Rushmore

It’s still as quirky and charming as you remember it to be, but what makes settling in to watch this Criterion Collection edition of the Wes Anderson’s 1998 comedy so cool now is getting a chance to watch the amazing Bill Murray give one of the best performances of his film career. In the movie, Murray plays Herman Blume, a millionaire steel maker whose life is on the skids. He’s got a wife he doesn’t love, children he can’t believe are his and an outlook on life so bleak that if it wasn’t for booze, he’d probably have already killed himself. Then he meets perpetual Rushmore student Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and rediscovers that there’s more to life than drinking and ignoring the people around him. Murray brings such a perfect blend of comedy and pathos to the part that it gives Anderson’s quirky comedy the heart it needs. 

The Rolling Stones Some Girls Live in Texas 1978

Talk about catching lightning in a bottle. When they hit the stage in Texas for this concert, The Rolling Stones didn’t surround themselves with a lot of showy stage sets or pyrotechnics. They didn’t have host of backup musicians playing behind them. It was just the band and a batch of new songs from their latest release. Ten minutes into it, you realize that’s all they needed. The year 1978 was a proving ground for The Rolling Stones, who were feeling the pressure of becoming passé as the punk rock movement came along, so there’s a fierceness to the band’s playing in the show that reminds you how good they could be when they wanted to be. The extras showing them playing on Saturday Night Life are a bit redundant, and the sketch of Jagger being interviewed by Dan Aykroyd as Tom Snider is embarrassing, but the 2011 interview Jagger gives about the show, and the band in 1978, is illuminating.

Helldriver

If ever a movie needed to come with its own splatter guard, this is it. As anyone who has seen some of his earlier films, like Tokyo Gore Police or The Machine Girl, will tell you, director Yoshihiro Nishimura has never been shy about spraying buckets of blood and gore across the screen. They will also tell you that he does it with such absolute glee that it’s hard to be too horrified by what you see, as long as you’re not too squeamish to begin with. Helldriver takes place in an apocalyptic future where half of Japan has been turned into crazed alien zombies and the other half seem to be addicted to the powder made from the ground horns that sprout from the alien zombie’s foreheads. It’s up to Kika (Yumiko Hara), a beautiful high school girl armed with a chainsaw sword powered by an artificial heart, to save the day by killing the zombie queen Rikka (Eihi Shiina). It’s a wild ride.

New York Dolls – Lookin’ Fine on Television

The actual quality of the performances captured in this 70s documentary of the legendary New York Dolls is anything but ‘fine,’ but somehow the rawness of the performances, as well as the rawness of the band members in the interview segments, is a perfect match with the music they were making. The Dolls were always a smashup of glamour and trash: it’s hard to be anything else when you’re a six-foot dude from the Staten Island like David Johansen who just happens to put on a dress, heels and a lot of makeup before he steps to the microphone to sing. The best thing about this film, shot by legendary rock photographer Bob Gruen and his wife Nadya, is that it captures The Dolls in the moment just as they were reaching the peak of the new wave they were riding and makes that moment feel as fresh as it did back then.

The Littlest Angel

Unless you have young children, this animated tale from director Dave Kim (Elf Bowling the Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike) may be the last thing you would think of sitting down to watch. But don’t let the cute angel and dog on the cover keep you away; it’s actually a fun little film. Based on the best-selling children’s book by Charles Tazewell, it’s the story of a young angel who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble in heaven. Putting his restlessness down to some things he left behind on earth, the Littlest Angel goes back to set things right. Although the film is obviously based on Christian beliefs, the religious aspect of the tale is never hammered home too hard. The end result is a fine film for the family to enjoy no matter what their beliefs may be.

A Passionate Woman

After years spent as a pop singing diva and a sci-fi cultural icon, for her work as Rose in the Dr. Who series, Billie Piper needed to find a grown-up role to prove she was more than just a pretty face, and that’s just what this BBC mini-series gives her. In it, she plays Betty, a young mother and housewife circa 1950s London. Trapped in dull relationship, Betty finds passion with a downstairs neighbor named Craze (Theo James), whose marriage to a local girl is equally troubled. Piper is captivating as the young woman discovering her passionate side, and there’s real chemistry between her and James. She also has a knack for making the domestic suffocation of her character palpable to the audience. Betty’s youthful indiscretions are only half the story, though, as the series also lets us see what her life is like as an older woman (played by Sue Johnston). The second part of the story stands on its own, but it’s ten times as effective to watch because of the strength of Piper’s performance.

Blue Velvet: 25th Anniversary Edition

It’s one of the weirdest – and most rewarding – movie experiences you can have, only now it’s even more intense thanks to close to an hour of new ‘lost footage’ contained in this excellent 25^th anniversary blu-ray of the David Lynch classic. What’s Blue Velvet about? Words can hardly describe what you will see – let alone feel – when you watch it. It’s a dark mystery about a night club singer (Isabella Rossellini) being blackmailed by a deranged psychopath (Dennis Hopper) with a passion for listening to classic crooners and huffing oxygen while committing unspeakable acts of violence. Blue Velvet is also a sweetly innocent love story about a two crazy kids falling for each other as they try to unravel the mystery that starts when one of them (Kyle MacLachlan) finds a severed ear rotting in the weeds of an abandoned house lot. Like we said, words don’t do it justice, Just check out the Siskel & Ebert review on the extras. Even they don’t know how to describe what Lynch has created.