Fast Scans

Alain Resnais: A Decade in Film. 4 discs. color. 414 min. In French w/English subtitles. KimStim Collection, dist. by Kino Intl. 1983–89. DVD UPC 6-98452-20713-1. $49.95.

Repackaged as a four-disc, single-case set selling for less than half the price of the previously released individual titles combined, this quartet (Life Is a Bed of Roses, Love unto Death, Melo, and I Want To Go Home) finds the seminal French New Wave director most appreciated for Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima, Mon Amour, in a generally more accessible but less cutting-edge mode. Romance, satire, and love and death are the themes supplanting the filmmaker's trademark time and memory motifs. For Resnais completists.

The Hit. color. 98 min. Criterion Collection, dist. by Image Entertainment. 1984. DVD ISBN 978-1-60465-125-6. $29.95.

A heavily protected witness for the prosecution (Terence Stamp) sings like a canary in the trial of his former partners-in-crime, forcing him to hole up in Spain, where a decade later he's captured for execution by an unflappable hired gun (John Hurt) and his volatile assistant (Tim Roth). In Stephen Frears's auspicious early work, things hardly ever go as planned. With its emphasis on character over action, this atypical genre film should appeal to fans of British movies where dark humor, intelligence, and offbeat quirkiness reign.

The Ring Finger (L'Annulaire). color. 100 min. In French w/English subtitles. Strand Releasing. 2005. DVD UPC 7-12267-29052-9. $27.99.

In her screen debut, recent Bond girl Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) exudes a simple sensuality as a young woman who takes an odd secretarial job after slicing her finger on an assembly line. Filmmaker Diane Bertrand maintains a subtly creepy air about the goings-on in a repository where a wide variety of mementos—the bones of a pet bird, a mushroom, a musical performance—are stored as specimens by the lab-coated proprietor with an eye for his new hire. For discriminating viewers not fixated on the literal.

The Whole Shootin' Match. 3 discs. b/w. 108 min. Watchmaker Films. 1978. DVD UPC 6-16892-98062-9. $29.98.

A pair of hapless, small-town Texas good ol' boys fail at business ventures, get cheated out of royalties to an invention, and finally resort to prospecting for gold in pursuit of their unfulfilled dreams. Heralded boy wonder Eagle Pennell wowed the critics and late 1970s film-fest crowds with this desultory cult classic that offers a certain dog-eared charm for out-of-the-mainstream audiences. Interviews with cast members, a short film by the director, and a CD of the nicely spare solo guitar soundtrack make for a complete package.

Wise Blood. color. 105 min. Criterion Collection, dist. by Image Entertainment. 1979. DVD ISBN 978-1-60465-151-5. $39.95.

Late in his career, legendary Hollywood director John Huston proved adept at adapting literary works like James Joyce's The Dubliners (filmed as The Dead), Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, and this, Flannery O'Connor's first novel, as low-budget, essentially independent films. Brad Dourif is indelible as the fanatical Hazel Motes, the self-styled founder of the Church Without Christ, in this blackly comic tale for viewers drawn to wide-eyed eccentrics. Interviews with Huston and Dourif shed light on the novel-to-screen route.