Directed, co-written, and co-produced by Alex Proyas, Dark City was a bomb, but one that has found its audience. It followed Proyas’ first two films, Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds and The Crow. Maybe the movies that followed — Garage Days, I, Robot, Knowing and Gods of Egypt — didn’t live up to the promise he was showing here, but at least we still have some great stuff to look back on. Perhaps his adaptation of R.U.R. will be excellent.

According to Wikipedia, “Concerned that audiences would not understand the film, New Line asked Proyas to add an explanatory voice-over to the introduction, and he complied.” Nothing good ever comes of that. But perhaps Dark City paved the way for The Matrix to run.

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a hotel with a ritualistically murdered woman in the next room. A phone call from Dr. Daniel P. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) urges him to run, as The Strangers are on their way. Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) is looking for whoever is killing sex workers, which makes Murdoch a suspect.

It’s always night here, and soon, both Murdoch and Bumstead learn that The Strangers are aliens who can use “tuning” to distort reality. As a group of humans sleep, they are mining them for the data that may save their world. Tracked by a Stranger with his memories, Mr. Hand (Richard O’Brien, Riff Raff in another iconic role), he must find and rescue his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and stop the aliens from taking over the entire human race, while also getting back to his hometown, Shell Beach, a place everyone knows about. Still, no one knows how to get there.

I love movies shot all on a soundstage, and that’s what makes Dark City feel so unique. It’s a world that could be the 1940s but is also nowhere, filled with spirals, clocks and near-unending darkness. I can and can’t believe that this was released against Titanic but I have also learned that the right films always find their audience.

In 2021, Proyas made a short film in the same universe as Dark City, Mask of the Evil Apparition. 

The Arrow Video release of Dark City has a brand new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negatives approved by director of photography Dariusz Wolski, plus a 60-page perfect bound collectors’ book featuring new writing by author Richard Kadrey, and film critics Sabina Stent, Virat Nehru and Martyn Pedler. It’s inside limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Doug John Miller with a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Doug John Miller, three postcard-sized reproduction art cards, a postcard from Shell Beach and a business card for Dr. Schreber.

The Director’s City disk has five commentaries: a new commentary by director Alex Proyas, another by Craig Anderson, Bruce Isaacs and Herschel Isaacs, co-hosts of the Film Versus Film podcast and an archival audio commentary by director Proyas; an archival commentary by Roger Ebert; and an archival commentary by writers Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer. There’s also an archival introduction by Alex Proyas; Return to Dark City, a new hour-long documentary featuring interviews with director Alex Proyas, producer Andrew Mason, production designers Patrick Tatopoulos and George Liddle, costume designer Liz Keough, storyboard artist Peter Pound, director of photography Dariusz Wolski, actor Rufus Sewell, hair & makeup artist Leslie Vanderwalt and VFX creative director Peter Doyle; Rats in a Maze, a new visual essay by film scholar Alexandra West; I’m as Much in the Dark as You Are, a new visual essay by film scholar Josh Nelson on film noir and identity in Dark City and a design and storyboard gallery.

The theatrical cut has two archival commentaries, one by Proyas, writers Lem Dobbs & David S. Goyer, director of photography Dariusz Wolski and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos and the other by Roger Ebert. There’s also Memories of Shell Beach, a 2008 featurette in which cast and crew look back at the making of the film from concept to reception; Architecture of Dreams, a 2008 featurette presenting five perspectives on the themes and meanings of the film; a theatrical trailer and an image gallery.

While this is currently sold out, keep your eye on Arrow Video and MVD Shop.

“King of Cult” Teruo Ishii (Horrors of Malformed Men, Shogun’s Joy of Torture) shares four stories of real-life crimes of passion involving women throughout Japan’s history, including the Hotel Nihonkaku Murders; Oden Takahash, the poison wife and last woman to be executed by beheading in Japan; serial killer Yoshio Kodaira and Sada Abe, whose story was also told in Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses.

This is one of seven movies that Ishii made in 1969 (Horrors of Malformed Men, Yakuza Law, Inferno of Torture, Rising Dragon’s Iron Flesh, Shameless: Abnormal and Abusive Love and Orgies of Edo are the others), yet he doesn’t feel tired. If anything, this is a fully formed and intense mission statement on the nature of female evil.

Forensics examiner Dr. Murase (Teruo Yoshida) is shocked that the next body he is to perform an autopsy on is his wife, Yukiko, who had sex with another man before taking her own life. As he ponders this, he reflects on four true crime stories.

Toyokaku Inn Case is based on a 1961 incident. Chiyu Saito (Mitsuko Aoi) and her husband Kosuke (Kenjirô Ishiyama) may own a hotel together, yet she sees him so infrequently that she assumes that he’s having an affair. She’s right, as it’s the very same woman, Kinue Munakata (Rika Fujie), whom she has been confiding in. She and Kosuke conspire to murder Chiyu, along with Kinue’s faithful lover, Shibuya (Takashi Fujiki). Now the owner of the hotel, she makes it successful, but not without many more killings.

You probably know the Sada Abe story, which happened in 1936, as she was found wandering the streets covered in blood, clutching the genitals of her dead lover. What you may not know is how horrible her life was to that point. Played by Yukie Kagawa, we see how her childhood and teen years led her to, well, cutting off a man’s dick. We also meet several other women who’ve done the same, as well as Dr. Murase — in a moment of meta madness — meeting the actual Sada Abe, who disappeared soon after this. She tells him that we only truly love one person in our lives and that her lover asked to be killed.

Taking a break from women, the third story is about serial killer Yoshio Kodaira (Asao Koike). Shot in black and white, this gets grimy, as we see him set up, assault, kill and maybe even assault after death several women. This is all so the doctor can ask if women make men crazy. Come on, 1969 exploitation Japanese violence movie, be more faithful to our 2025 values.

Takahashi Oden (Teruko Yumi) doesn’t want to marry the man she’s been picked to be the wife of, Naminosuke (Shin’ichirô Hayashi). In just ten minutes or so, he gets leprosy, keeps making love to her, she gets a criminal lover, they kill the husband, and then she’s sold into sexual slavery before being beheaded. Wow.

Obviously, this won’t be a movie for everyone, but if you want to see how far ahead Japan was, both in depicting true crime and lusty tales of sex, murder and violence, this is here for you.

Released for the very first time outside Japan by 88 Films, this has audio commentary by Jasper Sharp and Amber T., a new introduction by Mark Schilling, a stills gallery, a trailer and original and new artwork by Ilan Sheady. There’s also a limited edition numbered OBI strip and booklet. You can order it from MVD.

We start at the funeral of Dawn Wiener, who got heavy, got acne, got date raped and then took her own life, all before the age of 20. Everyone worries that the way they treated her as a child is why this happened. Aviva watches these discussions and, despite only being a teenager — she’s played by eight different actors of different ages, races, and genders, but is supposed to be 13 — she wants a child.

She becomes pregnant by Judah, a family friend, and her family forces her to abort, which ruins her ability to become with child. No one tells her that, however. She runs away from home, has sex with a trucker and becomes part of the Sunshine Family, an ultra-religious home for orphans and runaways run by a father who hires a hitman to murder abortion doctors. And that killer is the trucker that Aviva just met, who she is sure that she’s in love with, until he kills the doctor, his daughter and himself via suicide by cop.

Finally, she meets Mark, who is suspected of touching Missy — the estranged sister of Dawn — who tells her that everyone is programmed to be one way or the other, that free will does not exist. But somehow, she’s able to find Judah again, who is now Otto, and feels that this time, she has a child.

Aviva is played by Emani Sledge, Valerie Shusterov, Hannah Freiman, Rachel Corr, Will Denton, Sharon Wilkins, Shayna Levine and Jennifer Jason Leigh in this Todd Solondz-directed and written movie. Of the casting, Roger Ebert said, “Consider the pathos brought to Aviva by the actress Sharon Wilkins, who is a plus-size adult black woman playing a little girl, and who creates perhaps the most convincing little girl of them all. Or Jennifer Jason Leigh, three times as old as Aviva but barely seeming her age. These individual segments are so effective that at the end of each one we know how we feel, and why. It’s just that the next segment invalidates our conclusions.”

Solondz doesn’t make easy films to watch or get your brain around. Good.

This Radiance Films release has a 4K restoration from the original negative by the Museum of Modern Art approved by writer-director Todd Solondz. Extras include a new interview with Todd Solondz by critic Hannah Strong; Todd Solondz and His Cinema of Cruelty, a new video essay by critic Lillian Crawford; a trailer; a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Bence Bardos, extracts from the original press book, plus archival interviews with Solondz and composer Nathan Larson and a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters.

You can get this on 4K UHD or Blu-ray from MVD.

Directed and written by Chris Skotchdopole, this starts the morning after Shane (Rigo Garay) blacks out on the night he marries Leah (Ella Rae Peck). As they get to a remote location for their honeymoon, they soon find themselves blackmailed by a waiter, John (John Speredakos), and a bartender, Rose (Lorraine Farris), from the wedding, who know something he did that he can’t remember. But they don’t want money. They want to be business partners for their invention, The Crumb Catcher.

At one point, Leah tells Shane that he’s unlovable, which makes me ask why they’ve been together so long. or why he’s so worried about losing her because of the video that John and Rose have. It seems like everyone in this is unlovable, if you want to be honest.

Kind of home invasion, kind of relationship introspection, Crumb Catcher is, well, unique. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, as several viewings may prove that to me.

Extras on the Arrow Blu-ray release of this movie include a new commentary track by Skotchdopole, recorded exclusively for Arrow Video in 2025, as well as Catching Crumbs: The Making of Crumb Catcher, a 38-minute behind-the-scenes, featuring interviews with the film’s cast and crew, created exclusively for Arrow Video; two short films by the director, a trailer, an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring an introduction by producer Larry Fessenden and new writing on the film by Richard Newby and Tori Potenza and a reversible sleeve featuring original artwork by Tessa Price and Sister Hyde. You can order this from MVD.