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DVD
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Movie Releases February 25, 2005
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VHS
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Bambi (Disney Special Platinum
Edition) (1942)
It always comes up when people
are comparing their most traumatic movie experiences: "the
death of Bambi's mother," a recollection that can bring a
shudder to even the most jaded filmgoer. That primal separation
(which is no less stunning for happening off-screen) is the centerpiece
of Bambi, Walt Disney's 1942 animated classic, but it is by no
means the only bold stroke in the film.
DVD features
The little deer is over 60 years old, but he's never looked better.
The 1942 Disney film has been painstakingly restored for DVD so
that almost every trace of dirt and damage is gone, and the colors
are brilliant. |
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Flight of the Phoenix
(2004)
As superfluous remakes go, Flight of the Phoenix
could've been better, and could've been worse. It's
a passable popcorn adventure, especially for those
unfamiliar with the 1965 original, which starred
James Stewart, made headlines for the crash-landing
death of stunt-pilot Paul Mantz, and now stands as
a minor classic of its era. This flashy remake stars
Dennis Quaid in Stewart's role, adds a woman to the
list of plane-crash survivors, and showcases Giovanni
Ribisi, who gives a cleverly eccentric performance
as the model-airplane designer who proposes to rebuild
a crashed cargo plane into a single-engine escape
from certain death in the remote Gobi desert.
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The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
How many movies offer the rare spectacle of a parasailing pink
starfish flying over a crowd with a congratulatory pennant clenched
between his buttcheeks? And that's only the tip of the iceberg--The
SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is a freewheeling goof of a cartoon,
full of surreal twists as its diminutive heroes head down a dangerous
road to rescue the lost crown of King Neptune. SpongeBob (voiced
by Tom Kenny), an arrested adolescent in the mold of Pee-wee Herman,
works at a fast-food restaurant that serves something called Krabby
Patties (as the restaurant owner is himself a crab, it's not clear
what exactly they're made of). His best friend Patrick Starfish
(Bill Fagerbakke) lives under a rock and has an IQ in the lower
digits. Still, their friendship carries them through many a tight
spot as they strive for manliness. |
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Exorcist - The Beginning
"This movie is cursed!" exclaimed movie-magazine headlines
regarding Exorcist: The Beginning, but those dire warnings turned
out to be exaggerated. Considering a tumultuous production history
that actually did seem cursed, Renny Harlin's much-maligned prequel
to The Exorcist is a surprisingly competent, serious-minded shocker
filled with the same anxious foreboding that made the 1973 Exorcist
original so phenomenally effective. |
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Incident at Loch Ness
Nothing is quite as it seems in Incident at Loch Ness, an entertaining
pseudo-documentary comment on cinematic fakery. Conceived and directed
by Hollywood screenwriter Zak Penn, this half-clever ruse begins
with a master-stroke by casting German director Werner Herzog as
himself, preparing to film a documentary about Scotland's mysterious
Loch Ness monster. As this film-within-a-film is chronicled by
a documentary crew led by renowned cinematographer John Bailey, "producer" Penn
rises to apparently impossible heights of ineptitude, until it
becomes obvious (indeed, it's the film's near-fatal flaw) that
there is no "reality" here at all--just a very amusing
pile-up of falsehoods. Penn's onto something good here, and Herzog
is by far the film's greatest asset, maintaining a credible commitment
to the ruse with a hilarious and fiercely believable performance. |
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Movie: Ray
Jamie Foxx's uncannily
accurate performance isn't the only good thing about Ray. Riding
high on
a wave of Oscar
buzz, Foxx proved himself worthy of all the hype by portraying
blind R&B legend Ray Charles in a warts-and-all performance
that Charles approved shortly before his death in June 2004. Despite
a few dramatic embellishments of actual incidents (such as the
suggestion that the accidental drowning of Charles's younger brother
caused all the inner demons that Charles would battle into adulthood),
the film does a remarkable job of summarizing Charles's strengths
as a musical innovator and his weaknesses as a philandering heroin
addict who recorded some of his best songs while flying high as
a kite. |
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Shall We Dance?
Something got lost in translation from 1996's critically acclaimed
Japanese comedy, but the American remake of Shall We Dance? is
not without charms of its own. In being transplanted from Tokyo
to Chicago, the original version's subtle humor is shaken out of
its cultural context, but this is an otherwise faithful adaptation
in which a weary lawyer (Richard Gere) battles his mid-life crisis
with ballroom dancing lessons, while his wife (Susan Sarandon)
hires a private detective to see if he's cheating. Those expecting
a Jennifer Lopez showcase will be disappointed; her role as the
melancholy dance instructor keeps the beautifully lovelorn J-Lo
on the sidelines, while a cast of standard-issue supporting characters
(especially Stanley Tucci's clandestine faux-Latin dance lover)
provide a generous dose of Hollywood-ized comic relief. |
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The Grudge
It's not the scary hit that The
Ring was in 2002, but The Grudge makes a similarly convincing case
for American remakes of popular Japanese horror films. Barely a
year passed between the release of Takashi Shimizu's creepy ghost
story Ju-On: The Grudge and the production of this American remake,
set in Tokyo and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in her first post-Buffy
horror film. About the only significant difference between the
two films is the importing of a mostly-American cast (including
Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and Grace Zabriskie), but The Grudge
was reconfigured (by screenwriter Stephen Susco) to allow Shimizu
to refine and improve the spookiest highlights of his earlier version,
which enjoyed previous incarnations as a short film and two made-for-Japanese-video
features. |
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Mulan II
With less drama and more slapstick
than its predecessor, Disney's Mulan II continues the animated
saga of the young Chinese heroine, Fa Mulan (voiced by Ming-Na
Wen, sung by Lea Salonga). The story picks up one month after Mulan
has saved her country through bravery and determination. Revered
by all, she now returns to her village and becomes engaged to General
Li Shang. Wedding plans must wait, however, when the Emperor assigns
the couple to a secret mission to escort his three princess daughters
across China where their arranged marriages to waiting princes
will secure an alliance with a rival kingdom and save China from
invasion. Meanwhile, Mulan's wise-cracking guardian dragon, Mushu
(voiced by Mark Moseley), realizes that if Mulan's marriage takes
place, he is out of a job and so he undertakes his "18-phase
master plan" of relationship sabotage to breakup the happy
couple. |
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Bopha
In his directorial debut, actor
Morgan Freeman cast a knowing eye on the ways the racist apartheid
movement in South Africa--now demolished--divided South African
blacks even from each other in this story of a black policeman.
Danny Glover plays the cop, who believes he's trying to help his
people, even while serving as a pawn of the racist government.
When his son gets involved in the antiapartheid movement, he finds
himself torn between his family (including long-suffering wife
Alfre Woodard) and what he believes is his duty. A sorrowful, anger-tinged
film featuring a complex performance by the marvelous Glover, who
seems to come apart at the seams before your very eyes. |
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The Day of the Dolphin
Nominated for an Academy Award™,
The Day of the Dolphin stars George C. Scott as a scientist who
trains dolphins to speak, only to find them kidnapped for use in
a vicious assassination plot. This beautiful production of an exciting
adventure was executed by one of the only creative teams that could
pull it off: writer Buck Henry and director Mike Nichols (The Graduate,
Catch-22). Based on the novel by Robert Merle, the film is a nostalgic
favorite of the generation who grew up with Flipper. An effective
and at times amusing action flick, the film is available for the
first time in a special edition DVD featuring an astounding new
digital transfer enhanced for 16x9 televisions and a slew of charming
supplements. |
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