Ponette (Blu-ray) by Justin Remer The Movie: Jacques Doillon's 1996 film Ponette is one of the absolute best fiction films centered on the experience of very young characters. (A more recent example that comes to mind is Carla Simón's Summer 1993, which could be considered a sister film to Ponette.) Doillon's film puts its 4-year-old central character in the impossible position of coping with the death of her mother and sensitively explores the confusing emotions that situation presents. Young Victoire Thivisol plays Ponette so naturally that we never doubt the honesty of what she's doing. The whole world of the film is populated with young people who are utterly unselfconscious on camera, avoidi...Read the entire review »

Mackintosh and TJ (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Are there any film and television stars working today as positively beloved as Roy Rogers once was? Born Leonard Slye, Rogers co-founded the Sons of the Pioneers singing cowboys group, then eased into B-Westerns, eventually replacing Gene Autry as Republic Studios' top star in that capacity when Autry joined the Army in 1942. Rogers stopped making B-Westerns in 1952, his The Roy Rogers Show TV program debuting at the end of 1951 and which CBS continued airing in reruns until the fall of 1964, seven years after it had ended. During that time, Rogers (and his wife and co-star, Dale Evans) amassed a fanbase of millions of kids, loyal fans even we they outlived Roy and Dale and became parents and grandparents themselves. Rogers gave up film acting, apart from a cameo in the Bob Hope comedy Alias Jesse James (1959), the couple preferring to focus on their church work, they being particularl...Read the entire review »