The Thursday Night Club - DVD

Meet Jo, Beth, Amy and Meg. They're the March sisters, the Little Women of Mervyn LeRoy's Academy Award -winning* Technicolor version of the cherished Louisa May Alcott novel. Set during the Civil War, it chronicles the Marches' lives and loves, underscoring the era's expectations about a woman's place in the world. Golden-tressed Elizabeth Taylor portrays pretentious Amy, Janet Leigh is earnest Meg, and Margaret O'Brien is dear, traged

Winner of the Grand Prix at the first Tokyo International Film Festival in 1985, Typhoon Club is widely regarded as the seminal film of director Shinji Somai's career. A work of raw, elemental power, it follows an ensemble of junior high students in a provincial town, beset by a summer-y malaise as a typhoon looms. When the storm makes landfall, the teens find themselves holed up in their school unsupervised, while another classmate (Yuki Kudo) disappears alone on a harrowing trek to the big city. Set adrift in a world suddenly unmoored, the students let loose their pent-up angst and burgeoning passions in a series of propulsive, phantasmic scenes-part apocalypse, part utopia-as the deluge rages on into the night. Observed in daring long takes, director Somai gives material form to the students' turbulent inner lives. When day breaks and the rains let up, the youngsters open their eyes to a world in ruins-or a world renewed. The 10th best Japanese film of all time, according to Japan's Kinema Junpo poll.

George Raft and Mae West star in the pre-code drama Night After Night about a speakeasy owner with a colorful past. Joe Anton (Raft), an ex-thug intent on losing his street-smart manner, hires a proper spinster named Mabel (Alison Skipworth) to accompany him and Miss Healy (Constance Cummings) to dinner at his swanky establishment. Complicating matters, his flamboyant ex-girlfriend, Maudie Triplet (West), breezes over to their table and