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"MADEMOISELLE." (2001. NOT RATED. SYKRONIZED USA. $24.98.)Synkronized USA is a terrific Florida company that specializes in issuing previously unreleased French films for the U.S. market. Any Synkronized title is worth strong consideration: The company has excellent taste, a fact reinforced by its choice of this 2001 gem. It's a subtle, heartfelt film of a kind we don't make in this country.The release is especially welcome in that it adds another Sandrine Bonnaire title into circulation. She plays a married sales executive who meets a group of wedding entertainers while on a business trip. Circumstances keep preventing them from separating, and so, during the course of a day, she and an actor (Jacques Gamblin) find themselves becoming increasingly drawn to each other.The emotional dynamics are subtle and complicated. The film is about romance, but elements of class come into play as well. There's a small but telling moment, unlike anything you'd see in a Hollywood film, in which the woman, after calling for the evening train schedule, corrects herself and asks for the morning schedule. In doing so, she's the one who decides to spend the night with the man, just as she -- despite her easygoing cheer and his masculine sullenness -- is truly in control all along."Mademoiselle" is only 85 minutes long, but it's a full meal that tells a complete, emotionally rich story, in which love is the ultimate education. The film was never released in the United States and was never shown at a film festival. At least we can see it this way.-- Mick LaSalle"THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN COLOR." (2002. NOT RATED. ACORN MEDIA. $24.99.)There is a scene early on in the magnificent three-part documentary "The British Empire in Color" depicting the wedding of an Indian prince during the final years of the Raj. After arriving for the ceremony atop an ornately feathered and bejeweled elephant, the young man is borne to his waiting bride on a solid silver litter. As breathtaking as it is, the scene is, like many, an ironic contrast to the poverty, disease, subjugation, abrogation of native tradition, forced labor and death visited upon nearly a third of the world's population during the centuries-long existence of the British Empire.From Canadian Indians and Eskimos to African villagers, from Jews in Palestine to Australian aborigines, Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims, the Empire remains history's greatest example of colonialism. What's extraordinary about this 2002 documentary is the color footage, even from as far back as 1911, when we see Indian troops parading before George V.The filmmakers have an agenda that is pretty difficult to argue against when you see footage of starving African children, or hear British women in Rhodesia dismissing the idea that Africans are capable of ruling their own country, or hear Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain admit that it's in Britain's interest to side with Arabs against the Jews in Palestine because the country needs oil. Sadly, it's not a big stretch to see some parallels in our modern world.-- David Wiegand"THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: LIMITED COLLECTOR'S EDITION." (1964. NOT RATED. GENIUS PRODUCTS. $39.92.)"My lord Caesar, the omens are bad." So says the blind soothsayer at this film's beginning, and he's not kidding. For 179 minutes, we watch the world's greatest empire hit the skids, with all the hokum only Hollywood could provide during its epic period of the '50s and '60s. Everything here -- the dialogue and acting, the pitched battles, the sets and the music -- is outsize and ripe.The picture offers an amazing parade of the era's stars: Alec Guinness, Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd, Christopher Plummer, James Mason, John Ireland, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle and Mel Ferrer. Though a narrator gravely informs us that the causes of Rome's fall were many, the film focuses on a single dynastic struggle: Who will succeed the wise Emperor Marcus Aurelius?Directed by the redoubtable Anthony Mann (who made "El Cid," plus many fine Westerns and noirs), the movie was produced by Sam Bronston, king of the epics. The Oscar-nominated score is by Dimitri Tiomkin.Trivia: The movie's re-creation of the Roman Forum was the largest outdoor movie set ever built, covering more than 55 acres. Numerous extra features in this three-disc set include a reproduction of the original souvenir program, shorts about the Roman Empire and commentary by Bill Bronston (Sam's son) and Mel Martin, who wrote a book about the producer. A two-disc edition, with fewer extras, is also available.-- Walter Addiego"THE LIVING END." (1992. NOT RATED. STRAND RELEASING. $27.99.)If you remember Gregg Araki's breakthrough film, "The Living End," you may think it an emblematic prisoner of another time, largely because of how cultural attitudes toward HIV have changed since 1992. Influenced by Jean-Luc Godard, Fritz Lang and even Francois Truffaut's "Jules et Jim," "The Living End" is raw, dangerous and nihilistic as it follows a newly diagnosed HIV-positive writer named Jon (Craig Gilmore) and a sexy drifter named Luke (Mike Dytri) as they drive aimlessly around the West after one of them kills a cop. Before he knows it, Jon has been seduced by Luke, and not just sexually. Nothing matters -- why bother? What's the point of worrying about a future when you have none anyway? If death is inevitable, you might as well live for this second.You can view the film narrowly as commentary on the soul-crushing fury of being HIV positive, or take a few steps back and see Araki's film in a more universal sense as the disintegration of human values caused by an obsessive culturewide drive for self-satisfaction and indifference to others. "The Living End" is much more than a time capsule, thanks to Araki's daring as a filmmaker. From his earliest films, through other examinations of nihilism such as "The Doom Generation," through his extraordinary adaptation of Scott Heim's "Mysterious Skin," Araki remains one of our most fascinating filmmakers. He never plays it safe.-- David Wiegand(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)