New to Rent By Mail for January 15 2024

CITY OF LOST CHILDREN (1995)

A dazzling fantasy adventure from Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, creators of Delicatessen=. They bring their surreal vision to the story of Krank, a tormented scientist who sets about kidnapping local children in order to steal their dreams and so reverse his accelerated ageing process. When Krank’s henchmen kidnap his brother, local fisherman and former circus strongman One (Hellboy’s Ron Perlman) sets out on a journey to Krank’s nightmarish laboratory, accompanied by a little orphan girl called Miette. With stunning visuals from Darius Khondji (Se7en), costumes from Jean Paul Gaultier and a haunting score by Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Dr.) (4K ULTRA HD)

GORGO (1961)

This time it's London, not Tokyo, that has a bad case of "pest trouble." The crew of a salvage ship ensnares a monstrous sea creature that's dubbed "Gorgo" and winds up on public display in Battersea Park. But it turns out that Gorgo is just a baby, and his 200-foot-tall mama is about to tear up the town in order to rescue her kidnapped offspring. (BLU-RAY and 4K ULTRA HD)

MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001)

A stylish and seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, Hou's much-misunderstood marvel stars Shu Qi (The Assassin) as an aimless bar hostess drifting away from her blowhard boyfriend and towards Jack Kao's suave, sensitive gangster. Structured as a flashback to the then-present from the then-future of 2011, it's a transfixing trance-out of a movie, drenched in club lights, ecstatic endorphin-rush exhilaration, and a nagging undercurrent of ennui. (BLU-RAY)

NIGHTBREED (1990)

Boone (Craig Sheffer) may be a troubled young man, but his troubles are just beginning. Set up as the fall guy in a string of slasher murders, he decides he'll hide by crossing the threshold that separates "us" from "them" and sneak into the forbidden subterranean realm of Midian. Boone will live among the monsters.

Hellraiser creator Clive Barker writes (adapting his novel Cabal) and directs this vivid leap into horror that asks: in the battle of man vs. monster, who's really the monster? The answer supplies flesh-crawling suspense, sudden fear, a colorful Danny Elfman score and a creepy array of shape-shifting beings. They are the Nightbreed, denizens of a world beyond death, beyond the imagination, perhaps beyond anything you've seen. (BLU-RAY and 4K ULTRA HD)

WHAT HAPPENED WAS... (1994)

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Screenwriting Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, What Happened Was... is Tom Noonan's directorial debut; a darkly humorous take on dating dread. Featuring powerhouse performances by Noonan and Karen Sillas as two lonely hearts spending one claustrophobic Friday night together in an imposing apartment, the film exposes with startling clarity the ways in which people struggle to connect. Presented here in a beautiful, newly restored digital transfer from the film's original 35mm negative. (BLU-RAY)