At last-a great American movie available on video for the first time in its original aspect ratio. For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters-then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for one fateful night. Psycho gets the masterpiece treatment it deserves on DVD, with extras including newsreel footage surrounding the making and release of the movie; an archive of production stills; the special trailer in which Hitchcock (acting as one of the original Universal Studio tour guides) himself leads viewers around the Bates place; credit designer Saul Bass's original "shower scene" story boards; posters and advertising materials for the movie's William Castle-like publicity campaign (No One Will Be Seated After the Feature Begins!); and a 90-minute documentary on the making of the film! What more could any movie fan possibly want? -Jim Emerson At last-a great American movie available on video for the first time in its original aspect ratio. For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters-then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for one fateful night. Psycho gets the masterpiece treatment it deserves on DVD, with extras including newsreel footage surrounding the making and release of the movie; an archive of production stills; the special trailer in which Hitchcock (acting as one of the original Universal Studio tour guides) himself leads viewers around the Bates place; credit designer Saul Bass's original "shower scene" story boards; posters and advertising materials for the movie's William Castle-like publicity campaign (No One Will Be Seated After the Feature Begins!); and a 90-minute documentary on the making of the film! What more could any movie fan possibly want? -Jim Emerson.

Written and directed by Cédric Klapisch, this delightful French film from 1997 is less interested in its plot-about a young Parisian woman named Chloé (Garance Clabel) who is searching for her lost cat-than it is in her response to the sudden predicament of being truly alone. Chloe's life is hardly thrilling, and romance has proven elusive, so when her cat disappears while she's away on a brief vacation, it's a minor crisis that reminds Chloé of just how lonely she is, and her exhaustive search for the cat begins. She recruits her neighbors and a network of women who know every cat in the district where she lives. But When the Cat's Away is really about the rhythms of Chloé's daily life, the lives of the people around her, and the changing identity of the neighborhood as it undergoes renovation. Like the films of Eric Rohmer, this film is filled with casual observation and quiet revelations of character. It hardly seems like a film at all, but rather a privileged glimpse into the lives of very real people whom we come to know and admire, and in whom we recognize parts of ourselves. -Jeff Shannon.

A Night in Casablanca may not qualify as a Marx Brothers classic, but it's certainly the best of their latter-day comedies. "This picture is funnier than all but a handful of their earlier ones," wrote the usually cantankerous Pauline Kael, and she's right. The Big Store would have been the final Marx movie, but that disappointment, and an attractive new deal with United Artists, prompted the Marx trio to bring freshly anarchic energy to this post-war spoof of wartime intrigue, prompting Warner Bros. (producers of Casablanca) to threaten legal action over the title, to which Groucho responded, "I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. " As it happens, Night bears only passing resemblance to the Bergman/Bogart classic, with Groucho playing the new manager of a hotel in Casablanca, where several previous managers have been murdered while a scheming villain (Marx regular Sig Rumann) plots to steal the hotel's cache of Nazi treasure. Chico and Harpo are up to their usual antics (including piano and harp interludes, respectively), and they all give Rumann the runaround in the film's funniest and most perfectly choreographed scene. The brothers made their final film together with Love Happy three years later, but as any fan will tell you, A Night in Casablanca was the last Marx comedy that mattered. -Jeff Shannon.

Played to surly, snarly imperfection, Mickey Rourke's character (John) in 9-1/2 Weeks helped raise the bar on how much to reveal in mainstream soft porn. Whether erotic tension was raised by his relationship with Elizabeth (Kim Basinger) is another matter, and may well reflect whether one is aroused by the idea of abusive sex with-well, someone like Mickey Rourke. Regardless, Another 9-1/2 Weeks was released direct to video, so perhaps this tells us something about the confidence of loosing a sequel into an unsuspecting theater market. Of course, the central question raised by the sequel is: Whatever happened to John? After all, when Kim Basinger won an Oscar in L. A. Confidential, we lost any chance of seeing what happened to Elizabeth. Well, true to his burly macho sensitivity, John's been yearning for the glory days, when he could take a casual stroll from his Wall Street job and pick up someone like Elizabeth for three months of increasingly scumbag treatment. We can practically hear him thinking, "Where are those closet-sub, art gallery dealers when you really need them?" Try Paris. That's the home of Lea (Angie Everhart), Elizabeth's best friend. Aha-will she be John's new obsession, or the catalyst for a deeper, more profound change in his character? See if you can tell from his thoughtful, yet fashionably brooding expression as he gazes toward the Seine at the end. [+]

"Miss Claudel has become a master. " "She has the talent of a man. " "She's a witch. " And so Auguste Rodin and friends neatly sum up the sad trajectory of Camille Claudel's career. We first meet the sculptor as she digs clay with bare fingers from a frozen ditch, in the winter of 1885. By the time the film leaves her, in 1913, she's an acclaimed, if socially scorned, artist who's been committed to an asylum. In the interim, Claudel (Isabelle Adjani) falls in love with the famous, older, womanizing Rodin (Gérard Depardieu). Claudel abandons her work to assist the creatively bankrupt Rodin, filling in as his muse, assistant, and lover. When pregnancy forces Claudel to ask him to choose between her and his longtime mistress, he won't, she leaves, and their alliance ends. This proves to be the turning point for Claudel's mental health; when her affair with Rodin ends, she begins her intimacy with insanity. [+]

The fantastic visions of Belgian filmmakers Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet find full fruition in this fairy tale for adults. Evoking utopias and dystopias from Brazil to Peter Pan, Caro and Jeunet create a vivid but menacing fantasy city in a perpetually twilight world. In this rough port town lives circus strongman One (Ron Perlman), who wanders the alleys and waterfront dives looking for his baby brother, snatched from him by a mysterious gang preying upon the children of the town. Rising from the harbor is an enigmatic castle where lives the evil scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork), who has lost the ability to dream and robs the nocturnal visions of the children he kidnaps, but receives only mad nightmares from the lonely cherubs. Other wild characters include the Fagin-like Octopus-Siamese twin sisters who control a small gang of runaways-turned-thieves-Krank's six cloned henchmen (all played by the memorable Dominique Pinon from Delicatessen), and a giant brain floating in an aquarium (voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant). Caro and Jeunet are kindred souls to Terry Gilliam (who is a vocal fan), creating imaginative flights of fancy built of equal parts delight and dread, which seem to be painted on the screen in rich, dreamy colors. -Sean Axmaker.