What’s New in the CFL Movie Collection?
Every year, the Chester Fritz Library acquires new DVDs and Blu-rays to add to our collection. Some of these acquisitions are recent releases; others are splashy re-releases of classic films. We also try to fill “gaps” in our collection– movies that were overlooked by our curators at the time of release. To start 2026, we will be featuring some of the interesting titles we acquired during the previous year. Check out a few examples below!
This month, we’ll also be screening one of the biggest blockbusters of 2025: Jurassic World Rebrith. Join us on January 21 at 6:30 to watch Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey in an adventure to extract dinosaur DNA from wild specimens at an abandoned research facility. Admission is free and snacks are provided!
We make periodic purchases throughout the school year. If there’s a movie you think we ought to have on our shelves, please complete a recommendation form!
Dr. Nancy Love (Geneviève Bujold) hosts “The Love Line”, a relationship advice radio program. Among her listeners is her new roommate, Eve (Lesley Ann Warren), a former call girl who has become pessimistic about romance after ruining marriages through her trade. Eve now runs a bar, where the atmosphere is disturbed by a drifter (Keith Carradine). The stranger is looking for money for a bus ticket from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, but he’s also interested in the local women, including Nancy and Eve. (1984, dir. Alan Rudolph, 106 minutes)
Mars, 2071, days before Halloween. Villains blow up a tanker truck on Highway One, releasing a deadly virus that kills hundreds. Fearing a bigger biochemical attack, the Martian government offers an astronomical reward for the arrest and capture of the person(s) responsible. Aboard the spaceship Bebop lives a team of bounty hunters: cool gangster Spike Spiegel, ex-cop Jet Black, amnesic femme fatale Faye Valentine, teen hacker Radical Edward, and the hyper-intelligent corgi Ein. With such an enormous reward on the table, the crew leaps into their biggest job to date. Based on the anime series. (2001, dir. Shinichiro Watanabe, 115 minutes)
Documentary-maker Kirsten Johnson’s beloved dad, Dick, is dying from dementia. In order to prepare themselves for the ultimate end, father and daughter envision the many ways Dick might die and perform the scenarios as darkly comedic sketches. Intermixed with the tableaux is footage of the Johnson family dealing with Dick’s decline. (2020, dir. Kirsten Johnson, 89 minutes)
Lt. Col. Lam (Lam Ching-ying) has been assigned a mission by the U.S. Army: destroy an American bunker full of missiles before they can be seized by the Viet Cong. His solution: airdrop 12 Chinese American prisoners into Vietnam and collaborate with Cambodian guerillas. The team, including a black-market trader (Yuen Biao) and the convicts’ leader (Sammo Hung), will face a superhuman, giggling martial-arts master (Yuen Wah) if they want to collect their reward. (1987, dir. Sammo Hung, 100 minutes)
Twelve-year-old Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) is overweight and already a cynic. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena (Roxane Mesquida), is popular with boys and eager to lose her virginity. While the girls are on vacation at a seaside resort in southwestern France, Elena meets Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), an Italian law student. He seduces her with promises of love as the ever-watchful Anaïs observes on the margins. (2001, dir. Catherine Breillat, 86 minutes)
What is Susan (Melanie Mayron) to do when her roommate and best friend, Anna (Anita Skinner), gets married and moves out of their Upper West Side apartment? Susan wants to be a gallery artist, but for now she photographs weddings and b’nai mitzvah to make a living. She becomes close to a rabbi (Eli Wallach) who regularly presides over the events she photographs, yet she grows distant from Anna as their lives become more different. (1978, dir. Claudia Weill, 88 minutes)
In 1973, the Brookside coal miners of Harlan County, Kentucky voted to join the United Mine Workers union. The Duke Power Company refused to sign the union’s contact. This documentary follows the 13 months-long standoff between the miners (and their families) and company management, including how the strikers organize and the threats made against them. (1976, dir. Barbara Kopple, 103 minutes)
Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons) is a director intent to adapt a “cursed” Polish Romani folktale. The last attempted adaptation stalled when the two leads were murdered. Having offered the female lead to Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), Kingsley warns her co-star, Devon Berk (Justin Theroux), to maintain his professional distance, as Nikki’s husband (Peter J. Lucas) is notoriously possessive. Devon fails to follow this advice, and Nikki’s slipping sense of reality causes her to become lost in her character while the story of a Polish couple unfurls, and a trio of giant rabbits (voices of Naomi Watts, Scott Coffey, and Laura Harring) lounge around on the sofa and tend to their domestic duties. (2006, dir. David Lynch, 180 minutes)
Dutch Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has been dispatched with his elite rescue team to recover a politician whose helicopter was shot down over a Central American jungle. When they encounter Soviet soldiers in the jungle, Dutch realizes that the mission, overseen by war buddy and CIA agent Al Dillon (Carl Weathers), is not what it seems. Furthermore, their unit is being stalked by something invisible, something that likes to hunt for trophies. (1987, dir. John McTiernan, 107 minutes)
Glasgow, Scotland, 1973: amidst a trash collectors’ strike, a boy named James (William Eadie) accidentally causes the death of a friend. While dealing with his bloodguilt, James befriends a boy who loves mice (John Miller) and an oft-bullied girl (Leanne Mullen). He dreams of moving into a new housing estate near a wheat field, but as the strike drags on, James’s circumstances don’t seem likely to change. (1999, dir. Lynne Ramsay, 94 minutes)
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is an experimental documentary made with three film crews in Central Park. The first crew focuses on actors playing an arguing couple; the second crew films the first crew at work. The third crew films whatever in the park fits the broad theme of “sexuality”, whether that be actors, crewmates, or random onlookers. The director intentionally acts unprofessionally in order to create drama amidst the crews. The result: a documentary about a documentary about a documentary. (1971, dir. William Greaves, 75 minutes)
Our story opens in 1805. The army of Napoleon Bonaparte is advancing eastward. Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, Pierre Bezukhov (Sergei Bondarchuk), the bastard son of a nobleman, enters high society. He befriends Andrei Bolkonsky (Vyacheslav Tikhonov), a general’s son who will soon serve in the War of the Third Coalition. As the years pass, they and fellow aristocrats like Natasha Rostova (Ludmila Savelyeva) will face trials of warfare and love as French forces threaten the core of the Russian Empire. This epic film consists of four feature-length installments. Based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy. (1965-67, dir. Sergei Bondarchuk, 422 minutes)
