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It’s been three issues since I initiated this “safari into terra multimedia to collect sites, sights, and sounds of interest to filmlovers and cybersurfers of all stripes,” and while I’ve heard from readers, they haven’t heard–in print–from me. No lack of stuff to talk about, but a great chunk of my year was swallowed up by an unexpected, and hugely educational, writing project. More on that in good time. Meanwhile, suffice it to say that the job represented an intersection–perhaps even a collision–between film writing and forms of cyberdata....

Once a week, I will use this space to address a new DVD release or arrival at a streaming site, or a single film from a forthcoming or underway repertory series. (The last are likely to stay New York City-area exclusive, but who knows—I may get ambitious.) Like all previous such weekly columns that I’ve undertaken, the name of this one—because I am almost completely barren of imagination—is cribbed from the songbook of The Fall....

20 Discs to Watch ★★ A Ciambra Jonas Carpignano, Italy, 2017; IFC Films ★ Dagon Stuart Gordon, Spain, 2001; Vestron Video ★ The Death of Stalin Armando Iannucci, France/UK/Belgium/Canada, 2017; Paramount ★ The Devil to Pay George Fitzmaurice, USA, 1930; Warner Archive ★ Gun Crazy Joseph H. Lewis, USA, 1950; Warner Archive ★ Hilda Crane Philip Dunne, USA, 1956; Twilight Time ★★ King Hu x 2: Dragon Inn, Taiwan/Hong Kong, 1967, The Criterion Collection; Legend of the Mountain, Taiwan/Hong Kong, 1979; Kino Lorber ⦿★ Maborosi Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 1995; Milestone ★★ The Man Who Watched Trains Go By Harold French, UK/USA, 1952; ClassicFlix ★ Merrily We Live Norman Z....

The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams, 2023) About a quarter of the way into The Human Surge 3, there’s a sequence unlike any I’ve seen in a movie before. At a glance, it’s a typical conversation scene, only filmed from a slightly elevated angle. It opens with a counterclockwise pan to capture an exchange between two characters, who stand at an exaggerated distance from one another in the middle of a street....

FILM COMMENT digital editor Violet Lucca spoke to Green after La Sapienza’s premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. How do you go about composing a frame? Do you begin with an image or do you begin with an idea? Actually, all of my frames are composed, at least basically, when I write the script. If there’s a dialogue, it’s more that I have my own convention for making something strong come out of the actor when he’s speaking....

—Michael Atkinson, Sight & Sound, November 1993 James B. Harris uniquely kept the spirit of pulp alive at the dawn of Tarantino’s PoMo Pulp Fiction, in no small part because he knew the genuine article firsthand. His first gig as a producer was a 1956 adaptation of a crime novel by Lionel White, made with a fellow New Yorker who’d been trying to make his break into pictures, Stanley Kubrick....

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2023) Joanna Arnow’s The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed opens with Ann, played by the writer/director/editor, in bed with Allen (Scott Cohen), a long-term hookup, praising him for being totally unresponsive to her needs. Is he a dom par excellence, or just your average dude? It’s a question germane to Arnow’s film, which shows how the interpersonal dynamics of BDSM relationships—the discovery of desire, the difficulty of communication, the boundaries of consent, the complexities of power—are also issues that recur, in different forms, in our more public-facing lives....

A Separation When Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation became the first Iranian film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film of 2012, it gave the world a look at the work not only of one of Iran’s most acclaimed writer-directors but also of an Iranian cinematographer whose skills have contributed to dozens of important films of Iran’s post-Revolutionary cinema. Born in 1951, Mahmoud Kalari started in the 1970s studying photography, and later became a renowned news photographer whose images of Ayatollah Khomeini and other figures of Iran’s Revolutionary era appeared in magazines around the world....

Aachi & Ssipak “Exceedingly grotesque . . . increasingly nasty,” says Richard Kuipers of Variety! “Even mature and physically fit viewers for whom etiquette and courtesy are important values need to think twice before seeing the movie,” says the daily Chosun Ilbo in Korea. And The Korean Times observes with some trepidation: “Human feces are important in the story…” Not since the anti-authoritarian head trips of Ralph Bakshi has a movie done so much so quickly: within the first reel it’s dispensed more ultraviolence than a thousand action films, annihilated the boundaries of good taste, and violated the copyright on so many precious corporate properties so gleefully that they might never recover....

Bionic Ninja Rage of Ninja (88), A Life of Ninja (83), Clash of the Ninjas (87), Born a Ninja (91), Bionic Ninja (86), Full Metal Ninja (88), Shaolin vs. Ninja (83), Mafia vs. Ninja (85), Zombie vs. Ninja (88), Alien vs. Ninja (10), Cobra vs. Ninja (87), Ninja vs. Ninja (87), Twinkle Ninja Fantasy (87), Ninja, Phantom Heroes USA (88), and Thunder Ninja Kids: Wonderful Mission (91) are just a few of these ninja nature films....

Ip Man 3 Ip Man 3 hits theaters this Friday, starring Donnie Yen and a CGI moth. The third installment in the series that made Hong Kong kung fu movies box-office hits again brings back Ip Man—that mild-mannered slouch-shouldered paragon of Confucian virtue whose big claim to fame is that he taught Bruce Lee the art of wing chun. As big-budget entertainment goes, the Ip Man movies are bulletproof. Donnie Yen may be in his early fifties but Ip Man is the first iconic role he’s ever played and he wears him well....

This oddly named but inestimable DVD outfit deserves a shout-out for its industrious and often wondrous efforts as a quality clearinghouse for niche titles that might otherwise fall through the cracks, from music docs (The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle) to classic television (Freaks and Geeks, SCTV, priceless Dick Cavett collections devoted to film, rock music, and comedy), and definitive comedy compilations (Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor). Its licensing suggests a curatorial ethos—consider the varied likes of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Jackie Chan’s Police Story, and Johnny Got His Gun....

La Jetée Chris Marker, 1962 At Land Maya Deren, 1944 Brave Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman, 2012 Without Mark Jackson, 2011 When Harry Met Sally Rob Reiner, 1989 Brighter Summer Day Edward Yang, 1991 Late Autumn Yasujirô Ozu, 1960 The Muppets James Bobin, 2011 Yiyi Edward Yang, 2000

Iosseliani was born in Tblisi, Georgia, in 1934, and he was trained in music at the Tblisi conservatory until 1953, after which he lit off for the University of Moscow to study math—both early vocations would crucially inform his future practice. He next proceeded to the VGIK film school which, during the smothering years in which Socialist Realism was the official aesthetic of the Soviet-influenced world, had become a hotbed of dissident thought....

The spine of the film is an animated re-telling of the traditional Slavic folktale of Baba Yaga, a witch with the fungal facial features of an old tree stump who forces a lost brother and sister to complete a series of tasks or else suffer her wrath. Oreck’s approach is grounded in personal reflection and a fascination with how nature shapes customs and culture. Excerpts from the likes of Theodor Adorno, Czeslaw Milosz, and Olga Tokarczuk appear in voiceover and on screen, leading us through, as one quotation has it, “dense forests of thought....