“1900” (Olive) – Gerard Depardieu and Robert De Niro play childhood friends — a peasant and the scion of a vast country estate, respectively — who become bitter enemies on opposite side of the political battle in Bernardo Bertolucci’s sprawling epic. A film of earthy passion and raw violence, it charts the volatile struggle between the socialist dream and the Fascist nightmare of Italy’s agrarian past in the years between the World Wars, within a framework that opens on the turn of the century and the promise of the new century. The international cast includes Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Donald Sutherland, Alida Valli, Romolo Valli, Anna-Maria Gherardi, and Laura Betti.

Originally cut by over an hour for American release, this release features the complete 315-minute director’s cut released on Europe with three separate audio options: English, Italian, and French language soundtracks. Previously released on DVD by Paramount, Olive offers a DVD upgrade and the Blu-ray debut of the film. The film is spread across two discs and a third DVD offers the accompanying 51-minute documentary “Bernardo Bertolucci: Reflections on Cinema” from 2002.

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Being John Malkovich (Criterion), a devastatingly funny portrait of unhappiness, desperation, desire, and the vicious things we do for love, catapulted Spike Jonze from music video wunderkind to visionary director and Charlie Kaufman from sitcom scribe to brilliant screenwriter. In 1999 it was fresh and daring and inventive, and more than ten years later, in the age of reality TV and celebrity obsession gone viral, it is as timely and topical as ever, and just as inventive, surprising, devastating, and compassionate.

John Cusack stars as a shaggy, self-important only marionette artist who takes a  break from the angst-ridden wish fulfillment fantasies of his puppet theater to get a paying job and becomes obsessed with an acerbic woman (Catherine Keener) in the office next door. The fact that he’s married (to an improbably dowdy Cameron Diaz in a dowdy frizz) doesn’t phase his flailing attempts at seduction.

The mundane and the miraculous exist side by side in “Being John Malkovich.” The half-scale size of the 7 ½ floor is groaner of a pun (“low overhead,” get it?) turned deadpan surreal sight gag, and when Cusack stumbles into the weirdly organic portal that sends him into the mind of John Malkovich (played with exceedingly good humor by John Malkovich), the metaphysical implication pale beside the business opportunities.

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Norwegian Wood” (New Video) is quite the international affair: directed and adapted by French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh-hung from the novel by Murakami Haruki (itself named after a Beatles song), with a Japanese cast, cinematography by Hou Hsiao-hsien favorite Mark Lee Ping-bin from Taiwan, songs by Can and a hushed score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.

Set in late sixties Tokyo, where student protests erupt on college campuses and sexual liberation is in the air, this is a story of disconnection in a time of engagement, with a student (Ken’ichi Matsuyama) escaping into books after his best friend’s suicide and the withdrawn and fragile girlfriend (Rinko Kikuchi) scarred by the suicide retreating into a secluded sanitarium. Matsuyama plays the part as if a spectator rather than a participant in his life, too afraid to engage after the pain of his friend’s suicide. Except when he’s around Naoko, whose vulnerability draws him out of his cocoon.

Norwegian Wood is suffused in melancholia, with imagery as delicate as the lives it presents and atmospheres so fragile they look like they’d shatter under too much emotional pressure. Tran’s portrayal of the fragility of emotionally devastated teens and young adults afraid to open themselves up again makes for lonely portrait, more touching than engaging but masterfully painted throughout. More reviews here.

Japanese with English subtitles. The DVD features a detailed making of documentary that runs nearly an hour and a shorter piece on the premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Also available via digital download.

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Hell on Wheels: The Complete First Season (eOne) turns the building of the transcontinental railway into the forge that created the new America in the aftermath of the Civil War. This is not a romantic vision of brotherhood, however, but a dark drama of the savage past made for cable TV. That means mud, blood, graft, vengeance, and a hotbed of racial conflict surrounding the construction of the railroad.

The title, which doesn’t mince words in selling the show’s sensibility, is also the name of the tent village that follows the railroad construction, a migrating town that serves as base camp, bunker, and the industry of followers, from bars to brothels to a tent church determined to save souls from the hell around them.

Anson Mount stars as Confederate veteran Cullen Bohannan, who follows the trail of the Union renegades who murdered his wife and family to the railroad camp and ends up as the crew foreman, a job he takes only as cover for his mission. Common is Elam, a former slave who hasn’t found much opportunity in the wake of emancipation and the hangover of post-slavery racism. A murder wraps their destinies together, first as wary conspirators, then as allies. We’re not talking blood brothers here, but in a mercenary world where life is cheap and justice owned by the railroad boss (Colm Meaney), they find they can trust one another, and that saves both of their lives more than once.

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There was a vogue for South Seas exotica in the late silent and early sound era, films made up of varying degrees of ethnographic revelation, social commentary, and erotic spectacle.Moana (1926), Robert Flaherty’s documentary portrait of life in Samoa, is the first expression of this idealized screen fantasy (every scene was carefully staged for his cameras), and the most spectacular expression comes via King Kong (1933), which exaggerates both the primitive exoticism and the primal fears of savage tribal culture to outrageous extremes. Along the way are films as varied as White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), The Pagan (1929), Tabu (1931), and King Vidor’s Bird of Paradise (1932).

Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea

You wouldn’t peg King Vidor, a social realist by nature, as a natural for such a subject, and the director himself dismissed 1932 Bird of Paradise as “a potboiler.” He took the assignment with no script, merely a Hawaii location, a South Seas setting, Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea set for the starring roles, and a few directives from producer David O. Selznick, new ensconced as head of production at RKO. “Just give me three wonderful love scenes like you had in The Big Parade and Bardelys the Magnificent. I don’t care what story you use so long as we call it Bird of Paradise and Del Rio jumps into a flaming volcano at the finish,” is how Vidor (writing in his autobiography A Tree is a Tree) recalled Selznick’s request. And that’s what, after weeks of waiting out tropical storms to shoot location footage in Hawaii and completing the production with Catalina doubling Hawaii, he finally delivered. So many of these films revolve around forbidden love, often (though not always) about white male adventurers intoxicated by the primal innocence in a land of plenty and a culture of easy living. And so goes Bird of Paradise, with McCrea as Johnny, the all-American sailor who (with the blessing of his paternal captain) jumps ship to spend time on a tropical island and the chief’s beautiful young daughter Luana (Del Rio), who is betrothed to the prince of another island. But of course.

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New Releases:

“Underworld: Awakening” (Sony), the fourth film in the cyberpunk horror film / action movie hybrid of vampires, werewolves, and the humans caught in crossfire of their underworld war, brings back Kate Beckinsale as the vampire assassin in black leather fetish gear. Blu-ray, DVD, OnDemand and at Redbox kiosks. Videodrone’s review is here.

“The Vow” (Sony) is a Nicholas Sparks-esque romantic drama starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum in a tale of amnesia and willpower. Blu-ray, DVD, OnDemand and at Redbox kiosks.

“Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” (Magnolia) is the feature film version of the uber-cheap skit series created by and starring Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, and “Mother’s Day” (Anchor Bay) is the remake of 1980 horror film, directed by “Saw” series veteran Darren Lynn Bousman and starring Rebecca De Mornay as mother. Both on Blu-ray and DVD.

Also new this week: the surf drama “Beautiful Wave” (Anchor Bay), the Spanish drama “Amador” (Film Movement) and “The Kreutzer Sonata” (Kimstim / Zeitgeist) with Danny Huston.

Browse the complete New Release Rack here

TV on Disc:

“Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season” (Warner) brings the nerd spy fantasy to a close with 13 strong episodes and a farewell made to satisfy the passionate fan base that kept the show alive despite struggling ratings. I wasn’t one of its devotees, but I always enjoyed the show and the final run is clever, fun, and so generous with its characters that it made me a convert. Blu-ray and DVD, both featuring Ultraviolet digital copies. Videodrone’s review is here.

“The Big C: The Complete Second Season” (Sony) brings another season of Laura Linney facing cancer by living her life to its fullest. 13 episodes on three discs, DVD only.Reviewed on Videodrone here.

“Cold War: The Complete Series” (Warner) presents the complete 24-part award-winning 1998 series, and “Dark Shadows: The Complete Original Series” (MPI) collects all 1225 episodes of the gothic soap opera on 131 discs in a custom coffin shaped box.

Flip through the TV on Disc Channel Guide here

Cool, Classic and Cult:

“Ganja & Hess” (Kino) is one of the most unusual vampire films ever made, an art film under the guise of a blaxploitation shocker, with “Night of the Living Dead” star Duane Jones as an anthropologist under the influence of an ancient African strain of vampirism. Blu-ray and DVD.Reviewed on Videodrone here.

“A Hollis Frampton Odyssey” (Criterion) collects twenty-four films made by the avant-garde filmmaker between 1966 to 1979, plus select commentary by filmmaker. Blu-ray and DVD.

“Shock Labyrinth 3D” (Well Go) is Japanese horror from Takashi Shimizu (of “Ju-On” and “The Grudge” fame) and “The One That Got Away” (VCI) is a World War II POW escape thriller starring Hardy Kruger.

And on the MOD Movies front is Warren William in “The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady” (Sony Pictures Choice Collection) and a batch of outdoor adventures from Warner Archive, including ”Northwest Passage” and ”Westward the Women.”Reviews at the MOD Movies round-up here.

All of the Cool, Classic and Cult here

Blu-ray Debuts:

“The Big Heat” (Twilight Time), Fritz Lang’s 1953 film noir masterpiece, transforms Glenn Ford from family man to avenging vigilante with the mob murders his wife. It’s one of my all-time favorite films and I never expected to see it on Blu-ray. Thank you, Twilight Time. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

“Gremlins 2: The New Batch” (Warner) is the rare sequel that is funnier than its original and one of the funniest films of the nineties. Or ever. Joe Dante creates one of the great live-action cartoons of all time. Videodrone’s review is here.

“Dirty Dancing Collection” (Warner) doubles up the nostalgic 1987 hit starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey with the 2004 pseudo sequel with Diego Luna and Romola Garai in 1958 Cuba. “Nobody puts Baby in the corner!” Not even the Cuban Revolution.

Also new: “La haine” (Criterion), Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 portrait of life in the ghettoes of the Paris suburbs, and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (Twilight Time), the colorful 1959 version of the Jules Verne science fantasy starring James Mason, Arlene Dahl, and Pat Boone.

Peruse all the new Blu-rays here

New on Netflix Instant:

Two seventies classics from Sidney Lumet arrive this week: “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975) with Al Pacino and “Network” (1976) with Faye Dunaway and William Holden.

“Groundhog Day” (1993) with Bill Murray is just as serious, but it’s so funny you may not notice, and “Big Night” (1996), a modest character piece with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, is just as much fun.

Also new: the Israeli drama “Ajami” (2009), Gus Van Sant’s “Drugstore Cowboy” (1989), and the wily cult horror comedy “Bubba Ho-Tep” (2003) with Bruce Campbell.

Browse more Instant offerings here

Available from Redbox this week:

Day and date with video stores: “The Vow” (Sony) with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, and “Underworld: Awakening” (Sony) with Kate Beckinsale armed with fangs and guns, both on DVD and Blu-ray. Also new is the surf drama “Beautiful Wave” (Anchor Bay) and the horror movie remake “Mother’s Day” (Anchor Bay).

For more upcoming releases, click here

Gremlins 2: The New Batch Blu-ray (Warner) is not merely the rare sequel that is funnier than its original, it is one of the funniest comedies of its time, a veritable live-action cartoon from Joe Dante at his most unrestrained. Set in a New York skyscraper, Gizmo, the cuddly, the sweet-natured teddy bear of a pet introduced in “Gremlins,” is rescued from a downtown genetics lab by Zach Galligan (now a commercial artist in a corporate cubicle world) and once again doused with water, which releases an army of nasty little lizard-like creatures that sprout like boils from the creature’s back. This time, however, the Gremlins have modern science on their side and use the genetic drugs to mutate into a nightmarish bestiary.

John Glover is inpsired as the excitable mogul (equal parts Ted Turners and Donald Trump) and Dick Miller gets to join the fight this time, but they are all upstaged by the erudite talking Gremlin (voiced with sneaky wit by Tony Randall). Director Joe Dante tosses in tributes to Ray Harryhausen, Busby Berkeley, and dozens of classic movies, skewers Ted Turner (“Tonight on the Clamp Cable Channel: “Casablanca,” now in color and with a new, happier ending!”), and casts Christopher Lee as a ghoulish scientist with a gallows humor.

Features commentary by director Joe Dante, producer Michael Finnell, writer Charlie Haas, and actor Zach Galligan, an alternate “home video” sequence of a key scene (originally seen on the initial VHS release of the film), twenty minutes of deleted scenes (including an alternate animated Chuck Jones-produced title sequence with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck), a short spoof of a “making of” featurette (where Gizmo and the Gremlins turn into stuck-up prima donnas), and the obligatory gage reel.

The original 1984 Gremlins (Warner), which plays out the wicked demon invasion in a small town right out of “It’s a Wonderful Life” (complete with a crotchety Mr. Potter crossed with the Wicked Witch of the West), also gets a re-release this week.

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The Big Heat (Twilight Time) is one of the masterpieces of film noir, a film of subdued style, underplayed brutality, and a well of rage boiling under a surface of calm corruption.

Glenn Ford is the bland family man cop driven over the edge when the mob violently kills his wife in a hit meant for him (the scene is the first of the film’s explosive eruptions of violence that tear through the placid poise of normalcy). Gloria Grahame co-stars as the willfully blind gangster’s moll scarred to the soul in an even more scalding moment of brutality and Lee Marvin is memorable as a drawling gunman with a nasty vicious streak, but the usually stiff and stolid Ford is the revelation as his hatred and anger brings him to a boil.

Director Fritz Lang, once the master of grand expressionist scenes, tones down his style as he works on a diminished budget, instead playing up the mundane visual quality of family homes, anonymous apartments and hotel rooms, and generic city streets. It all becomes part of the shadowy world of corruption and violence and psychopathic criminals.

I confess I never expected to see this on Blu-ray, and I couldn’t be happier.

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The Big C: The Complete Second Season (Sony) brings back Laura Linney as Cathy Jamison, a wife, mother, and high school teacher who turns a diagnosis of cancer (the big C of the title) into a springboard to live her life to the fullest in the second season of the Showtime series. It’s terminal but treatment may give her extra years, and she dives into every possibility with an optimism that her former self never had.

I found the kooky eccentricities of Linney’s character close to unbearable in the first season of the show. But this time around, her Cathy is more committed to actually living her life and looking after the people she cares about in, from her flailing husband (Oliver Platt) and struggling son (Gabriel Basso) to a student (Gabourey Sidibe) who moves in and the school swim team, who gets a taste of her maternal ferocity and likes it. Compassion tempers her reflexive rebellion and she’s no longer as self-absorbed, merely self-aware. And given the instability of those around her in the face of comparatively minor crises, she’s now the most well-grounded person in the show.

13 episodes on three discs, plus deleted scenes and outtakes. DVD only.

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Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season (Warner) – The nerd spy series “Chuck,” about an amiable computer geek transformed into the world’s most powerful spy thanks to a program uploaded directly into his brain, hung on for four years thanks to a small but passionate fan base and a Subway sponsorship deal. And so it was given the gift of a final 13-episode season despite ratings that would have cancelled any other series faced with the same balance of ratings and production costs. Creators / producer Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz used the opportunity give the show a funny, affectionate, action packed, and emotionally satisfying send-off.

The fifth season opens with everyman super-spy Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) going private sector, thanks to an inheritance from a former supervillain, and taking his team with him: sexy spy wife Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), intense NSA agent John Casey (Adam Baldwin), and best friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez), who has just inherited The Intersect, the program that transformed Chuck into the intelligence communities most valuable (if unpredictable) asset. It doesn’t go as well with Morgan, but it becomes part of his evolution, and the series is as generous as can be with such matters. Chuck’s sister (Sarah Lancaster) and brother-in-law (Ryan McPartlin) are almost junior members of the team and even the slackers in their electronics store cover business get involved.

The guest stars this season include a return visit from double agent Brandon Routh (who killed Chuck’s father, which makes it persona) and Chuck’s covert agent mother (Linda Hamilton, of course), a new supervillain in the form of Angus McFaydyen, and Bo Derek as Bo Derek, professional spy. But the most inspired addition to the final season is Carrie Anne Moss as a rival private security contractor and love interest for John Casey. Hey, the guy earned a little love, and their courtship is just as strange as you could hope for.

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Can you believe that Underworld: Awakening (Sony) is the fourth film in the cyberpunk horror film / action movie hybrid of vampires, werewolves, and the humans caught in crossfire of their underworld war?

Following a flashback installment, where Rhona Mitri slipped into Kate Beckinsale’s leather girdle, this chapter jumps years into the future, where Beckinsale’s vampire assassin Selena wakes up from suspended animation to find that her kind has been hunted to extinction by a new breed of human / werewolf genetic cocktail. Oh, and she now has a child, thanks to experiments conducted during her frozen layover.

The awakening of the title refers to her revival in the future (which, thanks to the continued bleak tech noir look of drizzly nights, rain slicked streets, and neon blue and cold white lighting, looks just the same as when she left), but you wonder if maybe the filmmakers have finally awakened to the diminishing returns of the series. This chapter, directed by the Swedish team of Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, is still pretty much dedicated to celebrating Beckinsale running up walls, firing guns, and kicking CGI beastie butt while dressed in black fetish gear. The rest is a blur of generic exposition, random plot twists, vaguely maternal instincts, sloppy CGI animation, and Stephen Rea looking like a waxwork as a genetic scientist dipping into the monster pool to create a new master race.

It all feels very second hand, right down to Charles Dance leaving his dignity behind to play the king-in-exile of the vampire nation and India Eisley playing Beckinsale’s test-tube daughter Eve as a B-movie Chloë Grace Moretz, getting the ferocious adolescent action figure part down pat but struggling to provide a modicum of personality to the role.

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The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady (Sony Pictures Choice Collection) was Warren William’s third film playing retired gentleman jewel thief turned freelance detective and knight errant Michael Lanyard, aka The Lone Wolf, but it’s the first of the nine Warren William Lone Wolf films to appear on home video. Hopefully it’s not the last.

William made his career playing another kind of wolf in dozens of early thirties films, the seductive (and sometimes oily) middle-aged businessman always on the make for younger woman. Lanyard also has an eye for the ladies, but he’s more chivalrous, a charming rogue who matches wits with both the police and the underworld to solve crimes and rescue damsels in distress. In “Meets a Lady,” he doesn’t even get the girl. Rather, he plays cupid as well as detective as he solves a jewel theft (which the cops want to pin on him) and a murder pinned on an innocent girl (Jean Muir) in love with a society gentleman. William brings such a ease to the role, a high society Robin Hood who enjoys sparring with the police, and Eric Blore is superb as the loyal butler who misses the good old days of bit heists and high speed getaways.

The 70-minute programmer from 1940, shot completely on a studio backlot, is a step up from the usual B product. It features a solid cast of character actors (Thurston Hall as the dogged and clever police inspector just waiting to get the good on Lanyard, Victor Jory as a crook playing all angles for whatever money he can squeeze out of the players) and a modicum of style. And if the mystery is as generic as they come, the personality makes the film. I hope this is the beginning of a series roll-out. Maybe in a multi-disc set like the Warner Archive’s collections of “The Saint” and “The Falcon” series starring George Sanders.

More manufacture on demand titles at Videodrone