Steven Spielberg
Adventure
Universal Pictures
PG
Elliot is your normal boy, until one day, when he meets a little lost alien. Elliot decides to keep the alien, in which he gives the name E.T. Elliot works with E.T. in trying to find him a way to get back home. Elliot must make the difficult sacrifice. Whether to help his new friend or to lose him? Whatever the decision is, Elliot must keep him hidden, as someone else is out to look for him.

Steven Spielberg
Adventure
Universal Pictures
PG
Elliot is your normal boy, until one day, when he meets a little lost alien. Elliot decides to keep the alien, in which he gives the name E.T. Elliot works with E.T. in trying to find him a way to get back home. Elliot must make the difficult sacrifice. Whether to help his new friend or to lose him? Whatever the decision is, Elliot must keep him hidden, as someone else is out to look for him.

William Keighley
Thriller
Warner Bros. Pictures

Although innocent, reporter Frank Ross is found guilty of murder and is sent to jail. While his friends at the newspaper try to find out who framed him, Frank gets hardened by prison life and his optimism turns into bitterness. He meets fellow-inmate Stacey and they decide to help each other.

Yasujiro Ozu
Drama
Shochiku Kinema Kenkyû-jo

In postwar Tokyo, this household is loving and serene: older parents, their 28-year-old daughter Noriko, their married son, his devoted wife, and two rascally sons. Their only discontent is Noriko's lack of a husband. Society is changing: she works, she has women friends who tease and argue, her brother sees her independence as impudence, she sees it as normal. When her boss suggests that she marry a 40-year-old bachelor who is his friend, all the members of her family press her to accept. Without seeking their advice, and to their chagrin, Noriko determines her own course of action.

Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson
Short

Max Ophüls
Drama
Franco London Films
Unrated
In the Paris of the late 19th century, Louise, wife of a general, sells the earrings her husband gave her as a wedding gift: she needs money to cover her debts. The general secretly buys the earrings again and gives them to his mistress, Lola, leaving to go to Constantinople. Where an Italian diplomat, Baron Donati, buys them. Back to Paris, Donati meets Louise... So now Louise discovers love and becomes much less frivolous.

Kenjiro Omori
Action
Toho Company

Seizmologist Hoichi loses touch with his family when he predicts that there will be an earthquake in Tokyo of greater magnitude than the one in 1923, which his father predicted. Because of this he starts seeing another woman, who already has a boyfriend. Hoichi's wife wants to meet her before she will grant a divorce. Eventually, the earthquake he predicted does come, which changes all relationships and exemplifies the character of the Japanese.

Various
Comedy
Enemy MIGs Productions
Unrated
Stepping up to the plate in this six-episode HBO series, comedy's newest It Boy, Danny McBride ("The Foot Fist Way", "Pineapple Express", "Tropic Thunder"), hits it out of the park as Kenny Powers, a former baseball phenom, who, after spending his millions and burning all bridges, returns to his high school to teach physical education. The delusional Powers (he still wears a mullet!) insists that he will return to the majors. Until then, he makes a play for his former high school flame (Katy Mixon), now an art teacher who is engaged to the boring, by-the-book principal (Andrew Daly). He runs roughshod over his brother and his disapproving wife (John Hawkes and Jennifer Irwin), who allow Powers to live with them and their children. He lures the idolizing nerdy band teacher to the dark side. "Eastbound and Down" has an odd sense of humor. To say that the foul-mouthed, substance-abusing Powers is "inappropriate" is an understatement. He makes Billy Bob Thornton's "Bad Santa" look like Edmund Gwenn in "Miracle on 34th Street"). When one of his students repeats his father's claim that Powers ruined baseball, Powers tells the class, "Anybody want to pick on anybody in class, aim for him, because I ain't watching."
"Eastbound and Down" benefits from some big league talent. Will Ferrell, who helped get "The Foot Fist Way" into theatres, appears as a car salesman who wants to exploit what's left of Powers' celebrity with predictably disastrous results. Episodes were directed by McBride collaborator Jody Hill ("Observe and Report"), David Gordon Green ("Superbad"), and Ferrell's partner in comedy, Adam McKay ("Talladega Nights", "Anchorman"). There are other obnoxious characters on television, but Kenny Powers is in a league of his own, and he may take some warming up to. But McBride imbues this extreme character with an uncompromised integrity that is oddly admirable. Despite what his brother tells him at one point, Powers is someone you like being around. "--Donald Liebenson"
Stills from Eastbound and Down- The Complete First Season (click for larger image)

David Cronenberg
Crime
Serendipity Point Films
R
In London, the Russian pregnant teenager Tatiana arrives bleeding in a hospital, and the doctors save her baby only. The Russian descendant midwife Anna Khitrova finds Tatiana's diary written in Russian language in her belongings and decided to find her family to deliver the baby, she brings the diary home and ask her uncle Stepan to translate the document. Stepan refuses, but Anna finds a card of a restaurant owned by the Russian Semyon inside the diary and she visits the old man trying to find a lead to contact Tatiana's family. When she mentions the existence of the diary, Semyon immediately offers to translate the document. However, Stepan translates part of the diary and Anna discovers that Semyon and his sick son Kirill had raped Tatiana when she was fourteen years old and forced her to work as prostitute in a brothel of their own. Further, Semyon is the dangerous boss of the Russian mafia "Vory v Zakone", jeopardizing the safety of Anna and her family. Meanwhile, Semyon's driver Nikolai Luzhin gets close to Kirill and Semyon, climbing positions in the criminal organization, but he helps Anna, her family and the baby.

Jane Weinstock
Comedy
Curb Entertainment
R
Jamie Harris is a young woman that works giving original names to different products. She has a promiscuous life, with affairs with "Mr. Wrongs", differently of her sister that has a steady relationship with her boyfriend. Jamie misses her mother, who committed suicide when she was a child, and her father blames himself for the death of his wife. When Jamie dates her former professor John, for whom she had a crush, she believes she found her prince charming. Meanwhile she meets Mick, the host of a TV show, and they become friends. When John ends his relationship with Jamie, she decides to begin a celibate for three months, and she becomes closer to Mick. After some wrong decisions, Jamie finally commits with her true love.

Mitchell Leisen
Comedy, Romance
Paramount Pictures

J.B. Ball, a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it out the window, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith. But it isn't so easy to just give away something so valuable, as he soon learns.

Dennis Hopper
Adventure
Columbia Pictures Corporation
R
Wyatt and Billy are two motorcycle riders (bikers) on their way to Mardis Gras, and encounter hitchhikers, a drunken lawyer, a jail cell, a whorehouse and the death of a friend.

Kenneth Bowser
Documentary
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Based upon Peter Biskind's book of the same name, this BBC-produced documentary traces the rise of a generation of Hollywood filmmakers who briefly changed the face of movies with a more personal approach that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable on-screen. Influential directors who appear include Arthur Penn ("Bonnie and Clyde"), Dennis Hopper ("Easy Rider"), Francis Ford Coppola ("The Godfather"), John Schlesinger ("Midnight Cowboy"), Bob Rafelson ("Five Easy Pieces") Martin Scorsese ("Taxi Driver"), Peter Bogdanovich ("The Last Picture Show"), and Jonathan Demme ("Crazy Mama"). Narrated by William H. Macy, the documentary features vintage clips of Coppola, Scorsese, Beatty, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, and Pauline Kael. It also includes original interview material with Penn; Roger Corman; Bogdanovich; Hopper; David Picker; writer/directors John Milius and Paul Schrader; actresses Karen Black, Cybill Shepherd, Margot Kidder, and Jennifer Salt; actors Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, and Richard Dreyfuss; producers Jerome Hellman, Michael Phillips, and Jonathan Taplin; editor Dede Allen; production designer Polly Platt; writers David Newman, Joan Tewksbury, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck; cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond; agent Mike Medavoy; and former production executive Peter Bart. Among the films discussed are "Rosemary's Baby," "The Wild Bunch," "Mean Streets," "American Graffiti," "The Rain People," "Midnight Cowboy," "M*A*S*H," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," "The Last Picture Show," "Shampoo," and "Taxi Driver."

Alfred Hitchcock
Drama
Gainsborough Pictures

Larita Filton is named as correspondent in a scandalous divorce case. She escapes to France to rebuild her life where she meets John Whittaker. They are later married, but John's well-to-do family finds out Larita's secret.

Michelangelo Antonioni
Drama
Cineriz

In the suburb of Rome, the translator Vittoria breaks her engagement with her boyfriend, the writer Ricardo, after a troubled night. Vittoria goes to downtown to meet her mother, who is addicted in Stock Market, and she meets the broker Piero in a day of crash in the Stock Market. The materialist Piero and the absent Vittoria begins a monosyllabic relationship.

Tim Burton
Biography
Touchstone Pictures
R
The life of Edward D. Wood,Jr, hailed as the worst director (of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space', 'Glen or Glenda?' and 'Bride of the Monster') of all time.

Anastasia Pappas
Comedy
Ella Communications Ltd.

Town Hall, New York City, 26 June 2000. An evening with Eddie Izzard in which he moves back and forth in time, with religion as the loose but constant theme. He begins with Pope John Paul II, and then criss-crosses to Pius XII, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades and Jerusalem, the world's five major religions, the Dark Ages, Jesus, and the future. Along the way, Izzard makes observations about guns and monkeys, the World Series, the NRA and the IRA, mad cows, Socrates, the Stoned Olympics, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, and the Mona Lisa. Izzard wears black nylons, black leather pants, a black jacket and a diamond necklace.

Ed Bye
Comedy
Ella Communications Ltd.

Lawrence Jordan
Comedy
Ella Communications Ltd.

Executive transvestite Eddie Izzard takes his show to San Francisco to give a brief history of pagan and Christian religions, the building of Stonehenge, the birth of the Church of England and of Western empires, and the need for a European dream. Along the way, he dramatizes Dr. Heimlich's search for a maneuver, the naming of Engelbert Humperdinck, Scooby and Shaggy as archetypes, Neil Armstrong on the moon, society's tolerance of mass murderers, how we sing anthems and carols, Hollywood adapting British films, JFK's trip to Berlin, thoughts on puberty, and how to work schoolbook-French phrases into Parisian conversation. Closeups catch the glint in his eye and his carefully-applied make-up.

John Gordillo
Comedy

Bruce Gowers
Documentary
Eddie Murphy Productions

Eddie Murphy's raunchy, raucous stand-up comedy routine is captured for posterity on this tape. Not for folks who dislike foul language.

Robert Townsend
Comedy
Eddie Murphy Productions
R
After achieving fame with Saturday Night Live and Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy released a film version of one of his live stand-up performances. He mainly focuses on the topics of divorce and relations between the sexes, but also goes into some of the problems he's encountered because of fame, including offended listeners and fans who continually greet him with his unprintable catch phrases.

Lee Tamahori
Drama
Art Linson Productions
R
A model has her rich, much older husband come with her to a photo shoot. But when their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere, a strong mind game erupts between the jealous husband and the younger photographer as they try to get back to civilization.

Martin Ritt
Drama
David Susskind Productions

Two New York City longshoremen Axel Nordmann (John Cassavetes), an Army deserter and Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier), an easy-going freight car loader who's growing friendship is threatened by Charles Malik (Jack Warden), a notably repellent punk. Feature film debut of noted director Martin Ritt.

David J. Burke
Crime
Millennium Films
R
Josh Pollack, a naive and ambitious reporter, is convinced the F.R.A.T., an elite force within the Edison Police Department, is corrupted. Working on a homicide case, he begins to unearth evidence which suggests that the entire justice system is willingly turning a blind eye to the abuses of the this force. When his life and that of his girlfriend are threatened from his research, he join forces with his editor, a once-famous reporter, and a renown private detective to bring down the F.R.A.T. and every one behind it.

Stuart Gordon
Drama
120dB Films
R
A man in a suit at a Manhattan firm leaves work on Friday; he looks unhappy. He stops at a fortune teller's for a Tarot reading: "You are not where you belong," she tells him. That evening he quits his marriage and walks the streets of New York, passing from a classy bar to a gentleman's club, then to a high-class bordello, a mugging, a pawnshop, and a diner where someone does listen. He shares his insights with her and later with others. Violence, disappointment, and musings entwine as Edmond loses his moorings while believing he's found them. Where does he belong?

Lewis Gilbert
Drama
Acorn Pictures

A young wife decides to complete her education and take her exams. She meets a professor who teaches her to value her own insights while still being able to beat the exams. The change in her status causes friction between her and her husband.

Marion Lipschutz, Rose Rosenblatt
Documentary
Incite Pictures

Various
Documentary
Fantoma Films

Various
Documentary
A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive

Various
Documentary
A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive

Various
Documentary
A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive

Various
Documentary
Fantoma Films

Various
Documentary
A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive

Various
Documentary

Various
Documentary
A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive

Various
Documentary
A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive

Franklin J. Schaffner
Television
Koch Vision
NR
From 1953 to 1959, Edward R. Murrow informally welcomed television viewers into the homes of the twentieth century’s most well-known stars and celebrities on PERSON TO PERSON. Utilizing perhaps the simplest set in television – a chair, a table an ashtray and a picture window – Murrow greeted two guests per week in remote interviews that candidly revealed the private lives of such notable figures as John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis, Jr., Milton Berle, Sophia Loren and many more.
A television legend, Edward R. Murrow is credited with making broadcast journalism respectable, courageous and sincere. Industry professionals still aspire to the standards he established during his illustrious career.

Don Hewitt, Fred W. Friendly
Documentary
CBS Television
NR
A towering figure in radio and television, Edward R. Murrow is a name still whispered in reverent tones. He established the standards for broadcast journalists, and, when television was in its infancy, brought hard-hitting investigating reporting to prime time. In his inaugural broadcast of the seminal news magazine series, "See It Now", a television version of his radio series "Hear It Now", Murrow spoke of the new medium's potential to "illuminate and explain." He recognized the importance of television, and shared his hopes "to use it, and not abuse it." The "Edward R. Murrow Collection" is eloquent testimony to Murrow's impeccable legacy. The first disc, "This Reporter", is Murrow 101, with highlights from his legendary career and praise from the likes of Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters and a pre-Memogate Dan Rather. "The Best of "See It Now"" offers a representative sampling of some of this series' finest hours. The technology may be primitive (that inaugural broadcast featured the then-unprecedented miracle of a live coast-to-coast transmission, with twin images of New York's Brooklyn Bridge and San Francisco's Golden Gate), but the stories remain compelling. Among them: race relations from the perspective two southern small towns; a Christmas visit with American soldiers in Korea; profiles of Louis Armstrong and artist Grandma Moses; and flying into the eye of a hurricane.
"The McCarthy Years" chronicles the fall of a demagogue. In these dramatic and controversial broadcasts, Murrow used McCarthy's own words to expose his reckless abuse of power, and, in the story of disgraced Air Force lieutenant Milo Radulovich, put a human face on the "epidemic of fear" that was McCarthyism. The final disc contains "Harvest of Shame", a television benchmark. Broadcast the day after Thanksgiving, this "1960 "Grapes of Wrath"" exposed the agonizing plight of migrant farm workers. "We used to own our slaves," one farmer is quoted. "Now we just rent them." This indispensable set will hopefully serve as inspiration for budding journalists, and a reality check for network news executives. "--Donald Liebenson"

Tim Burton
Comedy
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
PG-13
In a castle high on top of a hill lives an inventor's greatest creation - Edward, a near-complete person. The creator died before he could finish Edward's hands; instead, Edward is left with metal scissors for hands. Edward has always lived alone, until a kind lady called Peg discovers Edward and welcomes him into her home. At first, everyone welcomes Edward into the community, but soon things begin to take a change for the worse.

Chester Erskine
Comedy
Universal International Pictures (UI)

On their wedding night Bob informs his new bride Betty that he has bought a chicken farm. An abandoned chicken farm, to be exact, which is obvious when the two move in. Betty endures Bob's enthusiasm for the rural life, rustic inconveniences, and battling nature, but her patience is severely tested when glamorous neighbor Harriet Putnam seems to set her sights on Bob.

Clint Eastwood
Action
Jennings Lang
R
Jonathan Hemlock is an Art teacher and collector who finances his hobby by performing the odd sanction (assassination) for an obscure government bureau. He is forced to take a case where he must find out which of the members of a mountain climbing team is the Russian killer he has been given as a target by joining an expedition to climb the treacherous Eiger.

Frank Marshall
Adventure
Walt Disney Pictures
PG
In the Antarctic, after an expedition with Dr. Davis McClaren (Bruce Greenwood), the sled dog trainer Jerry Shepherd (Paul Walker) has to leave the polar base with his colleagues due to the proximity of a heavy snow storm. He ties his dogs to be rescued after, but the mission is called-off and the dogs are left alone at their own fortune. For six months, Jerry tries to find a sponsor for a rescue mission while his dogs fight for survival.

Achim Bornhak
Biography, Comedy, Drama, Music
Babelsberg Film

Achim Bornhak's movie focuses on the restless life of Uschi Obermaier, the icon of the 1968 movement in Germany and groupie. At the age of 16, Uschi is bored by her job in a photo lab, but soon becomes the "it girl" of Munich's club scene. When she gets to know Rainer Langhans, they move to Berlin and live in "Kommune 1", the first politically-motivated commune in Germany. While the other occupants claim she isn't political enough, Uschi just wants to have fun, works as fashion model and leads international music stars in temptation...

Carlos Saura
Music Video & Concerts
Eclipse from Criterion
PG
In the wake of Criterion's release of "Cría Cuervos", his haunting Franco-era allegory, comes Carlos Saura's famed trilogy, crafted in collaboration with producer Emiliano Piedra, cinematographer Teodoro Escamilla, and choreographer Antonio Gades. "Blood Wedding" (1981) starts out like one of Robert Altman's behind-the-scenes efforts. As the reed-thin Gades describes his initiation into dance, Saura captures every backstage detail, from the bickering of the musicians to the mementos the dancers scatter about their stations. The action culminates in a dress rehearsal of Alfredo Manas's "Bodas de Sangre", a flamenco-ballet version of Federico García Lorca's play. On the day of her betrothal, the Bride (Cristina Hoyos) runs off with Leonardo (Gades), a married man. To appease his Mother (Pilar Cárdenas), the Groom (Juan Antonio Jiménez) sets out to avenge the family name.
In "Carmen" (1983), Saura's biggest international hit, he takes on Georges Bizet's operatic adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's novella. Fiction bleeds into fact as the performers incarnate their parts. The narrative begins with Gades's search for a dancer to play the tragic heroine. He finds her in headstrong hoofer Carmen (Laura del Sol) with whom he embarks on an affair. As with Gades, Cristina Hoyos plays a character much like herself, a dancer relegated to a supporting role (composer/guitarist Paco de Lucía also appears under his own name). Instead of a full-length performance, "Carmen" proceeds through a series of rehearsals and offstage encounters. The more time he spends with his leading lady--described in the text as a "she-wolf"--the more possessive Gades becomes. He demands fidelity, Carmen longs for freedom. Finally, in a fit of rage, he solves their problem--permanently. Manuel de Falla's ballet "El Amor Brujo" (1986) opens on a stage set made up like a gypsy village. (As with the previous films, there is no audience, though the dancers never break character.) Two men agree that their children, José and Candela, will marry when they are grown. The years go by and a wedding comes to pass, though Carmelo (Gades) secretly desires Candela (Hoyos), and Lucía ("Carmen"'s Laura del Sol) feels the same about José (Jiménez). Then José is killed in a knife fight, but every evening Candela dances with his ghost, so she remains blind to Carmelo’s devotion. Of the trilogy, "El Amor Brujo" ("Love, the Magician") features the least dancing, making it less satisfying, but just as passionate--and more optimistic--than its tragic predecessors. For aficionados of dance on film, Carlos Saura's "Flamenco Trilogy" belongs on the shelf with "The Red Shoes" and "West Side Story" (his trio is also filled with finger-snaps and switchblades). For those who wish to dig deeper, Saura followed up with the related documentaries "Sevillanas" (1992) and "Flamenco" (1995), which would have rounded out this set nicely. As with the other entries in Criterion's Eclipse Series (focusing on international masters, like Ingmar Bergman and Louis Malle), this collection may be devoid of extras, but it still represents one of the best deals around. "--Kathleen C. Fennessy"

Howard Hawks
Western
Paramount Pictures

Hired gunman Cole Thornton turns down a job with Bart Jason as it would mean having to fight an old sheriff friend. Some months later he finds out the lawman is on the bottle and a top gunfighter is heading his way to help Jason. Along with young Mississippi, handy with a knife and now armed with a diabolical shotgun, Cole returns to help.

Robert Rodriguez
Action
Columbia Pictures Corporation
R
A drug lord who pretends to overthrow the Mexican government. A corrupt CIA agent (Johnny Depp) who at that time, demands retribution from his worst enemy to carry out the drug lord's uprising against the government.

Gregory Nava
Adventure, Drama, Thriller
American Playhouse
R
Mayan Indian peasants, tired of being thought of as nothing more than "brazos fuertes" ("strong arms", i.e., manual laborers) and organizing in an effort to improve their lot in life, are discovered by the Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village and family, a brother and sister, teenagers who just barely escaped the massacre, decide they must flee to "El Norte" ("the North", i.e., the USA). After receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant on strategies for traveling through Mexico, they make their way by truck, bus and other means to Los Angeles, where they try to make a new life as young, uneducated, and illegal immigrants.

Alejandro Jodorowsky
Western
Producciones Panicas

The gunfighter El Topo ("The Mole") and his young son ride through a desert to a village, whose inhabitants have been massacred. Bandits are nearby, torturing and killing the survivors. El Topo rescues a woman (Mara), who leads him on a mission to find and defeat the four master gunmen of the desert. Leaving his son with a group of monks, El Topo and Mara complete the mission, accompanied by a mysterious woman in black. The women leave El Topo wounded in the desert, where he is found by a clan of deformed people who take him to the remote cavern where they live. Awakening years later, he goes with a dwarf woman to a nearby town, promising to dig a tunnel through which the cave-dwellers can escape. They find the town run by a vicious sheriff and home to a bizarre religious cult. El Topo's son, now a man, is a monk in the town. The completion of the tunnel leads El Topo, the townspeople, and the cave-dwellers to a bloody and tragic end.

Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus
Documentary
Pennebaker Hegedus Films

Bouli Lanners
Comedy, Drama
Casa Kafka Pictures

Yvan finds a burglar in his house. After some consideration, Yvan decides not to call the police and to drop the lad near the nearby city but he ends up giving him a lift home to his parents. Together, they travel through Belgium and meet some extraordinary people and find themselves in ditto situations.

Joe Barber, Mary Patel
Documentary
Cinema Libre
NR
Public disapproval of politics and politicians is at an all time high, and for good reason. Cynicism and distrust are the hallmarks of this public disenchantment. The unholy alliance of special interest money and public policy has produced government that is perceived to be out of touch with the reality of everyday citizens and unresponsive to their needs. ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION: INSIDE THE BUSINESS OF AMERICAN CAMPAIGNS is a serious critique of a political system that is spiraling into irrelevance. It surveys a broad cross-section of political elites, consultants, celebrities, and insiders to provide a critical analytical expose that is a must for individuals in search of answers as to how we got here and where we go from here. ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION: INSIDE THE BUSINESS OF AMERICAN CAMPAIGNS is a must see for anyone concerned about the future of democratic societies everywhere.

Alexander Payne
Comedy
Bona Fide Productions
R
Tracy Flick is running unopposed for this year's high school student election. But school civics teacher Jim McAllister has a different plan. Partly to establish a more democratic election, and partly to satisfy some deep personal anger toward Tracy, Jim talks popular varsity football player Paul Metzler to run for president as well. Chaos ensues.

Isabel Coixet
Drama, Romance
Lakeshore Entertainment
R
David Kepesh is growing old. He's a professor of literature, a student of American hedonism, and an amateur musician and photographer. When he finds a student attractive, Consuela, a 24-year-old Cuban, he sets out to seduce her. Along the way, he swims in deeper feelings, maybe he's drowning. She presses him to sort out what he wants from her, and a relationship develops. They talk of traveling. He confides in his friend, George, a poet long-married, who advises David to grow up and grow old. She invites him to meet her family. His own son, from a long-ended marriage, confronts him. Is the elegy for lost relationships, lost possibilities, beauty and time passing, or failure of nerve?

Lars von Trier
Thriller
Det Danske Filminstitut

Fischer, an ex-cop, returns to his old beat somewhere in northern Europe after a thirteen-year hiatus in Cairo. His former mentor and role model, author of a treatise called "The Element of Crime", asks him to solve a series of murders involving lottery ticket sellers. Guided by the theories put forth in the book, Fischer retraces the steps of a suspect, Harry Grey, as recorded in a three-year-old police surveillance report. A dark film set in a post-somethingorother Europe with unique visual atmosphere and kind of cult-movie status (in Europe at least).

Jean Renoir
Drama
Franco London Films

Polish countess Elena falls in love to a Frensh radical party's candidate, a general, in pre world war I Paris, but another officer pines for her.

Gus Van Sant
Crime
HBO Films
R
"Elephant" is a 2003 crime/drama film by Gus Van Sant. The film is centered around a group of your average teenage high school students. There's the jock, the geek, the princesses, and the list goes on. The film follows every character and shows their average day routine. However two of the students plan to do something that the student body won't forget.

David Lynch
Biography
Brooksfilms
PG
Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick, a 19th-century Englishman afflicted with a disfiguring congenital disease. With the help of kindly Dr. Frederick Treves, Merrick attempts to regain the dignity he lost after years spent as a side-show freak.

Louis Malle
Crime
Nouvelles Éditions de Films

Florence Carala and her lover Julien Tavernier, an ex - paratrooper want to murder her husband by faking a suicide. But after Julien has killed him and he puts his things in his car, he finds he has forgotten the rope outside the window and he returns to the building to remove it...

Jon Favreau
Comedy
New Line Cinema
PG
Buddy (Will Ferrell) was a baby in an orphanage who stowed away in Santa's sack and ended up at the North Pole. Later, as an adult human who happened to be raised by elves, Santa allows him to go to New York City to find his birth father, Walter Hobbs (James Caan). Hobbs, on Santa's naughty list for being a heartless jerk, had no idea that Buddy was even born. Buddy, meanwhile, experiences the delights of New York City (and human culture) as only an elf can. When Walter's relationship with Buddy interferes with his job, he is forced to reevaluate his priorities.

Shekhar Kapur
Biography
Motion Picture ZETA Produktionsgesellschaft

Two faiths, two empires, two rulers - colliding in 1588. Papist Spain wants to bring down the heretic Elizabeth. Philip is building an armada but needs a rationale to attack. With covert intrigue, Spain sets a trap for the Queen and her principal secretary, Walsingham, using as a pawn Elizabeth's cousin Mary Stuart, who's under house arrest in the North. The trap springs, and the armada sets sail, to rendezvous with French ground forces and to attack. During these months, the Virgin Queen falls in love with Walter Raleigh, keeping him close to court and away from the sea and America. Is treachery or heroism at his heart? Does loneliness await her passionate majesty?

Cameron Crowe
Comedy
Paramount Pictures
PG-13
After causing a loss of almost one billion dollars in his company, the shoe designer Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) decides to commit suicide. However, in the exact moment of his act of despair, he receives a phone call from his sister telling him that his beloved father had just died in Elizabethtown, and he should bring him back since his mother had problem with the relatives of his father. He travels in an empty red eye flight and meets the attendant Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst), who changes his view and perspective of life.

Joel Gallen
Comedy
Home Box Office (HBO)

Scott Coffey
Comedy
Strand Releasing
R
Slice of life look at a young woman trying to make it as an actress in Hollywood. Ellie Parker, from Australia, works hard: she's gifted with accents, hustles to auditions, changes clothes and makeup as she drives across L.A., goes to acting classes and therapy, maintains a friendship with another Aussie searching for the same roles, meets a cinematographer when he bangs into her car at a stop sign, and faces a failing relationship with her slacker thinks-he's-a-musician boyfriend. All this brings on an identity crisis - who am I, and should I keep trying to be an actress? Ellie's balancing act and her inquiry into self carry the story.

Allan Arkush
Biography
Showtime Networks
PG-13
A "mockumentary" about Elvis's real-life trip to the White House to become a federal marshal under the DEA, but meets the President instead. Along the way, the film exposes Elvis's humor, drug problem, and even him pulling a gun out at a doughnut shop.

N/a
Music Video & Concerts
IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT
NR
Share the excitement of Elvis Presley's earthshattering introduction to the nation in this collection of iconic performances from "The Ed Sullivan Show," and experience for yourself why Elvis became the legendary King of Rock and Roll! Appearing on the show Sept. 9, 1956, Elvis sent shock waves through a repressed nation with his soulful singing, wild hip gyrations and raw energy, attracting a record-breaking TV audience of more than 60 million people. Presley returned on Oct. 28, 1956, continuing to provoke ecstatic screams with hits such as "Don't Be Cruel," "Love Me Tender" and "Hound Dog." In fact, these exhilarating performances were so explosive that Elvis was filmed above the waist during his final Sullivan show appearance on January 6, 1957!

SPECIAL FEATURES: Remembering Ed and Elvis; Why Ed Didn't Host Elvis' First Appearance; Elvis and Ed: Intros and Promos; Caught on Celluloid: The First Moving Pictures of Elvis Presley; Special Elvis Moments; Jerry Shillings Home Movies; Documents from the Graceland Archives; Documents from the Sullivan Archives

Various
Documentary
Good Times Video
NR
Upon viewing these DVDs it was truly "the experience " of rare moments with EP. I was able to see for the first time some television show clippings where ELVIS had appeared that filled up the edited versions from other videos or DVDs I have seen. Watching these DVDs ended my search of ever wondering what event happened before and after a skit. One of my favorite at the Milton Berle's show where Milton was mistaken to be Elvis and got his clothes rip by avid fans . Anyone who really wants to get to know EP should get this DVD and be the first in their collection and one thing I am sure of. you will want to have more....

Denis Sanders
Documentary
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
PG

Steve Binder, Gary Hovey
Documentary
Binder/Howe Productions

Tim Robbins
Comedy
Havoc

Anne Goursaud
Horror
General Media Entertainment
R
Charlotte is a good girl virgin who is having some very bad dreams about sex. These dreams are courtesy of the vampire. Charlotte begins to change but as long as she remains pure for three days, the vampire will take her and they will live eternally together.

John 'Quig' Quigley
Documentary
Aftermath Entertainment

Dudley Murphy
Drama
John Krimsky and Gifford Cochran Inc.

At a Baptist prayer meeting, the preacher leads a prayer for Brutus Jones, who is leaving to become a railway porter. Jones joins the congregation in a spiritual. Once on the train, Jeff, a porter, shows Jones the ropes. Jones secretly takes up with Jeff's girl, Undine. He makes some money in a deal with a rich businessman on the train. Jones proves to be a cunning manipulator and a good liar. In a crap game, Jones stabs Jeff over a pair of loaded dice. Now doing hard labour, Jones kills a white prison guard and escapes. Shovelling coal on a ship in the Caribbean, Jones swims to an island. He is brought before the island's ruler, where Smithers, a crooked white trader, buys his freedom. Jones schemes his way into a partnership in Smithers' business, then finally control of the entire island through a touch of witchcraft, or so it seems. Brutus declares himself to be The Emperor Jones... Smithers reports on the unrest that Jones' rule is causing. One morning, the palace is empty of servants. As rebel drums beat, Jones flees into the forest where he is haunted by visions from his past...

Franc. Reyes
Crime
Arenas Entertainment
R
Victor (Leguizamo), is trying to escape his life as a drug dealer in the South Bronx. Enter Jack (Sarsgaard), a Wall Street investment banker with a business proposal that has Victor's name (and money) written all over it.

Fred Schepisi
Drama, Romance
HBO Films

A drama that swoops in on Empire Falls, an economically depressed mill town in Maine, and lifetime resident Miles Roby, who's run the town's top restaurant for some twenty years. Miles is surrounded by his newly thin wife, meddling father, and hostile boss.

Nagisa Ôshima
Drama, Horror, Romance, Thriller
Argos Films

A young man has an affair with an older woman. He is very jealous of her husband and decides that they should kill him. One night, after the husband had plenty of sake to drink and was in bed, they strangle him and dump his body down a well. To avert any suspicions, she pretends her husband has gone off to Tokyo to work. For three years the wife and her lover secretly see each other. Finally, suspicions become very strong and people begin to gossip. To make matters worse, her husband's ghost begins to haunt her and the law arrives to investigate her husband's disappearance.

Steven Spielberg
Drama
Amblin Entertainment
PG
Based on J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, tells the story of a boy, James Graham, whose privileged life is upturned by the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, December 8, 1941. Separated from his parents, he is eventually captured, and taken to Soo Chow confinement camp, next to a captured Chinese airfield. Amidst the sickness and food shortages in the camp, Jim attempts to reconstruct his former life, all the while bringing spirit and dignity to those around him.

Allan Moyle
Comedy
Monarchy Enterprises B.V.
PG-13
A day in the life of the employees of Empire Records. Except this is a day where everything comes to a head for a number of them facing personal crises - can they pull through together? And more importantly, can they keep their record store independent and not swallowed up by corporate greed?

Neil Jordan
Drama
Columbia Pictures Corporation
R
On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.

Jim Fields, Michael Gramaglia
Documentary
Chinagraph

In 1974, the New York City music scene was shocked into consciousness by the violently new and raw sound of a band of misfits from Queens, called The Ramones. Playing in a seedy Bowery bar to a small group of fellow struggling musicians, the band struck a chord of disharmony that rocked the foundation of the mid-'70s music scene. This quartet of unlikely rock stars traveled across the country and around the world connecting with the disenfranchised everywhere, while sparking a movement that would resonate with two generations of outcasts across the globe. Although the band never reached the top of the Billboard charts, it managed to endure by maintaining a rigorous touring schedule for 22 years.

Jean-Jacques Annaud
Action
DOS
R
During the WWII battle of Stalingrad, two snipers, a Russian (Law), and a German (Harris), are locked in a battle of wills and marksmenship, while the Russian is boosted to the status of hero by a political official (Fiennes).

Tony Scott
Action
Touchstone Pictures
R
Robert dean is a mild-mannered lawyer who works in Washington D.C. He is on the trail of a kingpin named Pintero. Meanwhile, a politician named Thomas Reynolds is negotiating with Congressman Phillip Hammerson about a new surveillance system with satellites. But, Hammerson declines, that is when Reynolds had Hammerson killed, but this murder was caught on tape, and this person was being chased by Reynolds' team of NSA agents, the guy must ditch the tape, so he plants it on Dean (unbeknownst to Dean). Then, the NSA decides to get into Dean's life. That is when Dean's life began to fall apart all around him, with his wife and job both gone. Dean wants to find out what is going on. Then, he meets a man named "Brill" who tells him that Dean has something that the government wants. Thta is when Dean and Brill formulate a plan to get Dean's life back and turn the Tables on Reynolds.

James Fargo
Action
Warner Bros. Pictures

Picking up three years after the events in Magnum Force, a threatening terrorist group called, The People's Revolutionary Strike Force declare war to the city of San Francisco and demand a ransom to be paid, otherwise they plan to blow the city apart. While Inspector 'Dirty' Harry Callahan is at a limbo following his unorthodox method during a robbery, he's at it to dispatch the terrorist group, by playing their game by being more dirty than ever. But this time, he's got a new partner, which might prove the task to be somewhat more difficult than ever, unless the two can work together.

Alex Gibney
Documentary
Jigsaw Productions

Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with $250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. Along the way, we watch Enron game California's deregulated electricity market, get a free pass from Arthur Andersen (which okays the dubious mark-to-market accounting), use greed to manipulate banks and brokerages (Merrill Lynch fires the analyst who questions Enron's rise), and hear from both Presidents Bush what great guys these are.

Various
Comedy
Warner Home Video
Suitable for 15 years and over
OK, so not everyone will agree that this is the best TV show around, but it's pretty damn close. What baffles me is why it is hidden away on ITV2 and doesn't have a primetime slot on a major channel. Having said that, I quite like the exclusivity this brings, as not that many people seem to have seen it.



Previous reviews and the synopsis tell you what this series is all about, so I won't repeat this. What I will say is that this is one of the smartest, best written, most engaging, laugh out load shows I have seen for a long time. It's sort of like a cross between Swingers, Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas and other boys shows. Some people have said that it's sort of a male 'Sex & The City'. Not sure about that, as 'Sex & The City' is rubbish. If you like your comedy a little more cerebral than '2 Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' (and let's face it, if you can read you probably do) then you should like this.



All of the characters are fantastic (especially Ari Gold who has got to be one of THE great TV characters), the dialogue is sharp and believable, the music and settings are great - I could go on!



I try not to own too many DVD's as, frankly, there are not many things that stand up to repeated viewing. This entire series, however, is a must have. You could put any episode on and watch it with friends who have never seen it before and they will love it. If they don't, they shouldn't be your friends.



Buy series one and two, and as soon as series 3 is available buy that as well.

Various
Comedy
Warner Home Video
Suitable for 15 years and over
Class series, your man who plays Ari Gold is fantastic, and he is by far the best thing in this series, a brilliant character. In second place has to be Jonny Drama, who cracks me up. The main fella, who plays Vince is a bit wooden but I guess the thing isn't about him, its about his mates. A very cool series, get involved.

Various
Comedy
Warner Home Video
To Be Announced
I too have found this misleading - it was listed as "The Complete 3rd Season" but now appears to be just Part 1. What's more, if the episode listing is correct, part 1 will be 12 episodes, and part 2 will be 8 - not sure what the logic behind this is.



Whilst I understand it is still showing on ITV2, this is pretty ridiculous - these episodes were screened 15 months ago in the US



No complaints about the show, definitely one of the best shows on TV, but this product is poor

Jon Amiel
Crime
Fountainbridge Films
PG-13
Following the theft of a highly-secured piece of artwork, an agent convinces her insurance agency employers to allow her to wriggle into the company of an aging but active master thief. Connery's burglar takes her on suspiciously and demands rigorous training before their first job together--stealing a highly-valued mask from a chichi party. Their deepening attraction and distrust could tear apart their partnership but the promise of a bigger prize (some eight billion odd dollars) by Zeta-Jones keeps the game interesting. Only, who's playing with whom?

Phil Joanou
Drama
Baldwin/Cohen Productions
R
Stephen Dorff narrates this tale about how his life goes astray as his character attempts to strike a balance between the demands of directing his first film and the pressures of his new romance with a model. U2's Bono plays a role in this film as both himself and Dorff's character's concience.

Jack Woods
Horror
Tonylyn Productions Inc.

Four friends are attacked by a demon while on a picnic, due to possession of a tome of mystic information. Told in flashbacks by the sole survivor.

Quentin Tarantino
Television
Warner Brothers Home Video

Inspired by creator Michael Crichton's experiences as a medical student in a hospital emergency room, "ER" quickly became one of the most compelling shows of the 1990s, each episode a whirlwind of intense and involving drama, gritty realism, and offbeat humor. Heading the staff at the inner-city Chicago hospital is Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards), a doctor so good at providing care to the downtrodden, helpless, or just plain quirky patients that his career blossoms even as his personal life crumbles. Greene is the soul of the cast, but the heart is Julianna Margulies's nurse Carol Hathaway. Her character was intended only for the pilot episode, but she ended up capturing viewers with her palpable empathy for patients and her troublesome romance with womanizing pediatrician Doug Ross (George Clooney). The rest of the central cast consisted of compassionate Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield), Peter Benton (Eriq Lasalle), whose prodigious talent nearly matches his ambition, and his fresh-faced student, John Carter (Noah Wyle). Other key characters included ER heads Morgenstern and Swift (William H. Macy and Michael Ironside, respectively), overachieving student Deb (Ming Na), who returned later in the show's run, attending physician Angela Hicks (CCH Pounder), and physical therapist Jeanie Boulet (Gloria Rueben).
The remarkably strong first season showed off its sharp ensemble cast through a variety of compelling story lines both personal (Carter's conflicts with Benton, Lewis's struggles with her no-account sister, Chloe, played by Kathleen Wilhoite) and professional (a holiday blizzard and especially the harrowing tale of a pregnancy gone bad, "Love's Labor Lost," which won five Emmy Awards). When Carter is pondering whether his future includes the ER, Green jokes, "It's not bad: Stress, late nights, hard work, no pay--it's hard to beat." It's hard to imagine people choosing to work under those conditions, but they do, and in the process these very "human" people perform superhuman feats as they face life and death as part of their daily jobs.
DVD features are fairly generous for a TV series box. There are two commentary tracks on the pilot episode, including one by Crichton, and crew commentaries on "Sleepless in Chicago" and "Love's Labor Lost." A new 39-minute documentary discusses the show's genesis, casting, and the "Chicago hospital drama smackdown" with "Chicago Hope" through interviews with Crichton, executive producer Steven Spielberg, other crew members, and the principal cast members other than Eriq LaSalle. Also included are a very watchable featurette on the show's realism (ever wonder why Ross is always looking down?) and another on post-production, a list of characters (including patients by episode, but why no actor credits?), three minor deleted scenes, outtakes, and a glossary of frequently used medical terms. Particularly notable is that the episodes are shown in anamorphic widescreen. "ER" was one of the first network shows broadcast in widescreen, but that was years after these episodes, which are shown in widescreen for the first time. "--David Horiuchi"

David Lynch
Drama
American Film Institute (AFI)

Is it a nightmare or an actual view of a post-apocalyptic world? Set in an industrial town in which giant machines are constantly working, spewing smoke, and making noise that is inescapable, Henry Spencer lives in a building that, like all the others, appears to be abandoned. The lights flicker on and off, he has bowls of water in his dresser drawers, and for his only diversion he watches and listens to the Lady in the Radiator sing about finding happiness in heaven. Henry has a girlfriend, Mary X, who has frequent spastic fits. Mary gives birth to Henry's child, a frightening looking mutant, which leads to the injection of all sorts of sexual imagery into the depressive and chaotic mix.

Jo Bonney, Lewis MacAdams
Comedy
EZTV

Mary Murphy
Documentary
Timeless Pictures

A documentary film made to publicise The Cranberries fifth album "Wake up and Smell the Coffee". This takes a retrospective look at the Cranberries careers thus far using archive footage and new interviews with the bandmembers. We get rare glimpses behind the scenes at a press conference in Sweeden and fun anecdotes for the bandmembers.

Steven Soderbergh
Biography
Jersey Films
R
Erin Brockovich is an unemployed single mother, desperate to find a job, but is having no luck. This losing streak even extends to a failed lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in. With no alternative, she successfully browbeats her lawyer to give her a job in compensation for the loss. While no one takes her seriously, with her trashy clothes and earthy manners, that soon changes when she begins to investigate a suspicious real estate case involving the Pacific Gas & Electric Company. What she discovers is that the company is trying quietly to buy land that was contaminated by hexavalent chromium, a deadly toxic waste that the company is improperly and illegally dumping and, in turn, poisoning the residents in the area. As she digs deeper, Erin finds herself leading point in a series of events that would involve her lawfirm in one of the biggest class action lawsuits in American history against a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh
Drama
Roissy Films
R
A three-part anthology film about love and sexuality: a menage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany; an advertising executive under enormous pressure at work, who, during visits to his psychiatrist, is pulled to delve into the possible reasons why his stress seems to manifest itself in a recurring erotic dream; and a story of unrequited love about a beautiful, 1960s high-end call girl in an impossible affair with her young tailor.

Jerry Lewis
Comedy
Jerry Lewis Productions

Paramutual Pictures wants to know where all the money is going so they hire Morty to be their spy. Morty works for Mr. Sneak and gets a job in the mail room so that he can have access to the lot. But all that Morty ever finds is that he can cause havoc no matter what he does.

Don Siegel
Action
Paramount Pictures
PG
A group of inmates attempt a daring escape from the notorious Alcatraz prison island, from which no-one had managed to escape before. Based on a true story.

John Carpenter
Action
AVCO Embassy Pictures
R
In the future, crime is out of control and New York City is a maximum security prison. Grabbing a bargaining chip right out of the air, convicts bring down the President's plane in bad old Gotham. Gruff Snake Plissken, a one-eyed lone warrior new to prison life, is coerced into bringing the President, and his cargo, out of this land of undesirables.

Don Taylor
Sci-Fi
APJAC Productions

Following the events in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes", Cornelius and Zira flee back through time to 20th Century Los Angeles, where they face persecution similar to what Taylor suffered in the future, and discover the origins of the stream of events that will shape their world.

Man Kei Chin
Comedy
Art Top Movie Productions Ltd.

Michel Gondry
Drama
Anonymous Content
R
A man, Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend Clementine underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realizes that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.

Various
Comedy
Sub Pop
Unrated

Ric Burns
Documentary
PBS Paramount
NR
The author of such innovative works as "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night" Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eugene O Neill wrote 20 long plays in fewer than 25 years. Much of his writing was influenced by his troubled childhood and relationships. This AMERICAN EXPERIENCE production by award-winning director Ric Burns tells O'Neill's turbulent story from his childhood to his painful death at the age of 65.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 841887050531 Manufacturer No: 705053

Michael Clancy
Comedy
Eulogy Productions LLC
R
When three generations of a dysfunctional family gather in Rhode Island to bury the family patriarch, members of the Collins clan are at each other's throats in no time. Son Daniel is a secret porn actor, and daughter Lucy is a lesbian. Lucy totes along her lover Judy to the outrage of Lucy's aggressively neurotic sister Alice, whose hysterical overreaction to the pair's marriage plans ought to tell everyone something. Rounding out the delightful crowd are dim brother Skip, whose unfailingly rude twin sons offer caustic commentary on their elders' infantile predilections; matriarchal widow Charlotte, who becomes so justifiably distraught at the insanity of her children she tries to commit suicide; and Kate, a confused but comely college freshman who juggles preparation of the eulogy with internal debate over what to do with her childhood friend-turned-suitor, Ryan.

Lars von Trier
Drama, War
Alicéléo
R
An American of German descent arrives in post-war Germany 1945. His uncle gets him a job on the Zentropa train line as a sleeping car conductor. The American's wish is to be neutral to the ongoing purges of loyalists by the Allied forces and do what he can to help a hurting country, but he finds himself being used by both the Americans and the influential family that owns the railroad. After falling in love with the railroad magnate's daughter, he finds that he can't remain neutral and must make some difficult choices.

Kasi Lemmons
Drama
Addis Wechsler Pictures
R
The story is set in 1962 Louisiana. The big Batiste family is headed by charming doctor Louis. Though he is married to beautiful Roz, he has a weakness for attractive women patients. One day Louis is flirting with married and sexy Metty Mereaux, not knowing that he is observed by his youngest idealistic daughter Eve, who is there by accident. Eve can not forget the incident which is traumatic for her naivete and shares a secret with older sister Cisely. Lies start to roll...

J.M. Kenny
Documentary

J.M. Kenny
Documentary

Don Mischer
Comedy


Stand-up comic Robin Williams performs his act in San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. Although he does do some of his more well known routines, much of the footage is devoted to Williams' frenetic, completely off the wall improvisation.

Chris Rock, Ali LeRoi, Dennie Gordon, Eric Laneuville, Gina Prince-Bythewood
Comedy
CBS/Paramount
Unrated
Beginning with its assured pilot episode, it's love at first sight for "Everybody Hates Chris". This loosely autobiographical family sitcom has a distinctive voice (belonging to co-creator Chris Rock, who also serves as narrator) and a strong sense of time (1982-83) and place (Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighborhood). For Chris (the winning Tyler James Williams), turning 13 is anything but a wonder year. He is the only black kid in an all-white junior high school (to which he is bused) that offers him "not a Harvard-type education, just not a sticking-up-a-liquor-store-type education." At school, he is befriended by the geeky Greg (Vincent Martella), and mercilessly tormented by the red-haired bully Joey Caruso (Travis T. Flory). At home, his father, Julius, (former NFL player Terry Crews) works two jobs to make ends meet, and knows the cost of everything ("That's 49 cents of spilt milk on my table"). His mother, Rochelle (Tichina Arnold), also works part-time and knows "100 recipes for whooping ass." Chris is often called upon to be "the emergency adult" to his younger brother, Drew (Tequan Richmond), who is taller than Chris and better at everything from karate to girls, and his younger sister, Tonya (Imani Hakim), who is Daddy's favorite and delights in getting Chris into trouble.
While Chris's family is much more functional than "Roseanne"'s clan, it, too, etches a vivid portrait of a family struggling to get by, as when Rochelle explains to Julius the "debt system" of paying bills. But most of the humor is universal, from Chris's life-changing discovery of his father's "Playboy" magazine to his anxiety over Picture Day at school. "Everybody Hates Chris" also manages to show the love without being mawkishly sentimental. In the pilot, narrator Rock notes that his father didn't express his feelings, but as he was only one of four fathers on the block, his "'I'll see you in the morning' meant he'd be coming home. And that was his way of saying, 'I love you.'" "--Donald Liebenson"

Various
Television
Paramount Home Video
NR
If you liked "Everybody Hates Chris"' first season, you're going to love season 2. Much like Chris (NAACP Image Award-winner Tyler James Williams, really growing into the role), now an eighth grader at all-white Corleone Junior High, this semi-autobiographical series based on Chris Rock's childhood, has matured. "This doesn't feel like last year all over again," Chris's best (and only) friend, fellow geek Greg (Vincent Martella) tells him at one point. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Tired of being "picked on, made fun of, and left out," Chris runs for class president and actually wins. But, after making campaign promises he cannot keep, he is later unceremoniously impeached. Looking to get a little respect, he becomes a hall monitor, but becomes such an abusive, power-mad "jerk," he risks losing Greg's friendship. And in the season finale, he finally gives Caruso (Travis T. Flory) his racist tormentor, his comeuppance. Too bad they'll be attending summer school together. What is most intriguing about this season is we begin to see the first sketches in this portrait of the artist as a young man. "You ought to be a comedian," a thug tells Chris after Chris asks him to return money he stole from the neighborhood grocery store where Chris works. In "Everybody Hates Dirty Jokes," Chris is introduced to the forbidden comedy of Red Foxx, Moms Mabley, and George Carlin, and regales his classmates with their unprintable routines.
What distinguishes "Chris" from old-school family sitcoms is that there is little that is typical or obvious about it. The episode "Everybody Hates the Buddy System" resists sitcom expectations of Chris and Caruso bonding after they are paired up during a field trip. "Everybody Hates Chris" has an indelible sense of time (1984-85) and place (Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighborhood)--it's got a killer soundtrack! While it is firmly grounded, it has an animated sensibility that allows for hilarious fantasy digressions. Chris Rock's "Wonder Years"-type narration also finds humor in the gritty reality of a family struggling to get by in a crime-plagued neighborhood (and he can't resist occasional anachronistic Michael Jackson, O.J., and Bill Clinton jokes). Along with mild profanity, there are references to parental-administered corporal punishment (which is inflicted off-screen). But there are scenes of genuine warmth and sweetness that convey that this is a nurturing family, as when Chris's younger, more popular brother, Drew (Tequan Richmond) teaches his Billy Ocean-loving younger sister Tonya (Imani Hakim) how to moonwalk (which she insists Michael stole from Billy), or the celebratory dinner when Chris wins his election. "Everybody Hates Chris" was snubbed by Emmy voters for Best Comedy Series consideration, nor were cast members nominated, but hopefully this DVD set, enhanced with a wealth of clever and creative extras (including one segment featuring the actors who stand-in for cast members during rehearsal) will allow people to show the love for one of TV's freshest and funniest series. Be a "Hate"-er! "--Donald Liebenson"

Various
Comedy
Paramount
PG
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/26/2008 Run time: 457 minutes Rating: Nr

Various
Comedy
Hbo Home Video
Unrated
Finally, all 9 seasons - over 100 hours of Everybody Loves Raymond on 44 discs - are now available under one roof! Inside this collectible house structure are all 210 episodes, along with loads of bonus features and a 40-page script of the series finale autographed by all 10 of the episode's writers.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Deleted Scenes
Documentaries
Gag Reel
Outtakes
TV Special

Unknown
Comedy
Hbo Home Video
Unrated
"Everybody Loves Raymond"'s Emmy-winning final season makes it official: Debra Barone (Patricia Heaton) is hot! The scenes in which she scandalizes a PTA meeting in a "trampy" outfit ("P.T.& A") and attempts a lingerie-clad seduction of Raymond (Ray Romano) in "The Power of No" are the reason YouTube was invented. This season begins on a giddy, albeit bittersweet note as Frank (Peter Boyle) and Marie (Doris Roberts, honored with another Emmy) announce that they are moving to a New Jersey retirement home 85 minutes away. The surreptitious kitchen celebration between Raymond and Debra and put-upon Robert (Brad Garrett, also an Emmy-winner) and Amy (Monica Horan) is a play-it-again classic. Their joy is inevitably short-lived when Frank and Marie manage to offend and alienate all the other residents and are kicked out. This season produced a mere 16 episodes, but the majority of them are gems, including "Ally's F," in which a failing math grade leads to a tentative mother-daughter connection ("Are all boys stupid?" a lovelorn Ally asks her mother. "Yes," she assures her).
In the best "Raymond" episodes, you laugh until it hurts (in "Sister-in-Law," Raymond, ever the "selfish ass," resists extroverted Amy's attempts to get to know him better) and it hurts until you laugh (in "Boys' Therapy," Raymond, Robert and Frank, unwittingly make personal breakthroughs when they ditch group-therapy sessions for the track). At the heart of the final season is Marie's definition of family: "We stick together, we support each other." In the pitch-perfect finale (watched by a reported 32 million people), all resentments and bickering are forgotten when Raymond, undergoing minor surgery for adenoids, momentarily does not awaken following the operation. This set contains "The Last Laugh," an emotional series retrospective built around the filming of the finale (which had to be delayed when Heaton developed laryngitis), amusing deleted scenes, and rollicking, spontaneous commentaries on eight episodes. The brief blooper reel is hardly worth the trouble, but we do get to see Romano break up Boyle with a "Young Frankenstein " reference. "--Donald Liebenson"

Woody Allen
Comedy
Miramax Films
R
Holden and Skylar are in love with each other. Skylar lives with a large and extended family on Manhattan. Her parents, Bob and Steffi have been married to each other for many years. Joe, a friend of theirs, who has a daughter, DJ, with Steffi. After yet another relationship, Joe is alone again. He flees to Venice, and meets Von, and makes her believe that he is the man of her dreams. However, their happiness is fake all the way, and she returns to her previous husband. Steffi spends her time with charity work, and manages to break up Skylars and Holdens relation when she introduces Skylar to a released jailbird, Charles Ferry.

Liev Schreiber
Comedy
Warner Independent Pictures (WIP)
PG-13
A young Jewish American flies to the Ukraine in search of his grandfather's past. He has a photograph and the name of a village. He hires the Odessa Heritage Tours, made up of a gruff old man and his English-speaking grandson. The three, plus grandfather's deranged dog, travel in an old car from Odessa into Ukraine's heart. Jonathan, the American, is a collector, putting things he finds into small plastic bags, so he will remember. Alex, the interpreter, is an archetypal wild and crazy guy. Alex asks the old man, "Was there anti-Semitism in the Ukraine before the war?" Will they find the village? The past illuminates everything.

Woody Allen
Comedy
Rollins-Joffe Productions

Seven segments related to one another only in that they all purport to be based on sections of the book by David Reuben. The segments range from "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?" in which a court jester gives an aphrodisiac to the Queen and is, in the end, beheaded to "What Happens During Ejaculation?" in which we watch 'control central' during a successful seduction.

Sam Raimi
Fantasy
Renaissance Pictures
NC-17
Five friends go up to a cabin in the woods where they find unspeakable evil lurking in the forest. They find the Necronomicon and the taped translation of the text. Once the tape is played, the evil is released. One by one, the teens become deadly zombies. With only one remaining, it is up to him to survive the night and battle the evil dead.

Sam Raimi
Comedy
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG)

A sequel/remake of the film The Evil Dead. A young man named Ash takes his girlfriend Linda to a secluded cabin, and plays back a professor's tape recorded recitation of passages from the Book of the Dead. The spell calls up an evil force from the woods which turns Linda into a monstrous Deadite, and threatens to do the same to Ash. When the professor's daughter and her entourage show up at the cabin, the night turns into a non-stop, grotesquely comic battle with chainsaw and shotgun on one side, demon horde and flying eyeball on the other.

Mario Siciliano
Crime
Emaus Films S.A.

People around Peter Crane begin dying in mysterious fashion. How is Playboy Peter involved in this? He begins having nightmares dealing with murder...His psychiatrist has no idea of what Peter is suffering from. Even the police are in danger as they start investigating the case. What is the secret of the "Magic Circle"?

Alan Parker
Biography
Cinergi Pictures Entertainment
PG
High-flying, adored! The film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical depicting the infamous real-life story of Eva "Evita" Duarte de Peron, the wife of President Juan Peron, who rose from poverty to become the most famous Argentine woman in history. Her huge political influence and constant charity works earned her scorn and fear from the military and upper classes but adoration and love from the workers and descamisados. Evita's legendary life is displayed before your eyes as the most hated and most beloved woman in Argentina.

Ivan Reitman
Comedy
Montecito Picture Company, The
PG-13
When a meteorite falls to Earth two college professors, Dr. Ira Kane and Prof. Harry Phineas Block, are assigned the job of checking the site out. At the site, they discover organisms not of this planet. Soon the site is taken over by the government, forcing Ira and Harry to the side. As the new life-forms begin to evolve and start to get more and more dangerous, it's up to the two professors to save the planet.

Jesse Peretz
Comedy
2929 Productions

In Manhattan, Sofia's an attorney and Tom's a cook who has a hard time holding a job. When their first child is born, they agree that she'll be a full-time mom and he'll get a promotion. When he gets fired, he takes a job in Ohio working at the ad agency where her father is assistant director. Tom's assigned to report to Chip, a competitive, hard-driving guy who's in a wheelchair and who's Sofia's ex-boyfriend - from high school. Chip still carries a torch for her, so he connives to make Tom's work life miserable. As Tom's frustrations mount, it may be that Sofia will take Chip's side. Is Tom doomed to fail yet again?

James Bryan
Action

David Cronenberg
Crime
Alliance Atlantis Communications
R
Allegra Geller, the leading game designer in the world, is testing her new virtual reality game, eXistenZ with a focus group. As they begin, she is attacked by a fanatic assassin employing a bizarre organic gun. She flees with a young marketing trainee, Ted Pikul, who is suddenly assigned as her bodyguard. Unfortunately, her pod, an organic gaming device that contains the only copy of the eXistenZ game program, is damaged. To inspect it, she talks Ted into accepting a gameport in his own body so he can play the game with her. The events leading up to this, and the resulting game lead the pair on a strange adventure where reality and their actions are impossible to determine from either their own or the game's perspective.

Scott Derrickson
Crime
Screen Gems
PG-13
When a younger girl called Emily Rose (Carpenter) dies, everyone puts blame on the exorcism which was performed on her by Father Moore (Wilkinson) prior to her death. The priest is arrested on suspicion of murder. The trail begins with lawyer Erin Bruner (Linney) representing Moore, but it is not going to be easy, as no one wants to believe what Father Moore says is true.

William Friedkin
Drama
Hoya Productions

Something beyond evil is happening in a little girl's room. Regan (Blair) has brutally changed both in the way she looks and the way she acts, with violent outbursts on everyone who comes in contact with her. Her worried mother (Burstyn) gets in contact with a priest (Miller) who comes to the conclusion that Regan is possessed. The top priest who can deal with an exorcism, Father Merrin (Sydow) is called in to help save Regan from the demon inside her.

William Peter Blatty
Horror
Morgan Creek Productions
R
Ignoring Exorcist II: The Heretic, this one deals with a serial killer who was executed the same night of the exorcism in the first film with the girl Regan. The priest who fell down the flight of steps was been taken into the spirit of the killer to claim victim after victim some 20 years later. The killer mutilates priests and doctors and uses old women as a suspect. After the returning police detective Kinderman sees that it is the same serial killings of the Gemini, he and another priest decide to find and destroy the killer's spirit with using the final exorcism. But this exorcism will be much dangerous...

Atom Egoyan
Drama
Alliance Entertainment
R
The 'Exotica' is a nightclub on the outskirts of Toronto, where Eric, DJ and MC, watches nightly as his ex-girlfriend Christina performs. Watches jealously, especially as far as the extra attentions regular customer Francis garners are concerned. Thomas, meanwhile and erstwhile, goes through a series of, um, interesting situations involving his pet shop, a gruff taxi-sharing stranger, unexpected tickets to the opera and smuggled eggs of a rare bird. Multiple story lines unfold in a splendid tangle of cutbacks, forward and backward references and recurring themes, all woven around the Exotica, its customers and employees. A calm roller-coaster ride of a movie, visually and intriguingly and emotionally moving. O, and the sound track is notable, too.

Mark Webber
Drama
Mangusta Productions
R

Luis Buñuel
Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
Producciones Gustavo Alatriste

After a lavish dinner party, the guests find themselves mysteriously unable to leave the room... and over the next few days all the elaborate pretenses and facades that they've built up by virtue of their position in society collapse completely as they become reduced to living like animals...

Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant
Comedy
HBO Home Video
NR
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown of celebrity. Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) is back and more miserable than ever in this darker and devastatingly funny finale to the Emmy-winning series. Though his sitcom "When the Whistle Blows" rates six million viewers, he is, as ever, mindful of the critics' barbs and jealous of colleagues landing the prestige film roles he covets. "I'm not proud of having Britain's No. 1 catchphrase," he grouses (actually, he has sunk to No. 3, now trailing "You are the weakest link, goodbye"). Worse, he has become a right bastard, arrogantly treating crewmembers and his one true friend, Maggie (a heartbreaking Ashley Jensen), like dirt. Andy finally drops his clueless and incompetent agent (series co-creator Stephen Merchant) and quits the show. "Don't worry about me," he proclaims. "The phone won't stop ringing."
Unlike the finale of the original British incarnation of "The Office", this super-duper-sized episode really has no loose ends to tie up. In Andy's humiliating comeuppance (he sinks to portraying an alien on "Dr. Who" and joins the desperate housemates on "Celebrity Big Brother"), Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winner Gervais has the perfect vessel with which to rail against soul-sucking celebrity, degrading tabloid culture, and "the gutter press." As for Andy and Maggie, those longing for some kind of Tim/Dawn or Jim/Pam hookup may not get exactly what they want, but they will get what they need in the lovely final scenes. A-listers having a laugh at their own images have always been one of "Extras"' special treats. The finale features jaw-dropping cameos by Clive Owen and George Michael, performing community service yet again. Kudos to HBO for making this available separately for those who have already purchased series one and two. For those unfamiliar with "Extras", this feature-length finale can pretty much stand on its own. But, really, just go ahead and buy "The Complete Series". You're going to want to see what you've missed. "--Donald Liebenson"

Various
Comedy
Hbo Home Video
NR
After the British series of "The Office" came to an end, co-creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant were faced with an enviable problem: After making the most influential and acclaimed sitcom of the past decade, what do you do next? Amazingly, they've actually created an equally brilliant show: "Extras", in which Gervais plays Andy Millman, an frustrated actor who can only get work as a "background artist"--i.e., an extra. Not only does the role continue to mine Gervais' gift for self-humiliation (which, staggeringly enough, may be even more excruciating than his David Brent's behavior in "The Office", because Andy is more socially capable yet still can't avoid moments of jaw-dropping embarrassment), but Gervais has also persuaded a glorious variety of stars to tweak their own images. High points include Kate Winslet ("Sense & Sensibility") teaching Andy's best friend Maggie (Ashley Jensen, "Ugly Betty") how to talk dirty and Patrick Stewart ("X-Men") describing his new screenplay about a man who uses psychic powers to remove women's clothing. But Ben Stiller, Samuel L. Jackson, Ross Kemp (sort of the British version of Michael Chiklis), and Les Dennis (sort of the British version of...well, there may not be an American version of Les Dennis) all also turn in deliciously ego-bursting turns. Merchant plays Andy's deliriously dense agent, but the core of the show is the relationship between Andy and Maggie. Over the course of six episodes, the interplay between this hapless, starry-eyed pair grows into a wonderfully tender portrait of friendship that perfectly balances the show's so-funny-it-hurts humor. The extras are few but worth watching: Along with a behind-the-scenes featurette, genuinely funny deleted scenes, and the usual clips of everyone forgetting their lines and swearing, there's a very funny sequence of Gervais and Merchant desperately trying to replace Jude Law (who had to drop out of an episode) with Leonardo DiCaprio. All in all, "Extras: The Complete First Season" is essential viewing. "--Bret Fetzer"

Various
Comedy
Hbo Home Video
NR
In "Extras"' exquisitely excruciating second and, alas, final season, Andy Millman, former "supporting artist," learns a humbling lesson: Be careful what you wish for. Andy (Ricky Gervais) is still "an impossible person," but he is now an impossible person with a sitcom, one that, to his increasing horror, humiliation, and disgust he allows to be severely compromised. The character he portrays, a factory boss, is outfitted in a ridiculous wig and big glasses, and Andy becomes enthrall to his catchphrase: "Are you havin' a laugh?" The result is high ratings for the show, but the critics' slings and arrows are aimed at Andy. Surely, David Bowie (just one of the A-listers who grace this season) can relate to Andy's struggle for artistic integrity. Instead, his plight inspires Bowie to improvise a V.I.P. lounge sing-along ditty that mocks his pretensions ("Little fat man who sold his soul/Little fat man who sold his dream"). Andy's two closest relationships drive the series. The first is with his clueless and useless manager (Stephen Merchant), who in one there's-everything-wrong-with-that episode, arranges for Andy to be unwittingly cast as a gay man in a play. The second is with Maggie (Ashley Jensen), Andy's platonic friend, still an extra, who is steadfast and supportive, but at times absolutely tactless, as when she reveals to a woman whom Andy dumped how he lost his virginity (an embarrassing anecdote the vengeful woman proceeds to share with the attendees of Britain's most prestigious awards ceremony).
Season 2 is a no less star-studded affair than its predecessor. Among the astonishingly game notables having a laugh at themselves are Orlando Bloom ("You know who does get ignored?" he tries to impress Maggie, "Johnny Depp"), a randy Daniel Radcliffe, and Coldplay's Chris Martin, who makes a hilariously gratuitous guest-star appearance on Andy's show. Priceless are cameos by such venerable British entertainers as Robert Lindsay, Ronnie Corbett (one of "The Two Ronnies") and "Barry from "EastEnders"." "Extras" is a classic cringe comedy in the grand tradition of Albert Brooks, "The Larry Sanders Show", and "Curb Your Enthusiasm". All of Andy's worst impulses are magnified by his newfound fame. In one episode, he complains about a disruptive child in a restaurant, only to discover he has Down's Syndrome. Enhancing these all-too-few six episodes are "Extras"' extremely entertaining extras, including a multi-part behind-the-scenes look at the show. One wonders how the actors got through these brilliantly funny episodes without "corpsing" (breaking up). As the generous outtakes reveal, they very often didn't. With "Extras", Gervais has accomplished what the hapless Andy could not: Create "a good credible comedy that will stand the test of time." "--Donald Liebenson"

Tim Blake Nelson
Crime
Minnow Pictures
R
We see two stories told over four time lines, which wind down to a devastating ground zero collision, as we watch a double tragedy unfold in a small Oklahoma town. The two stories are told out of normal time sequence, showing us brief glimpses of the beginning, middle and end of the two stories in seemingly random order. One story concerns Ainsley DuPree (Martha Plimpton), who meets and marries her prison pen pal Jack (Kevin Anderson). The other story begins with the discovery of a mute and bloody teenager (Nick Stahl), found wandering and in shock in the middle of the night, and the efforts of the town sheriff (Hal Holbrook) to determine what happened to him. As the film unfolds these tales, the viewer is confronted with questions of the existence and mercy of God and the hopelessness of being alone and adrift in an indifferent world.

Paul Marcus
Crime
Videal GmbH
R

Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato
Documentary
Cinemax
PG-13
A documentary look, mostly through the eyes of Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, at her rise and fall as a popular televangelist with husband Jim Bakker. Traces their rise: her teen marriage to Jim; their children's TV show (she was a puppeteer and singer), success founding the 700 Club, co-founding the Trinity Broadcast Network, and starting PTL Network; her nondenominational version of Christianity reaching out to all; and, their building of Heritage USA, a theme park. Things fall apart as money woes mount for Heritage and for Jim, as Tammy takes pills, and as Jerry Falwell takes PTL. Jim goes to prison; she remarries, finds herself alone again, yet remains unsinkable.

Henry Hampton
Documentary
Blackside

This is a documentary series about the glory years of the American Civil Rights Movement, starting in 1952 with the murder of Emmit Till and the subsequent trial and ending with the civil rights march to Selma in 1965. Along the way, the series touches on the major figures of the movement such as Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and major incidents such as the Little Rock school riots and Montgomery, Alabama Transit Boycott.

Stanley Kubrick
Drama
Hobby Films
R
Sexual jolts disrupt Manhattan physician Bill Harford's equilibrium. At an elegant Christmas party, two "models" hit on him, he watches a Lothario try to pick up his tipsy wife, he aids a woman sprawled naked in a bathroom after an overdose. The next night, his wife reveals sexual fantasies with a stranger; a dead patient's daughter throws herself at him; as he walks, brooding, six teen boys hurl homophobic insults at him; a streetwalker takes him to her flat; he interrupts men having a sex party with a girl barely in her teens. His odyssey, which next takes him into a world of wealthy sex play at a masked ball of hedonism, threatens his life, his self-respect, and his marriage.

Georges Franju
Drama
Champs-Élysées Productions

A brilliant surgeon, Dr. Génessier, helped by his assistant Louise, kidnaps nice young women. He removes their faces and tries to graft them onto the head on his beloved daughter Christiane, whose face has been entirely spoiled in a car crash. All the experiments fail, and the victims die, but Génessier keeps trying....