Five ordinary people needed a miracle. Then one night Faye Riley left the window open. When an unscrupulous real estate developer sends thugs into a deteriorating tenement to get rid of the last five tenants they need nothing short of a miracle to stay where they are. In this delightful fantasy presented by Steven Spielberg little stands between the brave holdouts and the street. But one night when all hope seems lost tiny visitors from outer space mysteriously glide th
If, as they say, you're in a certain mood, Message in a Bottle can be just the ticket. Based on Nicholas Sparks' bestselling novel, this handsome but overly calculated romantic tale stars Robin Wright Penn as Theresa, a Chicago Tribune researcher who finds a note encased in a green bottle that has floated onto a Cape Cod shore. The message within is a heartfelt, yearning declaration of love to a woman named Catherine but the author is unknown until Theresa (rather improbably) tracks him down in North Carolina. He's Garret Blake (Kevin Costner), a taciturn builder of sailboats and a grieving widower whose late wife, poetically speaking, was the intended recipient of the seafaring note Theresa found. Theresa, a divorcée with a son, decides to meet Garret, only to find him as bottled-up as his message. Nevertheless, a romance blooms on the strength of quality time in a sailboat and lots of cuddling, though the script tosses in bits of conflict to keep their relationship spicy. Directed by Luis Mandoki (When a Man Loves a Woman), this love story is entirely by the numbers, with Costner inhabiting (rather than performing) a stock fantasy of a man perfect in every way save his broken heart. Penn brings more vibrancy to her equally predictable part but fortunately for all, Paul Newman, John Savage, Robbie Coltrane and Illeana Douglas are on hand in nicely textured character parts. Sometimes predictability is exactly what one wants when settling in for an evening of home video, and this movie fits the bill nicely. The appealing cinematography is by ace cameraman Caleb Deschanel. --Tom Keogh
The Adventures Of Huck Finn is an action-packed adaptation of Mark Twain's classic adventure. The unforgettable story of two unlikely friends a mischievous boy and a runaway slave on a wild trip down the mighty Mississippi River. On their treacherous journey to freedom they come across an entertaining assortment of diverse characters and face one incredible adventure after another. You won't want to miss this sensational telling of Twain's classic tale - a fun-filled mix of thrills and adventure!
Bob a troubled but loveable therapy patient who fears everything calls upon a noted psychiatrist who helps him overcome his fears. When the doctor takes a quiet family holiday in New Hampshire Bob terrified of being alone keeps popping up unexpectedly at the family's retreat. That's right about when the fun begins....
Fabulously successful LA divorce attorney Miles Massey is missing something from life when he meets much-divorced Marilyn Rexroth. Cue the mother of all battles of the sexes as the two square off, personally and professionally.
No review of Lawn Dogs can adequately describe this extraordinary movie, nor can the title or any simple synopsis. In fact, there's no way of knowing what Lawn Dogs is really about until the very end when the last 90-minutes takes on a whole new significance. The basic story follows the formation and fruition of a simple friendship. Devon (astounding newcomer Mischa Barton) is a 10-year-old girl born to glamour magazine identikit parents who live in the plush US suburban Camelot Gardens Estate. Trent (Sam Rockwell) is a 20-something lawnmower man whom everyone considers trash and who lives in a forest trailer. As secret friends they fill the holes in one another's lives. She has no other friends because she thinks "other kids smell like TV". It's all perfectly sweet and innocent. But naturally there's no way the uptight neighbourhood would perceive it that way. A creeping sense of doom begins to overtake events; but it is where this seemingly obvious tale twists at the end that makes the community's darker quirks a revelation. On the DVD: Lawn Dogs on disc comes in a 16:9 transfer that retains the superb cinematography of endlessly stretching flat horizons. The three-channel sound is equally of benefit to a subtle bluesy score. Regrettably the only extra is a trailer. As a winner at numerous International Film Festivals, this picture really deserved something more. --Paul Tonks
In the game of life play the cards you're dealt... Dealt a painful lesson when he blows his hard-earned savings in a high-stakes underground card club master poker player Mike (Damon) thinks he's played his final hand when he gives up gambling for law school and a fresh start with his beautiful girlfriend (Gretchen Mol). But then his best buddy (Norton) gets out of prison and in over his head with a ruthless Russian card shark (John Malkovich). From there Mike's strong se
Message In A Bottle: Grieving widower Garret Blake builds boats for a living. Rebuilding his life - that's another matter. But that's before Theresa Osborne comes to his North Carolina village. Theresa a lonely divorcee and researcher for the Chicago Tribune knows Garret is the author of the message she found inside a bottle on Cape Cod beach. And she knows the message spoke to her in a way that profoundly touched her heart. Kevin Costner as Garret and Robin Wright Penn as T
Huckleberry Finn's age has been scaled down in this 1993 Disney film in order to accommodate star Elijah Wood's young years at the time. But that is not the only concession Mark Twain's great American novel must make to Disney revisionism. Wood's Huck, as adapted for the screen by writer-director Stephen Sommers, is all rascal and only nominally a philosopher, which takes a lot of the soul out of Twain's extraordinary story about Huck's enlightenment while travelling with the slave Jim (Courtney B. Vance) along the Mississippi river. Big chunks of the journey are also minimised in significance, and not just for the sake of storytelling economy. Jason Robards Jr and Robbie Coltrane brighten things up, but overall this is an unnecessarily simplified version of a literary classic. --Tom Keogh
Christopher 'Barking Mad' Walken in his first leading role. In this his first leading role Christopher Walken plays a misfit G.I. who finds himself as a guinea pig in a bizarre brain research experiment. A compelling tale of mind-numbing drugs boisterous soldiers and a sinister German scientist. Hailed as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest meets A Clockwork Orange The Mind Snatchers is adapted from the Broadway play The Happiness Cage and features a very young Walken showing his early talent for spontaneous menace giving a chilling performance as Private James Reese who has his mental stability stolen from him. It seems that Walken never really got it back as he went on to build an illustrious film career playing killers gangsters and plain barking mad psychos. Reese is a constant offender sociopathic bordering on schizophrenic. His wild behaviour means he has inadvertently caught the attention of the army shrinks who have sinister plans for him. A German scientist Dr. Frederick (Joss Ackland) is working on a way to pacify overly aggressive soldiers by developing implants that directly stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain. Reese is 'volunteered' by his superiors for the secret medical experiment and finds himself in a military hospital. There are two other patients only one of whom Sgt. Boford Miles (Ronny Cox) can speak. Reese's attempts to discover the nature of the experiment are unsuccessful - he knows that Miles and the other patient have fatal diseases and that the work has been sanctioned by The Major (Ralph Meeker) but when enlightenment finally comes Reese wishes he had been kept from the truth after all. In 1970 Walken had screentested for the Ryan O'Neil part in Love Story. They didn't think he was right for the part but things could have been so very different if they had. Following a brief appearance in The Anderson Tapes as Sean Connery's sidekick Walken's mesmerisingly dark performance in The Mind Snatchers in 1972 meant that he was never going to play the romantic lead and instead went on to become our favourite screen weirdo. Daring Brilliant - NEW YORK TIMES
Based on the true experiences of Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl who wrote eloquently of them in a widely circulated 2004 article Taking Chance is a profoundly emotional look at the military rituals taken to honor its war dead as represented by a fallen Marine killed in Iraq Lance Corporal Chance Phelps. Working as a strategic analyst at Marine Corps Base Quantico in VA Lt. Col. Strobl (Kevin Bacon) learns that Phelps had once lived in his hometown and volunteers to escort the body to its final resting place in Wyoming. As Strobl journeys across America he discovers the great diligence and dignity in how the military and all those involved with preparing and transporting the body handle their duties. Equally important he encounters hundreds of people affected by Chances death a vast majority of whom never knew him. This collective grieving eventually causes Lt. Col. Strobl a veteran of Desert Storm now assigned to office duty to probe his own guilt about not re-deploying to Iraq for the current conflict. Arriving in Wyoming Lt. Col. Strobl completes his catharsis when he encounters Chances gracious family and friends and discovers an extraordinary outpouring of community support.
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