Luis Buñuel's "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz" Blu-ray - Ernesto Alonso, Miroslava, Rita Macedo, Ariadne Welter, Andrea Palma @SecondRunDVD UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/posts/luis-bunue… OUR COMPARISON: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film2/… The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ensayo de un crimen, 1955), directed by Luis Buñuel, is a razor-sharp black comedy that skewers bourgeois hypocrisy, Catholic guilt, and the absurd gap between murderous fantasy and reality. Wealthy Mexican potter Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ernesto Alonso) has been haunted since childhood by a formative incident during the Revolution: after receiving a music box from his indulgent mother, he was told it possessed the power to kill one’s enemies. When he wound it while wishing death upon his stern governess, a stray bullet fulfilled the wish—forever fusing erotic fascination, power, and violence in his mind. As an adult, Archibaldo meticulously plots the “perfect crime” against a succession of women, only to have fate and circumstance repeatedly thwart his elaborate schemes, leaving the victims dead by other hands. Buñuel’s elegant, ironic direction transforms this premise into a wickedly funny meditation on repressed desire, self-delusion, and the futility of criminal intent, making the film one of the director’s most accessible yet thematically rich works from his Mexican period. *** Luis Buñuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz stands as one of the most elegantly perverse and intellectually playful films of the director’s prolific Mexican period (1947–1960). This black comedy-satire is based on Rodolfo Usigli’s 1944 novel and stars Ernesto Alonso (The Young and the Damned) in the title role, with, in her final screen appearance, Miroslava (Jacques Tourneur's Stranger on Horseback) and, in her debut, Ariadna Welter (The Panther Women, Rage, The Brainiac, The Vampire's Coffin, The Vampire.) Rita Macedo (The Curse of the Crying Woman, The Exterminating Angel,) delivers a vivid, emotionally raw performance as Patricia Terrazas, the volatile and self-destructive woman whose turbulent affair and impulsive suicide ironically deny Archibaldo the chance to carry out his meticulously planned murder. While less overtly dreamlike than Buñuel’s later French masterpieces, the film distills his signature obsessions - repressed desire, Catholic guilt, bourgeois hypocrisy, and the absurd mechanics of fate - into a deceptively light, ironic narrative that functions simultaneously as psychological case study, erotic farce, and philosophical joke. Archibaldo is the ultimate victim of Catholic doctrine in Buñuel’s universe. Burdened by imaginary sins, he actively seeks real crimes to justify his self-loathing. The confession to the judge functions as both legal proceeding and mock psychoanalysis. The judge ultimately declares that Archibaldo has committed no crimes - only to watch the protagonist throw the music box into a lake in a gesture of symbolic exorcism. Buñuel suggests that guilt precedes and even creates the desire for transgression. The recurring motif of legs, the music box, the razor, and especially the mannequin crystallize Archibaldo’s (and by extension, patriarchal) tendency to turn women into objects of control and destruction. The mannequin scene is particularly Buñuelian: Archibaldo kisses the wax figure, only for the real Lavinia to reveal herself. When he later destroys the mannequin in his pottery kiln, the act reads as both erotic release and pathetic substitution. Buñuel links creation (pottery) and destruction in a single gesture. In the end, Buñuel leaves us with a characteristically ambiguous moral: Archibaldo may be “cured,” but only after reality itself has done his dirty work for him. The music box is discarded, yet the film suggests that the human capacity for self-deluding obsession is far harder to drown. This is Buñuel at his most accessible and most subversive - inviting us to laugh at a would-be murderer while quietly forcing us to confront the mechanisms of desire, guilt, and fate that make such figures possible. If you already own the VCI Blu-ray and are primarily concerned with picture quality, there is little reason to upgrade solely for the 1080P image. However, the Second Run Blu-ray edition is the clear choice for collectors thanks to its superior audio and substantially expanded extras, which provide valuable context on Buñuel’s work and this specific film. For most enthusiasts, the, Region FREE, Second Run release represents the definitive version currently available. Absolutely recommended.

Kazuo Hara’s "Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974" Blu-ray - Miyuki Takeda, Miyuki Takeda, Sachiko Kobayashi @SecondRunDVD UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/posts/kazuo-hara… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film1/… From the director of the renowned, controversial documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, Kazuo Hara’s intensely personal - and equally controversial - film Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 is a detached, radical examination of the interplay between the director and subject. In order to maintain contact with his former partner, Miyuki, Hara shot this raw, intimate film as a way to both maintain a connection with her and to make sense of their complex relationship. Shocking and uncompromising, Extreme Private Eros explodes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking to create a stunningly candid portrait of an independent woman living on her own terms, and Hara’s own struggle to accept her rejection. *** Kazuo Hara's Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 Order stands as one of the most audaciously intimate and ethically provocative documentaries in Japanese cinema history. Running approximately 92 minutes (IMDb lists the running time as 98-minutes) in grainy black-and-white 16mm, the film chronicles the post-breakup life of Hara’s ex-partner, the 26-year-old radical feminist and single mother Miyuki Takeda. The result is less a conventional portrait than a fractured “love song” that collapses boundaries between filmmaker and subject, observer and participant, private eros and public politics. Stylistically, the film rejects polished documentary conventions in favor of a home-video rawness that feels both accidental and deliberate. Long, claustrophobic takes, frequent sound-image desynchronization, and discontinuous editing create a sense of emotional volatility and temporal fragmentation. Thematically, Extreme Private Eros is saturated with the tensions of 1970s Japanese feminism, particularly the Ribu (Women’s Liberation) movement. Takeda was not merely a subject but an active participant in Ribu activism - opposing government attempts to restrict abortion rights under the Eugenic Protection Law and advocating for women’s bodily autonomy, sexual freedom, and rejection of traditional family structures. Takeda emerges as a complex, contradictory figure: fiercely independent and magnetically charismatic one moment, petty, neglectful, or verbally cruel the next (shaming her infant son for resembling his father, for instance.) Extreme Private Eros marks a pivotal shift toward the personal as political. It refuses easy resolution or moral clarity, leaving viewers unsettled by Takeda’s incomplete self-actualization, Hara’s unresolved longing, and the film’s own complicity in the spectacle of female rebellion. Decades later, it remains a landmark of reflexive, essayistic documentary filmmaking: a cinematic open wound that exposes the violence of privacy, the politics of the bedroom, and the high human cost of radical independence. For anyone interested in the evolution of personal cinema, feminist media history, or the blurred line between art and life, it is essential - and still profoundly disturbing - viewing. Second Run’s Blu-ray is the definitive edition of one of documentary cinema’s most disturbing and boundary-shattering works. By presenting a respectful yet revealing HD transfer that never sanitizes the film’s technical “flaws,” and pairing it with intelligent contextual supplements, the label has delivered a package that respects both the movie’s radical spirit and the needs of modern viewers. For anyone serious about personal documentary, Japanese independent cinema, or the ethics of nonfiction filmmaking, this disc is indispensable - raw, unflinching, and long overdue.