Devil in the Flesh
(NoShame)
Once notorious and now nearly forgotten, Marco Bellocchio’s 1986 film updates Raymond Radiguet’s World War I—era novel to modern-day Italy. The result is a semi-coherent mixture of explicit sex and left-wing politics. Extras include interviews with two real-life members of Italy’s Red Brigades.
Point of Order/In the Year of the Pig
(Home Vision)
Essential preparation for this week’s Good Night, and Good Luck, Emile de Antonio’s 1964 Point of Order distills the nearly 200 televised hours of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings into a devastating 93-minute polemic. Eschewing narration, this cannily edited film stands as both a landmark of political documentary and a seminal look at the emergence of television as a key player in the American political process. Also released, for the first time on disc, is de Antonio’s incendiary In the Year of the Pig (1968), a seldom seem work that uses contemporary news footage to argue against the Vietnam War. Both feature liner notes from scholar Douglas Kellner as well as audio commentaries with the late director, compiled from archival sources.
Turtles Can Fly
(MGM)
Set during the tense days leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Bahman Ghobadi’s third feature relegates war and politics to the background of its story about a group of refugee kids struggling to stay alive in a camp near the Iraqi-Turkish border.