Penélope Cruz is an actress who will, for a vast swath of English-speaking audiences familiar only with her work in breakouts like Vanilla Sky and Vicky Cristina Barcelona or big-budget blockbusters like (gulp) Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, never receive her full due. No small amount of ink has been spilled on Cruz’s physical appearance, of course. But her true gift lies in her skillful touch with silences, and in particular weighted, melancholic tranquility. For viewers who haven’t delved deeper into her native Spanish tongue canon, there’s no way to really understand and entirely appreciate that.

Actually, add the Italian language to that list of estimable international work. Of course there are all of Cruz’s superb collaborations with Pedro Almodóvar, her longest-lasting big screen partner and probably the filmmaker who most grasps Cruz’s essence. But in L’Immensita, director Emanuele Crialese also shows a keen understanding of the depths of Cruz’s talent, and a solid knack for more fully showcasing them.

Set in 1970s Rome, L’Immensita (which translates basically as “The Immensity,” the added article providing a degree of psychological heft) centers around a Spanish expatriate, Clara (Cruz), struggling to raise her three children with her businessman husband, Felice (Vicenzo Amato). His philandering is one thing, perhaps expected and forgiven, but his disinterest and casual cruelty prove to be the straws which ultimately break the camel’s back, so to speak.

Experiencing gender dysphoria, 12-year-old Adriana (Luana Giuliani) rejects her birth sex and instead wishes to go by the name of Andrea — something which enrages Felice. Caught in the middle is Clara — maybe a little heartbroken, or at least uncertain about the path for her and her family, but bonded in outsider feeling with Andrea, and of course wanting the best for all her children.

There is significant overlap here with a couple other films, probably most notably Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy; we’ve seen some of these characters before, and the film’s well-intentioned attempts to rope in yet another element of “otherness” via Andrea’s crush on a girl, Sara (Penelope Conti), who lives in a nearby Romani camp don’t entirely bear fruit in the intended fashion. But Crialese (Respiro, Terraferma) taps into the all-consuming reality of adolescent fantasy worlds, and adults who of course still want to think of them as only children.

The production design and filmmaking deftly balance nostalgia and a more modern sensibility, and even, in one great black-and-white fantasy sequence involving Clara, touch on whimsical release. Anchoring the entire enterprise is Cruz, with a performance of incredible, deceptively modulated depth. The result is something that connects as a type of dual-track coming-of-age film — for child and parent alike, one innocent and one attempting to reclaim some of that tender perspective for herself.

L’Immensita comes to Blu-ray from Music Box Films, in a 2.35:1 widescreen transfer with a 5.1 DTS-HD Italian-language master audio track and, naturally, English subtitles. Its bonus features consist of a photo gallery and the movie’s theatrical trailer; it’s a shame that even a brief, subtitled EPK-style chat with Cruz in either Spanish or Italian (or perhaps the film’s rich, lively 2022 Venice Film Festival press conference with international journalists) isn’t included here, to further highlight Cruz’s passionate connection to not merely this particular story but also this type of more intimately scaled, humanistic filmmaking.

Part of the thrill of the horror genre, for hardcore fans, of course comes in the pliancy of certain tropes and sub-genres, and getting to bear witness to their influence being disseminated across disparate cultures. Case in point: Gangnam Zombie, a loose-limbed contemporary South Korean horror flick set in the titular wealthy Seoul business district. Helmed by Lee Su-seong, (House With a Good View), the movie features K-pop starlet Park Ji-yeon, who co-stars alongside Ji Il-ju and Cho Kyung-hoon, and if the make-up and effects work don’t necessarily rise to a satisfying level for many horror fanatics, there is at least a streamlined sense of purpose here that keep intact much of its no-frills fun.

Set conspicuously in a post-COVID world, the movie opens with a jolting dose of mayhem and gore, as Hyeon-seok (Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo’s Ji) and Min-jeong (Park) fight off a swarm of zombies with a baseball bat. From there the film flashes back in time, giving viewers a glimpse of the outbreak’s origins during a heist gone wrong. As Gangnam Zombie kicks and punches its way forward, there are small bits and flashes of what could be generously interpreted as socioeconomic commentary (Hyeon-seok and Min-jeong are arrears in their rent by three months), though nothing that really rises to the level of George Romero’s work. There is also no small amount of humor (including a fairly inspired gag of surprise “safety” near the movie’s end).

In this regard (and others), Lee’s film is a mainly a vehicle for the blend of genre cocktails and rich melodrama which mark so many Korean productions. Positioning Hyeon-seok as an erstwhile taekwondo champion provides the opportunity to inject some martial arts action sequences into the marauding zombie attacks, and casting Ji — who has a certain springy, leonine physicality — is an inspired touch. While the stagings aren’t top-shelf in their accomplishment, the likability factor on this import is high, something that counts a lot for horror flicks.

Gangnam Zombie comes to Blu-ray from Well Go USA, presented in 2.39:1 widescreen with Korean-language DTS-HD master audio 5.1 and Dolby digital 2.0 tracks. Naturally, English subtitles are featured, but there are otherwise no bonus features apart from the movie’s theatrical trailer. This is a shame, really — as even a crudely assembled cultural appreciation or scattered presentation of some behind-the-scenes elements would add nominal value and help plant the seeds to further grow the international horror marketplace.

Perhaps no European filmmaker was as prolific a purveyor of low-budget exploitation and so-called “spy-fi” B-movies as Spanish-born Jess Franco, who cranked out over 170 films in a career spanning seven decades. Blue Underground, among several other home video labels dedicated to under-appreciated genre fare largely from the 1950s through the ’80s, have gone a long way toward rehabilitating the image of Franco and other directors who for many years lived on only in the minds and imaginations of cinephiles who scoured the dustiest VHS rental shelves of their video stores growing up.

Known in some markets as Future Women at the time of its 1969 release, The Girl From Rio is a wacky, very horny psychedelic thriller told in a shrugging, offbeat style which predates comic-book goofiness of many years later. Sexxed up and full of gorgeously out-there costumes and wild set and production design (but also lacking spatial cohesion as well as a unifying visual aesthetic), it is pure Franco, for better and worse.

The movie’s story centers on criminal Jeff Sutton (Richard Wyler), who is on the lam with $10 million, and finds himself caught between mob boss Masius (George Sanders) and a bisexual criminal mastermind known, variously, as Sunanda and Sumuru (Goldfinger’s Shirley Eaton). When Sutton is kidnapped by Sumuru, as part of her plan to enslave the male species with an army of lusty warrior women, it pits her against Masius. The film’s jazzy surplus of mood, more than anything else, is what helps it more or less hold up to the scrutiny of a present-day viewing — it’s entertaining and still rather bracing to see a movie with this muchness (at least one where there isn’t a protagonist with superpowers and loads of CGI thrown at the screen) going on.

The Girl From Rio comes to 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray in a superlative two-disc release, anchored by loads of new bonus material and a great transfer with deep blacks and solid crispness. Among these are an audio commentary track from film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth that unpacks all manner of production detail while also serving as a deeper excavation of Franco’s entire canon. There’s also a new featurette, “Rocking in Rio,” that provides counterpoint to the archival featurette “Rolling in Rio.” The former is anchored by an interview with Stephen Thrower, author of Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco (the filmmaker’s birth name), while the latter features conversations with Franco (who passed in 2013), Eaton and producer Harry Alan Towers. A great poster and still photo gallery, plus a trim reel of soundless footage, are also included, in addition to 11 minutes of material from a German edit of the movie that brush up and flesh out a bit of character motivation. Wrapping things up, for Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans, is a RiffTrax audio commentary track on a 78-minute version of the movie.