The Movie:

Peter Coyote and Nick Mancuso play the titular Heartbreakers in Bobby Roth's 1984 Los Angeles-set drama. These characters aren't young men, but they aren't exactly old either. They are certainly old enough to know better.

Coyote is Arthur Blue, a mercurial painter whose recent work has focused on pseudo-pin-ups inspired by Bettie Page. His relationship to Cyd (Modern Romance's Kathryn Harrold) implodes after five years because, despite his sensitivity, Blue wasn't able to make room for their relationship beside his work.

Mancuso is Blue's longtime pal Eli, a businessman in his father's schmatta empire. Eli claims to want a relationship but -- shocker!...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Coca-Cola Kid (1985) is one of those fascinating mismatches of material and filmmaker that still kind of works despite itself.

Dušan Makavejev is one of the most popular avant-garde directors of the '60s and '70s, whose best-known film is WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971). WR prankishly combines documentary, narrative, and agitprop in what could be termed Makavejev's signature style. By the mid-'80s, however, it seems like Makavejev just wanted to work. His 1974 film Sweet Movie was a litmus test for hipness in the button-pushing vein...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay's 2002 follow-up to her poetic debut Ratcatcher, cemented her reputation as a filmmaker to watch. Years of tangling with the Hollywood machine have led to a number of unrealized projects or films that wound up coming to the screen in the care of other directors. Lynne Ramsay's name has only appeared on two other (brilliant and idiosyncratic) feature films in the past two decades. In 2022, she's still a filmmaker to watch, even if the roar of buzz that initally accompanied the release of Morvern Callar has transformed into the murmurs of an excited cult.

Fun City Editions' new Blu-ray of Morvern Callar will hopefully go a long wa...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Bilitis is an odd softcore whatsit from 1977, inspired by the pseudo-Sapphic poetry of Pierre Louÿs. Patti D'Arbanville (Rancho Deluxe, Big Wednesday) plays Bilitis, a schoolgirl fumbling toward her sexuality during a brief stay at a country house with an unfamiliar young couple. (D'Arbanville was 25 at the time of filming and, despite the filmmakers' best efforts, can't quite fool us into thinking she's an early-teen.)

The film's oddness is partly due to the seemingly competing sensibilities of its director and main writer. Director David Hamilton was known for soft-focus photography of nude young women and ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Christopher Petit's debut feature from 1979, Radio On, is a unique arthouse entity. It's an English road movie that takes its inspiration from the existential blankness of Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop and the desolate physical and emotional landscapes of Wim Wenders's road movies. (Wenders co-produced Radio On and provided some of his long-time crew members to make it.) The titular radio propels this journey with a mixture of bummed-out David Bowie tunes, chilly Kraftwerk compositions, and a smattering of spiky new wave from the cult Stiff Records label (Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Lene Lovich, Devo's "Satisfacti...Read the entire review

The Movie:

From writer Thomas McGuane (The Missouri Breaks) and director Frank Perry (Doc) comes the 1975 comedy Rancho Deluxe. It's a loosely plotted character study, set fittingly close to the Crazy Mountains in Montana, outfitted with elements of a heist flick, and top-lined by a delightful ensemble cast.

Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston star as Jack and Cecil, two irreverent young dudes who have seemingly stumbled into penny-ante cattle rustling almost as a way to keep from getting bored. The target of their rustling is John Brown (Clifton James), a beauty parlor magnate from New York state who has fashioned himself in...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The 1983 crime thriller Walking the Edge finds future Oscar nominee Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) right in the thick of his run as an exploitation star. Forster plays Jason Walk, a former baseball pitcher turned numbers runner who operates out of a yellow cab. Walk is pegged as a man with an assertiveness problem, and he is first glimpsed in the film getting short-changed by a customer who won't pay up after a bad bet. One imagines the role being tailor-made for Forster, who specializes in men whose gruff charm is offset by an undercurrent of weariness.

Walk's world is thrown for a loop when Christine Holloway (Nancy Kwan) hails his cab. Christine has seen her husband an...Read the entire review

The Movie:

A jokier take on the same mid-'70s American disillusionment that informed Robert Altman's Nashville, Michael Ritchie's 1975 ensemble film Smile is essentially an absurd comedy played bone dry. Set during the week of the Young American Miss beauty pageant in middle-of-nowhere Santa Rosa, California, the film flits between episodes in the lives of the contestants and some of the organizers.

Bruce Dern, as Big Bob Freelander, is essentially the main character. Big Bob is a car salesman who seems like the kind of fella who has been selling so long, he believes every word that he says. Big Bob is one of the judges of the pageant, and he is bizarrely devoted to it. Knowing that, c...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The 1973 film Jeremy is a simple but affecting teen romance set in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Future teen idol Robby Benson convincingly plays the title character, an awkward and nebbishy 15-year-old who falls for the new girl at school. Jeremy is smart and sensitive, with a million interests, poetry on his shelves and music in his heart, but he lacks the confidence to speak to Susan (Glynnis O'Connor) after he notices her preparing for a dance class at school. Like a million shy guys before and since, he becomes obsessed with Susan but contends that being near her is enough. It takes the intervention of Jeremy's outgoing buddy Ralph (Len Bari) to inform Susan that Jeremy likes her. (When Ralph tells Susan and points across the room to Jeremy,...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Movie:

It's always exciting to discover a new company dedicated to putting out lesser-known and little-loved titles on Blu-ray with the kind of affection and attention they haven't received in the past. Fun City Editions has thrown their hat into the ring with a handful of titles so far, produced in cooperation with the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome (meaning you can get some nifty limited edition art with your flick if you manage to snag one of those LE versions from the VS website).

The label's first release is Amos Poe's Alphabet City from 1984. Poe was a significant part of the late '70s/early '80s downtown New York scene -- his Blank Generation is a key punk-rock film -- and Read the entire review