DVD Watch - For Tuesday June 22nd

[Earende]

Quite an eclectic group of movies this week. There's something for everyone...

[Earende]

Last Station - The final year of Russian socialist writer Leo Tolstoy's life comes to the screen with Christopher Plummer in the lead role and Helen Mirren portraying his wife, Sofya. Paul Giamatti, James McAvoy, and AnneMarie Duff co-star in the Warner Bros. production, directed by Michael Hoffman from the novel by Jay Parini.

Green Zone - United 93 director Paul Greengrass explores the aftermath of the Iraq invasion in this feature adaptation of author Rajiv Chandrasekaran's literary exposé Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone. A onetime Baghdad bureau chief of the ~Washington Post, Chandrasekaran was present as American forces attempted to set up a provisional government on the grounds surrounding former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's opulent palace. The resulting governing body, according to critics, existed in a bubble so far-removed from the grim realities of the Iraq War that it failed to properly assess the needs of the people. In this fictional thriller set during the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad, director Greengrass and screenwriter Brian Helgeland use Chandrasekaran's journalistic account as the foundation for the story of an officer who joins forces with a senior CIA officer to unearth evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is certain that Hussein has been stockpiling WMDs in the Iraqi desert, but in their race from one empty site to the next, they soon stumble across evidence of an elaborate cover up. As a result, Miller realizes that operatives on both sides of the conflict are attempting to spin the story in their favor. Now, as Miller searches for answers made ever more elusive by covert and faulty intelligence, the truth becomes the most valuable weapon of all. Will those answers prove pivotal in clearing a rogue regime, or escalate the war in a region that grows increasingly unstable with each passing day? Amy Ryan co-stars as the ~New York Times foreign correspondent who travels to Iraq investigating the U.S. government's allegations about weapons of mass destruction, with Greg Kinnear appearing in the role of an additional CIA officer, and Antoni Corone essaying the role of a colonel. Brendan Gleeson rounds out the main cast for this Universal Pictures production.

Remember Me - His relationship with his father strained in the wake of a family tragedy, rebellious New Yorker Tyler (Robert Pattinson) finds love with the one girl who understands him. Tyler wasn't looking for love, but that's exactly what he found when he met Ally (Emilie de Ravin). Enchanted by her beauty and inspired by her spirit, Tyler finds that his strange life suddenly makes sense when he's around Ally. As their relationship grows, Tyler learns to live his life with passion, and value the little things. When buried secrets threaten to tear the young couple apart, Tyler realizes that sometimes love is worth fighting for. Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, and Lena Olin co-star.

Riverworld - Matt, an American journalist, and his fiancée, Jessie, are killed in an explosion, but reawaken in a very unusual afterlife — a mysterious planet with an endless river terrain. Everyone who has ever lived on Earth has been resurrected simultaneously in this strange new world. Determined to find Jessie, Matt joins forces with an intrepid crew including a 13th century female warrior and Riverboat captain Mark Twain. Embarking upriver, their adventure begins, all the while tracked by the watchful eye of a mysterious alien force.

Timer - Life doesn't offer many guarantees, but in the alternate universe of writer-director Jac Schaeffer's feature debut, the romantic comedy TiMER, people can get a digital clock implanted on their wrist that counts down to the second they meet "the one." It even sounds a little alarm the first time two soul mates look into each other's eyes. The device is not working too well for Oona (Emma Caulfield, who played Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), because her TiMER is blank. That means her soul mate, whoever he is, hasn't yet signed up for the service. So Oona dates guys without TiMERs, and forces them to get the implant if the relationship looks promising. But so far, no dice. Oona's twentysomething half sister, Steph (Michelle Borth), is also unlucky. Her TiMER tells her she won't meet Mr. Right for about 20 more years. While Steph sows her wild oats, resigned not to commit to a relationship, Oona, approaching 30, obsesses over her TiMER. Oona meets a cute younger guy working at the local supermarket, but Mikey (John Patrick Amedori of Gossip Girl) already has a TiMER, and it's set to go off in a few months. "Life is about detours," he tells her, but Oona's not convinced. Meanwhile, Steph meets dashing and TiMER-less Dan (Desmond Harrington, also of Gossip Girl). Dan is interested in Steph, but she knows he's not "the one" for her, so she tries to set him up with Oona. Timer also features JoBeth Williams as Oona's mom. The film had its world premiere at the ~2009 Tribeca Film Festival, and was shown on demand in conjunction with the 2010 festival at the time of its theatrical release.

Part Time Work of a Domestic Slave - Acclaimed German New Wave director Alexander Kluge helmed this groundbreaking feminist drama starring his sister Alexandra, which later became the filmmaker's best-known work. She plays Rosewitha Bronski, a mother and housewife-cum-factory worker, who moonlights as an abortionist. Her world is a veritable maelstrom of chaos, marked by screaming children; an obnoxious, demanding, ne'er-do-well husband; and tumult at a factory caught up in the throes of corporate relocation. Meanwhile, at the abortion clinic, doctors have begun refusing to pay referral fees, which puts Rosewitha in an extraordinarily challenging position. Kluge's innovation relies in handling this emotionally-charged material in a cool, detached and matter-of-fact style that interpolates extensive voiceover to critique and reflect on the central character's life-choices and attitudes.

Death Race 2000 - Cult hero Paul Bartel directed this low-budget satire in which America's passion for cars, violence, and sporting events are finally brought together in one convenient package. In the not-so-distant future, the United States has become a totalitarian regime overseen by the charming but sinister Mr. President (Sandy McCallum), who, in order to satisfy the masses' need for entertainment (and to quench their thirst for violence), has created a new national sport -- the Death Race, a nationwide road rally in which the winner is not determined by who finishes first, but by who scores the most points along the way by running over hapless pedestrians. Aspiring champions Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), Nero the Hero (Martin Kove), and Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins) are all looking to take the top honors away from Frankenstein (David Carradine), a half-man/half-machine who has been built to be the best racer on Earth and can outrun and outkill anyone on the circuit. However, not everyone likes the Death Race, and revolutionary leader Thomasina Paine (Harriet Medin) wants to sabotage the event in the name of restoring democracy; her plan is to foil Frankenstein's expected victory by smuggling her daughter Annie (Simone Griffeth) into Frankenstein's race car as his navigator. Featuring David Carradine at the height of his Kung Fu fame (and Sylvester Stallone a year before Rocky), Death Race 2000 was a major drive-in hit in 1975; Bartel and Carradine teamed up for another road race movie, Cannonball, a year later, and a semi-sequel, Death Sport, appeared in 1978.

Krik? Krak! Tales of a Nightmare - This unusual documentary examines the political and spiritual facets of Haitian culture in the post-Duvalier era. A voodoo priest explains the difference between white and black magic. Haitians talking of escaping the government oppression realize their lives could be endangered, and film footage shows boat people being washed up on the coast of Florida. The cameras go to Fort Dimanche prison, called by many human rights advocates as the worst in the world. Corpses of victims and the living dead who will soon join them provide a harrowing scene that mirror a country filled with corruption, violence, and voodoo.

E.T. : The Extra-Terrestrial - Both a classic movie for kids and a remarkable portrait of childhood, E.T. is a sci-fi adventure that captures that strange moment in youth when the world is a place of mysterious possibilities (some wonderful, some awful), and the universe seems somehow separate from the one inhabited by grown-ups. Henry Thomas plays Elliott, a young boy living with his single mother (Dee Wallace), his older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton), and his younger sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore). Elliott often seems lonely and out of sorts, lost in his own world. One day, while looking for something in the back yard, he senses something mysterious in the woods watching him. And he's right: an alien spacecraft on a scientific mission mistakenly left behind an aging botanist who isn't sure how to get home. Eventually Elliott puts his fears aside and makes contact with the "little squashy guy," perhaps the least threatening alien invader ever to hit a movie screen. As Elliott tries to keep the alien under wraps and help him figure out a way to get home, he discovers that the creature can communicate with him telepathically. Soon they begin to learn from each other, and Elliott becomes braver and less threatened by life. E.T. rigs up a communication device from junk he finds around the house, but no one knows if he'll be rescued before a group of government scientists gets hold of him. In 2002, Steven Spielberg re-released E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial in a revised edition, with several deleted scenes restored and digitally refurbished special effects.

Wolf Moon - A small town girl falls for a handsome drifter who suffers from a sinister family curse in this lycanthropic love story featuring Sid Haig, Lin Shaye, and Billy Drago. Amy didn't know what she was in for when she first crossed paths with Dan, she only knew that he was all she could ever want in a man. But Dan has a secret, and the only people who know it are Bender and an ex-policeman named Thibodeaux. Thibodeaux has witnessed the horror of Dan's family curse firsthand, and he's determined that it doesn't get passed on to the next generation. Perhaps with a little help from some heavily armed locals, Thibodeaux will finally be able to break the curse under the light of the next full moon.

She’s Out Of My League - An airport security guard gets involved with a girl who's very obviously of a higher caliber than himself, and schemes to make the relationship last as his friends and family watch along in disbelief. Kirk (Jay Baruchel) was languishing in a dead-end job as an airport security agent when he somehow managed to earn the affections of the successful and drop-dead gorgeous Molly (Alice Eve). Even Kirk isn't exactly sure what Molly sees in him, though he's willing to do whatever it takes to make the relationship work. With his friends, family, and ex-girlfriend all watching stunned from the sidelines, Kirk discovers that he'll have to work overtime in order to convince Molly that he's worth hanging on to.

Red Desert - Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso) once more combines the considerable talents of director Michelangelo Antonioni and star Monica Vitti. Cast as Giuliana, an unhappy wife, Vitti suffers from an unnamed form of depression and malaise. Her quicksilver emotional shifts disturb everyone around her, but they, like she, pretend that nothing is truly wrong. British engineer Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris) seems to understand what Giuliana is really after in life, and he acts upon it by entering into an affair with the troubled woman. Giuliana eventually comes to terms with her physical and mental pain, but this hardly means that she's "cured" in the conventional sense. Monica Vitti's sense of isolation is heightened by Antonioni's (and cinematographer Carlo DiPalma's) choice of colors, and especially by Carlo Savina's bizarre electronic musical score. This is a landmark movie in Antonioni's effort to portray alienated individuals in contemporary life; he places people against towering forms of technology to emphasize their smallness and lostness in the modern world of technological change.

Good Guy - After executive producing the acclaimed documentary Manda Bala and the J.M. Coetzee adaptation Disgrace, Julio DePietro makes his feature debut as a writer-director with The Good Guy, a drama about ambitious young Wall Streeters fighting each other -- and sometimes their own decent nature -- to get ahead in the world. Our narrator, Tommy (Scott Porter of TV's Friday Night Lights), is young, clever, charming, and attractive. He's got a smart, pretty girlfriend, Beth (Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls), an urban conservationist. He's also very good at his investment broker job, impressing his ruthless, cynical boss, Cash (erstwhile "Brat Pack" member Andrew McCarthy). When a key member of Tommy's sales team suddenly leaves for a competitor, Tommy needs to fill his spot quickly, and takes a chance on the bumbling Daniel (Bryan Greenberg, Bride Wars), a former Marine and computer geek who seems a bit naïve about high finance and a bit nervous around women. Tommy takes Daniel under his wing, showing him how to dress, where to socialize, and how to charm attractive women. Their relationship is threatened when Daniel begins spending more time with Beth, joining her book club, and becoming her confidant. Tommy begins to question his decision to share his wisdom with Daniel, while Daniel is forced to decide what success really means to him, and where his loyalties lie. The Good Guy also stars Anna Chlumsky (In the Loop) and Aaron Yoo (Disturbia). The film had its world premiere at the ~2009 Tribeca Film Festival.

[LunaDonna]

Riverworld...is that the same as the SyFy series?

[Zen Elipsys]

I hope so...