Arrivals from the UK and Germany are the order of the day, as the latest titles to turn up consist of one debut, Anders Ronnow-Klarlund’s “Strings,” a restock of Jack Hill’s “Switchblade Sisters,” and seven British restocks from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema line: Alex Ross Perry’s “Listen Up Philip,” Jia Zhangke’s “The World,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Rumble Fish,” Nagisa Oshima’s “Cruel Story of Youth,” Johnnie To’s “Mad Detective,” Peter Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon,” and Douglas Sirk’s “The Tarnished Angels.”
“Strings” is a fantasy film along the lines of the Lord of the Rings movies, however it’s staged entirely with marionettes. Rather than ignoring the fact that the characters are puppets, it’s actually incorporated into the rules of their reality; for instance, in the opening scene, the king kills himself — indicating straightaway that just because these are puppets that doesn’t necessarily mean this is the sort of picture for small children — by cutting the string that’s connected to his head.