Days of Thunder (DVD)
Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) is a young, cocky hotshot with little stock car driving experience and a lot of raw talent. Trickles uncanny ability to make all the right moves on the racetrack wins him the backing of Tim Dolan (Randy Quaid), who wants to put him in a car. Eventually he wins the support of grizzled former driver Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall), a NASCAR legend who sees that Trickle has the potential to be a great driver. Determined to make it to the top, Trickle develops a healthy rivalry with veteran racer Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker). Along the way, he romances Dr. Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman), a beautiful neurosurgeon. Hogges mentoring (and a potential tragedy) leads Trickle through the dramatic process of self-discovery, which ultimately makes him a better driver. Directed by Tony Scott, DAYS OF THUNDER is reminiscent of his TOP GUN, the film that rocketed Cruise to stardom. Scott uses spectacular driving and racing scenes in this film, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound.PG"
Director: Tony Scott
ACTORS: Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes
Dirty Pretty Things
Dirty Pretty Things marks the screenwriting debut of Steve Knight, co-creator of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Director Stephen Frears returns to the grittier themes of his earlier films for the urban thriller Dirty Pretty Things. Residing in London, the medically trained Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian immigrant working as a taxi driver and a hotel concierge, but he still lives on the edge of poverty. He shares a room with Senay (Amilie's Audrey Tautou making her English-language debut), a Turkish refugee who works as a maid at the hotel. As illegal immigrants, Okwe and Senay live in fear of being deported. One night, working at the front desk, Okwe receives a call from prostitute Juliette (Sophie Okonedo) to check a broken toilet, where he makes a horrifying discovery. He reports it to the manager Sneaky (Sergi Lopez), who blackmails Okwe into staying quiet about it. Okwe soon discovers the presence of a shady business operation that sends him into the seedy London underworld. Senay becomes lured in with hopes of being able to fund her escape to America. Dirty Pretty Things marks the screenwriting debut of Steve Knight, co-creator of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Andrea LeVasseur
Titanic: Disaster In The Atlantic & The Titanic Chronicles (DVD) DVD Double Feature An historical presentation of the Titantic disaster produced in 1929.
An historical presentation of the Titantic disaster produced in 1929.
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Man With a Movie Camera (DVD) Remastered by the BFI; New Score by Michael Nyman Not merely a cinematic portrait of a day in the life of a city, cinema pioneer Dziga Vertovs MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is an experimental manifesto of vision. Controversial when it was ...
Not merely a cinematic portrait of a day in the life of a city, cinema pioneer Dziga Vertovs MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is an experimental manifesto of vision. Controversial when it was created in 1929, the film still pulses with the unruly energy and innovation of Vertovs genius. Subverting and criticizing the conventions of capitalist fiction filmmaking that he so despised, Vertov and his revolutionary Kino-Eye crew (including his wife as editor and his brother as cameraman--both of whom appear in the film) created a plethora of filmic devises in order to comment on vision, life, Marxism, and modernity. Differing film speeds, superimposition, evocative and manipulative editing, and rhythmic graphic composition all blend seamlessly in a magic show of life above and below the city. Shooting shops, traffic, children, coal miners, workers, human bodies, and nature, Vertov creates visual rhymes and graphic portraits of the structure of life and the explosion of perception. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA took part in the city symphony genre that was popular at the time (BERLIN: SYMPHONIE OF A GREAT CITY is another example) but transcended it in its critical distance, sheer innovation, and sublimely fluid vision of man, machine, and society.
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Director: Dziga Vertov
This Property Is Condemned (DVD)
Sydney Pollack directs this steamy melodrama co-scripted by Francis Ford Coppola from a play by Southern Gothic maestro Tennessee Williams. Robert Redford stars as Owen Legate, a handsome railroad official who comes to Depression-era Dodson, Mississippi, to shut down the local rail yard and lay off its already struggling employees. When Legate begins a passionate affair with town flirt Alva Starr (Natalie Wood)--a small town girl with big dreams of escaping her dead-end surroundings--the romance angers Alva`s domineering mother (Kate Reid) and ignites the town`s economic resentments, provoking an act of revenge against the lovers.NR"
Director: Sydney Pollack
ACTORS: Robert Redford, Natalie Wood, Kate Reid, Charles Bronson, Dabney Coleman
