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10 Things I Hate About You
Comedy Walt Disney Video PG-13
It's, like, Shakespeare, man! This good-natured and likeable update of "The Taming of the Shrew" takes the basics of Shakespeare's farce about a surly wench and the man who tries to win her and transfers it to modern-day Padua High School. Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is a sullen, forbidding riot grrrl who has a blistering word for everyone; her sunny younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) is poised for high school stardom. The problem: overprotective and paranoid Papa Stratford (a dryly funny Larry Miller) won't let Bianca date until boy-hating Kat does, which is to say never. When Bianca's pining suitor Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets wind of this, he hires the mysterious, brooding Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) to loosen Kat up. Of course, what starts out as a paying gig turns to true love as Patrick discovers that underneath her brittle exterior, Kat is a regular babe. The script, by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, is sitcom-funny with peppy one-liners and lots of smart teenspeak; however, its cleverness and imagination doesn't really extend beyond its characters' Renaissance names and occasional snippets of real Shakespearean dialogue. What makes the movie energetic and winning is the formula that helped make "She's All That" such a big hit: two high-wattage stars who look great and can really act. Ledger is a hunk of promise with a quick grin and charming Aussie accent, and Stiles mines Kat's bitterness and anger to depths usually unknown in teen films; her recitation of her English class sonnet (from which the film takes its title) is funny, heartbreaking, and hopelessly romantic. The imperious Allison Janney ("Primary Colors") nearly steals the film as a no-nonsense guidance counselor secretly writing a trashy romance novel. "--Mark Englehart"

Accepted
Comedy Universal Studios PG-13
Justin Long has been hovering on the edges of movies like "The Break-Up" and "Dodgeball", providing little comic bursts that are often funnier than the rest of the movie. In "Accepted", Long plays Bartleby Gaines, a fast-talking slacker who, when he gets rejected by every college he applied to, invents a phony college to get his parents off his back. Unfortunately, the website his best friend creates is too effective--hundreds of other rejects apply and are accepted. Instead of revealing the hoax, Gaines decides to forge ahead and let the students create their own curriculum, little suspecting that their school is obstructing the expansion plans of the nearby snobbish college. "Accepted" is much better than you might expect, given the low bar set by most campus comedies; it aims for, and sometimes achieves, the blend of slapstick and social satire that "Animal House" embodied. Long proves to be a charming leading man without losing his quirky comic sense and the supporting cast is consistently entertaining, particularly stand-up comedian Lewis Black, who delivers a variety of sardonic rants about society. "Accepted"'s critique of conformism is glib--you wish they'd given it a little more bite--but it's still valid and a pleasant sliver of substance in an otherwise vapid genre. "--Bret Fetzer"

Across the Tracks
Drama First Look Pictures R
Though this movie is slightly cheesy, and obviously neither Brad nor Ricky's best work, it is very entertaining nonetheless. Brad Pitt as a track star...need I say any more? And Ricky Schroeder as a troubled youth looking to make a fresh start...brilliant. The best part of the movie is the drunk scene (if you watch it you'll know what I mean), which can be reenacted over and over with your friends for hours and hours of guaranteed hilarity. A must see, and one of my favorites!

Aeon Flux
SciFi.Fantasy Paramount Home Video PG-13
Like the animated series it's based on, "Aeon Flux" is the kind of sci-fi that's best appreciated by the MTV generation. It's a serious attempt at stylized, futuristic action/adventure (the title character, played by Charlize Theron, is essentially a female James Bond for the cyberpunk era) and taken for what it is, it's not all that bad. The action takes place in the year 2415, four centuries after a virus nearly decimated the human race, leaving only five million survivors in a utopian city called Bregna. Aeon belongs to the Monicans, a secret rebel resistance force that is struggling to destroy the Goodchild regime led by its namesake, Trevor Goodchild (Martin Csokas), the ruler of Bregna and a descendant of the man who found a cure for the deadly virus. As instructed by the Handler (Frances McDormand, gamely playing along in ridiculous sci-fi regalia), Aeon is assigned to assassinate Goodchild, but there are deeper secrets to be discovered, and conspiracies to be foiled. This leads director Karyn Kusama (who fared much better with her debut feature "Girlfight") to indulge in all sorts of routine action and fast-paced gunplay, but the elusive pleasures of "Aeon Flux" are mostly found in the sleek athleticism of Theron and costar Sophie Okonedo (as a fellow Monican), who commit themselves 100% to roles that are dramatically flat yet physically dynamic. Other highlights include Aeon's high-tech gadgetry (including an eyeball that doubles as a microsocope) and the amusing sight of Pete Postlethwaite in a costume resembling a construction-site disposal tube, but "Flux" fans may wonder what happened to the surreal, chromium sheen future that gave the MTV series its visionary appeal. As a live-action feature, "Aeon Flux" is a miscalculated exercise in cheesy style and dour tone, but it's entertaining enough to earn a small cadre of admirers. "--Jeff Shannon"

Akira
Anime.SciFi Geneon [Pioneer] R
Artist-writer Katsuhiro ôtomo began telling the story of Akira as a comic book series in 1982 but took a break from 1986 to 1988 to write, direct, supervise, and design this animated film version. Set in 2019, the film richly imagines the new metropolis of Neo-Tokyo, which is designed from huge buildings down to the smallest details of passing vehicles or police uniforms. Two disaffected orphan teenagers--slight, resentful Tetsuo and confident, breezy Kaneda--run with a biker gang, but trouble grows when Tetsuo start to resent the way Kaneda always has to rescue him. Meanwhile, a group of scientists, military men, and politicians wonder what to do with a collection of withered children who possess enormous psychic powers, especially the mysterious, rarely seen Akira, whose awakening might well have caused the end of the old world. Tetsuo is visited by the children, who trigger the growth of psychic and physical powers that might make him a superman or a supermonster. As befits a distillation of 1,318 pages of the story so far, "Akira" is overstuffed with character, incident, and detail. However, it piles up astonishing set pieces: the chases and shootouts (amazingly kinetic, amazingly bloody) benefit from minute cartoon detail that extends to the surprised or shocked faces of the tiniest extra; the Tetsuo monster alternately looks like a billion-gallon scrotal sac or a Tex Avery mutation of the monster from "The Quatermass Experiment"; and the finale--which combines flashbacks to more innocent days with a destruction of Neo City and the creation of a new universe--is one of the most mind-bending in all sci-fi cinema. "--Kim Newman"

Aliens
Science Fiction Twentieth Century Fox R
Aliens is one of the few cases of a sequel that far surpassed the original. Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley, who awakens on Earth only to discover that she has been hibernating in space so long that everyone she knows is dead. Then she is talked into traveling (along with a squad of Marines) to a planet under assault by the same aliens that nearly killed her. Once she gets there, she finds a lost little girl who triggers her maternal instincts--and she discovers that the company has once again double-crossed her, in hopes of capturing one of the aliens to study as a military weapon. Directed and written by James Cameron, this is one of the most intensely exciting (not to mention intensely frightening) action films ever, with a large ensemble cast that includes Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, and Michael Biehn. Weaver defined the action woman in this film and walked away with an Oscar nomination for her trouble. --Marshall Fine

America's Sweethearts
Comedy Sony Pictures PG-13
"America's Sweethearts" is just the kind of romantic froth that makes for pleasant viewing on a lazy, rainy day. While Julia Roberts, John Cusack, and Catherine Zeta-Jones offer high-wattage marquee value, costar and cowriter Billy Crystal reworks "Singin' in the Rain" for latter-day Hollywood, where estranged superstars Gwen (Zeta-Jones) and Eddie (Cusack) reluctantly promote their latest movie by pretending their messily disputed relationship is still going strong. The studio chief (Stanley Tucci) is desperate for a hit, so he hires a seasoned publicist (Crystal) to orchestrate a press junket that will cast everyone in a profitable light. The catch: The director (Christopher Walken) has abducted his own film in an act of artistic extortion, and Gwen's sister and longtime assistant Kiki (Roberts) is the true object of Eddie's desire.
Chaos ensues at the luxury hotel where the junket is scheduled, and "America's Sweethearts" pokes easy fun at the cynical machinery that keeps Hollywood running. Quotable quips are delivered in abundance, and while Zeta-Jones is readily convincing as a bitchy narcissist, Roberts effortlessly steals the show with her trademark charms. All of which makes "America's Sweethearts" lightly entertaining, even though it never rises (like Roberts's earlier "Notting Hill") to the level of classic romantic comedy, hampered by a script that too often substitutes easy laughs for ripe satirical invention, flashing a phony grin when it should be baring its fangs. "--Jeff Shannon"

American Dreamz
Comedy Universal Studios PG-13
Thinly disguised versions of "American Idol" and the Bush presidency collide in the satire "American Dreamz". Bored and self-loathing, Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant, "About a Boy") wants to give his hugely popular reality show "American Dreamz" an extra boost by courting political controversy--but suspects he may find personal redemption in the form of scheming contestant Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore, "Saved!"), who manipulates her boyfriend (Chris Klein, "Election") to give herself a vote-winning backstory. Meanwhile, equally desperate to court popularity, the President's chief of staff (Willem Dafoe, "Spider-Man", looking suspiciously Dick-Cheney-esque) gets Tweed to let the President (Dennis Quaid, "The Rookie") be a guest judge on the show. But unbeknownst to all, a privately conflicted terrorist (Sam Golzari) has been selected as a contestant, and his sleeper cell wants him to blow up the President in the final competition. This complicated storyline doesn't quite have the bite it's reaching for; the political edge is particularly blunted--even diehard Republicans are unlikely to be offended. But sharp and funny lines are sprinkled throughout and the cast is uniformly excellent; the relationship between Grant and Moore is oddly touching, and Marcia Gay Harden ("Pollock") makes an amazing First Lady--is this satire, or what we all wish Laura Bush was really like? An uneven movie, but with some delicious tidbits. "--Bret Fetzer"

An American Haunting
Horror Lions Gate PG-13
With its brisk 83-minute running time, "An American Haunting" is compact enough to be recommended as an occasionally spooky sampling of historical horror. Based on Brent Monahan's novel "The Bell Witch: An American Haunting", which in turn was inspired by the only known case (from 1818-20) in which the U.S. government officially acknowledged a death by supernatural forces, writer-director Courtney Solomon's film is a well-crafted 19th-century case study involving Tennessee land-owner John Bell (Donald Sutherland), his worried wife Lucy (Sissy Spacek), and the terrifying abuse of their daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) by a malicious poltergeist. Intensified by excessive sound effects and a nerve-jangling score, these nightly hauntings won't scare anyone who's seen "The Exorcist", and they grow increasingly repetitious even as Spacek and Sutherland make the most of their underwritten roles. Solomon (who previously brought "Dungeons and Dragons" to the big screen) seems more interested in visceral terror than fleshing out the details of this interesting story of dark secrets and child abuse, and his over-used bag of tricks includes time-lapse footage, flashes of negative images, black-and-white (to signal an imminent haunting), and a variety of physical effects designed to keep your adrenaline flowing. It works, to a point (although the present-day framing scenes are completely unnecessary), and "An American Haunting" makes a good double-feature with "The Exorcism of Emily Rose", a far better film with similar subject matter. This good-looking, bleakly moody fright-fest is also noteworthy as the next-to-last screen credit for Adrian Biddle, the esteemed cinematographer of such high-profile hits as "Aliens", "Thelma & Louise", "The Mummy", and "V for Vendetta", the latter completed just prior to Biddle's fatal heart attack in December 2005."--Jeff Shannon"

The Amityville Horror
Horror MGM (Video & DVD) R
Based on a bestselling, allegedly nonfiction book about haunted goings-on in a Long Island house ("The Amityville Horror Conspiracy"), this rather cheesy horror movie is more silly than unsettling. James Brolin and Margot Kidder star as newlyweds who move into the empty home and are gradually affected by the legacy of a murder committed on the premises. Rod Steiger is a priest who can tell what's up and gets dispatched in a rather ugly way. Director Stuart Rosenberg can't lift the action above a certain level of tawdriness, and the audience ends up watching the horror from a distance instead of feeling involved. In the wake of "The Exorcist", this 1979 spooker seemed like a no-brainer knockoff--and still does. "--Tom Keogh"

Appleseed
Anime.SciFi Geneon Entertainment R
The 2004 "Appleseed" feature is a reworking of the earlier video based on the manga by Masamune Shirow ("Ghost in the Shell"). In 2131, most of humanity has withdrawn to the glittering city of Olympus after a devastating war. When the curvaceous Deunan Knute comes to Olympus, she encounters her former comrade Briareos, now a cyborg, and the lovely android Hitomi. The fate of Hitomi, Olympus, and humanity rest on the lost "Appleseed" technology that Deunan's mother helped to develop. A standard series of chases, "mecha battles", and confrontations leads to a predictable ending. When the original "Appleseed"appeared in 1988, it felt like a summary of anime's past, while "Akira" pointed the way to the future. This new version feels like a mishmash of "Ghost in the Shell", "Akira", "Jin-Roh", "Evangelion", and other, more exciting works. The motion-capture CG is typically weightless, and the "mecha" look oddly squat. (Rated R: violence) "--Charles Solomon"

Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Vol 1
Animated.Comedy Warner Home Video
Another cracked animated series from the Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" programming block, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Volume One's blend of superhero action and skewed humor should provide plenty of nourishment to fans of offbeat animation. The Aqua Teen Hunger Force are a squabbling trio of fast-food items (milkshake, fries, and a ball of hamburger meat) that have joined together to fight a host of monsters, aliens, and mad scientists in their native New Jersey. Fans of traditional cartoons may find the surreal plotlines and low-fi animation unmanageable, but viewers who enjoy other Adult Swim programming like Space Ghost Coast to Coast (series creators Chris Willis and Matt Maiellaro are veterans from that show) will find the Force's adventures side-splitting. The two-disc set, which features 16 episodes from the series' first two seasons, is supplemented by commentary by Willis and Maiellaro on three episodes, including an early version of "Rabbot." Disc 2 has a pair of Easter eggs that feature deleted scenes. --Paul Gaita

Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Vol 2
Animated.Comedy Warner Home Video NR
I've always loved this show right from the beginning of its run on Cartoon Network. Assuming they stick with 16 episodes like they did with the first DVD set, they'll be:Mail Order BrideCybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future (alot of people don't like this one, but it's one of my favorites, especially with Danzig guest starring)Super ComputerSuper Birthday Snake (another fave, "You so freakin' did!")Super BowlSuper HeroSuper ModelSuper SporeSuper SirloinSuper SquatterSuper TriviaBroodwichMeatzoneUniversal RemonsterTotal RecarlRevenge of the TreesWith just 10 more episodes after these 16, I wonder if they'll include them with this set or wait to make 6 more--I don't see any more episodes on the horizon, and their last episode entitled "The Last One" kind of makes me skeptical, unless I'm just missing the point, whatever. Anyways, get this as soon as possible! It's even more hilarious than the first set. And here's hoping they get around to Space Ghost Volume 2 soon. Sealab 2021 Volume 1 is coming out the same time as ATHF2, so it's possible SG is in the works.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Vol 3
Animated.Comedy Warner Home Video NR
A milkshake, a floating order of fries and a meatball become local superheroes that safeguard the world (when they feel like it).

Austin Powers - The Spy Who Shagged Me
Comedy New Line Home Entertainment PG-13
"I put the grrr in swinger, baby!" a deliciously randy Austin Powers coos near the beginning of The Spy Who Shagged Me, and if the imagination of Austin creator Mike Myers seems to have sagged a bit, his energy surely hasn't. This friendly, go-for-broke sequel to 1997's Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery finds our man Austin heading back to the '60s to keep perennial nemesis Dr. Evil (Myers again) from blowing up the world--and, more importantly, to get back his mojo, that man-juice that turns Austin into irresistible catnip for women, especially American spygirl Felicity Shagwell (a pretty but vacant Heather Graham). The plot may be irreverent and illogical, the jokes may be bad (with characters named Ivana Humpalot and Robin Swallows, née Spitz), and the scenes may run on too long, but it's all delivered sunnily and with tongue firmly in cheek. Myers's true triumph, though, is his turn as the neurotic Dr. Evil, who tends to spout the right cultural reference at exactly the wrong time (referring to his moon base as a "Death Star" with Moon Units Alpha and Zappa--in 1969). Myers teams Dr. Evil with a diminutive clone, Mini-Me (Verne J. Troyer), who soon replaces slacker son Scott Evil (Seth Green) as the apple of the doctor's eye; Myers and Troyer work magic in what could plausibly be one of the year's most affecting (and hysterically funny) love stories. Despite a stellar supporting cast--including a sly Rob Lowe as Robert Wagner's younger self and Mindy Sterling as the forbidding Frau Farbissina--it's basically Myers's show, and he pulls a hat trick by playing a third character, the obese and disgusting Scottish assassin Fat Bastard. Many viewers will reel in disgust at Mr. Bastard's repulsive antics and the scatological bent Myers indulges in, including one showstopper involving coffee and--shudder--a stool sample. Still, Myers's good humor and dead-on cultural references win the day; Austin is one spy who proves he can still shag like a minx. --Mark Englehart



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