Kino Lorber and Kino Classics have unveiled the details of their September 2020 Blu-Ray and DVD releases including works featuring the great Willem Dafoe, fascinating documentaries, newly restored independent films and more. Get all the details on this incredibly packed lineup below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjtqvpl7IHE]
Street Date: 9/1/20
Synopsis: In this gripping Cold War noir, tensions simmer between residents of a small German village and the soldiers of a U.S. military base. Postwar economic hardship has turned the town of Sohnen into a vice district. The women serve as entertainment for the GIs, while the men struggle for survival in the black market. Helmed by Helmut Käutner (Port of Freedom), Black Gravel is hardboiled cinema at its most cynical, recalling such white-knuckle thrillers as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and Jules Dassin and A.I. Bezzerides’s Thieves’ Highway. Upon its initial release, Black Gravel was criticized for its honest depiction of lingering antisemitism—and the film was re-edited for general release. This Kino Classics edition presents both the uncensored “Premiere” cut and the revised “Distribution” version, both meticulously restored in 4K by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung.
Bonus Features: Includes both the uncensored “Premiere” version and the re-edited “Distribution” version of the film | Audio commentary by film historian Olaf Möller
Street Date: 9/15/20
Synopsis: “Abel Ferrara’s first dramatic feature since 2014’s Pasolini reteams the filmmaker and his frequent lead Willem Dafoe, who delivers a career-best performance as the title character, an older American expat living in Rome with his young wife and their daughter. Disoriented by his past misgivings and subsequent, unexpected blows to his self-esteem, Tommaso wades through this late chapter of his life with an increasingly impaired grasp on reality as he prepares for his next film. Tommaso is easily Ferrara and Dafoe’s most personal and engrossing collaboration to date, a delicately surrealistic work of autofiction marked by the keen sensitivity of two consummate artists”. – Film at Lincoln Center
Bonus Features: Abel Ferrara interviewed by filmmaker Sean Baker (courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center) | Booklet essay by film critic Brad Stevens (Blu-ray only) | Interview with Willem Dafoe (courtesy of Coolidge Corner Theatre) | Trailers
Street Date: 9/22/20
Synopsis: Oscar® winner Ben Kingsley plays the Great Zamboni, a magician with a mysterious secret. He lives alone with his jaguar, Shadow, in the Spooky House, an old mansion rigged with magic tricks and hidden chambers. Young orphan Max (Matt Weinberg) believes he can befriend him but his attempts are met with stubborn resistance. When a trio of teenage bullies, who work for the town’s eccentric crime queen (Oscar® winner Mercedes Ruehl) led by Mona (Katharine Isabelle), chases Max and his friends into the Spooky House on Halloween, a night of hilarious magic and spectacular illusions ensues. In this funny, heartwarming story Zamboni and Max discover the power of real magic.
Bonus Features: Alternate French audio | English Closed Captions
Street Date: 9/29/20
Synopsis: NEW 2K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE OVERSEEN BY DIRECTOR BETTE GORDON. Bette Gordon’s Variety is a landmark independent film that challenges common notions about feminism and pornography, which Kino Classics is proudly presenting in a director-approved 2K restoration from the original camera negative. It follows Christine (Sandy McLeod, Something Wild), a bright and unassuming young woman, after she takes a job selling tickets at a porno theater near Times Square. Christine soon develops an obsession that begins to consume her life, finding self-expression through an interest in porn. Variety dramatizes the changes that occur in her relationships with both Mark (Will Patton, Armageddon), her boyfriend, and Louie (Richard Davidon, Law & Order), a dangerous-looking patron of the theater. Emerging out of the underground NYC arts scene that produced the late ’80s boom in American independent cinema, Variety contains the contributions of an impressive array of talent, including cinematographer Tom DiCillo (Living in Oblivion), actor Luis Guzman (Boogie Nights), a script by the late cult novelist Kathy Acker, and a score by actor and musician John Lurie (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law). Bonus Features: Anybody’s Woman (1981, short film directed by Bette Gordon) | Audio commentary with director Bette Gordon moderated by writer Hillary Weston | Booklet essay by film critic Amy Taubin (Blu-ray only) | Gallery of production stills by Nan Goldin |Location scouting stills gallery | Storyboard illustrations by Bette Gordon
Street Date: 9/29/20
Synopsis: “Bumped from a flight back to Los Angeles and the life, wife, and infant daughter that await him there, Mikey (Matt Boren, How I Met Your Mother) returns to his childhood home, a cluttered, cocoon-like Manhattan loft presided over by his bohemian parents. “You can stay here as long as you want,” Mikey’s mother tells him. But in Momma’s Man, what begins as a respite from adult responsibility becomes a premature midlife crisis. Re-installed in a household saturated with two generations of bric-a-brac evoking days gone by, Mikey starts to regress and drift back to an awkward youth he never outgrew. To realize this “modestly scaled movie with a heart the size of The Ritz” (The New York Times), writer-director Azazel Jacobs (The Lovers, Terri) cast his real-life parents, artist Flo Jacobs and underground film legend Ken Jacobs (Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son), as Mikey’s benevolent mother and father, and the Jacobs’ family apartment as an archive of the unconscious where free-floating anxiety renders Mikey a prisoner of his own nostalgia. Deftly balancing “melancholy emotional realities with unexpected moments of Chaplinesque comedy” (Variety), Momma’s Man is a funny, touching, and bracingly honest look at the pleasures and perils of yearning for the imperfect past.”
Bonus Features: New audio commentary by director Azazel Jacobs | Momma’s Family, behind-the-scenes documentary | Rain Building Music (1991, Azazel Jacobs’ first film) | Audio conversation with Azazel Jacobs and his parents | Deleted Scenes | Production stills gallery | Trailer
Street Date: 9/29/20
Synopsis: “A story about stolen love and stolen identities, literally shot on stolen film…Momma’s Man writer-director Azazel Jacobs’ second feature is an absurdist comedy of errors, a punk-rock slice of DIY rebellion, and a warmhearted frolic that captures the “amour fou spirit of the early French New Wave” (The Village Voice).
Hot-tempered Echo Park slacker Rodolfo Cano (Jacobs) enlists in the army to escape a meaningless existence with his free-spirited girlfriend Diaz (Diaz). When his call-for-service letter somehow winds up in the hands of another Rodolfo Cano (Gerardo Naranjo, director of Miss Bala), a quietly dignified loner wholives on a sailboat, their three lives intersect in odd and beautifully unexpected ways. Evoking the inventive gags of Chaplin and Jacques Tati, plus the deadpan minimalism of Kaurismäki and Jarmusch, The GoodTimesKid “finds poetry in wordless scenes of observation” (The New York Times).” Bonus Features: 2K restoration from the 35mm negative | New audio commentary by director Azazel Jacobs | Production Stills and Scrapbook Gallery | Extended Takes
Street Date: 9/1/20 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: Denise Ho: Becoming the Song is the first feature documentary to profile the charismatic Hong Kong singer and human rights activist Denise Ho. Denise’s story closely mirrors Hong Kong’s uneasy relationship with China. In 2014, at the height of her career, she publicly supported the students who were demanding free elections during the Umbrella Movement. Her actions led to her arrest, she was blacklisted by China, and her commercial sponsors dropped her. In 2017 director Sue Williams began to follow Denise as she toured the UK and North America, attempting to rebuild her career. In June 2019, Hong Kong exploded in anti-extradition law protests, with millions taking to the streets. Once again, Denise joined them in enduring the tear gas and water cannons. She addressed the UN and the US Congress, pleading for international help, making it clear that Hong Kong’s struggle is a fight for freedom and democracy around the world.
Bonus Features: Deleted Scenes | Trailer
Street Date: 9/15/20 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: “In 1981, it was still illegal to be gay in France. Today, same-sex marriage is recognized and has paved the way for legalizing the adoption of children by LGBTQ families. Proud tells the story of Charles, Victor and Diego, three generations of the same family who represent the seismic social changes that took place in just three decades. From the award-winning director of Fatima (César Award winner for Best Film) Philippe Faucon, Proud is a three-part episodic cinema event that is a chronology of tolerance and a portrait of one family through changing times.”
Bonus Features: Trailer
HELMUT NEWTON: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Street Date: 9/29/20 (DVD Only)
Synopsis: Women were clearly at the core of legendary photographer Helmut Newton’s work. The stars of his iconic portraits and fashion editorials – from Catherine Deneuve to Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling to Isabella Rossellini – finally give their own interpretation of the life and work of this controversial genius. A portrait by the portrayed. Provocative, unconventional, subversive, his depiction of women still sparks the question: were they subjects or objects?
Bonus Features: Trailer
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
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