New Releases for November 28 2023

BARBARELLA (1968)

Slip out of your spacesuit and into something more comfortable! It's time to join Barbarella on a series of cosmic adventures in this Dino De Laurentiis production directed by Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman) and starring Jane Fonda as the intergalactic glamour puss created by comic book artist Jean-Claude Forest. It is the year 40,000AD. When evil scientist Durand Durand (Milo O'Shea) creates a deadly weapon with the potential to cause mass devastation, the President of Earth dispatches Barbarella (Fonda) to hunt him down. Crash-landing in an icy wilderness somewhere within the Tau Ceti planetary system, Barbarella is rescued by Mark Hand (Ugo Tognazzi, La Cage Aux Folles) and guided by the blind angel Pygar (John Phillip Law, Danger: Diabolik) to Durand's lair in Sogo, a city of corruption and debauchery, where an encounter with the Great Tyrant Black Queen (Anita Pallenberg, Performance) and her minions throws her mission into jeopardy. With an all-star cast including David Hemmings and Marcel Marceau, and glorious retro-futuristic costumes and art design dripping with 60s psychedelia, Barbarella defined an era and has never looked better than this brand new 4K restoration, loaded with never-before-seen bonus features! (4K ULTRA HD and BLU-RAY)

DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. / ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (1980)

It sparked riots on 42nd Street, spawned a generation of gorehounds on VHS, forever set an insane standard for Italian zombie/cannibal carnage worldwide, and is now presented in UHD: Ian McCulloch (Zombie), Alexandra Delli Colli (The New York Ripper), Sherry Buchanan (Tentacles) and Donald O'Brien (Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) star in this unabashed EuroTrash orgy of gut-munching, eyeball-gouging and face-chopping originally known as Zombie Holocaust, which a notorious American distributor would then re-edit, re-title as Doctor Butcher M.D. and re-release as a certified grindhouse masterpiece. Severin Films now presents both films scanned in 4K from original vault elements discovered in Manhattan and Rome with 4 hours of archival and all-new Special Features that reveal the unbelievable truth behind its bizarre history, infamous marketing and still-deviant legacy. (4K ULTRA HD and BLU-RAY)

COMPUTER CHESS (2013)

Directed by Andrew Bujalski (Support the Girls, Mutual Appreciation, Funny Ha Ha) and the Winner of the Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Computer Chess is an off-kilter comedy set during a weekend tournament for chess software programmers in the early 1980s. Shot on vintage video equipment, it transports viewers to a moment when the contest between technology and the human spirit seemed a little more up for grabs. We get to know the eccentric geniuses possessed of the vision to teach a CPU to defeat man at his own game, laying the groundwork for artificial intelligence as we know it. (BLU-RAY)

BLACKHAT (2015)

Michael Mann (Thief, Collateral), the acclaimed auteur celebrated for his action panache and commitment to cinematic realism, turns his hand to depicting the high-stakes world of global cybercrime in Blackhat, a contemporary, ripped-from-the-headlines twist on the espionage thriller. Chris Hemsworth (The Avengers, Extraction) stars as Nick Hathaway, a gifted hacker currently serving a lengthy prison sentence. When a Hong Kong nuclear plant goes into meltdown after its security is penetrated, Chinese army cybersecurity captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang, Lust, Caution) offers his old college roommate a deal: help identify and apprehend the culprit in exchange for his own freedom. What follows is a frenetic, globe trotting race against time to avert disaster, fraught with hidden agendas and ever-shifting loyalties. Praised for its unusually accurate portrayal of cybersecurity, Blackhat boasts an impressive international cast, including Tang Wei (Decision to Leave), Viola Davis (The Woman King) and Yorick van Wageningen (The Girl with he Dragon Tattoo), and showcases one of cinema's finest filmmakers bringing the skills he honed during a long and storied career to bear on a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon. Also includes Mann's Director's Cut. (4K ULTRA HD and BLU-RAY)