This is a mighty big week for catalog releases, particularly from a label I’ve yet to delve into here. That would be Indicator, a British label that’s been releasing quality, region-free special editions of Sony titles for a few years now. This week, they’re releasing The China Syndrome, but more importantly, a seven-film set of Sam Fuller’s work as both a writer and director at Columbia, complete with 400 minutes(!!!) of unedited Fuller interview footage and an assortment of other supplements. But the one I really want to talk about (my virtue of me having seen the movie) is their release of Albert Brooks’ Modern Romance. Not even a cringe comedy so much as a horror-comedy without any blood, it’s a rom-com that makes no bones about the hideous behavior of its lead and why his on-again off-again girlfriend should run far away from him. And if Paul Thomas Anderson hasn’t confirmed it yet, it’s still almost certainly a major influence on Phantom Thread, with its self-obsessed protagonist struggling to maintain control over his love life like he does his professional life (although here he’s pathetic in both arenas; Reynolds Woodcock gets to cut together fine dresses, Robert Cole can only cut together schlocky sci-fi movies). Hell, it even opens with Albert Brooks ordering “a mushroom omelette cooked with very little butter.”
And that’s not even the half of it this week! Criterion celebrates Ingmar Bergman’s centennial with an upgrade of his The Virgin Spring and continues to canonize a completely different filmmaker, John Waters, with a special edition of Female Trouble. Kino, meanwhile, spends the week on Andrey Zvyagintsev, giving his The Banishment and The Return their U.S. home video debuts. And Abel Ferrara’s unorthodox vampire film The Addiction gets its own U.S. debut from Arrow. New titles are incredibly slim in comparison, but there are a couple quality ones in there, namely Aaron Katz’s Hollywood neo-noir Gemini and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s latest bit of mind-bending horror, The Endless.
The Addiction (Arrow)
The Banishment (Kino)
Black Lightning: The Complete First Season (Warner)
The China Syndrome (Indicator)
The Curse of the Cat People (Shout Factory)
The Endless (Well Go)
Female Trouble (Criterion)
Gemini (Universal)
Modern Romance (Indicator)
The Return (Kino)
Samuel Fuller at Columbia, 1937-1961 (It Happened in Hollywood / Adventure in Sahara / Power of the Press / Shockproof / Scandal Sheet / The Crimson Kimono / Underworld U.S.A.) (Indicator)
Sleepless in Seattle (Sony)
Super Fly (Warner)
Terminal (Image)
Vigil (Arrow)
The Virgin Spring (Criterion)