Dylan Kidd
Drama
Hart-Sharp Entertainment
R
Louise Harrington, a divorced, thirty-something admission's office at Columbia University's School of Fine Arts is intelligent, pretty, and successful, yet unfulfilled. That is, until a graduate school application crosses her desk and she arranges to interview the young painter. When Scott Feinstadt appears, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Louise's high school boyfriend and one true love, an artist who died in a car accident twenty years earlier. Within hours of the interview, Louise and Scott have embarked on a passionately uninhibited older woman/younger man affair. But is Scott just a reminder of Louise's lost love? And is Scott just trying to wheedle his way into the Ivy League? Adding to the romantic complications is competition from Louise's best friend from high school, Missy, who shows up to claim the affections of the boy; Louise's co-dependent ex-husband Peter; her cynical mother and fresh-out-of-rehab brother.

George Marshall, Ray McCarey
Comedy
Hal Roach Studios Inc.

The boys' Army buddy, Eddie Smith, is killed in the trenches in France, leaving his baby girl an orphan. Back home after Armistice, they try to find Eddie's father and turn the child over to him. Unfortunately, they keep coming up with the wrong Smiths, and in the process disrupt a wedding by proclaiming the baby to be the groom's child. To evade the Welfare Association, they try to skip town, raising money for their escape by hocking their lunch wagon. But they accidentally knock the bank president unconscious and wind up being hunted down for bank robbery.

John Curran
Drama
WIP
PG-13
This love story has Kitty meeting young, intelligent, shy and somewhat dull Dr. Walter Fane, whose forte is the study of infectious diseases, and the convenient marriage that she finds herself committed to. It is in this web of intrigue that they head for China, only after Walter discovers Kitty's infidelity with one dashing and witty diplomat Charlie Townsend. So much as to hide her from herself and to help thwart a cholera outbreak, this is a marriage more than on the rocks. This is a cold, indifferent and loveless partnership in a vast unknown and deadly environment that will test both these flightless lovebirds and with the hardships and tolerances more than any had ever anticipated. A visual delight amid the pain and suffering of a dying people and failing marriage. Will a cure be found for both, before it's too late?

Various
Comedy
Laugh.Com
Unrated
Yuch! My husband and I are HUGE Lewis Black fans, based on his live proformances, CDs and Comedy Central apperances. I bought this DVD for my husband's birthday. I was embarrased when we watched it together. I would like to think that this was done when Black was young, hungry and obviously stupid, but he doesn't look that young in the skits. I am also ashamed of anyone who paid Black or any of the other performers for this work. We are not prudes and may have been able to look beyond the crude vulgarity of this work if it were only funny. Don't waste your money on this. Spend it on some of Black's audio CDs, esp. the White Album and The End of the Universe.

Clint Eastwood
Westerns
Warner Home Video
R
After a nine-year break from the genre that made him an international star (the Western just before this one was "The Outlaw Josey Wales", from 1976), Clint Eastwood returned in this gritty Western, crafted in the tradition of "Shane" and "High Noon". Eastwood directed and stars as the nameless stranger known only as "Preacher," because he rides into a beleaguered mining town wearing a clerical collar. He's either an agent of death or an angel of mercy, and the echoes of "Shane" ring loud and clear when he comes to the aid of independent miners who are being terrorized by a local tycoon (Richard Dysart) and his ruthless band of hired guns. Befriended by a miner (Michael Moriarty) and idolized by the miner's wife and daughter (played by Carrie Snodgress and Sydney Penny, respectively), the "Pale Rider" sparks the defiant spirit of the underdog miners and takes after the bad guys with single-minded purpose. "--Jeff Shannon"

Todd Solondz
Drama
Extra Large Pictures

A fable of innocence: thirteen-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a 'mom'. She does all she can to make this happen, and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibility. She takes a road trip from the suburbs of New Jersey, through Ohio to the plains of Kansas and back. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it's hard to say in the end if she can ever be quite the same again, or if she can ever be anything but the same again.

Matt Reeves
Comedy
Miramax Films
PG-13
Chaos unfolds as Tom is roped into being a pallbearer (and delivering the eulogy!) by the mother of a recently deceased "friend" from high school that he just can't remember. In the meantime, an unrequited love from high school (NOT the dead guy's girlfriend) reappears in his life.

Preston Sturges
Romance
Paramount Pictures
NR
Gerry and Tom Jeffers are finding married life hard. Tom is an inventor/ architect and there is little money for them to live on. They are about to be thrown out of their apartment when Gerry meets rich businessman being shown around as a prospective tenant. He gives Gerry $700 to start life afresh but Tom refuses to believe her story and they quarrel. Gerry decides the marriage is over and heads to Palm Beach for a quick divorce but Tom has plans to stop her.

Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Crime
Nero-Film AG

G.W. Pabst's film that catapulted Louise Brooks to international acclaim and made her 'the' icon of the Jazz Age tells the tragic story of Lulu, the hedonistic dancer and prostitute. Based on the plays of F. Wedekind.

Henry Bromell
Drama
Artisan Entertainment
R
Alex, a sad-eyed mournful man, goes into psychotherapy: he discloses he's a hit man. He also tells the doctor, after a few sessions, that he's attracted to a young woman he's met in the waiting room. She's Sarah, 23, quick, edgy, and perhaps attracted to him as well. But he's married, the dutiful father of a young precocious boy, so Sarah brushes him off. In flashbacks we see him get his start as a killer, at his father's prompting: it's the family business. Dad gives Alex his next assignment: to kill the therapist. Alex keeps returning to Sarah, calling her, stopping by her apartment, as he decides what to do about the hit, his father, his marriage, and his malaise.

Jerry Schatzberg
Crime
Didion-Dunne Inc.
PG
This movie is a stark portrayal of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in "Needle Park" in New York City. Played against this setting is a low-key love story between Bobby, a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen, a homeless girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves. She becomes addicted too, and life goes downhill for them both as their addiction deepens, eventually leading to a series of betrayals. But, in spite of it all, the relationship between Bobby and Helen endures.

David Fincher
Crime
Columbia Pictures Corporation
R
Recently divorced Meg Altman (Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Stewart) have bought a new home in New York. On their tour around the mansion, they come across the panic room. A room so secure, that no one can get in. When three burglars break in, Meg makes a move to the panic room. But all her troubles don't stop there. The criminals know where she is, and what they require the most in the house is in that very room.

Ron Howard
Comedy
Universal Pictures
R
Henry Hackett is the editor of a New York City tabloid. He is a workaholic who loves his job, but the long hours and low pay are leading to discontent. Also, publisher Bernie White faces financial straits, and has hatchetman Alicia Clark, Henry's nemesis, impose unpopular cutbacks. Henry's wife Martha, a hugely pregnant former reporter of his, is fed up because he has so little time for his family. He is therefore considering an offer from Paul Bladden to edit a paper like the New York Times, which would mean more money, shorter hours, more respectability...but might also be a bit boring for his tastes. But a hot story soon confronts Henry with tough decisions.

James Bridges
Drama
Thompson Films
PG
Hart is a confused first year law student at Harvard. He is trying to survive the year under his strictest professer, the legendary Kingsfield. With the help of some of his classmates in his study group, Hart becomes one of the smartest students in his class. His reputation with Kingsfield is diminished, however, when he finds out the girl he has been seeing is Kingfields daughter. Will Hart perform to the best of his ability with Kingsfield watching his every move?

Peter Bogdanovich
Comedy
Directors Company, The
PG
Adapted from the novel, "Addie Pray" (1971) by Joe David Brown, PAPER MOON is the story of Moses Pray and Addie Loggins. With scenery reminiscent of "The Grapes of Wrath," the film is set in the depression-era Midwestern region of the United States. As the movie opens, we see a small group of mourners clustered at a graveside. Among the mourners is Addie, the dead woman's small daughter. Moses Pray -- ostensibly of the "Kansas Bible Company" -- approaches the group, as the service concludes, and two of the elderly women remark that the child bears some resemblance to him and asks if he might be related. "If ever a child needed kin, it's now," one lady says. With no knowledge of who her father is, Addie's only haven is her Aunt's home in St. Joseph, Missouri. Having identified himself as a "traveling man spreading the Lord's gospel in these troubled times," "Mose" is prevailed upon to deliver the helpless child to her Aunt since he's going that way, anyway. Addie, wise beyond her years, soon discovers that Mose is little more than a scam artist traveling from town to town delivering unordered Bibles and charging exorbitant prices to recently widowed women whom he identifies through the obituary columns of local papers. Soon, Addie and Mose become a team, traveling from town to town, making money in every dishonest way imaginable, and looking for the ultimate score. The colorful characters they meet along the way make the film all the more interesting. Paramount among these is "Miss Trixie Delight," an exotic dancer who Mose rescues from a traveling carnival and her minion, Imogene. The film is peppered with "regional" dialog. Perhaps one of the most memorable lines of the movie is uttered when Mose is forced to wrestle a backwoodsman in order to trade his new car for the hillbilly's battered old truck. "Make him say calf-rope, Leroy!" one of the observers calls out.

Franklin J. Schaffner
Adventure
Allied Artists Pictures
PG
Based on the true story of Henri Charriere, also known as Papillon, which is French for 'butterfly' (the character even sports a large tattoo of a butterfly). A petty criminal, Papillon is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life in a French penal colony in 'Guiane' (French Guiana, South America). Papillon is determined to escape but attempt after attempt meets with difficulty, resulting in eventual recapture. He continues his attempts to escape despite incarcerations in solitary confinement as punishment.

Alfred Hitchcock
Crime
Vanguard Films

The beautiful Mrs. Paradine is accused of poisoning her older, blind husband. She hires married Anthony Keane as her lawyer and when he begins to fall in love with her, she encourages him.

Carl Pierson
Western
Lone Star Productions (I)

Sent to find counterfeiters, John Wyatt joins Doc Carter's medicine show. They arrive in the town where Curly Joe runs his counterfeiting operation. Carter was once framed by Curly Joe and Curly Joe tries to get rid of him. But John foils his attempts and learning Curly Joe is the counterfeiter, goes after him.

Del Lord
Short, Comedy
Wilding Picture Productions

Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
Documentary
Creative Thinking International Ltd.

Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
Documentary
Home Box Office (HBO)

Berlinger and Sinofsky's documentary of a gruesome triple murder in West Memphis, Arkansas and the subsequent trials of three suspects, takes a hard look at both the occult and the American justice system in 'small-town' America. Three teenagers are accused of this horrific crime of killing three children, supposedly as a result of involvement in Satanism. As in their previous documentary, things turn out to be more complex than initial appearances and this film presents the real-life courtroom drama to the viewer, as it unfolds.

Hany Abu-Assad
Crime
Augustus Film
PG-13
The story places two close friends, Palestinians Said and Khaled, recruited by an extremist group to perpetrate a terrorist attack in Tel-Aviv, blowing up themselves. However, things go wrong and both friends must separate in the border. One of them, maintaining in his purpose of carry the attack to the end, and the other will have his doubts about it.

Bruce Beresford
Drama
Village Roadshow Pictures
R
The group of women from different countries and social levels are prisoners in a Japanese concentration camp, where one of them, Adrienne, who is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, organizes a vocal band in spite of their guards resistance.

Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Documentary
Channel Four Films

By the 1920's, Berlin had become known as a homosexual eden, where gay men and lesbians lived relatively open lives amidst an exciting subculture of artists and intellectuals. With the coming to power of the Nazis, all this changed. Between 1933 and 1945 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality under Paragraph 175, the sodomy provision of the German penal code dating back to 1871. Some were imprisoned, others were sent to concentration camps. Of the latter, only about 4,000 survived. Today, fewer than ten of these men are known to be living. Five of them have now come forward to tell their stories for the first time in this powerful new film. The Nazi persecution of homosexuals may be the last untold story of the Third Reich. Paragraph 175 fills a crucial gap in the historical record, and reveals the lasting consequences of this hidden chapter of 20th century history, as told through personal stories of men and women who lived through it: the half Jewish gay resistance fighter who spent the war helping refugees in Berlin; the Jewish lesbian who escaped to England with the help of a woman she had a crush on; the German Christian photographer who was arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality, then joined the army on his release because he "wanted to be with men"; the French Alsatian teenager who watched as his lover was tortured and murdered in the camps. These are stories of survivors -- sometimes bitter, but just as often filled with irony and humor; tortured by their memories, yet infused with a powerful will to endure. Their moving testimonies, rendered with evocative images of their lives and times, tell a haunting, compelling story of human resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty. Intimate in its portrayals, sweeping in its implications, Paragraph 175 raises provocative questions about memory, history, and identity.

Oren Peli
Things That Go Bump
Paramount
R
Like "The Blair Witch Project", "Paranormal Activity" is an impressive and harrowing indie chiller that derives much of its terror--and there is quite a bit of that in its brief running time--by playing on the most basic of human fears: that which cannot be seen. Though one might assume that the point-of-view aesthetic had been worn out thanks to "Cloverfield" and "Quarantine" (and, lest one forgets, "Blair Witch"), "Paranormal" makes excellent use of the single-camera technique, which helps to not only preserve the film's central conceit--a new-minted couple records the increasingly threatening supernatural phenomena that have invaded their home on a camcorder--but underscore the realism needed to drive home the low-fi (if completely persuasive) special effects. The approach is also crucial to the film's suspense, which unfolds in long, largely broken takes to nerve-rattling effect. Not every horror fan--or moviegoer--will fall for the film's spook-show approach. Those that found "Blair Witch"'s less-is-more approach aggravating will feel the same way about "Paranormal", but the sleight of hand exhibited by first-time director Oren Peli, and assisted by his two leads, relative newcomers Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, should provide adventurous viewers with fresher and stronger scares than anything from Hollywood in recent years. "--Paul Gaita"

Norman Taurog
Comedy
York Pictures Corporation

Martin and Lewis are sons of former ranch partners. Lewis, raised by his millionaire mother, follows visiting Martin back to the old West to learn how to be a cowboy. The ranch where Martin is foreman is in financial trouble, and with Lewis's unorthodox help, the good guys win out.

Erle C. Kenton
Comedy
Mayfair Productions Inc.

James Parrott
Comedy
Hal Roach Studios Inc.

It's Prohibition, and the boys wind up behind bars after Stan sells some of their home-brew beer to a policeman. In prison, Stan's loose tooth keeps getting him in trouble, because it sounds like he's giving everybody a rasp- berry. But it earns him the respect of The Tiger, a rough prisoner, and the boys manage to slip away during The Tiger's escape attempt. They disguise themselves in blackface and hide on a cotton plantation, but are recaptured when the warden happens by. Back in the big house, they find themselves in a hail of bullets, caught between the state militia and gun-toting prisoners, when The Tiger tries another escape.

Gerd Oswald
Action
Tolda Productions

American comedian Bob Hunter, on a luxury liner to France with French counterpart Fernandel, takes an interest in blonde diplomat Ann McCall while pursued by an even shapelier blonde, the mysterious Zara, who seems to be after something in Bob's possession. But he's only going to France to obtain rights to a new play...so what are Zara and her sinister boss after? The pursuit, amorous and larcenous, continues in Paris and escalates into a full-fledged comedy thriller.

Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin
Romance
Victoires International
R
Paris, je t'aime is about the plurality of cinema in one mythic location: Paris, the City of Love. Twenty filmmakers will bring their own personal touch, underlining the wide variety of styles, genres, encounters and the various atmospheres and lifestyles that prevail in the neighborhoods of Paris. Each director has been given five minutes of freedom, and we, as producers, carry the responsibility of weaving a single narrative unit out of those twenty moments. The 20 films will not appear in the order of the arrondissements, from one to twenty, but rather, in a pertinent narrative order, initially unknown to the audience. They will be fused together by transitional interstitial sequences, and also via the introduction and epilogue sequences of the feature film. Each transition will begin with the last shot of the previous film and will end with the first shot of the following film, and will have a threefold function: 1) The first is to extend the enchantment and the emotion of the previous segment, 2) The second is to prepare the audience for the surprise of the next segment, and 3) The third is to provide a general, comfortable and cohesive atmosphere to the feature film. The delightful and brief interludes of these transitions will enable the viewer to slide from one world to the next, featuring a recurring and unexpected character. This mysterious character is a witness to the Parisian life and helps create a continuous narration. It appears both in and in-between the films. In addition to the information these transitions will provide about the city and its people, their tone will be intentionally light often referring to famous scenes easily attributed to the history of Paris cinema. Similar specifications will be followed by the composer who will supervise the musical fusion between the films and the transitions as he creates the musical score of Paris, je t'aime. Considering the common theme of Paris and Love, the fusion between the films and the transitions, the fast pace of a fluid and complete storytelling, Paris, je t'aime will not be just another "anthology" picture. It will be a unique collective feature film that will constitute a two-hour cinematographic spectacle whose original structure will make for a dramatically different experience for its global audience.

Wim Wenders
Drama
Road Movies Filmproduktion

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his wife and son four years before. As his memory returns, he makes contact with various people from his past.

Jeffrey Blitz; Greg Daniels; Seth Gordon; Beth McCarthy-Miller; Michael McCullers; Michael Schur
Comedy
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
NR
From the people who bring you The Office comes Parks and Recreation, the hilarious saga of government employees and local citizens turning a neighborhood hole in the ground into a new public park. Comedy superstar Amy Poehler (Saturday Night Live, Baby Mama) stars as Leslie Knope, an ambitious and hopeful small town government worker, whose dreams are way bigger than her political talents. Created by Primetime Emmy® Award winners Greg Daniels (The Office, King of the Hill, The Simpsons) and Michael Schur (The Office, SNL), and featuring a stellar ensemble cast, Parks and Recreation is a “genuinely funny comedy” (Daniel Carlson, Hollywood Reporter) about bureaucracy, hope and America at the dawn of the Obama age.

Rebecca Chaiklin, Donovan Leitch
Documentary
Camouflage Productions Inc.

Filmed over the last six months of the 2000 Presidential election, Phillip Seymour Hoffman starts documenting the campaign at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, but spends more time outside, in the street protests and police actions than in the orchestrated conventions. Hoffman shows an obvious distaste for money politics and the conservative right. He looks seedier and more disillusioned the campaign progresses. Eventually Hoffman seems most energized by the Ralph Nader campaign as an alternative to the nearly indistinguishable major parties. The high point of the film are the comments by Barney Frank who says that marches and demonstrations are largely a waste of time, and that the really effective political players such as the NRA and the AARP never bother with walk ins, sit-ins, shoot-ins or shuffles. In the interview with Jesse Jackson, Hoffman is too flustered to ask all of his questions.

Michelangelo Antonioni
Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Compagnia Cinematografica Champion
PG-13
A journalist researching a documentary in the Sahara Desert meets a gunrunner who dies suddenly. When the journalist notices that they have a similar appearance, he assumes the recently deceased's identity and accepts the consequences that it brings.

Spike Lee
Musical
40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks
Unrated
Passing Strange The Movie tells the semi-autobiographical story of a young black man who leaves behind his middle-class, church-ruled upbringing in mid-1970s Los Angeles to travel to Europe in search of his artistic and personal identity, or what he calls the real. Picaresque misadventures with sex, drugs, politics, and art await him in far-out Amsterdam and hyper-militant Berlin. His eyes are opened ever wider, even revealing what he left behind. An absolutely superb cast, ably supported by sparing (but pitch-perfect) costumes, design, and stagecraft, bring to life the emotionally charged story with its astounding original music, narrated and overseen by Stew himself. Lee s multicamera coverage of the event (including backstage scenes) involves the audience in not only the text but the electricity of the ensemble s onstage adventure. Passing Strange The Movie is a tour-de-force of creative collaboration and inspiration.

Carl Theodor Dreyer
Drama
Société générale des films

The sufferings of a martyr, Jeanne D'Arc (1412-1431). Jeanne appears in court where Cauchon questions her and d'Estivet spits on her. She predicts her rescue, is taken to her cell, and judges forge evidence against her. In her cell, priests interrogate her and judges deny her the Mass. Threatened first in a torture chamber and then offered communion if she will recant, she refuses. At a cemetery, in front of a crowd, a priest and supporters urge her to recant; she does, and Cauchon announces her sentence. In her cell, she explains her change of mind and receives communion. In the courtyard at Rouen castle, she burns at the stake; the soldiers turn on the protesting crowd.

Mel Gibson
Drama
Icon Productions
R
A depiction of the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, on the day of his crucifixion in Jerusalem. The story opens in the Garden of Olives where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper. Betrayed by Judas Iscariot, the controversial Jesus--who has performed 'miracles' and has publicly announced that he is 'the Son of God'--is arrested and taken back within the city walls of Jerusalem. There, the leaders of the Pharisees confront him with accusations of blasphemy; subsequently, his trial results with the leaders condemning him to his death. Jesus is brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Palestine, for his sentencing. Pilate listens to the accusations leveled at Jesus by the Pharisees. Realizing that his own decision will cause him to become embroiled in a political conflict, Pilate defers to King Herod in deciding the matter of how to persecute Jesus. However, Herod returns Jesus to Pilate who, in turn, gives the crowd a choice between which prisoner they would rather to see set free--Jesus, or Barrabas. The crowd chooses to have Barrabas set free. Thus, Jesus is handed over to the Roman soldiers and is brutally flagellated. Bloody and unrecognizable, he is brought back before Pilate who, once again, presents him to the thirsty crowd--assuming they will see that Jesus has been punished enough. The crowd, however, is not satisfied. Thus, Pilate washes his hands of the entire dilemma, ordering his men to do as the crowd wishes. Whipped and weakened, Jesus is presented with the cross and is ordered to carry it through the streets of Jerusalem, all the way up to Golgotha. There, more corporal cruelty takes place as Jesus is nailed to the cross--suffering, he hangs there, left to die. Initially, in his dazed suffering, Jesus is alarmed that he has been abandoned by God his father. He then beseeches God. At the moment of his death, nature itself over-turns.

Henry Cornelius
Comedy
Ealing Studios

When an unexploded WWII bomb is accidentally detonated in Pimlico, an area of London, it reveals a treasure trove and documents proving that the region is, in fact part of Burgundy, France and thus foreign territory. The British Government attempt to regain control by setting up border controls and cutting off services to the area. The 'Burgundians' fight back...

George Cukor
Comedy
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Pat's a brilliant athlete, except when her domineering fiance is around. The lady's golf championship is in her reach until she gets flustered by his presence at the final holes. He wants them to get married and forget the whole thing, but she can't give up on herself that easily. She enlists the help of Mike, a slightly shady sports promoter. Together they face mobsters, a jealous boxer, and a growing mutual attraction.

Sam Peckinpah
History
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
R
It's 1881 in New Mexico, and the times they are a'changing. Pat Garrett, erstwhile travelling companion of the outlaw Billy the Kid has become a sheriff, tasked by cattle interests with ridding the territory of Billy. After Billy escapes, Pat assembles a posse and chases him through the territory, culminating in a final confrontation at Fort Sumner, but is unaware of the full scope of the cattle interests' plans for the New West.

John Frankenheimer
Drama
Avenue Pictures Productions

A portrayal of the Johnson presidency and its spiraling descent into the Vietnam War. Acting on often conflicting advice from his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara and other advisers, President Johnson finds his domestic policy agenda for the Great Society overtaken by an ever demanding commitment to ending the war. It also depicts his political skills as he crosses swords with political foes such as Bobby Kennedy and Governor George Wallace. Despite support and encouragement from stalwart friends such as Clark Clifford, Johnson realizes his management of the war no longer has the confidence of the American people and announces that he will not seek the nomination of the Democratic party for the the 1968 election.

Stanley Kubrick
Drama
Bryna Productions

The futility and irony of the war in the trenches in WWI is shown as a unit commander in the French army must deal with the mutiny of his men and a glory-seeking general after part of his force falls back under fire in an impossible attack.

Yukio Mishima
Drama
Criterion
Unrated
Two characters on a Noh stage dramatize the rite of love and death of Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama and his wife Reiko. Takeyama was one of a cadre of young officers who staged a coup d'état in February, 1936. He was not arrested when the coup failed, but as an officer of the palace guard, he knew he would be given the order to execute his friends. The night before the execution, he and his wife prepare for hara-kiri, first with passion without shyness, then in uniform and kimono with sword and dagger. Calligraphy figures in the preparation, as Reiko gathers her keepsakes to give to survivors. They embrace in death.

Jerry Lewis
Comedy
Paramount Pictures
G
When a star comedian dies, his comedy team, decides to train a nobody to fill the shoes of the Star in a big TV show (a Patsy). But the man they choose, bellboy Stanley Belt, cant do anything right. The big TV show is getting closer, and Stanley gets worse all the time.

Franklin J. Schaffner
Biography
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
PG
"Patton" tells the tale of General George S. Patton, famous tank commander of World War II. The film begins with patton's career in North Africa and progresses through the invasion of Germany and the fall of the Third Reich. Side plots also speak of Patton's numerous faults such his temper and habit towards insubordination. Faults which would, eventually, lead to his being relieved as Occupation Commander of Germany.

David Berrent
Comedy
Comedy Central

Troy Miller, Keith Truesdell
Comedy
Dakota North Entertainment

Jason Woliner
Comedy
WEA/Reprise
NR
As a comedian, Patton has released three TV specials and, as of this writing, two critically acclaimed albums. Currently a series regular on Showtime's United States of Tara, he has also appeared as a guest star on The Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central and on Flight of the Conchords on HBO. He's a regular contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Real Time with Bill Maher and Lewis Black's Root Of All Evil. Patton will also appear in Steven Soderbergh's feature film The Informant and Observe and Report with Seth Rogen. Patton provided the voice for Remy, the rat, in Pixar's Oscar winning Ratatouille. He's also appeared in more then 20 films, including Magnolia, The Informant, Starsky and Hutch and Reno 911!: Miami. On TV he played Spence on The King of Queens on CBS for nine seasons, as well as appearing on Seinfeld, Reaper, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job!

Paul Miller
Comedy
Comedy Central Films

Unknown
Comedy

Unknown
Documentary
MPL Communications

Mark Haefeli
Music
MPL Communications

Richard Lester
Documentary
Allied Filmmakers

Geoff Wonfor
Music
MPL Communications

Paul McCartney plays some of the tracks from his new record, called Run Devil Run, making an emotional return to the scene of The Beatles celebrated venue. All the tracks on the record are old 1950s rock 'n' roll numbers.

Aubrey Powell
Music

Mark Haefeli
Music
Mark Haefeli Productions

Alistair Donald
Documentary
MPL Communications

Saul J. Turell
Documentary
Janus Films

An examination of the life of actor and singer Paul Robeson, from his first major triumphs on the stage in the 1920s through his gradually increasing social activism in the 1930s and 1940s, leading to his controversial performances in Eastern Europe in the 1940s in which he performed communist anthems and criticized American social conditions.

Gabriela Tagliavini
Comedy
IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT
NR
THE ORIGINAL LATIN KING OF COMEDY IS BACK!

Paul Rodriguez has brought the hottest new faces of Latino comedy Gene Pompa, Shayla Rivera & Manny Maldonado together for a once-in-a-lifetime performance. Filmed in Santa Fe, NM, Paul has pulled out all the stops to deliver the gut-busting, laugh-out-loud show of his already infamous career.

What more? This DVD is packed with never-before-seen extras including bonus concert acts Dennis Gaxiola and Benny Martinez, plus a behind-the-scenes tour of how Paul pulled off the most exciting (and funny) comedic event in years.

Bruce Gowers
Comedy
Home Box Office (HBO)

Eric Rohmer
Comedy
Les Films Ariane
R
Fifteen year old Pauline and her older cousin, model-shaped Marion, go to the emtying Atlantic coast for an autumn holiday . Marion ignores the approaches of a surfer and falls for Henri, a hedonist who is only interested in a sexual adventure and drops her soon. Pauline's little romance with a young man (Sylvain) is also spoiled by Henri.

Sidney Lumet
Drama
Landau Company

This was one of the first films to deal with the effects of Nazi Germany's concentration camps on their survivors. Sol Nazerman, operator of a pawn shop, and a concentration camp survivor faces a horrid internal conflict. Being engulfed in a New York ghetto Environment, Sol suffers flashbacks. The flashbacks juxtapose concentration camp treatment with ghetto neighborhood treatment. Although, the flashbacks suffer several historical inaccuracies, the point is well made. His internal conflicts between submitting to the same injustices he and his family suffered or resisting the injustice a peak at the end of the film

Brian Helgeland
Action
Icon Entertainment International
R
Val Resnick and Porter, two small time bandits, hit a Chinese gang together and manage to get $140,000. But Val Resnick needs 130 grand alone to buy himself back into his syndication. So, Val turns on Porter together with Porter's wife Lynn, who kills him with two shots in the back. But Porter survives and half a year later, he is back, seeking his share of $70,000. When he finally finds Val, Porter quickly learns that he has to go much further up the ladder in order to get his money from the guys who have it: The syndication. Working alone can't be realized any more, so Porter teams up with his flame and previous boss Rosie, a very exclusive prostitute. Together, they now start playing the teams against each other.

Brian Helgeland
Action
Icon Entertainment International

Bill Melendez
Animation
Warner Home Video
Unrated
Charles Schulz's award-winning "Peanuts" comics and animated television specials are perennial favorites of adults and children alike. What is it that makes a story about a morose young boy struggling with low self-esteem and social ineptness so timelessly appealing? Perhaps it's the universality of his struggle or Schulz's social commentary that sometimes proved years ahead of its time--or maybe "Peanuts" is just plain great animated entertainment. Regardless of why "Peanuts" remains so popular today, the 1960s gave birth to current classics "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" as well as four other works, with each network debut proving a highly anticipated television event. This two-disc compilation features all six 1960s specials, remastered with strikingly bright colors and crisp, clear pictures for a viewing experience that's simply great.
Probably the best-known "Peanuts" special, the Emmy-award-winning "A Charlie Brown Christmas" follows a despondent Charlie Brown through the Christmas season as he tries to get involved and figure out the true meaning of Christmas. The Emmy-nominated "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" chronicles Charlie Brown's emotional ups and downs as he goes trick-or-treating, attends a Halloween party, and ponders his friend Linus's unfailing belief in the existence of the Great Pumpkin. The lesser-known, but highly engaging special "Charlie Brown's All-Stars" finds Charlie Brown's losing baseball team excited about a sponsorship offer that will provide them with uniforms and entrance into a real league. Problem is, manager Charlie Brown would be forced to cut Snoopy and the girls from the team in order to comply with league rules--a step he's just not willing to take. "You're in Love, Charlie Brown" finds Charlie Brown infatuated with the Little Red-Haired Girl and frustrated with his inability to overcome his shyness and speak to her. "He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown" features an incorrigible Snoopy who, rather than returning to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm for a refresher course in obedience, moves in with Peppermint Patty only to find himself overworked and unhappy. While Snoopy is gone, Charlie Brown and the gang realize just how important a role Snoopy plays in their daily lives. "It Was a Short Summer" is Charlie Brown's reflection on what he did at camp over summer vacation. A 38-minute bonus feature about ""Linus and Lucy"" composer Vince Guaraldi delves into his music and philosophy, detailing the evolution of his music over the years and the integral part that it played in the "Peanuts" television specials. Whether reliving childhood memories or creating a whole new set with children or grandchildren, this classic "Peanuts" collection is perfect for sharing. "--Tami Horiuchi"

Joseph Barbera, William Hanna
Animation
Hanna-Barbera Productions
NR
In the original Flintstones, Pebbles was the baby daughter of Fred and Wilma Flintstone, while Bamm-Bamm was the son of neighbors Barney and Betty rubble. Now they've grown up to be teenagers, and they get into various hijinks with their other teenaged friends.

Tim Burton
Adventure
Aspen Film Society
PG
The cartoonish and childish character Pee Wee Herman goes on a big adventure for the first time ever when his beloved shiny new bicycle is stolen by his nemesis Francis Buxton, a fellow man-child and neighborhood rich "kid." And he sets off on an obsessive cross-country journey, determined to recover it. Pee-wee's awkward and childish attempts to be cool and mature.

Michael Powell
Drama
Michael Powell (Theatre)

Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), works as a focus puller in a British film studio. On his off hours, he supplies a local porno shop with cheesecake photos and also dabbles in filmmaking. A lonely, unfriendly, sexually repressed fellow, Mark is obsessed with the effects of fear and how they are registered on the face and behavior of the frightened. This obsession dates from the time when, as a child, he served as the subject of some cold-blooded experiments in the psychology of terror conducted by his own scientist father. As a grown man, Mark becomes a compulsive murderer who kills women and records their contorted features and dying gasps on film. His ongoing project is a documentary on fear. With 16mm camera in hand, he accompanies a prostitute to her room and stabs her with a blade concealed in his tripod, all the while photographing her contorted face in the throes of terror and death. Alone in his room, he surrounds himself with the sights and sounds of terror: taped screams, black-and-white "home movies" of convulsed faces. At his house, he meets Helen Stephens (Anna Massey), a young woman who lives with her blind mother in a downstairs flat. She visits his flat, where he shows her black-and-white films that were taken of him when he was a child. She is horrified to see that his father used him as a guinea pig in various experiments, taking movies of his reactions of fear.

Francis Ford Coppola
Comedy
Delphi V Productions
PG-13
A 43 year old mother and housewife that's facing divorce is thrust back in time when she tries to plan a high-school reunion. Given the chance to change the course of her life she finds herself making many of the same choices.

Mark Palansky
Comedy
Grosvenor Park Productions
PG
In this modern day romantic tale, Penelope is about a young girl's inspiring journey, a mysterious family secret and the power of love. With all odds against her, in order for Penelope to break the family curse, she must find true love with "one of her own kind" and realize the most important life lesson, "I like myself the way I am." Penelope Wilhern, born to wealthy socialites, is afflicted by the Wilhern spell that can only be broken when she finds love. Hidden away in her family's estate, the lonely girl meets a string of suitors in her parent's futile attempt to break the curse. Each eligible bachelor is enamored with Penelope and her sizable dowry; until her curse is revealed. Lemon, a mischievous and eager tabloid reporter wants a photograph of the mysterious Penelope and hires Max to pose as a prospective suitor to get the shot. The handsome down-on-his luck gambler finds himself falling for Penelope, but not wanting to disappoint her or to expose his surreptitious ways, he decides to disappear. Fed up by his latest betrayal and determined to live life on her own terms, Penelope breaks free from her family and ventures into the world alone. She finds adventure and Annie, her first friend and becomes the person she was meant to be.

Arthur Penn
Adventure, Comedy


Penn & Teller enjoy playing jokes on each other. When Penn says on an interview show that he wishes he has someone threatening his life so that he "wouldn't sweat the small stuff," each of them begins a series of pranks on the other to suggest a real threat. Then they find that a real psychopath is interested in them.

Mick Grogan, Ric Esther Bienstock, Hugo Smith (II)
Comedy
Acorn Media
NR
Made for Canada's CBC, this three-part miniseries proves the West doesn't have a monopoly on magic. For each 50-minute program, the intrepid duo takes an irreverent, non-academic approach to their subject, the art of illusion as practiced primarily by street performers. In Beijing, they observe the bowl and mask tricks. Then it's off to Cairo for cups and balls, which silent partner Teller actually talks about (just not in public). Next it's Alexandria for snake swallowing, Delhi for the handkerchief trick, and Calcutta for the Indian rope trick (some of these are not for the squeamish). Along the way, they share some of their specialties, like fire eating (Penn) and the needle trick (Teller), but are careful not to give any secrets away. "Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour" explores culture and history as much as sleight of hand, resulting in a series as enlightening as it is entertaining. "--Kathleen C. Fennessy"

Herbert Ross
Drama
Hera Productions
R
In Chicago during the depression, sheet music salesman, Arthur Parker, is trying to sell his products, but it's not easy to convince unwilling music store owners to buy them. Although he's already married to the somewhat drab Joan, when he meets school teacher Eileen in a music store, he falls in love with her.

Piers Haggard
Art House & International
BBC Warner
NR
Dennis Potter's astonishing six-part miniseries remains one of the edgiest, most audacious things ever conceived for television. The story tells of one Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins), a sheet-music salesman in 1930s England. Beaten down by economic hard times and the sexual indifference of his proper wife (Gemma Craven), Arthur cannot understand why his life can't be like the beautiful songs he loves. On a sales trip through the Forest of Dean, he meets a virginal rural woman (Cheryl Campbell) he suspects may be his ideal. Ruination follows. Punctuating virtually every scene is a vintage pop song--lip-synched and sometimes danced out by the characters. This startling innovation makes the contrast between Arthur's brutish life and his bourgeois dreams even more dramatic.
Potter's dark vision digs into British stoicism, sexual repression, the class system, and even the coming of fascism in Europe. But it is especially poignant on the subject of the divide between art and reality. Piers Haggard directs the long piece with deft transitions between songs and story. (It was shot partly on multi-camera video, partly on film.) The cast is fine, especially the extraordinary Cheryl Campbell, who imbues her character with keen intelligence and no small measure of perversity. Bob Hoskins triumphs in his star-making part, bringing a demonic energy to his small-time Cockney, nearly bursting his button-down vests with frustration and appetite. "Pennies from Heaven" was remade in 1981 for the big screen (with Steve Martin), an interesting, Potter-scripted adaptation; it's one of the reasons the original has been unavailable on home video for so long. "--Robert Horton"

Daniel Algrant
Crime
Myriad Pictures
R
Eli Wurman is a decadent drug addicted New Yorker public relation, who is promoting a social event on behalf of Afro-Americans. Along two days of his crazy life, the day of the event and the day before, he makes contacts and favors, 'kissing asses', using drugs etc. Victoria Gray is his widow sister-in-law and passion in the past. Cary Launer is an Oscar winner actor and principal client of Eli. On the day before of the event, Eli finds out secrets that evolve powerful men of America.

Milos Forman
Biography
Columbia Pictures Corporation
R
Larry Flynt is the hedonistically obnoxious, but indomitable, publisher of Hustler magazine. The film recounts his struggle to make an honest living publishing his girlie magazine and how it changes into a battle to protect the freedom of speech for all people.

Julien Duvivier
Crime
Paris Film

Pépé le Moko is a gangster from Paris that hides in Algier's Casbah. In the Casbah, he is safe and is able to elude the police's attempts to capture him. But he misses his freedom, after two years in the Casbah. He meets a gorgeous Parisian tourist, Gaby, and they fall in love. Native inspector Slimane tries to use her to attract Pépé out of the Casbah in order to catch him.

Mira Nair
Comedy
Samuel Goldwyn Company, The
R
In an attempt to secure a sponsor, an unlikely group of Cuban refugees become a "family" as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service gives families priority over others. In the process, a political prisoner who hasn't seen his wife for twenty years and a disaffected sugarcane cutter fall in love. An excitable brother and a lovestruck cop contribute to the general confusion. The inevitable humorous romantic entaglements ensue as a final confrontation is set up.

R.J. Cutler, David Van Taylor
Documentary
Arpie Films

The filmmakers follow Oliver North's unsuccessful 1994 bid for a Virginia Senate seat, focusing on North's campaign strategist, Mark Goodin, and a Washington Post reporter. Mudslinging ensues.

Robert Altman
Comedy
Lions Gate Films

Wolfgang Petersen
Adventure
Baltimore Spring Creek Productions
PG-13
In October 1991, a confluence of weather conditions combined to form a killer storm in the North Atlantic. Caught in the storm was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail. Magnificent foreshadowing and anticipation fill this true-life drama while minute details of the fishing boats, their gear and the weather are juxtaposed with the sea adventure.

Clint Eastwood
Drama
Malpaso Productions
PG-13
After escaping from a Huntsville prison, convict Butch Haynes and his partner Terry Pugh kidnap a young boy, Philip Perry, and flee across Texas. As they travel together, Butch and Philip discover common bonds and suffer the abuses of the outside "Perfect World." In pursuit is Texas Ranger "Red" Garnett and criminologist Sally Gerber.

Tom Tykwer
Crime
Constantin Film Produktion
R
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the stench of eighteenth century Paris, develops a superior olfactory sense, which he uses to create the world's finest perfumes. His work, however, takes a dark turn as he tries to preserve scents in the search for the ultimate perfume.

David Veloz
Biography
JD Productions
R
Comedy writer Jerry Stahl (Ben Stiller), whose $6000-a-week heroin habit had him taking his infant daughter along on his drug runs and doing smack during TV script conferences. Departing detox, Stahl explores memories with survivor Kitty, who listens patiently to Stahl's flashback. Other women in Stahl's life are his British wife Sandra (Elizabeth Hurley) and his agent Vola. For the TV series "Mr. Chompers" (inspired by ALF), Stahl meets with sitcom exec Craig Ziffer and puppeteer Allen. For freaky freebasing, Stahl hangs with mumbler Nicky and druggie Gus.

Marisa Silver
Drama
Paramount Pictures

When David Sinclair, a popular and talented high school student commits suicide, his best friend Chris takes over many of his responsibilities; from the school production of "HMS Pinafore" to caring for his family, and soon finds himself under the same pressures.

Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi
Animation
2.4.7. Films
PG-13
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own. With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her abroad to Vienna to study for a better life. However, this change proves an equally difficult trial with the young woman finding herself in a different culture loaded with abrasive characters and profound disappointments that deeply trouble her. Even when she returns home, Marji finds that both she and homeland have changed too much and the young woman and her loving family must decide where she truly belongs.

Ingmar Bergman
Drama
Svensk Filmindustri (SF)

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer. Alma eventually confesses her secrets to a seemingly sympathetic Elisabeth and finds that her own personality is being submerged into Elisabeth's persona.

Oliver Stone
Drama
Warner Home Video
NR
Controversial moviemaker Oliver Stone offers his own distinctive spin on the seemingly endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this episode made-for-cable documentary. Filmed in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Ramallah over a five-day period in March 2002, Persona Non Grata is essentially a collection of interviews with several key players in Middle Eastern affairs. Among those answering Stone's queries are former Israeli Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, and Benjamin Netanyahu; Hamas official Hasan Yosef; European diplomats Miguel Moratinos and Christian Jeuret; and several heavily disguised members of Palestine's Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. Unfortunately for Stone, the Passover suicide bombing in Netanya prevented him from interviewing the estimable Yasser Arafat. Persona Non Grata made its HBO debut on June 5, 2003.

Martin Scorsese, Michael Henry Wilson
Documentary
British Film Institute (BFI)

Despite its nearly four-hour running time, this is a uniquely personal look at movies from one of the late 20th century's great directors and film historians. The film consists of head & shoulder shots of Scorsese speaking into the camera for a minute or two, followed by 10-15 minutes of film clips with Scorsese voice-over. Scorsese approaches the films in terms of how they affected him as a director foremost and as a storyteller/film fan second. Segments include "The Director as Smuggler," "The Director as Iconoclast", and so on. The Journey begins with silent masters like D.W. Griffith and ends in 1969 - when Scorsese began to make films; as he says in closing, "I wouldn't feel right commenting on myself or my contemporaries."

Rebecca Miller
Drama
Blue Magic Pictures
R
A tale of three women who have reached a turning point in their lives. Delia is a spirited, working-class woman from a small town in New York who leaves her abusive husband and sets out on a journey to reclaim the power she has lost. Greta is a sharp, spunky editor who is rotten with ambition. To spite the hated infidel ways of her father, she has settled into a complacent relationship and is struggling (not too hard) with issues of fidelity to her kind but unexciting husband. Finally Paula, who ran away from home and got pregnant, is now in a relationship she doesn't want. She's a troubled young woman who takes off on a journey with a hitchhiker after a strange, fateful encounter on a New York street.

Robert Ellis Miller, Boris Sagal, Alan Crosland Jr., Robert Altman
Action & Adventure
A&E Home Video
NR
Shame on A&E for using the syndicated masters on the series. In many cases hissy, 16mm prints with scratches in them. To make matters worse, the episodes are cut 22 minute syndicated versions. Another BIG disappointment. The packaging should have been the tip off here...COLOR pictures do exist from the series BUT so-so black and white shots used for the covers. This series deserves better!

Henry Hathaway
Romance
Paramount Pictures

Architect Peter Ibbetson is hired by the Duke of Towers to design a building for him. Ibbetson discovers that the Duchess of Towers, Mary, is his now-grown childhood sweetheart. Their love revives, but Peter is sentenced to life in prison for an accidental killing. Mary comes to him in dreams and they are able to live out their romance in a dream world.

Cliff Roquemore
Comedy
Xenon

Petey Wheatstraw (Rudy Ray Moore) is a candidate to become the devil's son-in-law. The storyline is a scaffolding on which Rudy Ray Moore's standup humor can be unfolded. Beginning life as the afterbirth to a watermelon, the young Wheatstraw becomes a martial artist, but is unable to best the evil comedy team of Leroy and Skillet, who also indulge in wholesale murder. Satan restores the comedians' victims to life, and charges Petey with the task of marrying his clock-stoppingly ugly daughter to giving him a grandchild. When Petey attempts to default on the deal, he is pursued by the devil's henchmen.

Archie Mayo
Crime
Warner Bros. Pictures

Gabby (Bette Davis) lives and works at her dads small diner out in the desert. She can't stand it and wants to go and live with her mother in France. Along comes Alan (Leslie Howard), a broke man with no will to live, who is traveling to see the pacific, and maybe to drown in it. Meanwhile Duke Mantee (Humphrey Bogart) a notorious killer and his gang is heading towards the diner where Mantee plan on meeting up with his girl.

Richard Lester
Drama
Petersham Pictures
R
San Francisco physician Archie Bollen is divorcing, sorting out new relationships with his ex, her new man, his sons, and friends who knew him as part of a couple. At a charity event, Petulia Danner, a young and lovely socialite, throws herself at him, telling him they should find a hotel room and soon announcing she intends to marry him. She's quixotic, vulnerable, and not easy to dissuade. She's also married and faces demons of her own. Bollen returns to his apartment one afternoon and finds her unconscious, savagely beaten, most certainly by her husband. How Archie and Petulia respond to the husband's abuse are the film's conclusion.

Ford Beebe, Saul A. Goodkind
Mystery
Universal Pictures

"The Phantom Creeps" was Universal's 44th sound-era serial (between "The Oregon Trail" and "The Green Hornet")and was re-issued to theatres in 1949 by Commonwealth Pictures Corporation, a distribution set-up handling primarily Universal re-issues. Commonwealth had no hand at all in the production of this serial (as incorrectly shown on site) as they were a distribution company only. Some sources mistakenly identify them as the serial producer because all of the 1949 re-issue prints (and the 16mm prints sold to television circa 1952) show "Commonwealth Pictures Corp. Presents" above the title.There is a whole lot of difference between "presenting" and "producing", a fact that some sources appear to not know or don't care. The serial is of interest to some collectors as it re-unites Bela Lugosi and Edwin Stanley from 1931's "Dracula", and the crater-discovery of the meteorite fragment by Zorka (Bela Lugosi)in the serial is stock footage from Universal's 1936 "The Invisible Ray." The stock footage of an explosion and avalanche used in Chapter 11 comes from Universal's 1934 serial, "The Vanishing Shadow." Plot finds eccentric scientist Dr. Alex Zorka (Bela Lugosi)carrying on various experiments in his secret laboratory with the aid of his assistant Monk (Jack C. Smith). Zorka has invented many strange weapons of warfare, including a devisualizer belt which renders him invisible; a terrifying, eight-foot tall robot (played by stuntman Edwin "Bud" Wolfe and not circus giant Bud Wolff), and he also has a deadly meteorite fragment (which he found in a 1936 movie with Boris Karloff)from which he extracts an element which can induce suspended animation in an entire army. Foreign spies, operating under the guise of a foreign language school (great cover), are trying to buy or (mostly) steal the meteorite element, while his former partner, Dr. Fred Mallory (Edwin Stanley), miffed that Zorka will not turn his inventions over to the U. S. Government, blows the whistle on him to Captain Bob West (Robert Kent) of the Military Intelligence Department. Tired of answering the door and saying no to the spies and the government, Zorka moves his lab and when his beloved wife (Dora Clement) is killed, Zorka, puttering around for his own amusement up to this point, gets hacked off as only Lugosi can, swears eternal vengeance against society, and decides to use his inventions to make himself world dictator. And would have if not for his assistant Monk, an escaped convict virtually enslaved by Zorka, who is cowardly, treacherous and totally incompetent, and whose accidental or deliberate interference with Zorka's efforts repeatedly frustrates his master's grand schemes.

Luis Buñuel
Comedy
Euro International Film (EIA)

One of Luis Bunuel's most free-form and purely Surrealist films, consisting of a series of only vaguely related episodes - most famously, the dinner party scene where people sit on lavatories round a dinner table on, occasionally retiring to a little room to eat.

Joel Schumacher
Drama
Odyssey Entertainment
PG-13
Begins when an opera ghost terrorizes the cast and crew of the French Opera House while tutoring a chorus girl. He finally drives the lead soprano crazy so she and her friend leave. The girl is able to sing lead one night but the soprano doesn't want her show stolen so she comes back. The ghost demands they keep giving his protégé lead roles. Meanwhile, His pupil falls in love with the Vicomte de Chagny, but the Phantom is in love with Christine, his student. The Phantom is outraged by their love and kidnaps Christine to be his eternal bride. Will Raoul, the Vicomte, be able to stop this dastardly plan?

Dario Argento
Crime
DACFILM Rome

Jennifer Corvino, the daughter of a famous actor, has had trouble with sleepwalking for some time. Her doctor said that it can develop a split personality. She discovers her alternate personality when she stays at a boarding school that was once the home a Richard Wagner. But someone has been killing the students, and it relates only indirectly to the criminal sanitorium nearby. So it's up to "the two greatest detectives the world has ever known, or should I say, unknown"

Jonathan Demme
Drama
Clinica Estetico
PG-13
Andrew Beckett, a gay lawyer infected with AIDS, is fired from his conservative law firm in fear that they might contract AIDS from him. After Andrew is fired, in a last attempt for peace, he sues his former law firm with the help of a homophobic lawyer, Joe Miller. During the court battle, Miller sees that Beckett is no different than anyone else on the gritty streets of the city of brotherly love, sheds his homophobia and helps Beckett with his case before AIDS overcomes him.

George Cukor
Comedy
Loew's

Philadelphia heiress Tracy Lord throws out her playboy husband C.K. Dexter Haven shortly after their marriage. Two years later, Tracy is about to marry respectable George Kittredge whilst Dexter has been working for "Spy" magazine. Dexter arrives at the Lord's mansion the day before the wedding with writer Mike Connor and photographer Liz Imbrie, determined to spoil things.

Daniel Barnz
Drama, Family, Fantasy
Silverwood Films
PG-13
The fantastical tale of a little girl who won't - or can't - follow the rules. Confounded by her clashes with the rule-obsessed world around her, Phoebe seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher, even as her brilliant but anguished mother looks to Phoebe herself for inspiration.

Joel Schumacher
Thriller
Fox 2000 Pictures
R
A slick New York publicist who picks up a ringing receiver in a phone booth is told that if he hangs up, he'll be killed... and the little red light from a laser rifle sight is proof that the caller isn't kidding.

Darren Aronofsky
Thriller
Harvest Filmworks
R
Max is a genius mathematician who's built a supercomputer at home that provides something that can be understood as a key for understanding all existence. Representatives both from a Hasidic cabalistic sect and high-powered Wall Street firm hear of that secret and attempt to seduce him.

Roman Polanski
Biography
R.P. Productions
R
A brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew, witnesses the restrictions Nazis place on Jews in the Polish capital, from restricted access to the building of the Warsaw ghetto. As his family is rounded up to be shipped off to the Nazi labor camps, he escapes deportation and eludes capture by living in the ruins of Warsaw.

Michael Haneke
Drama
Arte
R

Bernard Hirschenson
Drama
Winter-Gregoravich Productions

Sexy hippie chicks Carol and Maureen get more than they bargained for when they hitch a ride with groovy hippie dude Chuck in his nifty mobile bus home. The trio get lost in the Florida Everglades following a fierce rain storm and embark on a startling spiritual journey of self-discovery.

Alfonso Arau
Comedy
Comala Films Productions
R
Woody Allen plays Tex, a kosher butcher. Sharon Stone plays his unfaithful wife Candy. Tex catches Candy in the act and in a fit of rage he kills her. To conceal his crime he cuts up her body and buries it in the desert in New Mexico. However, when her hand surfaces, a blind woman trips over it and it restores her sight. The hand is then considered to be the "hand of the Virgin." Despite the church's fallen priest (played by David Schwimmer) objecting, the ambitious mayor of the town (Cheech Marin) creates an international three-ring circus of miracle-seekers, TV crews, and born-again local prostitutes all interested in the hand. All of this goes on while Tex is desperately trying to recover the hand before the sheriff (Kiefer Sutherland) finds it and uses it as evidence against him.

Robert Bresson
Crime
Compagnie Cinématographique de France

Michel takes up picking pockets as a hobby, and is arrested almost immediately, giving him the chance to reflect on the morality of crime. After his release, though, his mother dies, and he rejects the support of friends Jeanne and Jacques in favour of returning to pickpocketing (after taking lessons from an expert), because he realises that it's the only way he can express himself...

Samuel Fuller
Film-Noir
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

On a crowded subway, Skip McCoy picks the purse of Candy. Among his take, although he does not know it at the time, is a piece of top-secret microfilm that was being passed by Candy's consort, a Communist agent. Candy discovers the whereabouts of the film through Moe Williams, a police informer. She attempts to seduce McCoy to recover the film. She fails to get back the film and falls in love with him. The desperate agent exterminates Moe and savagely beats Candy. McCoy, now goaded into action, confronts the agent in a particularly brutal fight in a subway.

Peter Weir
Drama
Australian Film Commission, The
PG
Three students and a school teacher disappear on an excursion to Hanging Rock, in Victoria, on Valentine's Day, 1900. Widely (and incorrectly) regarded as being based on a true story, the movie follows those that disappeared, and those that stayed behind, but it delights in the asking of questions, not the answering of them.

Glenn Gordon Caron
Comedy
3 Art Entertainment
PG-13
Kate is working on a career at Mercer Advertising, but she is passed up for promotion because she is 'not stable enough', still being single and having no ties to the company. She makes up a story about being engaged to Nick, a guy whom she just met at a friends' wedding. All seems to work out well for Kate. She even gets the attention of a colleague she had always wanted, but then events take a dramatic turn forcing her to 'present' her alleged fiancee to her boss...

Lloyd Bacon
Drama
Warner Bros. Pictures

Ex-convict Danny Kean decides to become honest as a photographer for a paper. He falls in love with Patricia, the daughter of the policeman who arrested him. Mr Nolan, her father, doesn't like that relation at first, but McLean, Kean's boss, convinces him of Kean's good nature. But Kean uses his relation to Patricia to make a photo of an execution. Due to this, Nolan loses his stripes and Kean isn't allowed to see Patricia any longer. But when one of his former friends kills two policemen, Kean sees his chance....

George Hickenlooper
Documentary
Vanguard Cinema

A visceral deconstruction of Academy Award nominated Peter Bogdanovich and the nervous breakdown he nearly had while shooting THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

Sidney Poitier
Crime
First Artists
PG
Dave Anderson and Manny Durrell are two high-class sneak thieves who have never been caught. Joshua Burke is a retired detective who has enough evidence on the both of them to put them behind bars. Instead, he offers to maintain his silence if the crooks will go straight and do work at a youth center for delinquents. At first, the crooks are reluctant and unwilling (and so are the kids). As time goes by they gain the trust and admiration of the kids and they start to enjoy the job. All goes well until someone out of the past tells them they have to do one last heist...or else...

Peter Hedges
Comedy
United Artists
PG-13
In a very poor zone of New York, April Burns and her boyfriend, the Afro-American Bobby, are preparing to receive April's family for a thanksgiving dinner. While Bobby tries to borrow a suit for him, April realizes that her stove is broken and she tries desperately to find a neighbor that can let her cook the turkey, since she does not want to fail (again) with her family. Meanwhile, in a suburb of Pennsylvania, her dysfunctional family is preparing to travel to New York. While driving in the road, the relationship between the Burns and the black-sheep April is disclosed through the conversations between her father Jim, her resented mother Joy, her brother, her sister and her grandmother.

Jean-Luc Godard
Drama
De Laurentiis

Pierro escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterian Sea with Marianne, a girl, who is chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead a unortodox live, always on the run.

Shohei Imamura
Drama, Comedy, Crime
Nikkatsu

Peter Greenaway
Drama
Kasander & Wigman Productions

As a young girl in Japan, Nagiko's father paints characters on her face, and her aunt reads to her from "The Pillow Book", the diary of a 10th-century lady-in-waiting. Nagiko grows up, obsessed with books, papers, and writing on bodies, and her sexual odyssey (and the creation of her own Pillow Book) is a "parfait mélange" of classical Japanese, modern Chinese, and Western film images.

Nick Millard
Drama
Secret Key
Unrated
The Grindhouse Trash 2-DVD Collection presents the ultimate "storefront theater" viewing experience with three rare gritty soft-core gems from the late 1960s including UTA LUSTFUL NEIGHBORS and THE PIMP PRIMER. Features adult screen icons John Holmes and Uschi Digard in early screen roles.System Requirements:Running Time: 240 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 878746001694 Manufacturer No: SKE-DV-16

David Gordon Green
Comedy
Sony Pictures
Unrated
The latest bro-mance from team Apatow (the guys who brought us "Superbad", "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin"), "Pineapple Express" is the story of Dale Denton (Seth Rogan) and Saul Silver (James Franco), a pothead and his dealer who accidently get caught up in a drug war between two gangs with some corrupt cops, high-school girls and small-time henchmen thrown in for good measure. At its core, "Pineapple Express" is a stoner comedy--a tale of two semi-slow giggling and loveable idiots in "way" over their heads--this formula has made for some entertaining comedy over the years, Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke" and Dave Chappell's "Half Baked" being two of the best examples. What sets "Pineapple Express" apart from these silly classics however, is the consistency of the humor, the perfect chemistry between Rogan and Franco and the giddily ridiculous action sequences (and the fact that even mild intoxication is not required to enjoy the humor). The movie retains the sweetness that is present in most of Apatow's films, making the characters’ poor choices and ultra-violent actions somehow justifiable, or at least relatable. The site gags, pop-culture references and perfectly timed non-sequiturs only enhance the hilarity. Director David Gordon Green, known mostly for the understated and reflective films "George Washington" and "All the Real Girls", seemed like an odd choice for such a raucous and over-the-top comedy, but it turns out Green's stamp is all over this film (as is his long-time cinematographer, Tim Orr) who together manage to turn "Pineapple Express" into much more than the sum of its parts. --"Kira Canny"
Stills from "Pineapple Express" (click for larger image)

Leon Ichaso
Biography
GreeneStreet Films
R
"Piñero" tells the story of the explosive life of a Latino icon, the poet-playwright-actor Miguel Piñero, whose urban poetry is recognized as a pre-cursor to rap and hip-hop. After doing time in hard-core Sing-Sing for petty thefts and drug dealing, Piñero's prison experiences developed into the 1974 Tony-nominated play Short Eyes. The resulting notoriety and fame was too much for the Latino bad-boy genius who retreated to the darker corners of New York City.

Larry G. Brown
Comedy
Plateau Productions

Blake Edwards
Comedy
Geoffrey Productions Inc.

As a child, Princess Dala is given, by her father, the largest diamond in the world, in which if you stare into it can be seen a "Pink Panther" hence the name. However, now as a young woman, rebels in her home country have seized power and are demanding the return of the jewel. Dala relaxes on holiday in an exclusive skiing resort but noted British playboy, Sir Charles Lytton is in town. He is secretly "The Phantom" - infamous jewel thief who has eyes on the Pink Panther. Charles's playboy nephew George follows to the resort in an attempt to steal it and blame it on "The Phantom", not knowing that it's his uncle. On the Phantom's trail is Inspector Jacques Clouseau, from France, and his wife who, unknowingly to Jacques, is the lover of Charles and helper in the Phantom's crime. Jacques tries to stop the attempts but he is so clueless that when several attempts are made at a fantasy-dress party, Jacques looks everywhere but the right place...

Shawn Levy
Adventure
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
PG
When the coach of the France soccer team is killed by a poisoned dart in the stadium in the end of a game, and his expensive and huge ring with the diamond Pink Panther disappears, the ambitious Chief Insp. Dreyfus assigns the worst police inspector Jacques Clouseau to the case. His intention is to give a diversion to the press, while he uses his best men to chase the killer and thief. He assigns Gendarme Gilbert Ponton to work with Closeau and inform each step of the investigation. When Clouseau is nominated with honor to the highest prize in France, Dreyfus decides to humiliate Clouseau and take him out of the case. However Clouseau has already solved the mystery.

Blake Edwards, Carolyn F. Russell, Friz Freleng, Gerry Chiniquy, Hawley Pratt
Documentary
MGM (Video & DVD)
PG
Cue the Henry Mancini music and watch out for Cato--the gist of the "Pink Panther" series has been gathered in a six-disc boxed set. At the center of it is Peter Sellers's incarnation of inspector Jacques Clouseau, a hopelessly bumbling detective with a genius for resting his hands in the wrong place (on the surface of a spinning globe, for instance) and mangling the English language.
Writer-director Blake Edwards cast Peter Ustinov as Clouseau in "The Pink Panther", but Ustinov dropped out just before shooting began. Edwards (who recounts this story in a spotty commentary track included here) and Sellers bonded over their affection for Laurel and Hardy, and immediately transformed the character of Clouseau into a walking sight gag. The first film has a delicious swinging sixties vibe, while jewel thief David Niven, Claudia Cardinale, and Capucine occupy as much screen time as Sellers. Sellers really hits his stride in "A Shot in the Dark", an elegantly funny tale of Clouseau sleuthing out a murder investigation. This one introduced Herbert Lom, as the increasingly frazzled Inspector Dreyfus, and Burt Kwouk, as Clouseau's houseboy-nemesis Cato. Sellers and Edwards, whose relationship was stormy, put Clouseau aside for over 10 years, until a trilogy of mid-1970s comedies restored the character to commercial (and dare we say cultural) primacy.
Unfortunately, the very funny comeback picture, "Return of the Pink Panther", is absent from this set due to rights issues with the studios involved. "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" has Dreyfus going bananas and targeting Clouseau; "Revenge of the Pink Panther" puts Clouseau in a hilarious series of disguises, climaxing in a wonderfully mounted sequence in Hong Kong. (Throughout the series, the calm, classical staging of gags by Blake Edwards reminds you of what a lost art this has become.) "Trail of the Pink Panther" looks better now than it did when originally released in 1982, shortly after Sellers's death; it's a batch of unused Sellers routines from previous pictures, strung together with a loose plot. In other words, it's a "deleted scenes" extra, and quite funny at times.
Subsequent efforts "Curse of the Pink Panther" and "Son of the Pink Panther" are neither included nor mentioned. A half-hour documentary gives pleasant memories from Edwards, but feels incomplete. The cartoon Panther gets his own 11-minute mini-doc, plus six cartoon shorts including the Oscar-winning "The Pink Phink." "--Robert Horton"

Blake Edwards
Comedy
United Artists

Charles Dreyfus escapes from the mental asylum and tries to kill Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau. He doesn't succeed at first, so he takes on another strategy, namely to build a Doom's Day machine and demand that someone else kills Jacques Clouseau, or Dreyfus will use the machine to wipe out whole cities and even whole countries... With about 22 assassins from all over the globe on his tail, Clouseau decides to find Dreyfus alone and put him back in the mental asylum.

Joe Dante
Comedy
New World Pictures
R
When flesh-eating piranhas are accidently released into a summer resort's rivers, the guests become their next meal.

Gore Verbinski
Action
Walt Disney Pictures
PG-13
This swash-buckling tale follows the quest of Captain Jack Sparrow, a savvy pirate, and Will Turner, a resourceful blacksmith, as they search for Elizabeth Swann. Elizabeth, the daughter of the governor and the love of Will's life, has been kidnapped by the feared Captain Barbossa. Little do they know, but the fierce and clever Barbossa has been cursed. He, along with his large crew, are under an ancient curse, doomed for eternity to neither live, nor die. That is, unless a blood sacrifice is made.

Hiroshi Teshigahara
Crime
Teshigahara Productions

A documentary fantasy. Penniless miners talk in passing about labor unions. A miner and his young son go to a village in Kyushu where the miner has been told he'll find work, but it's a ghost town, save for one woman. The miner leaves and is followed by a man in a white suit and white gloves. A murder takes place: faked footprints, bribery and intrigue, investigations, a frame-up, and a ghost who wants to know why meet in a story of realism and the surreal. A child mutely witnesses all. Does the truth count for anything in this world or in the next? Can everything be manipulated?

Lewis Seiler
Drama
Charles K. Feldman Group

Charles 'Pittsburgh' Markham rides roughshod over his friends, his lovers, and his ideals in his trek toward financial success in the Pittsburgh steel industry, only to find himself deserted and lonely at the top. When his crash comes, he finds that fate has dealt him a second chance.

Kids & Family
Walt Disney Video
G
Pixar's unprecedented string of hit animated features was built on the short films in this collection. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull used these cartoons the way Walt Disney used the "Silly Symphonies" during the 1930s: as a training ground for artists and a way to explore the potential of a new medium. Although it's only 90 seconds long, "Luxo, Jr." (1986) ranks as the "Steamboat Willie" of computer animation: For the first time, audiences believed CG characters could think and feel. (It was also the first CG film to make audiences laugh.) When the artists began work on "Toy Story", they had learned so much from the shorts, they were ready to undertake that landmark creation. In the later shorts, the viewer can see the artists continuing to experiment: with a more realistic human figure in "Geri's Game" and with new ways of suggesting atmospheric effects in "Boundin'." Some of the more recent shorts continue the adventures of the characters from the features. "Jack-Jack Attack" reveals what happened to the hapless baby-sitter while the Incredibles were off fighting Syndrome, while "Mater and the Ghost Light" shows that life goes on for the inhabitants of Radiator Springs. When Sully from "Monsters, Inc." tries to adjust his seat in "Mike's New Car," the animators prolong the moment to wring every drop of humor from the situation--just as an earlier generation of animators milked Wile E. Coyote's antics for all they were worth. The long-unseen films for "Sesame Street" are an unexpected bonus. A delightful collection of entertaining shorts, and a significant chronicle of the growth of computer animation. (Rated G: suitable for all ages: cartoon violence) "--Charles Solomon"

Kids & Family
Walt Disney Pictures
Unrated
Pixar's unprecedented string of hit animated features was built on the short films in this collection. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull used these cartoons the way Walt Disney used the "Silly Symphonies" during the 1930s: as a training ground for artists and a way to explore the potential of a new medium. Although it's only 90 seconds long, "Luxo, Jr." (1986) ranks as the "Steamboat Willie" of computer animation: For the first time, audiences believed CG characters could think and feel. (It was also the first CG film to make audiences laugh.) When the artists began work on "Toy Story", they had learned so much from the shorts, they were ready to undertake that landmark creation. In the later shorts, the viewer can see the artists continuing to experiment: with a more realistic human figure in "Geri's Game" and with new ways of suggesting atmospheric effects in "Boundin'." Some of the more recent shorts continue the adventures of the characters from the features. "Jack-Jack Attack" reveals what happened to the hapless baby-sitter while the "Incredibles" were off fighting Syndrome, while "Mater and the Ghost Light" shows that life goes on for the inhabitants of Radiator Springs. When Sully from "Monsters, Inc." tries to adjust his seat in "Mike's New Car," the animators prolong the moment to wring every drop of humor from the situation--just as an earlier generation of animators milked Wile E. Coyote's antics for all they were worth. The long-unseen films for Sesame Street are an unexpected bonus. A delightful collection of entertaining shorts, and a significant chronicle of the growth of computer animation. (Rated G: suitable for all ages: cartoon violence) "--Charles Solomon"

Edward D. Wood Jr.
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Reynolds Pictures

"Can your heart stand the shocking facts about Graverobbers from Outer Space?" That's the question on the lips of the narrator of this tale about flying saucers, zombies and cardboard tombstones. A pair of aliens, angered by the "stupid minds" of planet Earth, set up shop in a California cemetery. Their plan: to animate an army of the dead to march on the capitals of the world. (The fact that they have only managed to resurrect three zombies to date has not discouraged them.) An intrepid airline pilot living near the cemetery must rescue his wife from this low-budget terror. "Can you prove it *didn't* happen?"

Edward D. Wood Jr.
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Legend Films, Inc.
Unrated
Sometimes a movie achieves such legendary status that it can't quite live up to its reputation. "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is not one of these movies. It is just as magnificently terrible as you've heard. "Plan 9" is the story of space aliens who try to conquer the Earth through resurrection of the dead. Psychic Criswell narrates ("Future events such as these will affect you in the future!") as police rush through the cemetery, occasionally clipping the cardboard tombstones in their zeal to find the source of the mysterious goings-on. More than just a bad film, "Plan 9" is something of a one- stop clearinghouse for poor cinematic techniques: The time shifts whimsically from midnight to afternoon sun, Tor Johnson flails desperately in an attempt to rise from his coffin, and flying saucers zoom past on clearly visible strings. Fading star Bela Lugosi tragically died during filming, but such a small hurdle could not stop writer-producer-director Ed Wood. Lugosi is ingeniously replaced with a man who holds a cape across his face and might as well have "NOT BELA LUGOSI" stamped on his forehead. "Plan 9" is so sweetly well- intentioned in both its message and its execution that it's impossible not to love it. And if you don't, well, as Eros says, "You people of Earth are idiots!" "--Ali Davis"

John Hughes
Adventure
Hughes Entertainment
R
All that Neal Page wants to do is to get home for Thanksgiving. His flight has been cancelled due to bad weather, so he decides on other means of transport. As well as bad luck, Neal is blessed with the presence of Del Griffith, Shower Curtain Ring Salesman and all-around blabbermouth, who is never short of advice, conversation, bad jokes, or company. And when he decides that he is going the same direction as Neal....

Alastair Fothergill
Television
2 Entertain Video
Exempt
As befits the BBC’s reputation for producing some of the world’s best nature documentaries, the five-disc set "Planet Earth" is an epic travelogue, focussing on different ecologies and the unique animals that inhabit them. Once again, Sir David Attenborough provides the narration, as the cameras fly across the surface of the earth, zooming in to give us a bug’s eye view one minute, zooming out to give us an eagle’s perspective the next. The BBC’s cameramen filmed more than 200 locations, resulting in some truly spectacular footage, much of which has never before been seen--such as the rare sight of an endangered snow leopard hunting in the Himalayas, or great white sharks leaping from the water as they hunt. The creators of "Planet Earth" endured some of the world’s most hostile environments, from the deepest ocean depths to an Antarctic blizzard to a fetid, cockroach- and bat-infested cave, just to grab a few moments of film; it’s worth watching the "Making of" shorts that accompany each episode, in order to see just what lengths they had to go to. The three extra episodes here--"Planet Earth: The Future"--provide a sobering finale, as Sir David practically pleads with viewers to cherish the animals that we share this planet with, before it’s too late. "--Ted Kord"

Franklin J. Schaffner
Action
APJAC Productions

Taylor and two other astronauts come out of deep hibernation to find that their ship has crashed. Escaping with little more than clothes they find that they have landed on a planet where men are pre-lingual and uncivilized while apes have learned speech and technology. Taylor is captured and taken to the city of the apes after damaging his throat so that he is silent and cannot communicate with the apes.

Unknown
Comedy
Capstone Entertainment

Unknown
Comedy
Capstone Entertainment

Thrillers
MGM (Video & DVD)
R
"Platoon" put writer-turned-director Oliver Stone on the Hollywood map; it is still his most acclaimed and effective film, probably because it is based on Stone's firsthand experience as an American soldier in Vietnam. Chris (Charlie Sheen) is an infantryman whose loyalty is tested by two superior officers: Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe), a former hippie humanist who really cares about his men (this was a few years before he played Jesus in Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ"), and Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), a moody, macho soldier who may have gone over to the dark side. The personalities of the two sergeants correspond to their combat drugs of choice--pot for Elias and booze for Barnes. Stone has become known for his sledgehammer visual style, but in this film it seems perfectly appropriate. His violent and disorienting images have a terrifying immediacy, a you-are-there quality that gives you a sense of how things may have felt to an infantryman in the jungles of Vietnam. "Platoon" won Oscars for best picture and director. "--Jim Emerson"

Herbert Ross
Comedy
Paramount Pictures
PG
A mild mannered film critic is dumped by his wife and his ego is crushed. His hero persona is the tough guy played by Humphrey Bogart in many of his movies and the apparition of Bogart begins showing up to give him advice. With the encouragement of his two married friends, he actually tries dating again, with less than satisfactory results, until he relaxes.

Clint Eastwood
Thriller
Universal Pictures
R
Disc jockey Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood) attracts the amorous attentions of a demented fan named Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter). Evelyn lets Dave pick up at a bar; later at her apartment, Evelyn admits that she is the cooing caller who repeatedly asks Dave to play the Erroll Garner classic "Misty." From then on, the film is a lesson in how one casual date can turn your whole life around. Evelyn stalks Dave everywhere, ruins his business lunch, assaults his maid, mutilates his house and all of his belongings, and finally threatens to butcher his girlfriend Tobie Williams (Donna Mills). You'll never be able to hear that song again without looking over your shoulder. Eastwood's directorial debut.

Robert Altman
Comedy
Avenue Pictures Productions
R
A studio script screener gets on the bad side of a writer by not accepting his script. The writer is sending him threatening postcards. The screener tries to identify the writer in order to pay him off so he'll be left alone, and then in a case of mistaken identity gone awry, he accidentally gives the writer solid ammunition for blackmail. This plot is written on a backdrop of sleazy Hollywood deals and several subplots involving the politics of the industry.

Willard Carroll
Comedy
Hyperion Pictures
R
Eleven articulate people work through affairs of the heart in L.A. Paul produces Hannah's TV cooking show, and they must move beyond gentle barbs when she wants to know about an affair of his years ago. Mark is dying of AIDS, and his mother comes to his bedside: they must talk truthfully. Men have scalded Meredith so she rebuffs Trent's charm, but he persists. The trendy, prolix Joan tries to pull the solitary Keenan into her orbit: why is he reluctant? An adulterous couple meet at hotels for evening sex, but she is unwilling for the relationship to grow. Hugh tells tall tales, usually tragic, to women in bars. By the week's end, their parallel stories converge.

Andy Wilson
Crime
Beacon Communications
R
Stripped of his medical license after performing an operation while high on amphetamines, famed LA surgeon Dr Eugene Sands abandons his former life only to find himself crossing paths with Raymond Blossom, an infamous counterfeiter. Employed as a "gun-shot doctor" when Raymond's associates cannot risk visiting a hospital, Eugene is lured deep into the criminal world and becomes entangled with his boss's girlfriend.

Jacques Tati
Comedy
Jolly Film

Monsieur Hulot has to contact an American official in Paris, but he gets lost in the maze of modern architecture which is filled with the latest technical gadgets. Caught in the tourist invasion, Hulot roams around Paris with a group of American tourists, causing chaos in his usual manner.

Arthur Hiller
Comedy
Paramount Pictures
PG-13
Film version of the Neil Simon play has three separate acts set in the same hotel suite in New York's Plaza Hotel with Walter Matthau in a triple role. In the first, Karen Nash (Maureen Stapleton) tries to get her inattentive husband Sam's (Walter Matthau) attention to spruce up their failing marriage. In the second, brash film producer Jesse Kiplinger (Matthau) tries to get his former one-time flame Muriel (Barbara Harris) to see him for what he stands for. In the third, Roy Hubley (Matthau) and his wife Norma (Lee Grant) try and try to get their uncertain-of-herself daughter out of the bathroom before her approaching wedding.

Gary Ross
Fantasy
New Line Cinema
PG-13
David, single, lonely and not happy with his life, flees reality by watching Pleasantville - a 1950's b&w soap opera, where everything is just...pleasant. His sister Jennifer, sexually far more active than her brother, gets in a fight with him about a very strange remote control - given to them just seconds after the TV broke by an equally strange repair man - and they suddenly find themselves in Pleasantville, as Bud and Mary-Sue Parker, completely assimilated and therefore black and white, in clothes a little different and with new parents...pleasant ones. David wants to get out of the situation as well as his sister, but whereas he tries to blend in (effortlessly, with his knowledge), she does what she likes to do. One event leads to the other, and suddenly there is a red rose growing in Pleasantville. The more rules are broken, the more colorful life gets in Pleasantville, USA.

Roger Graef, Jonathan Miller
Comedy
Amnesty International

Sean Penn
Drama
Morgan Creek Productions
R
The night he retires as a Nevada sheriff, Jerry Black pledges to the mother of a murdered girl that he will find the killer. Jerry doesn't believe the police arrested the right man; he discovers this is the third incident in the area in the recent past with victims young, blond, pretty, and small for their age. So he buys an old gas station in the mountains near the crimes in order to search for a tall man who drives a black station wagon, gives toy porcupines as gifts, and calls himself the wizard: clues from a drawing by the dead girl. Jerry's solitary life gives way to friendship with a woman and her small, blond daughter. Has Jerry neglected something that may prove fatal?

John Singleton
Drama
Columbia Pictures Corporation
R
After witnessing the murder of her first and only boyfriend, young Justice decides to forget about college and become a South Central Los Angeles hairdresser. Avoiding friends, the only way for her to cope with her depression is by composing beautiful poetry. On her way to a convention in Oakland, she is forced to ride with an independent-minded postal worker whom she has not gotten along with in the past. After various arguments between them and their friends, they start to discover that their thoughts on violence, socially and domestically, are the same. Justice may finally feel that she is not as alone as before.

John Boorman
Action
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Later remade as PAYBACK, POINT BLANK follows an angry Lee Marvin through Angie Dickinson and most of California to get to John Vernon, who is defenestrated nude. The ostensible plot is the old saw of betrayal and vengeance, given life here by new-wave editing and pretty good acting.

Emile de Antonio
Documentary
Point Films

Point of Order is compiled from TV footage of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the Army accused Senator McCarthy of improperly pressuring the Army for special privileges for Private David Schine, formerly of McCarthy's investigative staff. McCarthy accused the Army of holding Schine hostage to keep him from searching for Communists in the Army. These hearings resulted in McCarthy's eventual censure for conduct unbecoming a senator.

Todd Haynes
Drama
Bronze Eye Productions

Three intercut stories about outsiders, sex and violence. In "Hero," Richie, at age 7, kills his father and flies away. After the event, a documentary in cheesy lurid colors asks what Richie was like and what led up to the shooting. In the black and white "Horror," a scientist isolates the elixir of human sexuality, drinks it, and becomes a festering, contagious murderer; a female colleague who loves him tries to help, to her peril. In "Homo," a prisoner in Fontenal prison is drawn to an inmate whom he knew some years before, at Baton juvenile institute, and whose humiliations he witnessed. This story is told in dim light, except for the bright flashbacks.

Katt Shea
Thriller
MG Entertainment Inc.

A sexy teen (Barrymore) who lives with her aunt moves in with a reclusive teen (Gilbert) and slowly works her way into the lives of her adopted family. The mother (Ladd) is sickly and can't sexually satisfy her husband (Skerritt) any more, and to the daughter's horror, begins seducing her father.

Anne Goursaud
Drama
New Line Cinema
R
Lily is a sheltered art student from Michigan going to school in California. She finds an apartment and her roommates aren't quite normal. One day she finds a box of items belonging to a girl she's never met before. But in the box are nude pictures of the girl and her diary. Lily begins reading the diary and realizes that she's going to change her life and become a wild woman! She begins dating a guy and at the same time her art instructor begins to lust after her. The struggle begins when her boyfriend thinks she's unfaithful to him and her art teacher becomes obsessed.

Kurt Voss
Drama
CineTel Pictures
R
Ivy's sister, Violet, comes to visit the Greer residence in this third installment of the franchise. It does not take long for the family to be turned upside down as Violet uses her body and skills of manipulation to throw the household into a state of panic and deceit.

Robert Zemeckis
Animation
Castle Rock Entertainment
G
This is the story of a young hero boy on Christmas Eve who boards on a powerful magical train that's headed to the North Pole and Santa Claus's home. What unfolds is an an adventure which follows a doubting boy, who takes an extraordinary train ride to the North Pole; during this ride, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery which shows him that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe.

Various
Comedy
Paramount
NR
In addition to spawning the popular "Naked Gun" movie franchise, "Police Squad!" had a lasting impact on TV comedy, and it's still a guilty pleasure. Hot from the success of "Airplane!" two years earlier, the ZAZ team (brothers David and Jerry Zucker and writing partner Jim Abrahams) decided to spoof TV cop shows, using the late '50s Lee Marvin series "M Squad" and the popular series format of Quinn Martin Productions (e.g., "The Streets of San Francisco") as their template for supremely silly, gag-laden satire. With "Airplane!" star Leslie Nielsen as straight-faced detective Frank Drebin and Alan North as Drebin's befuddled boss, Capt. Ed Hocken, this half-hour series quickly established an irresistible combination of nonstop sight gags, non sequiturs, and repeated routines ("Cigarette?" "Yes, it is") that dared viewers to pay close attention or miss the laughs if they didn't. Ironically, this very quality--you had to actually "watch" the show instead of casually listening for punchlines--is what ultimately sealed the series' fate. After only six poorly rated episodes, "Police Squad!" was canceled without fanfare, and six years passed before Drebin returned as the bumbling hero of "The Naked Gun".
Will all six episodes on one DVD, ZAZ fans can get reacquainted with a series that was arguably ahead of its time. In addition to the rib-tickling disparity between onscreen episode titles and narrated titles, and "special guest stars" (including William Shatner, Robert Goulet, Lorne Greene, and others) who get killed in the opening credits, loyal viewers could count on a weekly dose of hilarity from Nielsen, North, and their supporting players. Character actor William Duell appeared each week as shoeshine boy "Johnny the Snitch," capable of answering literally "any" question if you repeatedly greased his palm (a gag that led to info-seeking cameo appearances by Dick Clark, Dr. Joyce Brothers, baseball manager Tommy Lasorda, and others). And while original "Mission: Impossible" costar Peter Lupus poked fun at himself as the dim-witted Det. Norberg (later played by O.J. Simpson in the "Naked Gun" movies), Ed Williams--an actual high school science teacher--is hilarious as "Mr. Wizard"-like lab technician Ted Olson, who dispenses dubious science lessons to unsuspecting children. The fast-paced barrage of humor guaranteed that every episode would deliver as many hits as misses, and while some of the jokes have lost their punch, "Police Squad!" still delivers the belly-laughs... and always will, as long as humans have an appetite for shameless stupidity. "--Jeff Shannon"
On the DVD
Two episode commentaries by the Zucker brothers, Jim Abrahams, and producer Robert K. Weiss are good for a laugh, as the ZAZ team laughs at their own material and recalls the rigors of a 5-day shooting schedule, battles with network censors (also outlined in the revealing "Production Memo Highlights" feature), and the never-shown "celebrity guest death" of John Belushi, who actually died shortly after the gag was filmed. Comedian and writer Robert Wuhl's commentary is more autobiographical and somewhat perfunctory (he barely remembers the episode he wrote), but contains a few nuts-and-bolts details about the show's production. The 10-minute Leslie Nielsen interview shows the gracefully aging star in fine form as he recalls his affinity for the ZAZ brand of humor; the brief gag reel offers about a dozen on-set bloopers (several from crude workprint sources); "Behind the Freeze Frames" is an extended outtake to illustrate the elaborately faked "freeze frame" gag that ended each episode; and "Celebrity Death Shots" is a list of guest-star death gags proposed (and mostly used) for the series. Also included are casting tests for Alan North and Ed Williams, and an animated producers' photo gallery of "Police Squad!" sets, props, and scenery. "--Jeff Shannon"

Alan Raymond, Susan Raymond
Documentary
Video Verité

Jordan Copeland
Music Video & Concerts
A&M Records

109 minute 1080 HD concert presented in surround and stereo. Bonus feature: "Better Than Therapy," directed by Jordan Copeland, which is 50 minutes of exclusive content in HD detailing the Police's historic reunion tour with interviews with the band and crew. Also contains two HD photo galleries of the Police on tour, one by guitarist Andy Summers and one by Danny Clinch. Includes 2-CD set as well.

2-CD Set Track listing:

CD 1:

1. Message In A Bottle

2. Synchronicity II

3. Walking On The Moon

4. Voices Inside My Head/When The World Is Running Down

5. Don't Stand So Close To Me

6. Driven To Tears

7. Hole In My Life

8. Truth Hits Everybody

9. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

10. Wrapped Around Your Finger

CD 2:

1. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

2. Invisible Sun

3. Walking In Your Footsteps

4. Can't Stand Losing You/Reggatta De Blanc

5. Roxanne

6. King of Pain

7. So Lonely

8. Every Breath You Take

9. Next To You

Lee Frost
Action
Saber Productions

Barry Levinson
Documentary
Baltimore Pictures
NR

Ed Harris
Biography
Brant-Allen
R
At the end of the 1940's, abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is featured in Life magazine. Flashback to 1941, he's living with his brother in a tiny apartment in New York City, drinking too much, and exhibiting an occasional painting in group shows. That's when he meets artist Lee Krasner, who puts her career on hold to be his companion, lover, champion, wife, and, in essence, caretaker. To get him away from booze, insecurity, and the stress of city life, they move to the Hamptons where nature and sobriety help Pollock achieve a breakthrough in style: a critic praises, then Life magazine calls. But so do old demons: the end is nasty, brutish, and short.

Paul Powell
Family, Comedy, Drama
Mary Pickford Company

When Pollyanna is orphaned, she is sent to live with her crotchety Aunt Polly. Pollyanna discovers that many of the people in her aunt's New England home town are as ill-tempered as her aunt. But Pollyanna's incurable optimism - exemplified by her "glad game," in which she looks for the bright side of every situation - bring a change to the staid old community.

David Swift
Comedy
Walt Disney Productions

A little girl comes to a town that is embattled by feuds and intimidated by her aunt. By the time she must leave, she has transformed the community with her indominatable will to see the good side of even the worst situations and bring it out for the betterment of all.

Tobe Hooper
Horror
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

A young family are visited by ghosts in their home. At first the ghosts appear friendly, moving objects around the house to the amusement of everyone, then they turn nasty and start to terrorise the family before they "kidnap" the youngest daughter.

John Waters
Comedy
New Line Cinema
R
Francine Fishpaw is a upper middle class suburban housewife in Baltimore. Unfortunately for this "good christian woman", the money to support her lifestyle comes from her husbands porno theater, the neighbors are protesting, her son is the notorius "Baltimore Stomper", her daughter is knocked up by a local hoodlum, and her husband is having an affair with his secretary.

Joseph Ruben
Comedy
Crown International Pictures
R
A football player at Rosedale High School is amorous of one of the cheerleaders, who is going with another guy. Another player can't decide which of two cheerleaders he wants to be with. Meanwhile, the Big Game with Hardin High School is approaching, and a prank war is in full swing.

Andy Warhol

Louis C.K.
Comedy
3 Art Entertainment
PG-13
Pootie Tang, the musician/actor/folk hero of the ghetto, is chronicled from his early childhood to his battles against the evil Corporate America, who try to steal his magic belt and make him sell out by endorsing addictive products to his people. Pootie must learn to find himself and defeat the evil corporation for all the young black children of America, supatime.

Various
Music


This show follows the format of the regular "Pop-Up Video" (trivia-filled bubbles pop-up throughout music videos) with one twist - all the songs used are from the 80's. Great fun if you grew up listening to the music of that era.

Robert Altman
Comedy
Paramount Pictures
PG
Buff sailorman Popeye arrives in an awkward seaside town called Sweet Haven. There he meets Wimpy, a hamburger loving man, Olive Oyl, the soon-to-be love of his life, and Bluto, a huge, mean pirate who's out to make Sweet Haven pay for no good reason. Popeye also discovers his long lost Pappy in the middle of it all, so with a band of his new friends, Popeye heads off to stop Bluto, and he's got the power of spinach, which Popeye detests, to busk Bluto right in the mush. Watch as Popeye mops the floor with punks in a burger joint, stops a greedy tax man, takes down a champion boxer, and even finds abandoned baby Swee'Pea. He's strong to the finich, 'cause he eats his spinach!

A. Edward Sutherland
Comedy
Paramount Pictures

Poppy, daughter of carnival medicine salesman Professor McGargle, falls in love with the Mayor's son. Countess Maggie Tubbs DePuizzi is claimant to the Putnam estates, but McGargle and lawyer Wiffen plot to make Poppy claim the fortune. Wiffen and the Countess double-cross the Professor, but kindly Sarah Tucker notices a resemble between Poppy and the deceased Mrs. Putnam. It turns out that McGargle adopted the girl, she is the rightful heir, the purported Countess is only a showgirl, and every one has a happy ending.

Scott J. Gill
Documentary
District Films
R
Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy offers audiences a penetrating look inside the world of Ron Jeremy, America's most unlikely sex star and hero to millions. With nearly 25 years in the adult film industry and over 1,600 films to his credit, Ron Jeremy is huge. In his world, Ron reigns supreme-he's made millions of dollars and slept with thousands of beautiful women, and is indisputably the industry's biggest star. And everyone who's anyone knows Ron-a pop icon to millions, he is a beacon of hope for many American male, since he stands as living proof that pretty much anyone can get some. So how did such a classically unhandsome, big and hairy guy ever get to be suchia super stud? In one of the most fascinating and entertaining comedies of the last year, audiences finally get a chance to get inside the life and times of Ron Jeremy, and find out what's really behind the hardest working man in show business.

Shohei Imamura
Comedy
Imamura Productions

Mr. Ogata lives a complicated life: he's is a pornographer making two skin flicks per day and trying to stay beneath the radar screen of the local mob; he deeply loves his ailing wife Haru who's cursed by the restless spirit of her dead first husband; he also has a mistress, a step-son who wants to go to university, and a step-daughter entering adolescence. He lusts after his step-daughter, and he asks Haru if he can marry her. Haru agrees to his plan, signs over her business to him, and a crisis ensues when Ogata uses her nest egg to buy equipment so he and his pals can set up their own film processing lab. Surreal images and events weave their way into Ogata's life.

Marcel Carné
Crime
Ciné-Alliance

Life's a rotten business, says Jean, a deserter who arrives at night in Le Havre, looking to leave the country. He lucks into civilian clothes, a little bit of money, a passport, and a dog, and he also meets Nelly, a 17-year-old who's grown up too fast. She's the object of lust of men: including a boyfriend Maurice, her putative protector Zabel, and Lucien, a local hood. Jean falls for her, faces down Lucien, and gives her courage to stand on her own feet. A ship is leaving for Venezuela; can at least one of them be on it, or is that just a dream?

Dick Carruthers
Documentary
Lemmon Films

Portishead concert in the Roseland Ballroom, New York City, on the 24th July 1997 with tracks from the albums "Dummy" and "Portishead" played by the band and a 30 piece orchestra.

Mircea Dragan
Action
Romania Film

Michael Ritchie
Comedy
Frederick S. Pierce Company
R
Err, the title is almost a summary itself. Based on the true story of a Texas mom who tries to hire a hitman (through her ex's brother) to kill either or both a cheerleader and her mother. With the intended victims out of the way, Wanda's daughter gets the chance to become a cheerleader. When the media get hold of the story, Wanda's trial turns into a media circus.

Neil LaBute
Romance
USA Films
PG-13
Roland Michell is an Americian trying to make it in the difficult world of British Academics. He has yet to break out from under his mentor's shadow until he finds a pair of love letters in the textbook that once belonged to one of his idols, a famous long dead Victorian poet. Michell, after some sleuthing around, narrows down the suspects to a woman not his wife, another well known Victorian poet. Roland enlists the aid of a Dr. Maud Bailey, an expert on the life of the woman in question. Together they piece together the story of a forbidden love affair, and discover one of their own. They also find themselves in a battle to hold on to their discovery before it falls into the hands of their rival, Fergus Wolfe.

Bob Rafelson
Crime
CIP Filmproduktion GmbH
R
This remake of the 1946 movie of the same name accounts an affair between a seedy drifter and a seductive wife of a roadside cafe owner. This begins a chain of events that culminates in murder. Based on a novel by James M. Cain.

Ermanno Olmi
Drama
24 Horses

Domenico and Antonietta are two suburban Italian youths who meet while seeking "a job for life" from a big city corporation. After a bizarre screening process made up of written exams, physical agility exercises, and interview questions such as "Do you drink to forget your troubles?" (Domenico and Antonietta are no older than 17 or 18), they land jobs in the "Technical Division" and "Typing Services" respectively. From there, Domenico works as an underutilized errand boy until a clerk position is vacated by the death of an older employee. Domenico finally takes his place in a room of 12 other clerks with a manager overseeing them from a desk at the head of the room. The film ends as Domenico ponders his fate, from behind his tiny desk at the back of the small windowless room, listening to the sound of the mimeograph machine as it runs off carbon copies next to the manager's desk.

George Marshall
Comedy
James Roosevelt Productions

Jimmy, the owner of a failed music shop, goes to work with his uncle, the owner of a food factory. Before he gets there, he befriends an Irish family who happens to be his uncle's worst enemy because of their love for music and in-house band who constantly practices. Soon, Jimmy finds himself trying to help the band by getting them gigs and trying to reconcile the family with his uncle, an avid music-hater, all while winning the heart of the beautiful Molly!

Godfrey Reggio
Documentary
Santa Fe Institute for Regional Education
G

Timothy Linh Bui
Drama
Blue Snow Productions
R
Several Angelenos meet on Christmas Eve through chance, tragedy and divine intervention. Swayze will play the sleazy owner of the strip club where Biel's character dances. Redmayne will portray a mortician who falls in love with her. Kristofferson will play the head of a corporate crime organization who tries to convince his former employee (Liotta) not to seek vengeance on his former co-workers. Whitaker, who also serves as a producer on the film, will play a suicidal ex-priest. Newcomer Alejandro Romero will play a transsexual prostitute who shares an unexpected bond with the priest.

Robert Altman
Comedy
GreeneStreet Films
PG-13
The movie is a celebrity version of Garrison Keillor's radio show of the same name. The movie takes place during the last live performance of the show as the new radio network owners have sent an axeman (Tommy Lee Jones)to close the show. Another fantasy element is thrown in as an angel (Virginia Madsen) stalks the theater to take one of the performers. Keillor essentially plays himself, even using his own name for the character. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep play the singing Johnson Sisters, with Lindsay Lohan as a suicide-obsessed daughter of Streep. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are hilarious as the slightly off-color singing cowboy duo, Dusty & Lefty. Kevin Kline is a security guard who act as the narrator. Maya Rudolph also appears as a pregnant stage coordinator. Contains some mild sexually-oriented jokes.

Joe Brandmeier
Documentary
Prairie Home Productions

Penny Marshall
Drama
Mundy Lane Entertainment

Good natured Reverend Henry Biggs (Courtney B. Vance) finds that his marriage to choir mistress Julia (Whitney Houston) is flagging, due to his constant absence caring for the deprived neighbourhood they live in. On top of all this, his church is coming under threat from property developer Joe Hamilton (Gregory Hines). In desperation, Rev. Biggs prays to God for help - and help arrives in the form of an angel named Dudley (Denzel Washington). However, Dudley's arrival seems to cause even more trouble...

Lee Daniels
Action & Adventure
Lionsgate
R
Not every movie can survive the kind of hype--multiple awards at Sundance and other festivals, rapturous reviews, the promise of Oscars to come--that greeted the release of Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, but this extraordinary piece of work is more than up to the task. What's particularly notable about the film's success and acclaim is that in the beginning, at least, it presents one of the grimmest scenarios imaginable. The scene is Harlem, New York, in 1987. Teenager Clarisse Precious Jones (played by newcomer Gabourey Sibide in an absolutely fearless performance) is dirt poor, morbidly obese, semiliterate, and pregnant for the second time--both courtesy of her own father (the first baby was born with Down syndrome). Her home life is several levels below Hell, as her bitter, vengeful welfare mother, Mary (Mo'Nique, in a role that has generated legitimate Oscar® buzz), abuses her both physically and otherwise (telling Precious she should have aborted her is only the worst of a relentless flood of insults and vitriol). Yet somehow, the young woman still has hopes and dreams (depicted in a series of delightful fantasy sequences). She enrolls in an alternative school, where a young teacher (Paula Patton) takes her under her wing and even into her home, and visits a social worker (an excellent Mariah Carey; fellow pop star Lenny Kravitz is also effective as a male nurse) who further helps bring Precious out of the darkness. Incredibly, Precious's circumstances deteriorate even more before showing the slightest sign of improvement, and a climactic confrontation with her mother is one of the more wrenching scenes in recent memory. But against all odds, director Lee Daniels, screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher (working from Sapphire's novel), and especially the wondrously affecting Sibide have managed to make Precious a film that will lift the viewer far higher up that one might ever have thought possible. --Sam Graham

Lee Daniels
Drama
Lee Daniels Entertainment
R
Claireece Precious Jones endures unimaginable hardships in her young life. Abused by her mother, raped by her father, she grows up poor, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and generally unnoticed. So what better way to learn about her than through her own, halting dialect.

Steve James
Biography
Hollywood Pictures

Life and times of Steve Prefontaine, a young long-distance runner from Oregon who pursued the dream of Olympic gold in Munich and became one of the biggest, yet most tragic sport stars in America.

Christopher Nolan
Action & Adventure
Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
PG-13
"The Prestige" attempts a hat trick by combining a ridiculously good-looking cast, a highly regarded new director, and more than one sleight of hand. Does it pull it off? Sort of. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman play rival magicians who were once friends before an on-stage tragedy drove a wedge between them. While Bale's Alfred Borden is a more skilled illusionist, Jackman's Rufus Angier is the better showman; much of the film's interesting first half is their attempts to sabotage--and simultaneously, top--each other's tricks. Even with the help of a prop inventor (Michael Caine) and a comely assistant (Scarlett Johansson), Angier can't match Borden's ultimate illusion: The Transporting Man. Angier's obsession with learning Borden's trick leads him to an encounter with an eccentric inventor (David Bowie) in a second half that gets bogged down in plot loops and theatrics. Director Christopher Nolan, reuniting with his "Batman Begins" star Bale, demonstrates the same dark touch that hued that film, but some plot elements--without giving anything away--seem out of place with the rest of the movie. It's better to sit back and let the sometimes-clunky turns steer themselves than try to draw back the black curtain. That said, "The Prestige" still manages to entertain long after the magician has left the stage--a feat in itself. --"Ellen A. Kim"

Howard Deutch
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Paramount Pictures
PG-13
Young Andie is one of the not-so-popular girls in high school. She usually hangs out with her friends Iona or Duckie. Duckie has always had a crush on her, but now she has met a new guy from school, Blane. He's one of the rich and popular guys but can the two worlds meet?

Marcos Siega
Comedy
REN-Mar Studios
R
Manipulative high school sophomore Kimberly Joyce leads her friends Brittany Wells and Randa Azzouni in bringing charges of sexual assault against Percy Anderson, their English and drama teacher at an exclusive private school in Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, local reporter Emily Klein, originally assigned to do an insignificant piece on the school, hopes that the scandal will launch her into celebrity in the television news business, while Kimberly's bigoted father, Hank, is concerned primarily with the effect that his daughter's accusations may have on his business.

Garry Marshall
Comedy
Silver Screen Partners IV
R
Edward is a rich, ruthless businessman who specializes in taking over companies and then selling them off piece by piece. He travels to Los Angeles for a business trip and decides to hire a prostitute. They take a liking to each other and he offers her money if she'll stay with him for an entire week while he makes the "rich and famous" scene (since it doesn't do for a man of his stature to be alone at society parties and polo matches). Romantic comedy (and complications) ensue.

Boaz Yakin
Drama
Channel Four Films
R
About a young woman who is married to a devout Jew and the problems that trouble their marriage because of the woman wanting something more out of her life

Joe Wright
Drama
Focus Features
PG
The story is based on Jane Austen's novel about five sisters - Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia Bennet - in Georgian England. Their lives are turned upside down when a wealthy young man (Mr. Bingley) and his best friend (Mr. Darcy) arrive in their neighborhood.

Gregory Hoblit
Drama
Paramount
R
A high-profile slaying becomes the case of an ambitious attorney's career in this legal thriller based on the novel by William Diehl. Richard Gere stars as Martin Vail, a famed defense lawyer who volunteers his services to Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton), a Kentucky teenager charged with the murder of a Chicago archbishop. Covered with blood, Aaron was captured after a foot chase broadcast live on TV, making a gleeful Vail certain that he could raise his profile by defending the obviously guilty suspect. Assigned to prosecute is Assistant District Attorney Janet Venable (Laura Linney), who is Vail's ex-girlfriend. Vail's case becomes more complicated than he expected when a psychologist, Dr. Molly Arrington (Frances McDormand) concludes that Stampler suffers from multiple personality disorder. Vail also uncovers evidence that the archbishop was involved in a corrupt land scheme and may have molested young parishioners. Now the cynical, opportunistic attorney is faced with a daunting prospect, a client who may actually deserve his best defense. Its shocking, twist ending made "Primal Fear" (1996) a big box office hit and earned Norton, in his screen debut, an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Gregory Hoblit
Drama
Paramount Pictures
R
Courtroom thriller about a slick, hotshot lawyer (Richard Gere) who takes the seemingly unwinnable case of a young altar boy (Edward Norton) accused of murdering an eminent catholic priest.

Robert Drew
Documentary
Drew Associates

Mike Nichols
Comedy
Award Entertainment
R
Jack Stanton is running for president. The election is seen through the eyes of young Henry Burton. Along the way Stanton must deal with a sex scandal.

Ben Younger
Comedy
Prime Film Productions LLC
PG-13
In colorful, bustling modern-day Manhattan, Rafi Gardet, a beautiful 37-year-old photography producer reeling from a recent divorce, meets David Bloomberg, a handsome 23-year-old painter recently out of college. Rafi's therapist, Dr. Lisa Metzger, who is working to help Rafi overcome her fears of intimacy, finds out that Rafi's new lover is--unfortunately for Lisa--her only son, David. Both David and Rafi must contend with their 14-year age gap, vastly different backgrounds and the demands of David's traditional mother. Despite their intense attraction, the charmed couple soon realizes that vastly different ages and backgrounds create much conflict. A Jewish hip-hop lover and closet painter who still lives with his grandparents, David has little in common with Rafi--a non-practicing Catholic from a wealthy, broken family who travels in the sophisticated, high-end world of fashion.

Roberta Findlay
Horror
Rhino / Wea
R

Shane Carruth
Drama
New Line Home Video
PG-13
At night and on weekends, four men in a suburban garage have built a cottage industry of error-checking devices. But, they know that there is something more. There is some idea, some mechanism, some accidental side effect that is standing between them and a pure leap of innovation. And so, through trial and error they are building the device that is missing most. However, two of these men find the device and immediately realize that it is too valuable to market. The limit of their trust in each other is strained when they are faced with the question, If you always want what you can't have, what do you want when you can have anything?

Martha Coolidge
Comedy
Lions Gate Films
PG
At a Wisconsin university, local farmer's daughter Paige Morgan is intrigued by odd Danish exchange student Edvard 'Eddie', who is ignorant of many aspects of daily life, such as all domestic chores (no wonder, he's the incognito heir to the royal throne of Denmark, his roommate Soren a court minder) but well versed in other matters, such as Shakespeare. They become friends; invited -enouraged by her best friend- to the Moran family farm he makes a good impression on her parents and brothers and triumphs in the rustic lawnmower race. Only after some paparazzi track Edvard down to film them kissing and he has returned home because the king is gravely ill, Paige realizes he may be her true love, and flies to Copenhagen. Initially the court, especially queen Rosalind, opposes a commoner bride, but Edvard sticks to his guns before accepting to succeed his abdicating father, and Paige's public performance soon improves enough to win the royal family's blessing. Only once she realizes a queen's life means giving up her medical career and leaving the US forever, she seriously reconsiders...

Sidney Lumet
Drama
Orion Pictures Corporation

New York cop Daniel Ciello is involved in some questionable police practices. He is approached by internal affairs and in exchange for him potentially being let off the hook, he is instructed to begin to expose the inner workings of police corruption. Danny agrees as long as he does not have to turn in his partners but he soon learns that he cannot trust anyone and he must decide whose side he is on and who is on his.

Tom Tykwer
Drama
X-Filme Creative Pool
R
Young nurse Sissi lives a secluded life, seemingly entirely devoted to her patients at Birkenhof asylum. Her first encounter with ex-soldier and drifter Bodo has a lasting impact. He causes an accident that results in her lying under a truck, unable to breathe. While he provides life-saving first aid, mesmerized Sissi begins to wonder whether he may be the man of her dreams. But when she tracks him down weeks later her affection is rejected, as Bodo is stuck somewhere between a traumatic past and a criminal future.

Rob Reiner
Action
Act III Communications

A kindly grandfather sits down with his grandson and reads him a bedtime story. The story is one that has been passed down through from father to son for generations. As the grandfather reads the story, the action comes alive. The story is a classic tale of love and adventure as the beautiful Buttercup is kidnapped and held against her will in order to marry the odious Prince Humperdinck, and Westley (her childhood beau, now returned as the Dread Pirate Roberts) attempts to save her. On the way he meets an accomplished swordsman and a huge, super strong giant, both of whom become his companions in his quest. They meet a few bad guys along the way to rescue Buttercup.

Rob Reiner
Comedy
MGM
PG
Screenwriter William Goldman's novel "The Princess Bride" earned its own loyal audience on the strength of its narrative voice and its gently satirical, hyperbolic spin on swashbuckled adventure that seemed almost purely literary. For all its derring-do and vivid over-the-top characters, the book's joy was dictated as much by the deadpan tone of its narrator and a winking acknowledgement of the clichés being sent up. Miraculously, director Rob Reiner and Goldman himself managed to visualize this romantic fable while keeping that external voice largely intact: using a storytelling framework, avuncular Grandpa (Peter Falk) gradually seduces his skeptical grandson (Fred Savage) into the absurd, irresistible melodrama of the title story.
And what a story: a lowly stable boy, Westley (Cary Elwes), pledges his love to the beautiful Buttercup (Robin Wright), only to be abducted and reportedly killed by pirates while Buttercup is betrothed to the evil Prince Humperdinck. Even as Buttercup herself is kidnapped by a giant, a scheming criminal mastermind, and a master Spanish swordsman, a mysterious masked pirate (could it be Westley?) follows in pursuit. As they sail toward the Cliffs of Insanity...
The wild and woolly arcs of the story, the sudden twists of fate, and, above all, the cartoon-scaled characters all work because of Goldman's very funny script, Reiner's confident direction, and a terrific cast. Elwes and Wright, both sporting their best English accents, juggle romantic fervor and physical slapstick effortlessly, while supporting roles boast Mandy Patinkin (the swordsman Inigo Montoya), Wallace Shawn (the incredulous schemer Vizzini), and Christopher Guest (evil Count Rugen) with brief but funny cameos from Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, and Peter Cook. "--Sam Sutherland"

William K. Howard
Comedy
Paramount Pictures

A Swedish princess boards an ocean liner in Europe en route to an acting career in America, and finds herself getting inconveniently attached to a bandleader returning home. To complicate matters, a blackmailer on board apparently knows she is not who she claims to be - and he has his sights set on other passengers with secrets of their own. In the meantime an escaped killer has stowed away under someone else's identity, and is killing again to cover his tracks; five international police detectives on board are heading the investigation to find him. When evidence points to the princess and bandleader, they must find the killer themselves - before he finds them.

Hayao Miyazaki
Animation
DENTSU Music And Entertainment
PG-13
Set in feudal Japan a time of upheaval of samurai warriors and isolated villages comes this story of a gun-wielding, young brave princess who was raised by wolves named Princess Mononoke who is sent to an ancient, forested land to defend the forest from human encroachment which threatens to unbalance the forces of nature. Ashitaka intervenes to stop the two sides fighting and takes San back to the forest, but is injured in the process. With San's intervention, he is healed of his wounds - but not his curse - by the forest spirit.

Howard Zieff
Comedy
Warner Bros. Pictures
R
When her husband dies in the wedding night Judy decides to join the army. What looks like a bad decision at first, turns out not so bad at all. That is, until her superior makes sexual advances. She is transferred to NATO headquarters in Europe and (re)meets the Frenchman Henri. Judy and Henri decide to marry, but will they ?

Billy Wilder
Comedy
Compton Films

Director Billy Wilder adds a new and intriguing twist to the personality of intrepid detective Sherlock Holmes. One thing hasn't changed however: Holmes' crime-solving talents. Holmes and Dr. Watson take on the case of a beautiful woman whose husband has vanished. The investigation proves strange indeed, involving six missing midgets, villainous monks, a Scottish castle, the Loch Ness monster, and covert naval experiments. Can the sleuths make sense of all this and solve the mystery?

Frank Tashlin
Comedy
John Beck-Naho Productions

Betty Thomas
Biography
Paramount Pictures
R
Having always wanted to be a disc-jockey, Howard Stern works his way painfully from radio at his 1970's college to a Detroit station. It is with a move to Washington that he hits on an outrageous off-the-wall style that catches audience attention. Despite his on-air blue talk, at home he is a loving husband. He needs all the support he can get when he joins NBC in New York and comes up against a very different vision of radio.

Jane Anderson
Biography
Revolution Erie Productions Ltd.
PG-13
Kelly and Evelyn Ryan live in Defiance, Ohio with their 10 children. At first glance their life seems idyllic; they call each other "Mother" and "Father" and seem to dote on the kids. But Kelly was a garage-band crooner whose voice was ruined in an auto accident. He's resigned to a dead-end factory job that barely pays the bills, and is given to fits of alcohol-induced rage. Evelyn, a stay-at-home wife and mother, deals with this abuse by appealing to her priest, who is no help at all. She deals with their poverty by entering the jingle contests that were the rage in the 50's and early 60's, even sending in multiple entries in the names of the children. She is very clever at it, winning more than her share of prizes, but her successes aren't enough to keep the wolf from the door. Further, they trigger Kelly's insecurities and he retreats deeper into the bottle, using food and mortgage money to support the habit. Can the loving, optimistic Evelyn hold the family together? Is she justified in placing her faith in the deeply-flawed Kelly? How will the children turn out? This underrated film provides an inspirational answer to these questions.

John Huston
Crime
ABC Motion Pictures
R
The Prizzis are a powerful family of mobsters, as devoted to their code of honor as they are to bending laws and breaking skulls. Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson), a Prizzi hit man, is not quite so honorable, at least where affairs of the heart are concerned. While attending a mob wedding,he throws over his longtime sweetheart Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston) in favor of gorgeous Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner). Supposedly a tax consultant, Irene is actually a paid killer like Charley-and this endears her to him all the more. But when it turns out that Irene has betrayed the Prizzis, Charley finds himself on the horns of a dilemma: does he kill Irene or marry her? Fortuitously, Irene helps Charley make up his mind by attempting to kill him.

Mel Brooks
Comedy
Crossbow Productions

Down-on-his-luck theatrical producer Max Biyalistok is forced to romance rich old ladies to finance his efforts. When timid accountant Leo Bloom reviews Max's books, the two hit upon a way to make a fortune by producing a sure-fire flop. The play which is to be their gold mine? "Springtime for Hitler."

Susan Stroman
Comedy
Universal Pictures
PG-13
New York, 1959. Max Bialystock was once the king of Broadway, but now all his shows close on opening night. Things turn around when he's visited by the neurotic accountant Leo Bloom, who proposes a scheme tailor-made for producers who can only make flops: raise far more money than you need, then make sure the show is despised. No one will be interested in it, so you can pocket the surplus. To this end, they produce a musical called Springtime for Hitler written by escaped Nazi Franz Liebken. Then they get the insanely flamboyant Roger De Bris to direct. Finally, they hire as a lead actress the loopy Swedish bombshell Ulla (whose last name has over 15 syllables). As opening night draws near, what can go wrong? Well, there's no accounting for taste...

Paul Lynch
Drama
Quadrant Trust Company

For six long years, Hamilton High School seniors Kelly, Jude, Wendy, and Nick have been hiding the truth of what happened to ten-year-old Robin Hammond the day her broken body was discovered near an old abandoned convent. The foursome kept secret how they taunted Robin - backed her into a corner until, frightened, she stood on a window ledge... and fell to her death. Though an accident, the then-twelve-year-olds feared they'd be held responsible and vowed never to tell. But someone else was there that day... watching. And now, that someone is ready to exact murderous revenge-on prom night.

Paul Saltzman
Documentary
Return to Mississippi Productions
NR
In 1997, Academy Award winning actor, Morgan Freeman, who lives in the Charleston, Mississippi community, offered to fund the first-ever integrated Senior Prom in the history of Charleston's one high school. His offer was ignored. In 2008, Morgan offered again... the East Tallahatchie County School Board accepted. In this town of 2,300 people, its high school of 415 black and white students has, to this day, always had separate proms: one black, one white prom. Our film follows the Charleston High senior class of 2008 preparing and attending their historic, first integrated prom, in the context of strong emotions, traditions, and conflict inherent in race relations in the community, and in the deep south. Some of the white parents maintained their whites-only prom.

Steve Conrad
Comedy
Dimension Films
R
At 33, Doug Stauber is ready for a promotion. He's married, wants to buy a house, and is assistant manager at a Chicago supermarket that's building a new store in his neighborhood. His boss tells him he's a shoe in to manage the new store, then, a rival appears - Richard Wehlner, transferred from Canada. Richard has a deeper resume than Doug, is really nice, has a wife and daughter, and wants the promotion to manager, too. How should Doug behave toward Richard - as a friend, a colleague, a competitor, or an enemy? Richard, it seems, has demons and a past, but with the help of motivational tapes, he's resolved to succeed. Corporate and personal tests await the two men.

John Madden
Drama
Hart-Sharp Entertainment
PG-13
The daughter of a brilliant but mentally disturbed mathematician (recently deceased) tries to come to grips with her possible inheritance: his insanity. Complicating matters are one of her father's ex-students who wants to search through his papers and her estranged sister who shows up to help settle his affairs.

Taylor Hackford
Action
Castle Rock Entertainment
R
In a mountainous South American country, drug-dealing rebels kidnap Peter Bowman, a US engineer who works for an oil company's subsidiary. The company calls in a negotiator, Terry Thorne, an Aussie ex-soldier based in London. When the subsidiary goes bankrupt, the oil company washes its hands of the matter and pulls Thorne. Bowman's wife Alice begs him to stay. She and Peter's sister cobble together some money, Thorne talks ransom terms with the cash-strapped rebels, and Peter, chained high in the mountains, is sustained by a photo of Alice. When the politics of the situation change, so must Thorne's strategy. And what can Alice and he do about the attraction growing between them?

John Hillcoat
Crime
Autonomous
R
Rural Australia in the late nineteenth century: Capt. Stanley and his men capture two of the four Burns brothers, Charlie and Mike. Their gang is held responsible for attacking the Hopkins farm, raping pregnant Mrs. Hopkins and murdering the whole family. Arthur Burns, the eldest brother and the gang's mastermind, remains at large has and has retreated to a mountain hideout. Capt. Stanley's proposition to Charlie is to gain pardon and - more importantly - save his beloved younger brother Mike from the gallows by finding and killing Arthur within nine days.

John Hillcoat
Western
First Look Pictures
R
A savage Western set in Australia's Outback, "The Proposition" is relentless in its intensity and bloody imagery. Set in the late 19th century, the film tells the brutal story of a gang of brothers that kills not out of desperation, but because they can. Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) is the mastermind who shares little in common (other than total disregard for human life) with his younger brother Charlie (Guy Pearce, "L.A. Confidential", "Memento"). When Charlie and their baby brother Mike (Richard Wilson) are captured, Charlie is offered a proposition to save their necks from the gallows. "Suppose, Mr. Burns, I was to give both you and your young brother Mikey, here, a pardon," offers Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone). "Suppose I said that I could give you the chance to expunge the guilt beneath which you so clearly labor.... Now, suppose you tell me what it is I want from you." Without blinking, Charlie says, "You want me to kill my brother." For most people, this would be an unthinkable proposition. For Charlie, the answer's obvious. He'll do whatever he has to spare his own life, even if that means trading his for Arthur's. "The Proposition" at times is a difficult film to watch. But thanks to a compelling story by rocker Nick Cave and a supporting cast (including Emily Watson as the Captain's gentle wife), the film is a classic in the making. "--Jae-Ha Kim"

Pen Tennyson
Drama
CAPAD

In a Welsh coal mining valley, a young man with a beautiful singing voice is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice when a pit disaster threatens.

Erik Skjoldbjærg
Drama
Cinerenta Medienbeteiligungs KG
R
Elizabeth "Lizzie" Wurtzel is a teenager accepted into Harvard with a scholarship in journalism. She has been raised by her divorced mother Mrs. Wurtzel since she was two years old, but she misses her father and feels needy and depressive. When she joins the university, she lives with a roommate Ruby and has her sexual initiation with Noah. Her article for the local column in Crimson newspaper is awarded by Rolling Stone magazine. Lizzie becomes abusive in sex and drugs, and her existential crisis and depression increases and she hurts her friends and her mother that love her, while dating Rafe. Mrs. Wurtzel sends her to an expensive psychiatric treatment with Dr. Sterling, in spite of having difficulties paying for her medical bills and therapy sessions. After a long period of treatment under medication, and suicide attempt, Lizzie stabilizes and adjusts to the real world.

Richard Rush
Comedy
Dick Clark Productions

Jennie (Susan Strasberg), a deaf runaway who has just arrived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to find her long-lost brother, a mysterious bearded sculptor known around town as The Seeker (Bruce Dern). She falls in with a psychedelic band, Mumblin' Jim, whose members include Stony (a pony-tailed Jack Nicholson), Ben (Adam Roarke), and Elwood (Max Julien). They hide her from the fuzz in their crash pad, a Victorian house crowded with love beads and necking couples. Mumblin' Jim's truth-seeking friend Dave (Dean Stockwell) considers the band's pursuit of success "playing games," but he agrees to help Jennie anyway.

Alfred Hitchcock
Horror
Shamley Productions

Phoenix officeworker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.

Gus Van Sant
Horror
Imagine Entertainment
R
Marion Crane steals a lot of cash from a man whom her boss is in business with. On the way to see her boyfriend, she stops off by an old motel, run by the odd Norman Bates. She is murdered in the shower. Her sister, boyfriend, and a private investigator try to find out where she is, while we learn more about Norman Bates.

Alfred Hitchcock
Horror
Universal Studios
R
At last--a great American movie available on video for the first time in its original aspect ratio. For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off "Psycho" (and particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, "Psycho" is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters--then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for one fateful night. "Psycho" gets the masterpiece treatment it deserves on DVD, with extras including newsreel footage surrounding the making and release of the movie; an archive of production stills; the special trailer in which Hitchcock (acting as one of the original Universal Studio tour guides) himself leads viewers around the Bates place; credit designer Saul Bass's original "shower scene" story boards; posters and advertising materials for the movie's William Castle-like publicity campaign (No One Will Be Seated After the Feature Begins!); "and" a 90-minute documentary on the making of the film! What more could any movie fan possibly want? "--Jim Emerson"

Richard Franklin
Horror
Oak

Now declared legally sane, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is released from a mental institution after spending 22 years in confinement over the protests of Marion Crane's sister Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), who insists that he's still a killer and that the court's indifference to his victims by releasing him is a gross miscarriage of justice. Norman returns to his motel and the old Victorian mansion where his troubles started, and history predictably begins to repeat itself.

Anthony Perkins
Horror
Universal Pictures

Norman Bates is still running his little motel, and he has kept the dressed skeleton he calls mother. One of his guests is a young girl who has left the convent where she lived. To get some help he employs a young man. One day a nosey journalist comes to see him to ask questions about his past.

Michael Mann
Action & Adventure
Universal Studios
R
Since crime auteur Michael Mann, like his protagonists, plays by his own rules, Public Enemies eschews back story and motivation for a closely-observed, action-packed examination of men at work. FBI supremo J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) kick-starts a nationwide manhunt when he proclaims John Dillinger (Johnny Depp, in top form) Public Enemy #1. Hoover taps Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to bring the Tommy Gun-toting bank robber in by any means necessary (the agency also targets Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson). If Dillinger had split the scene then and there, he might have enjoyed a happier fate, but he falls for beautiful coat-check girl Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard, whose open-hearted performance makes her the most sympathetic character in the film). In the end, though, Dillinger is the captain of his own destiny: his loyalty to his girl and his gang overpowers his desire to live free. Though the director also set his first film, Thief, and third series, Crime Story, in his native Chicago, Public Enemies plays more like Heat in Depression-era garb. In that L.A. policier, Al Pacino's cop develops a grudging respect for Robert De Niro's criminal, but letting a lawbreaker go free isn't an option. In this case, however, the tight-lipped Purvis never develops the same sort of esteem for Dillinger--or Hoover--making him the more tragic figure. If Public Enemies is less overtly commercial than The Untouchables or Bugsy, it's still the best mainstream gangster epic in ages and ranks among Mann's finest works. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Public Enemies (Click for larger image)

Constantine Nasr
Documentary
New Wave Entertainment

William A. Wellman
Action
Warner Bros. Pictures

Tom's bad way of life is constantly set up against his brother Mike's, who has a job during the day and goes to night school. Mike will enroll in the Marines to fight in WWI. He will come back and will constantly try to put Tom back on the right path.

Unknown
Music


Public Enemy are invariably described as "controversial," and controversial they are. But among rap fans, there's not much controversy about one thing--they're the best. Their black nationalist rhymes have changed the rules of rap braggadocio, and while not everyone emulates their dissonant music, its dense textures exemplify rap's new "hard" aesthetic. What's more, their stage show has always avoided the static visuals of what has become a very record-oriented genre.

On Fight the Power, however, Public Enemy don't settle for the concert video they could have gotten away with, especially given director Hart Perry's evident gift for crowd shots. The tape does focus on a triumphant show at the group's home arena, Nassau Coliseum. But not only does it shock the living room with quick cuts as hectic as the buzzy undertones and polyphonic crosstalk of their music, it ups the energy with all kinds of gimmicks--historical footage of black heroes, flashed keywords, looped images, bits of skit, black-and-white inserts of the group itself, snatches of performances from Japan to Riker's Island. And it breaks things up with three promo clips, including the Spike Lee-directed title song, and a running joke about something called PETV.

Big man Chuck D is his usual admonitory self throughout. Professor Griff, whose anti-Semitic pronunciamentos (which are never reflected in the music) almost destroyed the group last June, gets a few cameos. But the tape belongs to heroic sidekick Flavor Flav, the star if not the proprietor of PETV. Musically, Flav usually plays the young loudmouth who urges Chuck D on. But here he's an irrepressible clown--from the clocks around his neck to the whiskbroom coif beneath his headgear to the spastic grace of his perpetual motion to the humanely silly wisdom he spouts at any opportunity.

PE isn't the first group to trick up a concert video, but they're damn near the first with the stuff to make you like it. No matter what you think you think of rap, you should subject yourself to this version.

Unknown
Music

Kerry Asmussen
Music
HOB Productions

Unknown
Music

80

Moses Edinborough
Music
Griot Filmworks

Howard Franklin
Thriller
Universal Pictures

Leon Bernstein is New York's best news photographer in 1942, equally at home with cops or crooks. The pictures are often of death and pain, but they are the ones the others wish they had got. Then glamorous Kay Levitz turns to him when the Mob seem to be muscling in on the club she owns due to some arrangement with her late husband. Bernstein, none too successful with women, agrees to help, saying there may be some good photos in it for him. In fact, he is falling in love with Kay.

Jay Duplass
Comedy
Duplass Brothers Productions
R

Mike Hodges
Crime
Three Michaels Film Productions

Michael King is a seedy writer of sleazy pulp genre novels under a half dozen sensational pseudonyms whose ambition is to dictate 10,000 words per minute to stenographers a la Earle Stanley Gardner. He's recruited by the agent of Preston Gilbert, a quirky ex-Hollywood star currently living reclusively in exile in Malta, to help him write his biography. Despite being pursued by an enigmatic hit man, Gilbert has a large entourage of eccentrics and remains an inveterate practical joker. After Gilbert is eventually murdered by an apparent priest, King tries to stay alive himself while interacting with a variety of idiosyncratic characters including an ersatz princess, a henpecked clairvoyant, and a cross-dressing hit man.

Various
Crime
All-Day Entertainment

Quentin Tarantino
Crime
A Band Apart
R
Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega are two hitmen who are out to retrieve a suitcase stolen from their employer, mob boss Marsellus Wallace. Wallace has also asked Vincent to take his wife Mia out a few days later when Wallace himself will be out of town. Butch Coolidge is an aging boxer who is paid by Wallace to lose his next fight. The lives of these seemingly unrelated people are woven together comprising of a series of funny, bizarre and uncalled-for incidents.

Jim Sonzero
Action
Weinstein Company, The
PG-13
The hacker Josh invades the computer of Douglas Ziegler, who is developing a powerful wireless signal and accidentally releases a mysterious force that take the will to live of the human beings, generating a suicide epidemic and increasing the force. His girlfriend and student of psychology Mattie sees each one of their common friends die and the destruction of the modern world, and together with her new acquaintance Dexter, they try to plan a virus developed by Josh in the network to shutdown the system and save mankind.

Allan Moyle
Drama
New Line Cinema
R
Mark is an intelligent but shy teenager who has just moved to Arizona from the East Coast. His parents give him a short-wave radio so he can talk to his pals, but instead he sets up shop as pirate deejay Hard Harry, who becomes a hero to his peers while inspiring the wrath of the local high school principal. When one of Harry's listeners commits suicide and Harry- inspired chaos breaks out at the school, the authorities are called in to put a stop to Harry's broadcasts.

Anthony Abrams, Adam Larson Broder
Comedy
American Zoetrope
R
Perky, perfect Carolyn and her Alpha Omega Pi sisters plan to win Sorority of the Year by impressing the Greek Council with a killer charity: coaching mentally challenged athletes for the regional Challenged Games. When Carolyn's assigned to coach Pumpkin she's terrified at first, but soon sees in him something she's never seen before: a gentle humanity and honest clarity that touches her soul. To the horror of her friends and Pumpkin's overprotective mother, Carolyn falls in love, becoming an outcast in the process. As Carolyn's "perfect life" falls apart, Pumpkin teaches her that perfect isn't always perfect after all.

Paul Thomas Anderson
Comedy
New Line Cinema
R
Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a small business owner with seven sisters whose abuse has kept him alone and unable to fall in love. When a harmonium and a mysterious woman (Emily Watson) enter his life, his romantic journey begins.

David Seltzer
Comedy
Columbia Pictures Corporation
R
Steven Gold is a stand-up comedian who is flat broke and has recently dropped out of medical school. He and several others work regularly at the Gas Station, a New York comedy club. The wages are lousy and everybody hopes for the big break. Lilah Krytsick is housewife with an ambition to be a stand-up comedian, however she doesnt seem to have the talent. Steven takes her under his wings and teaches her the art of comedy and humour. But when a TV station arranges a comedy evening at the club, Steve sees his opportunity for fame and stardom. Their friendship seems quickly forgotten and now it's every man and woman for him- or herself!

Woody Allen
Fantasy
MGM (Video & DVD)
PG
Cecilia is a waitress in New Jersey during the Depression and is searching for an escape from her dreary life. Tom Baxter is a dashing young archaeologist in the film "The Purple Rose of Cairo." After losing her job Cecilia goes to see the film in hopes of raising her spirits. Much to her surprise Tom Baxter walks off the screen and into her life. There's only one problem..Tom isn't real. Meanwhile Hollywood is up in arms when they dicover that other Tom Baxters are trying to leave the screen in other theatres. Will Tom ever return and finish the film or will he decide to stay in the real world?

Various
Television
Warner Home Video
NR
Every not-so-often, along comes a show that's different. Wonderfully different. Pushing Daisies, TV Guide's Matt Roush writes, "restores my faith in TV's ability to amuse, enchant and entertain." It's the story of Ned, a lonely pie maker whose touch can reanimate the dead. Cool, but there's a hitch. If Ned touches the person again, the miracle is reversed. If he doesn't, a bystander goes toes up. What to do? Easy: Team with a private eye, bring murder victims back just long enough to discover whodunit, and collect the rewards. Things go well until Ned's boyhood sweetie is the next dear departed, and he can't resist bringing her back for keeps! Dig the wit, style and quirky romance: If you're not laughing, you may need a visit from Ned.

Various
Comedy
Warner Home Video
NR
The second season of "Pushing Daisies" became, unfortunately, its last--abruptly wrapping one of the most beautiful and unusual love stories ever told on TV. Farewell to Ned (Lee Pace), the handsome piemaker who can restore the dead with one touch (and un-restore them with another, or else end another life in exchange). Farewell to Chuck (Anna Friel), his true love, brought back to life by Ned and therefore forever untouchable by him again. Farewell to Olive (Kristin Chenoweth), the pixie who pines for our piemaker, and also to Emerson (Chi McBride), the P.I. who partners with Ned (and Chuck and Olive) to solve murders with inside information from the briefly revived. But what a memorable sendoff this second season is: starting with bees gone wild and a shirtless Ned, paying homage to "Pete's Dragon" in one lighthouse-centric episode, and ending with some measure of closure that comes in a 13th-episode, "we know we're canceled" rush. Like that finale, the season is not always as fully realized as its rich fairytale world, yet it still achieves genuine joy and longing. In many ways, it is a season of separation, with Olive off to a nunnery and Chuck out of Ned's apartment (for a little while, at least). Olive and Ned get to explore their potential romance, while Chuck gets some unexpected family time. This set contains several featurettes, most notably a celebration of the show's music (a character all its own) and series creator Bryan Fuller, who also brought us "Dead Like Me", "Wonderfalls", and some of "Heroes"' best episodes. ("I never know what he's going to do, and I love that," says Chenoweth.) There's also a piece on what it takes to create the colorful corpses Ned brings to life as well as the technical challenge of creating a computer-generated rhino, but the real magic of this show comes from the heart. "--Stephanie Reid-Simons"

Adam Shell, Darren Stein
Comedy
Triple Feature Productions

Before he went on to direct

Robert Downey Sr.
Comedy
Herald
R
Dark satire in which the token black man on the executive board of an advertising firm is accidentally put in charge. Renaming the business "Truth and Soul, Inc.", he replaces the tight regime of monied white ad men with his militant brothers. Soon afterwards, however, the power that comes with its position takes its toll on Putney...

Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard
Comedy
Gabriel Pascal Productions

The snobbish & intellectual Professor of languages, Henry Higgins makes a bet with his friend that he can take a London flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, from the gutters and pass her off as a society lady. However he discovers that this involves dealing with a human being with ideas of her own.