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Release: March 20, 2018

$7.99

Description

Volker Schlöndorff transported Bertolt Brecht's 1918 debut play to contemporary West Germany for this vicious experiment in adaptation, seldom seen for nearly half a century. Oozing with brutish charisma, Rainer Werner Fassbinder embodies the eponymous anarchist poet, who feels himself cast out from bourgeois society and sets off on a schnapps-soaked rampage. Hewing faithfully to Brecht's text, Schlöndorff juxtaposes the theatricality of the prose with bare-bones, handheld 16 mm camera work, which gives immediacy to this savage story of rebellion. Featuring a supporting cast of Fassbinder's troupe of theater actors as well as Margarethe von Trotta, BAAL demonstrates the uncompromising nature of Schlöndorff's vision and forged a path for New German Cinema. DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES - New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Volker Schlöndorff, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack - Interviews from 1973 and 2015 with Schlöndorff - New conversation between actor Ethan Hawke and playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman about the play and adaptation - New interview with actor and filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta - New interview with film historian Eric

Release: November 15, 2016

$7.99

Description

During the post-war boom period of the late '40s, Willy Loman is an aging, traveling salesman, who despairs that his life his been lived in vain. Facing dispensability and insignificance in a heated, youthful economy, Willy is not ready to part with his cherished fantasies of an America that admires him for personable triumphs in the marketplace. But the reality is far more difficult than that, and the measure of Willy's self-delusion and contradictions is found in his two sons. One, Harold, is a ne'er-do-well gliding on inherited hot air and repressed feelings, and the other, Biff, a mousy, retiring sort unable to reconcile the difference between his father's desperate impersonation of success and the truth.

Release: April 18, 2017

$6.99

Description

With a "cool eroticism, intelligence and intensity", (Playboy), this eerie futuristic thriller, based on Margaret Atwood’s controversial and critically acclaimed best-selling novel, is filled with "large themes and deep thought ", (Roger Ebert). Boasting a phenomenal cast including Natasha Richardson (Nell) and Oscar winners Faye Dunaway (Network) and Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), this film "dazzles with its ingenuity and shocks with its outrageousness", (WNCN Radio)! In the not-so-distant future, strong-willed and beautiful Kate (Richardson) possesses a precious commodity that most women have lost and most men want to control... fertility. In a brain-washing bootcamp that turns fertile women into surrogate mothers for social-elite men and their infertile wives, Kate thinks she’s made out well when she’s assigned to an eminent party leader (Duvall). But when she learns that he’s sterile, she’s faced with the impossible choice: produce him an heir or die!

Release: August 4, 2020

$7.99

Description

When a young woman spends the night with an alleged terrorist, her quiet, ordered life falls into ruins. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum portrays an anxious era in West Germany amid a crumbling postwar political consensus. Katharina, though apparently innocent, suddenly becomes a suspect, falling prey to a vicious smear campaign by the police and a ruthless tabloid journalist that tests the limits of her dignity and her sanity. Crafting one of the most accessible and direct works of 1970s political filmmaking, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta deliver a powerful adaptation of Heinrich Böll’s novel, a stinging commentary on state power, individual freedom, and media manipulation that is as relevant today as when it was released. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Volker Schlöndorff and producer Eberhard Junkersdorf, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • Interview from 2002 with directors Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta • Interview from 2002 with director of photography Jost Vacano • Excerpts from a 1977 documentary on author Heinrich Böll • Trailer • PLUS: An essay by film critic Amy Taubin

Release: October 24, 2023

$6.99

Description

Stage a bogus kidnapping, collect the ransom, take 10% off the top and have a nice life, see ya later. They told Harry Barber the plan would work like clockwork. But it’s hapless Harry who is running out of time. Woody Harrelson is Harry, a Florida drifter who goes from perpetrator to patsy when lured into an abduction scam proposed by a mysterious blonde. Director Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum, The Handmaid’s Tale) steadily raises the stakes as Harry scrambles to untangle the mystery involving three women (Elisabeth Shue, Gina Gershon, Chloe Sevigny), false identities, cold corpses and a string of murderous clues that set him up for a very hard fall.

Release: January 15, 2013

$7.99

Description

Oskar is born in Germany in 1924 with an advanced intellect. Repulsed by the hypocrisy of adults and the irresponsibility of society, he refuses to grow older after his third birthday. While the chaotic world around him careers toward the madness and folly of World War II, Oskar pounds incessantly on his beloved tin drum and perfects his uncannily piercing shrieks. The Tin Drum, which earned the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, is a visionary adaptation from Volker Schlöndorff (Young Törless) of Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s acclaimed novel, characterized by surreal imagery, arresting eroticism, and clear-eyed satire.