Léo Zimmerman (Gilbert Melki) is a French businessman with haunted eyes and an air of paranoia. He knows he’s being watched—even targeted—and when a wiry young man named Kopas (Grégoire Colin) shows up in his office, he realizes his number’s truly up. Kopas is a hit man, and Léo is his next target; it’s only a matter of time. So the victim makes a deal with his killer: give him a couple of more days to wind up his affairs. He won’t stray; in fact, they’ll have lunch every day. The hit man reluctantly agrees.

That’s the basic plot of Le Tueur, a film by writer/director Cédric Anger (who also co-wrote the excellent Le Petit lieutenant). It’s technically a thriller, but it ambles along at a relaxed pace, for the genre, as the story slowly spools out, giving it an atmosphere few other hit men movies can boast. Le Tueur first showed here at Fantasia last year, followed by a brief theatrical run in the fall, and now, thanks to new local distributors Evokative Films (also responsible for bringing us the Korean fantasy Hansel & Gretel), you can pick it up in a spiffy, well-designed and, it should be mentioned, eco-friendly DVD package that also features an audio commentary and a short by Anger. Well worth a look.

Disney’s Pinocchio used to really freak me out when I was a kid. I don’t know what it was exactly about it—the art, the character himself, the boys turning into donkeys, Jiminy freakin’ Cricket—but I always found it unsettling to watch. So when, to mark the movie’s upcoming 70th anniversary, Disney went back to the vaults and did a comprehensive, frame-by-frame, high-definition restoration, I thought it was about time that I revisited the film as a grown-ass man. Maybe the movie’s underlying darkness would come across as twisted brilliance.

Yeah… bad idea. Pinocchio is still some creepy, creepy shit. It’s now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.