Based on the writings of Australian author Mark "Chopper" Read, a real-life criminal who recounts his misdeeds (including the severing of his own ears to win release) in books with titles like How to Shoot Friends and Influence People, Chopper is a stomach-churning spectacle from which you cannot pull away. In the opening scene of Andrew Dominik's vicious first film, Chopper jabs a man's face full of holes with pliers and proceeds to offer him a cigarette while he lies bleeding to death on a prison floor; contrite but obviously mad, he then asks sincerely, "You don't like me much, do you?" Somehow it's grotesquely funny. Shooting in bleached-out blue prison cells and corrosively lit nightclubs and flats, Dominik sets a spare stage for the film's true revelation, standup comic Eric Bana's explosive debut. Reminiscent in scale of Russell Crowe's first lead outing as a sadistic skinhead in Romper Stomper, Bana's performance is at turns fearsome, hilarious, and mesmerizing. -Fionn Meade.

Another great historical performance from the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in London that's been captured on tape, this 1968 production of Tchaikovsky's perennial holiday classic The Nutcracker stars two of the premier dancers of their (or any) time: ballerina Merle Park and the redoubtable Rudolf Nureyev. Both are seen in their considerable prime. Nureyev's choreography and production are also tastefully done, with the opening March of the Toy Soldiers and the climactic Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies particularly beautifully handled. Conductor Charles Taylor leads the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a merry and vigorous reading of Tchaikovsky's wonderfully appealing score. As always with such legendary stagings taped for posterity, the video and audio quality aren't perfect, but they are more than adequate enough to appreciate and be endlessly entertained by Nureyev's, Park's, and Tchaikovsky's balletic mastery. -Kevin Filipski.

Biography of the explorer who convinced Spanish royalty to send him on a trip to chr(39)the Indieschr(39) and found the Caribbean instead.

The silent epic and international cinema legend Abel Gance is most celebrated for his sweeping and pioneering biography masterpiece "Napoleon. " But this touching and tortured document of the legendary Beethoven's creative genius deserves equal tribute and attention. Like "Napoleon," "Beethoven" is Gance's portrait of a great mind, a giant of history, here crafted as a romantic vision of the artist. The film chronicles the years of Beethoven's greatest successes and his struggles against overwhelming adversity-poverty, the onset of deafness and his unrequited passion for his "Immortal Beloved. " Writer/director Gance conducts a symphony of images set to an expressionistic score, depicting not only the events but the spirit of the composer's life. If one were to gather the hundreds of books written about Ludwig van Beethoven, sift through each with a fine-tooth comb, and extract every simple mistake, wild speculation, and outright falsehood, the result would still be nowhere near as fabulous and artificial as this 1936 biopic, which rewrites the composer's life story into a throbbingly melodramatic tale of genius ignored and love unrequited. Director Abel Gance, best known for his expansive silent classic Napoleon, wasn't interested in the truth of Beethoven's life, but instead the romantic ideal of a great man tormented by history; Gance's Beethoven is merely a variation of the filmmaker's beloved Bonaparte, triumphant yet scorned by his inferiors in the artistic realm rather than the political. (Needless to say, among the film's many omissions is Beethoven's bitter rededication of the "Eroica" Symphony. ) Beginning where every portrait of Beethoven the man must, with the identification of the Immortal Beloved, the film nominates (wrongly) Giulietta Gallenberg, née Guicciardi, reconstructing their brief passion as a lifelong obsession. During each of Beethoven's struggles-with love, poverty, deafness-thunder cracks against the sky and the opening notes of the Fifth burst onto the soundtrack to punctuate the action. [+]

Abel Gance's 1927 masterpiece is absolutely indispensable for silent-film buffs or anyone interested in classic world cinema. From the future emperor's first strategic victory, a schoolyard snowball fight, to the climactic invasion of Italy, Napoleon truly rules! This is no static, antiquated relic. Among Gance's innovations was to free the camera (for one battle scene, he had it mounted on horseback!). The film's justly celebrated climax features a triptych of synchronized images that anticipates by more than 30 years Cinerama and widescreen. But more than a triumph of filmmaking, Napoleon is a triumph of film restoration and was a boon to the vital cause of film preservation. Gance's movie was long thought lost. But historian Kevin Brownlow, with the cooperation of film archives from around the world, spent more than a decade painstakingly reassembling it. Francis Ford Coppola's name (not to mention a reported quarter of a million of his dollars) helped find Napoleon the audience this film so richly deserves. The rousing score was composed by Coppola's father, Carmine. Viva la Gance! -Donald Liebenson.

Filmed on location in Russia and England, this informative and entertaining full-length feature film presents the fascinating life of the great ballerina, Anna Pavlova. This film presents her early years at the Imperial Ballet School, her work with dance world legends Diaghilev and Fokine, and highlights her triumphant world tour with her own ballet troupe. This is a lavish re-creation of the incredible life of the world's greatest ballerina. Starring Galina Beliaeva as Anna, with James Fox, Martin Scorsese, Roy Kinnear, and Bruce Forsyth.

This controversial 1969 film directed by rebellious Russian filmmaker Sergei Paradzhanov (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors) chronicles the life of the 18th-century poet Sayat Nova, but in a most unconventional way. Paradzhanov seeks to portray the poet by different actors at various stages of his long life, from a poor childhood working on farms through early celebration as a poet to his self-imposed isolation as a cloistered monk. The unorthodox stream-of-consciousness style of the film highlights character over plot, using the poet's own words as a springboard for sumptuous images that chart the course of his life from birth until death, from his youth and the great love of his life through his struggles with religion and philosophy and the despair of old age. The loose, evocative style not only brings to life the poetry of Sayat Nova's body of work, but also brings great weight to the poetry of his life. Challenging, defiant, and unconventional, The Color of Pomegranates is a must for those searching for new and different forms of filmmaking. -Robert Lane.