New Releases for August 27 2024

REAL LIFE (1979) (CRITERION) 

Decades before reality television reigned supreme, there was Albert Brooks’s debut feature, Real Life, a brilliantly deadpan, stylistically innovative satire about the perils and pitfalls of trying to capture the truth on film. The writer-director plays “Albert Brooks,” a narcissistic Hollywood filmmaker who plans to spend the year in Phoenix embedded with Warren and Jeanette Yeager (Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain) and their two children, deploying an arsenal of cutting-edge equipment (including the over-the-head Ettinauer 226XL camera) to capture an American family’s ordinary day-to-day. Chronicling the project’s disastrous fallout, as the meddlesome Albert can’t help getting too close to his subjects, this pioneering mockumentary is more relevant than ever amid today’s media landscape. (BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

SUPERSOUL BROTHER AND THE FILMS OF RENE MARTINEZ, JR. (1973–1978)

Let's get w-i-i-ild! SUPER SOUL BROTHER AND THE FILMS OF RENE MARTINEZ, JR. collects the anti-dimensional filmography of enigmatic, Miami-based DIY filmmaker Martinez for the first time on home video. In SUPER SOUL BROTHER (1978), naive wino Steve ("Wildman" Steve Gallon, PETEY WHEATSTRAW) is injected with a serum that gives him superhuman strength, a catch phrase ("I'm w-i-i-ild!"), and a quest to battle the mad scientists and crooks who made it all possible. THE GUY FROM HARLEM (1977) finds gritty private investigator Al Connors (Loye Hawkins) locked in mortal combat with crime kingpin Big Daddy in an explosion of cocaine, kung-fu, and funk jams. Finally, ROAD OF DEATH (1973) follows local rockers the Joe Banana Band and friends (including Carol Conners and Jack Birch, future parents of Thora "GHOST WORLD" Birch) as they seek revenge against a biker gang for their hideous crimes—complete with a shocking climax that predicts the final scene in Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF. Only in Florida. (BLU-RAY)

OUR WORLD IS DROWNING AND GOING TO HELL: THE UNDERGROUND FILMS OF RICHARD BAYLOR (2024)

Exploring themes of isolation, suicide, voyeurism, murder, sexual aberrations, and the condemnation of organized religion, Michigan born, UK based filmmaker and provocateur Richard Baylor sent shockwaves throughout the repressive and censorious '90s British film scene with his subversive and button-pushing underground video works. Drawing inspiration from the short and shocking films of Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, and their contemporaries from New York's Cinema of Transgression scene, Baylor became an honorary member of the movement by creating similarly insurgent works on video in his native Ipswich, England, culling collaborators from the local punk rock and industrial noise communities and employing acting performances and soundtrack contributions from members of Extreme Noise Terror, Whiteslug, and Optimum Wound Profile. (BLU-RAY)

ALPHAVILLE (1965) (2 DISKS)

From Jean-Luc Godard, the influential filmmaker behind the French New Wave classics, Breathless, Contempt, Band of Outsiders and Pierrot Le Fou, comes this futuristic noir masterpiece. American secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine, Attack of the Robots) is sent to the distant space city of Alphaville where he must find a missing person and kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60. Anna Karina (The Nun) and Akim Tamiroff (Touch of Evil) co-star in this cockeyed fusion of science-fiction with pulp characters and surrealist poetry. Godard’s irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Beautifully shot in glorious black-and-white by Raoul Coutard (Jules and Jim, First Name: Carmen). (BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

LINGUINI INCIDENT (1991) (DIRECTOR'S CUT)

Lucy (Rosanna Arquette, Pulp Fiction) is an underpaid waitress at “Dali”, a terminally hip New York City restaurant, who’s seriously in need of cash. Dali’s new, mysterious, charming (and very in debt) bartender, Monte (David Bowie, The Hunger) needs to marry someone, anyone, by the end of the week… or else. Together they join forces— along with Lucy’s lingerie designing best friend, Viv (Eszter Balint, Stranger Than Paradise) — to rob the popular eatery and solve their financial woes. However these three are far from master criminals and they soon learn that in robberies, as in love, things never go as planned.

This “lively and amusing” (Los Angeles Times) romantic caper co-stars Andre Gregory (Demolition Man), Buck Henry (Heaven Can Wait) and Academy Award® winner Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God) and features “David Bowie’s zaniest most underrated film role” (Collider) in this engaging romantic comedy from acclaimed director Richard Shepard (The Matador) in this never before seen director’s cut. (BLU-RAY and DVD)