Mikio Kobayashi lives quietly with his wife, daughter, and divorced sister in downtown Tokyo, where xenophobic neighbors insist on them participating in community meetings, and the most exciting thing to happen is the disappearance of a pet parrot. But one day Kagawa appears, claiming to be the son of a financier who once helped Kobayashi's company. In return for his family's past help, Kagawa requests to move in, and Kobayashi's quiet lifestyle is quickly forgotten when Kagawa invites his Brazilian (or is she Bosnian?) wife and a myriad of eclectic and foreign visitors to join him in the cramped apartment. The Kobayashis are comically tossed about in confusion as Kagawa and his associates run amuck in their home. Kagawa, with the help of his visitors, manages to reveal old secrets and stir up the monotony of Mikio's former life with affairs, blackmail, and rampant youthful partying.

The legendary bass Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938), regarded as one of the supreme singing actors of the 20th century, left an invaluable record of his art in this, his only sound film. Though primarily an actor in this film, Chaliapin is afforded ample opportunity to sing. The musical score consists of four songs by Jacques Ibert and one by Alexander Dargomyzhsky. Don Quixote is directed by G. W. Pabst, described by Leonard Maltin as “one of the prime architects of modern cinema.” As was the case with many early sound films destined for international release, it was filmed both in English and French versions.

The old bat researcher, professor Abronsius and his assistant, Alfred, go to a remote Transylvanian village looking for vampires. Alfred falls in love with the inn-keeper's young daughter Sarah. However, she has been spotted by the mysterious count Krolock who lives in a dark and creepy castle outside the village...

The Baby of Macon is a sumptuous-looking but ultimately shallow tale of manipulation, greed, and religious fanaticism set in Peter Greenaway's favorite, the 17th century. In the city of Macon, an ugly woman suddenly bears a beautiful, healthy baby. Her fellow citizens perceive it as a wonder, with rumors circulating that she could not be the real mother of the child. Her 18-year-old virginal daughter (Julia Ormond) tries to use the situation, claiming that the baby is her own and was born as a result of an immaculate conception. The citizens start to worship the baby and the outraged Roman Catholic Church finally intervenes. Aiming at disclosure of the whole Christian mythology, which, according to Greenaway, always served to manipulate people, The Baby of Macon lacks passion or commitment. Even the much publicized violence, including an unseen multiple rape and the onscreen dismemberment of the baby, seems routine and uninspired rather than shocking.

An epic five-part masterwork, The Cremaster Cycle is a celebrated evocation of the creative process by noted sculptor and performance artist Matthew Barney. The series is not now, nor will it ever be, available on mass-market DVD. The only place it can be seen is on screen in theaters. It was last shown in Columbus in 2003, when it screened it in five sold-out shows at the Wexner Center.

Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his dwarf assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye), assemble a creature (Karloff) with stitched-together body fragments stolen from graveyard corpses, then bring it to life with jolts of electric current. Unknowingly, they've given their man a criminal's brain, and when the sadistic Fritz mistreats the addled monster, it goes on a killer rampage. Now available as a stand-alone title, this 75th Anniversary two-disc edition of "Frankenstein" adds new commentary and documentaries about the making of the film and its principal actor, the legendary Boris Karloff.

The award winning director Sion Sono’s latest film is not a documentary but Japan’s first feature drama depicting one family trying to face the hard but true reality of Tohoku Tsunami earthquakes and nuclear power plant explosion.

From Nikolaus Geyrhalter, the director of OUR DAILY BREAD, comes this IDFA Special Jury Award-winning documentary, an epic journey to twelve remote and rarely glimpsed locales and communities around the world. Geyrhalter films expansive vistas of desert, snow, jungle, ice, and rainforest, travels with a scooter-riding Finnish reindeer herdsman, visits the home of a Namibian couple with relational problems, ventures out to sea with a Sardinian fisherman. In observational and striking visual portraits, impressions of modernization's influence on traditional societies emerge. An homage to humanity, ELSEWHERE is a nuanced portrait of life - fragile and resilient - at the start of the 21st century.

The lovely Reiko has taken a new teaching job at a creepy old high school. She is an extremely attractive woman and the young students in her class have fallen for her. One night, after tennis practice, she is brutally assaulted in the locker room shower by a man with a stocking over his face. Left on the floor naked and in shock, she discovers a single puzzle piece left behind by the crazed man. A few days later, a pair of students enact a perverted sexual revenge on Reiko for kicking someone off the tennis team. Could one of these students be the man who brutalized her in the locker room? Who owns the strange puzzle piece? As the mystery unfolds, Reiko must come to terms with her own sexual urges and fate.

At last, Martin Scorsese’s most personal masterpiece can be seen outside of the controversy it engendered, and be seen for what it is: a fifteen-year labor of love. Nikos Kazantzakis’s landmark novel comes to breathtaking life in this moving and spiritual film. The all-star cast includes Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie, and Willem Dafoe as Jesus. Criterion is proud to present this cinematic treasure in an exclusive director-approved special edition.

The obsessive and jealous shipowner Bruce Vail does not accept the divorce his wife Irene Vail achieved in London, and he hires his driver Michael Browsky to forge adultery with Irene in Paris to make the decree null. However, she is rescued by the headwaiter Paul Dumond, who punches Michael and locks Bruce and his private eyes in a locker, and they spend a wonderful night together in the restaurant Chateau Bleu, where Paul and his best friend Chef Cesare work, and they fall in love for each other. Meanwhile, Bruce kills Michael and blackmails Irene, blaming Paul and forcing her to return with him to New York. But Paul does not give up on Irene, and moves to New York with Cesare trying to find her love.

Christmas 1183--an aging and conniving King Henry II plans a reunion where he hopes to name his successor. He summons the following people for the holiday: his scheming but imprisoned wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine; his mistress, Princess Alais, whom he wishes to marry; his three sons (Richard, Geoffrey, and John), all of whom desire the throne; and the young but crafty King Philip of France (who is also Alais' brother). With the fate of Henry's empire at stake, everybody engages in their own brand of deception and treachery to stake their claim.

Documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter travels to Pripyat, the town in which the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant lived prior to the disaster of 1986, examining with striking black and white photography the decaying remnants of the abandoned environment, meeting with those who make their living in the area and the few stubborn, elderly residents who still refuse to leave their homes, in this restrained yet very powerful documentary.

Young, naive Luisa Ginglebusher, who loves fairy tales, leaves the Budapest orphanage to become a movie usherette. Soon she befriends paternal waiter Detlaff and not so paternal Konrad, a meat-packing millionaire. Uninterested in Konrad's rich gifts, Luisa schemes to be a "good fairy" and divert some of this wealth to poor stranger Dr. Sporum. But it's not that simple...

Several years before making their phenomenally successful classic King Kong (1933), directors Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack helmed this ethnographic docudrama set in the jungles of “Siam” (now Thailand). Basing their loose narrative on months of exposure to the natives’ daily lives, the story comes across as remarkably authentic, despite its clear staging. The close-up shots Cooper and Schoedsack were able to get of wild animals (including the infamous “tiger shot”, when a tiger’s snout literally swipes the camera’s lens) are remarkable today, and must have been doubly so back to audiences back in 1927. While this film is recommended as must-see viewing for its historical importance, it’s full of memorable images, and chances are you’ll enjoy it more than you expect.