Thriller
Color, R (mature themes, language, violence, sexual situations, nudity), 145 min.,
First Run: L, Oct. 2001, $6.6 mil.
Cast: Naomi Watts (Tank Girl), Laura Elena-Harring (Little Nicky), Justin Theroux
(American Psycho), Ann Miller (On The Town)
Director: David Lynch
Story Line: A fresh-faced young actress (Watts) with dreams of becoming a star arrives in Hollywood, where she meets a woman with amnesia who has just escaped an attempted murder on Mulholland Drive. However, is everything what it seems to be?

Bottom Line: Following his G-rated and as-conventional-as-he-can-be "family film" The Straight Story (1999), iconoclast filmmaker Lynch returns to his by-now-familiar dark and unpredictable stomping ground with Mulholland Drive, for which he picked up an Oscar nomination for best director. A young cast of relative unknowns sprinkled with a typically Lynchian selection of familiar older faces (including Robert Forster, Dan Hedaya, Lee Grant, Chad Everett and an outstanding Miller) go through the paces in this bizarre Hollywood parable that begins on firm ground but becomes increasingly nonlinear and--dare we say?--surreal as it proceeds. And then, at the two-thirds mark, the director fully opens his Pandora's Box of trademark weirdness, and we're plunged into Lynch Land. We won't even try to explain what it all means. That said, there's something to be commended about a filmmaker whose cryptic but provocative approach allows viewers to draw their own conclusions. Let the Lynch mob know the man's latest has arrived

Daisies (1966)

Bottom Line: Once widely acclaimed as a masterpiece of avant-garde cinema, this 1966 specimen of the Czech New Wave will irritate more of today's renters than it will delight. When it was originally released, the quaintly anarchistic Daisies seemed like an artistically valid response to Soviet-imposed repression in Czechoslovakia. Cheerfully and unapologetically surrealistic, Chytilova's daffy film wowed the intelligentsia. Today, however, American audiences won't have much patience for her succession of beautifully designed but emotionally parched vignettes, the striking visuals and discordant editing of which might fascinate some viewers, but at 74 minutes, Daisies will seem very long to most. It's for Eastern European cinephiles alone.

Children of Paradise - Criterion Collection (1946)

Poetic realism reaches sublime heights with Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis), the ineffably witty tale of a woman loved by four different men. Deftly entwining theater, literature, music, and design, director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert resurrect the tumultuous world of 19th-century Paris, teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this milestone of cinema in a new high-definition film transfer made from the restored negative.

Blood for Dracula - Criterion Collection (1974)

Paul Morrissey’s moralistic take on modern values is a brash mixture of humor, horror, and sex – and a revelation to fans of the horror film. In Blood for Dracula, the infamous count searches Italy for virgin blood. Criterion presents the long-suppressed director’s cut of this outrageous cult classic in a new widescreen transfer.

The FACES in this movie are AMAZING to watch. Realistic, scary, funny, and sexy.

The Confessions of Robert Crumb

STARRING ROBERT CRUMB, ALINE KOMINSKY CRUMB

"Crumb is the Breughel of the twentieth century."
—ROBERT HUGHES, TIME
Recently immortalized in a feature film from Terry Zwigoff, this documentary--the only officially sanctioned film about his life-- reveals the life of underground comic pioneer Robert Crumb. Crumb used comic books as a confessional for the perverse fantasies and visions that formed in reaction to a hostile world. As a child, Crumb avidly read and began to create comic books with his brothers—and ever since—his style has continued to evolve. He emerged among the hippies at Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco, and Crumb continues as an iconoclast who’s loved, hated, feared and misunderstood by an ever growing number of readers. The Confessions of Robert Crumb tells the story of the incredible artistry that shocks and satirizes every strata and dark hole of society. 1987 • Great Britain • Runtime 60 • Color • DVD •

Home Vision Entertainment Distributes Titles On Vhs/Dvd

Sundance Channel will partner with The Criterion Collection, the preeminent home entertainment resource for classic and restored films, to present landmark works of world cinema in Sundance Channel Presents Classic World Cinema from The Criterion Collection.  This special thirteen-week series launches Thursday, June 7^th at 9:00 p.m., with a different title airing every Thursday night. Included in the series are works by renowned directors such as Jean Renoir, Roman Polanski, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini.  The program launches on June 7 at 9pm with L'Avventura  (Italy, 1960), Michelangelo Antonioni's meditation on spiritual and moral emptiness set in motion by the mysterious disappearance of a wealthy woman during a yachting trip. Read More....

When the $130 million smash hit "LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER," with Oscar winner Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, arrived on DVD Nov 15, 2001, Paramount Home Entertainment included a groundbreaking DVD-ROM online experience. This experience is exclusively available via the DVD itself and runs the entire length of the film, allowing fans to play, race and shoot their way through the movie along with Lara Croft. Read More.....

Heritage: Civilization and the Jews

Winner of the coveted Peabody Award, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews is the monumental nine-part series hosted by former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Abba Eban. This epic production from public television station Thirteen/WNET New York traces the history of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present, telling their story as part of the broader history of Western civilization. Five years in the making, and filmed on four continents, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews became a landmark, a television portrait of the Jewish experience with a scope and depth that is unlikely to ever be duplicated. Now, after a national public television broadcast, it will be available for the first time from Home Vision Entertainment in a dramatically expanded form including VHS, and on DVD with an interactive DVD-ROM.