Beat (DVD)
Courtney Love stars as Joan Vollmer, the second wife of writer William S. Burroughs (Keifer Sutherland), in this picturesque look at death and travel among a group of travelling college students who would go on to become the best-known of the Beat writers. Leading up to her shooting death in a bizarre William Tell-type stunt attempted by her husband, Joan spends time in Mexico with her two children, ponders her future with her philandering husband, and is visited by Allen Ginsburg (Ron Livingston), Jack Kerouac (Daniel Martinez), and UPI journalist Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus).R"
Director: Gary Walkow
ACTORS: Kiefer Sutherland, Courtney Love, Ron Livingston, Norman Reedus, Kyle Secor
Living Out Loud (DVD)
A touching drama about a relationship that forms between a recently divorced nurse (Hunter) and her building`s elevator operator (Devito). Queen Latifah sparks the film every time she makes an appearance. Good, solid filmmaking that relies on characters and dialogue, not special effects, to make its impact.R"
Director: Richard LaGravenese
ACTORS: Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito, Queen Latifah, Martin Donovan, Richard Schiff
Larryboy and the Angry Eyebrows (DVD)
Awful Alvin enacts a plague of bat-like eyebrows upon the town of Bumblyburg. This causes the custodial cucumber Larry to transform into Larryboy, the superhero. A lesson in the release of anger and the tolerance of this emotion in others is woven into this supernatural tale. This aimated series derived from the VEGGIE TALES character.NR"
Director: Tom Bancroft
Street Scene (DVD)
King Vidor described his adaptation of Elmer Rice`s Pulitzer Prize-winning play as one of his experiments like OUR DAILY BREAD and THE CROWD, films from which he did not expect huge box-office numbers. Retaining the play`s unities of time and place, the film is set in a lower middle class New York neighborhood during the 1920s. It stars Sylvia Sidney as Rose Maurrant, a young woman whose parents` marriage is heading for disaster. All the neighbors are well aware that her mother (Estelle Taylor) is carrying on with bill collector Steve Sankey (Russell Hopton), but her alcoholic husband, Frank (David Landau), is still in the dark. All that changes when he returns to his apartment by surprise and catches the pair en flagrante. The fallout from this tragedy has a devastating effect on all members of the family, particularly Rose. Vidor powerfully evokes the stifling claustrophobia of young people trapped in such a neighborhood, and as he records the varying reactions of the neighbors to the incident, one feels oneself being enclosed in a prison of prying faces.NR"
Director: King Vidor
ACTORS: Sylvia Sidney, William Collier, Estelle Taylor, David Landau, Beulah Bondi
The Missiles of October (VHS)
A dramatic re-creation of the events of October, 1962 which culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. This Golden Laurel award-winning dramatization is based on all available historical records.NR"
Director: Anthony Page
ACTORS: William Devane, Ralph Bellamy, Howard Da Silva, Martin Sheen
