As adorable as she is ambitious Kate is determined to turn her mid-level advertising job into an executive position - and equally determined to snare Sam the agency's ultra-suave Romeo who prefers illicit affairs with attached women. She achieves both goals by pretending she's getting married to Nick a man she met at a wedding and barely knows. But her carefully constructed fictional life comes face to face with reality when her boss wants to meet Nick sending Kate's personal and
Based on the acclaimed book by neurologist Oliver Sacks, director Penny Marshall's hit 1990 drama Awakenings stars Robin Williams as Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Sayer is a neurologist who discovers that the drug L-Dopa can be used to "unlock" patients in a mental hospital from the mysterious sleeping sickness that has left them utterly immobilized. Leonard (Robert De Niro) is one such patient who awakens after being in a comatose state for 30 years, leaving Sayer to guide Leonard in adjusting to the world around him. Penelope Ann Miller costars as the daughter of another patient, with whom Leonard falls tenuously in love. Earning Oscar nominations for best picture, actor and screenplay, this moving fact-based drama was a hit with critics and audiences alike. --Jeff Shannon
Made in 1989 and set 15 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Jacknife tells the story of alcoholic trucker Dave (Ed Harris) who lives with his sister Martha (Kathy Baker). Robert De Niro is Megs, Dave's ex-'Nam sidekick who re-enters his life on the promise of a fishing trip. Megs and Martha embark on a tentative courtship to the seething fury of Dave, who considers Megs "bad news". However, through wartime flashbacks it soon becomes clear that his hitting the bottle is a means of bottling up his feelings about Vietnam, Megs and their mutual buddy Bobby, killed in action. Ruminative and romantic, Jacknife slow-burns its predictable though satisfying way to its resolution, the three main players carrying the burdens of their roles with admirable restraint, especially Ed Harris, whose rage is internalised at the expense of his liver. There are echoes of The Deerhunter but this is not a film of that order or scale, as its low-budget synthesiser soundtrack signifies, feeling at times like a superior made-for-TV affair. On the DVD: A full-screen version with a ratio of 4:3. Neither sound nor picture quality are exactly a showcase for DVD technology, both being a little fuzzy, while the dubbing goes noticeably awry on 42 minutes. Special features are decidedly un-special: the original, lugubrious trailer plus "talent profiles" which are merely lists of the main players' previous films. --David Stubbs
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