturer No: 2248668

Delicatessen

The title credit for Delicatessen reads "Presented by Terry Gilliam," and it's easy to understand why the director of Brazil was so supportive of this outrageously black French comedy from 1991. Like Gilliam, French codirectors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro have wildly inventive imaginations that gravitate to the darker absurdities of human behavior, and their visual extravagance is matched by impressive technical skill. Here, making their feature debut, Jeunet and Caro present a postapocalyptic scenario set entirely in a dank and gloomy building where the landlord operates a delicatessen on the ground floor. But this is an altogether meatless world, so the butcher-landlord keeps his customers happy by chopping unsuspecting victims into cutlets, and he's sharpening his knife for a new tenant (French comic actor Dominque Pinon) who's got the hots for the butcher's nearsighted daughter! Delicatessen is a feast (if you will) of hilarious vignettes, slapstick gags, and sweetly eccentric characters, including a man in a swampy room full of frogs, a woman doggedly determined to commit suicide (she never gets its right), and a pair of brothers who make toy sound boxes that "moo" like cows. It doesn't amount to much as a story, but that hardly matters; this is the kind of comedy that springs from a unique wellspring of imagination and inspiration, and it's handled with such visual virtuosity that you can't help but be mesmerized. There's some priceless comedy happening here, some of which is so inventive that you may feel the urge to stand up and cheer. --Jeff Shannon

From Jean-Pierre Jeunet the award-winning director of AMELIE comes a unique and surreal dark comedy that received overwhelming critical acclaim! In a post-apocalyptic society where meat is scarce cannibalism is no longer unsavory. And when a young ex-clown takes a job in a dilapidated deli he's completely unaware that the butcher plans to serve him to the building's bizarre tenants! But when the butcher s nearsighted daughter falls for the clown she'll go to absurd lengths to foil her father's plan! Loaded with tasty bonus features this bonafide cult classic now premieres on DVD!Bonus Features:1. Feature Commentary By Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet2. Fine-Cooked Meats: A Nod To DELICATESSEN3. The Archives Of Jean-Pierre Jeunet4. Theatrical Trailer5. DELICATESSEN TEASERSSystem Requirements:Running Time 99 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 786936694482 Manufacturer No: 04962200

Wings of Desire (Special Edition)

"There are angels over the streets of Berlin," quotes the movie poster, but these are like no angels you've ever seen. Bundled in dark overcoats, they watch over the city with ears open to the heartbeat of the human soul, listening to the internal musings and yearnings of earthbound humans like existential detectives. In these delicate, astounding scenes we float through the thoughts of dozens Berlin citizens, from the weary and worn to the hopeful and young, as the angels record the magic moments for some heavenly record. But when Damiel (the empathic and sensitive Bruno Ganz) falls in love with an angel of another sort, the lonely trapeze artist Marion (willowy, sad-eyed Solveig Dommartin), he gives up the contemplation and observation of life to experience it himself.

Wim Wenders's most purely romantic film is like poetry on celluloid, a celebration of the transient and fragile moments of being human: the warmth of a cup of coffee on a cold day, the embrace of a friend, the touch of a lover, the rapture of love. Opening with an angel's-eye view of Berlin in silvery black and white (delicately captured by the great cinematographer Henri Alekan, who photographed Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast 40 years earlier), it transforms into a gauzy color world when Damiel "crosses over" by sheer will. Peter Falk plays himself as a fallen angel with a special sensitivity for celestial visitors ("I can't see you, but I know you're there," he proclaims), and Otto Sander, whose smiling eyes brighten a face etched by eons of waiting and watching, is Damiel's partner. Wenders made a sequel in 1993, Faraway, So Close, and Hollywood remade the film as City of Angels with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. --Sean Axmaker

From Oscar®-nominated* writer/director Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club) comes this "exhilarating" (Vanity Fair) and life-affirming tale that won him the 1987 Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival and inspired City of Angels. Co-written with Peter Handke, this "enchanting" (The New York Times) film about the joy of life is "that rare thing a work of true originality" (Newsweek)! Damiel (Bruno Ganz) is a lonely angel who roams the streets of Berlin providing comfort to mortals in need. But when he is drawn into the life of a beautifuland troubledtrapeze artist, he experiences love for the first time and does everything in his power to be seen, heard and felt by her. Jeopardizing his divine position, Damiel is faced with a most difficult decision: either give up love or lose his eternal wings forever! *1999: Documentary Feature, Buena Vista Social Club

Delicatessen (Special Edition)

Bruce Won arrives in America in search of an American G.I. who saved his life in the Korean War. He meets an orphan boy and together they land themselves in a string of outrageous situations. This high-strung farce culminates when a case of mistaken identity leads a gang of thugs to think Bruce is a karate master. They arrange a nationally-televised match which pits our hero against a monstrous brute, and Bruce is beaten to a bloody pulp...

2 Days In Paris [Region 3]

Un indien dans la ville [Region 2]

Until the End of the World

Shot on location in numerous countries, this ambitious Wim Wenders fantasy takes Sam Neill, Solveig Dommartin, William Hurt, and a ragtag group in pursuit around the world and back again. Though set in 1999 under the shadow of impending disaster as a wobbly nuclear satellite threatens to Chernobyl the planet, the leisurely gait of their worldwide escapades has a distinctly '40s-era decadence. The ultimate object of their quest is a machine that records visual information from one person and reconstructs it in the brains of others--granting the miraculous power of sight to the blind for one thing, but even more mystically, enabling a person's dreams to be recorded. When the film seeks resolutions on the most intimate questions of the human soul which dovetail with the possibility of a destroyed world, the film is hampered by the VHS running time, which subtracts several hours from the laser disc version. But numerous joys, not least among them Jeanne Moreau and Max von Sydow as Hurt's parents, inhabit this thought-provoking film. --Alan E. Rapp

Un indien dans la ville [Region 2]

Wings of Desire [Region 2]

Foutaises [Region 2]