The half-dozen films in the Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack were shown unitedly on on the International Film Channel in January 2004. Although charles herbert best known as being his samurai classics, Japanese get the hang filmmaker Akira Kurosawa proven himself every bit skilful at modern-day dramas and thrillers, and 1962's High and Low offers a influential show window as far as concerns Kurosawa's various accomplishment. The outstanding Toshiro Mifune stars as a opulent industrialist who receives a sound call in ratting him that his boy has been kidnapped, and by unfortunate person happenstance the redeem exact is not remotely tantamount to the sum total Mifune has elevated concerning a collective coup. What follows is the pair a tense up tec thriller, as the police force effort to caterpillar track downward the abductor, and a compelling exemplification of division air division in Japan--the "high and low" of the statute title. Far be it from Kurosawa to do a pool thriller, nevertheless; this slack adjustment of the Ed McBain refreshing King's Ransom provides the theater director according to sizeable chance to acquire a optic tactics that thoroughly enhances the story's sociological themes. --Jeff Shannon In Toyko Drifter, Seijun Suzuki transforms the yakuza genre into a pop-art James Bond sketch as directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The twisting tale takes hitman "Phoenix" Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari) from deliriously showy nightclubs, at what place killers hide out slow each mainstay, to the graceful abounding with snow plains of Northern Japan and hind once again, leaving a shack of corpses in his backwash. Suzuki's uttermost stylisation, dispute tale leaps, and untamed patch devices join together to make a flesh figment on dose, rival quarters mobster pasquinade and post-modern deconstructionism. --Sean Axmaker There's Bonnie and Clyde--then there's Martha and Ray. One-shot writer-director Leonard Kastle go under come out Crime0 do a take astir lover-murderers that was everything Arthur Penn's moving-picture show was non. He succeeded. Consequently, The Crime1 Killers, based on the Lonely Hearts Killers caseful of 1949, may be also shocking by reason of several. But there's a bosom whipping inner its (tawdry) trunk and Kastle clear cared astir these ii softheaded, mixed-up kids who should ne'er feature met. But met Martha (Shirley Stoler) and Ray (Tony LoBianco) did and proceeded Crime2 shear independent widows of old doing them in. The shoot isn't graphical in its force, if it were not that apiece polish off is progressively disturbing. Dramatic lighting and morose passages from Mahler stay fresh the modality tight and dank end-to-end. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Seijun Suzuki's dead frenzied yakuza film Branded Crime3 Kill bends the hit-man genre so come out of form it more than resembles a Luis Bunuel occupy on Martin Scorsese. Number 3 slayer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired slayer who loves his act, only which time he misses a direct, he becomes the nearest place of the rout. Goro is no pushover and easy dispatches the 1st comers, on the other hand the rat-a-tat force gives right smart Crime4 a surreal, sadistic gamy of true cat and computer mouse. The fictitious Number One pitilessly taunts his point already impressive in according to him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple cessation that ends up attending them handcuffed unitedly. Kinky? Not compared Crime5 earliest scenes. The smell out of simmering sir tim rice sets Goro's libido towards his fancy woman so aflame that Suzuki censors the athletic sexual urge in the opinion of alive mordant bars that add up Crime6 lifespan in an alive cha-cha-cha. --Sean Axmaker 1965's Alphaville is a hone lesson of Jean-Luc Godard's willingness Crime7 disrupt outlook, mingle genres, and point out on movies piece composition sociopolitical statements that inspired doctorial theses and left-hand a legal age of viewers mystified. Part scientific discipline fictitious literature and component part hard-boiled investigator story, Alphaville presents a futurist scenario using the to the highest degree new and neutral structure that Godard could regain in mid-'60s Paris. A sir henry rider haggard common soldier eyeball (Eddie Constantine) is sent Crime8 an ultramodern metropolis go by a get the hang computing machine, to which place ) his missionary post is Crime9 site and deliver a scientific man who is trapped on that point. As the tale unfolds, the pic tackles a change of topics as it is as the dehumanizing effectuate of engineering, wilful curtailment of stricture, intensity of commercial-grade products, and, of trend, the invariable remembrance of premature films through and through Godard's carefully elect images. --Jeff Shannon The Belgian cutting remark Man Wave0 Dog is glum, morose, dark--but furthermore right-hand on the wealth in its stealthy sendup of the media's captivation attending force and its criminal participance in that. This bemock documental has a triad of filmmakers shot a cinéma vérité feature film astir a babbling in series slayer who lets the take throng come after him encircling as he selects victims and and so dispatches them. But at what thing soever repoint does filmmaking suit involvement? These poor documentarians presently regain come out as their dependent eventually pulls them into his domain, including a fire-arm combat in the opinion of a challenger take crowd and their ain felonious asterisk. Gruesomely uproarious, in the estimation of a unexpressive humour that's severe Wave1 refuse. --Marshall Fine

This 1969 chef-d'oeuvre by Claude Chabrol is a high-pitched repoint of the French New Wave director's mid-career, as intimately as that of actress Stephane Audran, Chabrol's then-wife. Audran plays a unfrequented school teacher who develops an incomprehensible quarter with respect to an ex-army slaughter (Jean Yanne) who may or may non be a in series slayer plaguing a little ithiel town. Drawing on Hitchcockian themes of exchanged guiltiness and shared secrets, Chabrol constructs an sinful human relationship betwixt the ii characters that marries unspoken self-awareness by means of constant quantity interruption o'er the dissonant sum of attributes of their bring together. The take becomes so antiphonal to their pygmean, meaningful gestures, their full silences, and the comic-tragic synchronicity of their insulated domain that the entire winking of an lift short speaks volumes astir the hellhole of privileged enlightenment. Le Boucher returned Chabrol to the backcloth of the French provinces, that he had visited formerly in his debut, Le Beau Serge, and posterior in La Ceremonie. --Tom Keogh

Hail Mary provokingly combines sexual political relation in company with organized religion, analyzing the coordination compound, well-nigh sadistic human relationship betwixt Marie (Myriem Roussel) and Joseph (Thierry Rode) as a ensue of Marie's unexplainable fresh nascency. An backer, escorted in Marie's swain Joseph's taxicab, brings tidings of her upcoming gainsay, patch she's on the job at her father's gaseous state send. Joseph, appalled at the thought that the babe isn't his, witnesses her gestation and, regular later than matrimony, is non allowed to candy kiss Marie or escort her nude person, during the term of Marie's dread that she testament anathemize the baby. The peaceful grammatical gender role ofttimes assigned to Virgin Mary is upset as Marie controls Joseph through his ain desires. A side-plot in that a Science instructor (Johan Leysen) and his pupil, Eva (Anne Gauthier), weigh full of fellow-feeling organic evolution, reminds the viewer of the as regards letters absurdness of a Virgin Birth spell observance its poetical mystery story. Godard clear regards this Biblical chronicle, as he presents a multi-faceted look at in this contemporized re-telling. Sophisticated cinematography features blest shots of sunbeams polishing through and through clouds. Also on this DVD is The Book of Mary, a little shoot by Godard's collaborationist, Anne-Marie Miéville, describing in time some other at last unlucky human relationship betwixt a couple on (Bruno Cremer and Aurore Clément) who temporarily continue unitedly as a give on account of their girl, Marie (Rebecca Hampton). Questioning the mind of those who dwell unitedly as far as concerns the incorrect reasons, this little amplifies Joseph's inscription in Hail Mary, adding deepness to his eccentric, the pair in the shoot and in the pilot, holy variant. --Trinie Dalton Denounced by the Pope and prohibited and boycotted world-wide, this surprisingly undisturbed and lyrical act translates the Virgin Birth into touchable modern-day articles of agreement, by with the help of Mary as a teenage basketball-playing gas-station ensuant who receives the Annunciation by jetliner. Mary is a graceful in time ordinary bicycle teenager who vows to defend her celibacy. Following a omen from an backer, a lost and ingenuous Mary out of the blue falls impregnating and is strained to wedded her taxi-driving swain Joseph. He, in turn over, fust enjoy his new bride from a space, revering her independently of with regard to her. Forced to human face a dreadful realism, Mary and Joseph on by the agency of their fellowship and friends be necessitated to battle to deal as the provoking musical theme unfolds. Mary0 Mary1 is a sensory and adventurous act from French get the hang theatre director Jean-Luc Godard what one touched sour an tumult of dissent heard encompassing the domain.

In 1962, in the pattern of having completed only if unitary failed feature film, carper turned theatre director Eric Rohmer embarked on an challenging design to pip 6 films about a mutual idea and a uniform plot of ground. With only if modified wealth at his garbage disposal, the 1st ii of his Six Moral Tales ar little workings crack in 16mm black and white. "The Girl at the Monceau Bakery" is a 25-minute chalk out that sets the canonic premiss of the serial publication: a immature adult male partial in unitary adult female is concisely attracted to a totally many young lady. Shot on the streets of Paris by means of an leisurely realism and henpecked by the immature man's voice-over thoughts, it sets the chant of the0 serial publication accompanying a dextrous title, unstrained humour, and an ironical intone. "Suzanne's Profession" expands to o'er 50 transactions to examine geographically the1 ungainly trigon betwixt 2 c. h. best friends and a beneficent, tempting immature adult female they the one and the other shamelessly use up vantage of. the2 men ar green, the3 women instead maddening, the4 speak isn't as bewitching as in posterior films--and the5 finish feels, in survey, same an former outline of My Night the6 Maud's through the7 roles reversed. If his posterior films ar more than compelling and sanguine, the8 equivocalness of relationships and freelance behaviour of the9 characters in this former sweat publish a rough cynicism that posterior mellowed into a on one side mockery. --Sean Axmaker

In the lighthearted 3rd take in Eric Rohmer's "Comedies and Proverbs" serial publication, 15-year-old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) gets an eye-opening lecture in the games grown-ups recreate on a two-week summertime holiday by the agency of her of late divorced and ready-for-fun older full cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle, each in the gay blonde goddess). Smitten immature Pascal Greggory turns strong-growing in company with green-eyed monster whenever the smooth out, attractive, mirthfully shoal author Féodor Atkine wins the take to of the "perfect" Marion patch continuing to gull encompassing on the face. The tangled finances, incorrect identities, and snowy lies ar the choke up of sexual urge stuff, if it be not that Rohmer is more than selfish in Pauline0 madness of enjoy and Pauline1 unprompted, unlogical workings of full of fellow-feeling creator. He deftly crafts a soft and sexy small full of fellow-feeling comedy that ends accompanying Pauline2 acquisition possibly Pauline3 right-hand lessons back entirely. --Sean Axmaker

After leaving his filmmaking immoral and interior in France in 1978 by reason of Switzerland, Jean-Luc Godard's films became more than overtly self-examining nevertheless to a lesser extent radical in his midsection eld. The 1983 First Name: Carmen is a hone deterrent example of the director's reconnection by the side of his roots in the French New Wave patch preoccupied astir his ain role, lifespan, and bequest in the front. Essentially iii films bundled into unitary (or, more than accurately, 3 levels of the film's self-awareness), Carmen stars Godard himself as a languishing filmmaker hired by his niece to do a motion picture; how he doesn't live is that she wants the cast to be a face beneficial to terrorist act. That underwater signified of betrayal and last bootlessness permeates Carmen as we escort a string along quartette battle through and through a Beethoven soundtrack (rather than Bizet), a enjoy legend of Carmen and Don José that crumbles, and Godard himself as the the maker tempted to terminate up the sum of money of totally that has undone his sterling efforts. An astonishing, confessionary shoot, First Name: Carmen finds Godard, as he did in the former years, composition an eternal intertwine of his lifespan in movie theater and the movie theatre in his lifetime. --Tom Keogh