Video: 4
Audio: 5
Extras: 5
The search for salvation, fortune, and a new world are all familiar things that many continue to fight for today; during the Crusades, it was no different. Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven is yet another masterpiece created by the father of the director's cut, who is best known for his unique vision. Orlando Bloom is Balian, a Frenchman who becomes a knight and travels to the Holy City to find redemption. As the words "I am Jerusalem" are uttered from both sides, Balian must defend his people in this historical clash between Europe and the Middle East.
Alfred Hitchcock in a Box
The matured DVD format enables library builders to enjoy the full sweep of a great career in cinema for minimal investment. A perfect example is Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense. Most of his major works are collectible in huge boxed sets that cost less, per title, than a movie ticket. True, the HD DVD and Blu-ray formats may eventually bring high-def reissues. But that would take years, and in the meantime, the standard-def boxes are bargains. Grab them before they slip away.
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
The third series in the juggernaut forensics franchise brings the police procedural to the city of NYPD Blue, quite literally. In stark contrast to the orange and mango hues of CSI: Miami, NY is bathed in deep, metallic blues and grays, making investigators and killers look as if they could use a good dose of Florida sun. Nowhere is the disparity between the look of the two shows as apparent as in the pilot, which blends both locales as it introduces the new cast.
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
Join me if you will for a walk down memory lane, to a time when women dressed in pastels and got jobs as the leads in TV shows just because they could wrinkle their noses cutely.
Video: 5
Audio: 5
Extras: 4
Completely unpretentious in its musings on the innocence of youth, Toy Story remains as captivating today as it was a decade ago. For all of its technical innovation, which was a true watershed, the movie put the characters and story first, resonating with emotion and humanity, despite the trappings of virtual plastic and wood.
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
I've never been a fan of John Waters. In fact, I thought the guy was dead. But I suspect that his latest effort will try even his ardent admirers' patience. Sexploitation films definitely have their place in cinema history; but peppering such a film with name talent—albeit B-list talent like Tracy Ullman and Johnny Knoxville—is a misguided attempt to lend legitimacy to a genre that's best left in the underground. It's like putting a fancy sign on a porn store.
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
If 3,000 hits is an automatic induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, what do you do if you only had 2,997? Go back to the team and get those missing hits—even if you haven't played in nine years and you're 47. That's the situation that Stan Ross (Bernie Mac) is in. He's alienated everyone, and he's egotistical, selfish, and immensely charming. Mac captures the swagger, cockiness, and self-promotion that some athletes revel in today. During the course of his comeback, he has a second chance with an ex-flame and ESPN reporter (Angela Bassett) and a second chance with the team after he realizes what's really important.
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 2 Swimming Upstream tells the true story of Australian swimmer Tony Fingleton, who must overcome poverty and a cruel, alcoholic father in his quest to become the best swimmer in Australia. The story is one we've seen many times in different incarnations. The difference here is that, because Fingleton penned the screenplay and the book on which it's based, events aren't always as tidy and pat as Hollywood would like them to be. We don't get the big ending we're expecting, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Video: 3
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
Kevin Bacon stars as a convicted pedophile who has served his time and is moving on with life in Philadelphia. To add the necessary dramatic twist, his apartment is located directly across the street from a school. The dark but equally fair-to-all-sides movie is Nicole Kassell's directorial debut, and she handles the responsibility well. Kyra Sedgwick, Benjamin Bratt, David Alan Grier, and the wonderful Mos Def round out the excellent cast.
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 4
A sad but strangely triumphant story, The Sea Inside follows the life of a quadriplegic who spent nearly three decades fighting for his right to assisted suicide. Javier Bardem plays the resolute man, poet Ramon Sampedro, who was paralyzed in a diving accident in his late teens and struggled with the Spanish government until 1998. Although writer/ director Alejandro Amenabar never attempts to justify Sampedro's decision, he draws a multifaceted character whose reasons for choosing to end his life make sense, no matter which side of the debate you might fall on.
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 0
For those of you out there who are anticipating an even bigger party than the fun that was Ocean's Eleven, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. The beauty of the first film was that everything came together in the end, and you left feeling like you'd really been privy to geniuses at work. Everything, and I mean everything, was part of the big picture. Ocean's Twelve just makes you scratch your head. What happened to these seriously smart guys? How in the world did they end up in this situation, and where's the big heist that made the first film so much fun? But, most importantly, who thought it would be funny for Julia Roberts' character to pretend to be Julia Roberts? Has Hollywood completely lost its mind?
Video: 5
Audio: 5
Extras: 2 House of Flying Daggers is, in many ways, similar to many other martial-arts movies you've seen (most notably, the crazily popular Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). It has all of the action and incredible fight sequences we've come to expect from the best Hong Kong exports. From a visual standpoint, though, it has more in common with the stylized color works of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. And what visuals they are. In Hero, director Yimou Zhang used massive amounts of color. Sometimes entire shots would be one color. Here, that is rarely the case, but color is no smaller a tool—just a more finely honed one. The story is of a love affair between an assassin and a policeman as a war builds around them.
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 2
If nothing else, Kinsey shows us just how far we haven't come since Alfred Kinsey first published his books on human sexual behavior in the 1940s and '50s. When we see the sex photos that Professor Kinsey shows his students during his first college course about sex, we're just as shocked as they are that we're actually being allowed to see them-and that the MPAA didn't slap an NC-17 rating on the film as a result. In a manner befitting the subject, writer/director Bill Condon provides a straightforward, almost clinical examination of Kinsey's life, which succeeds primarily because of the wonderful performances by Liam Neeson as Kinsey and Laura Linney as his wife Clara.
Video: 3
Audio: 4
Extras: 4
Samuel Fuller's quasi-autobiographical World War II drama, named for the symbol of the 1st Infantry, was brutally trimmed for its 1980 theatrical release. Now painstakingly pieced back together and enhanced for modern audiences, The Big Red One is almost 50 minutes longer and hereby revealed as a genuine epic. It's better than ever on every level. We can finally witness one of star Lee Marvin's most richly crafted roles as it was meant to be seen.
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
Before XXX State of the Union iced his destiny as an action star, Ice Cube stretched his wings with this charming but fairly routine family-bonding flick that hit box-office bling earlier this year. The family here is a surrogate, as Cube hauls a pair of spirited kids from Portland, Oregon, to Vancouver in his new Lincoln Navigator in order to win points with their hottie divorce mom. Illicit thoughts of mom aside, the road trip actually brings him close to the two brats. It's a no-lose formula, and any film with Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek's Lt. Uhura) earns extra points in my book.
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