DVD Update - 14 October

I'm suffering a seasonal malady, so there may be a lag in posting for the next few days. We'll see. For now, here's a DVD update. It looks as though Magnolia acquired a number of Netflix's former distribution studio Red Envelope Entertainment's releases and are making them available again come 3 November. All of the titles were previously released by Genius and sadly does not include the two Lukas Moodysson films, Lilja 4-ever and A Hole in My Heart, which Netflix had for rental only.

Some changes: As expected, both Pandorum and Capitalism: A Love Story have vanished from Amazon. The original November date I provided for Moon is obviously not accurate, and I'm told it's now sometime in January. District 9 is now 15 December. Tokyo Shock's Five Element Ninjas has been pushed to 26 January, and Sony's Rita Hayworth box will now be released on 23 February.

- 4, 2005, d. Ilya Khrjanovsky, Magnolia, 3 November
- The Bituminous Coal Queens of Pennsylvania, 2005, d. Judy Eldred, David Hunt, Magnolia, 3 November
- C.R.A.Z.Y., 2005, d. Jean-Marc Vallée, Magnolia, 3 November
- Cowboy del amor, 2005, d. Michèle Ohayon, Magnolia, 3 November
- Favela Rising, 2005, d. Matt Mochary, Jeff Zimbalist, Magnolia, 3 November
- Heading South [Vers el sud], 2005, d. Laurent Cantet, Magnolia, 3 November
- Mana: Beyond Belief, 2004, d. Peter Friedman, Roger Manley, Magnolia, 3 November
- Memron, 2004, d. Nancy Hower, Magnolia, 3 November
- The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio [L'orchestra di Piazza Vittorio], 2006, d. Agostino Ferrente, Magnolia, 3 November
- The Puffy Chair, 2005, d. Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass, Magnolia, 3 November
- Rank, 2006, d. John Hyams, Magnolia, 3 November
- Small Town Gay Bar, 2006, d. Malcolm Ingram, Magnolia, 3 November
- Street Fight, 2005, d. Marshall Curry, Magnolia, 3 November
- This Film Is Not Yet Rated, 2006, d. Kirby Dick, Magnolia, 3 November
- Yo soy Boricua, pa'que tu lo sepas!, 2006, d. Liz Garbus, Rosie Perez, Magnolia, 3 November
- Diagnosis: Death, 2009, d. Jason Stutter, Lionsgate, 29 December, w. Bret McKenzie, Jermaine Clement
- Dark Rage, 2008, d. Lee Akehurst, Cinema Epoch, 12 January
- The Hurt Locker, 2008, d. Kathryn Bigelow, Summit, 12 January
- Onimasa: A Japanese Godfather, 1982, d. Hideo Gosha, AnimEigo, 12 January
- The Brotherhood V: Alumni, d. David DeCoteau, here! Films, 9 February
- Eleven Minutes, 2008, d. Michael Selditch, Robert Tate, here! Films, 9 February
- The Pit and the Pendulum, 2009, d. David DeCoteau, here! Films, 9 February
- The Song of Sparrows, d. Majid Majidi, here! Films, 9 February
- $9.99, d. Tatia Rosenthal, here! Films, 23 February
- Breakfast with Scot, 2007, d. Laurie Lynd, here! Films, 23 February

The Decade List: (Some of) The Worst Films (2005)

Every year, the list seems to be getting longer. The sentimental issue with 2005 was that a list of the Worst Films of 2005 was my very third blog post ever on here, so unlike the previous years, I've written quite a few venomous words about the films below (I was pretty hostile when I started writing this blog). So for both your and my pleasure, I've selected some really mean and/or smart-ass "pull quotes" from what I had to say about these, the worst films I saw from 2005.

On The 40-Year-Old Virgin: "The 40-Year-Old Virgin is essentially a bunch of laughless sketch appendages (the worst involving foul-mouthed Eastern Indian coworkers), branching from a thin backbone of a lifeless romance." On Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma: "Amnesia ends up being an idea film with nothing to say and Langlois a lousy psychological researcher who’s happy enough to just to ask the questions instead of looking for the answers." On Dirty Love: "That this film presumes we’re going to care about a woman who flops around a supermarket looking for tampons to stop her Shining-size bloodbath of a menstrual flow is not only dead-wrong, but also rather insulting."

On Fratricide: "There’s grittiness and then there’s absurdity, and Arslan can’t figure out the difference." On Happy Endings: "Happy Endings’ mix of nastiness and earnestness is like water and electricity… when you’re in the bathtub." On Hard Candy: "Hard Candy is one of those films you could see someone handing into their teacher as a genre assignment. Everything is "fine" about the film, if you consider "fine" to be hitting all the points of a job or assignment. Or if "fine" simply means passionless."

On Havoc: I quoted my friend Mike on this one: "About as sharp and edgy as an oval-shaped blanket full of kittens." On Lower City: "Merely a collection of reminders of better films." On Me and You and Everyone We Know: "Weaving a bunch of quirky moments (involving setting hands on fire, a cuuuuuuuute little boy wanting to shit in a woman’s ass, a goldfish in peril, and tag-team fellatio from a duo of sassy teen girls, among other things) into a sloppy motion picture, Ms. July created the “indie” groan of the year."

On Monster-in-Law: "Setting women back nearly fifty years with this one, Jane Fonda returns to the screen, opposite the sweet-as-pie, stripped-of-race Jennifer Lopez. It’d be one thing for this film to just be unfunny… but it’s a two-hour-long cat fight, turning women into caddy, selfish, backstabbing cunts." On Pretty Persuasion: "Siega has accomplished the feat of making his film the only thing more despicable than [teen edge queen Evan Rachel Wood's protagonist]." On The Puffy Chair: "Do I really want to choose to join in on the roadtrip when I hate the people I'm traveling with... and don't really care where we're going?"

On Sorry, Haters: "Allow me to introduce you to the 9/11 exploitation film." On Transamerica: "The tolerance that Tucker does expect from us is even more offensive than a sweet "trannies are people too." He expects us to continue with his annoyingly familiar film because of Felicity Huffman." On Walk the Line: "When Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) proposes marriage to the love of his life June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), he asks her to come up with a fresh answer. Strange, we as an audience were asking the same thing out of this film."

- The 40-Year-Old Virgin - d. Judd Apatow - USA
- Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma [Amnésie: L'énigme James Brighton] - d. Denis Langlois - Canada
- Antibodies [Antikörper] - d. Christian Alvart - Germany
- The Aristocrats - d. Paul Provenza - USA
- Backstage - d. Emmanuelle Bercot - France
- The Cabin Movie - d. Dylan Akio Smith - Canada
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - d. Tim Burton - USA/UK
- The Civilization of Maxwell Bright - d. David Beaird - USA
- Diary of a Mad Black Woman - d. Tyler Perry - USA
- Dirty Love - d. John Mallory Asher - USA
- Don't Tell [La bestia nel cuore] - d. Cristina Comencini - Italy/France/UK/Spain
- Eighteen - d. Richard Bell - Canada
- Evil [To kako] - d. Yorgos Noussias - Greece
- FAQs - d. Everett Lewis - USA
- Feed - d. Brett Leonard - Australia
- Fratricide [Brudermord] - d. Yilmaz Arslan - Germany/Luxembourg/France
- Happy Endings - d. Don Roos - USA
- Hard Candy - d. David Slade - USA
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - d. Garth Jennings - UK/USA
- Havoc - d. Barbara Kopple - USA/Germany
- King's Ransom - d. Jeff Byrd - USA
- Lemming - d. Dominik Moll - France
- The Longest Yard - d. Peter Segal - USA
- Lower City [Cidade Baixa] - d. Sérgio Machado - Brazil
- Madagascar - d. Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath - USA
- Manuale d'amore [Manual of Love] - d. Giovanni Veronesi - Italy
- Me and You and Everyone We Know - d. Miranda July - USA
- Monster-in-Law - d. Robert Luketic - USA/Germany
- The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green - d. George Bamber - USA
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith - d. Doug Liman - USA
- Nanny McPhee - d. Kirk Jones - UK/USA/France
- Pervert! - d. Jonathan Yudis - USA
- Pretty Persuasion - d. Marcos Siega - USA
- The Producers - d. Susan Stroman - USA
- The Puffy Chair - d. Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass - USA
- Queens [Reinas] - d. Manuel Gómez Pereira - Spain
- Remedy - d. Christian Maelen - USA
- Robots - d. Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha - USA
- Sorry, Haters - d. Jeff Stanzler - USA
- Stoned - d. Stephen Woolley - UK
- Transamerica - d. Duncan Tucker - USA
- Walk the Line - d. James Mangold - USA/Germany
- The Wedding Date - d. Clare Kilner - USA
- Where the Truth Lies - d. Atom Egoyan - Canada/UK
- Witches of the Caribbean - d. David DeCoteau - USA
- Zerophilia - d. Martin Curland - USA