The weekly list is not exhaustive, in addition to the items listed, each month we are receiving several hundred titles not included on these lists. New movies are added on a daily basis... lots of them!
Ayn Rand In Her Own Words (2011): Revealing the surprising life story of one of the world's most influential minds, this unprecedented film weaves together Ayn Rand's own recollections and reflections, and draws upon never-before-seen or heard materials from archives of the Ayn Rand Estate.
The Chronicles of Narnia – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010): Return to the magic and wonder of C. S. Lewis' epic world in this third installment of the beloved Chronicles of Narnia fantasy-adventure series. When Lucy and Edmund Pensive, along with their cousin Eustace, are swallowed into a painting and transported back to Narnia, they join King Caspian and a noble mouse named Reepicheep aboard the magnificent ship The Dawn Treader. The courageous voyagers travel to mysterious islands, confront mystical creatures, and reunite with the Great Lion Aslan and a mission that will determine the fate of Narnia itself!
The Chosen One (2007): Feature length animated film about a loser who becomes a ninja, robot, monster fighting savior?
The Heroes of Telemark (1965): It is 1942 and Norway is under the thumb of the Nazis. In a Norwegian factory, Nazis are producing "heavy water," an essential element in the production of atomic weapons. The leader of the Norwegian underground is enlisted by British intelligence to aid in destroying the factory.
How to Make Love to a Woman (2010): Josh Meyers and Krysten Ritter star in this romantic comedy.
I Love You Phillip Morris (2009): Jim Carrey in his “best performance” as a gay con man. Co-stars Ewan McGregor.
The Night of the Generals (1968): Omar Sharif stars as a German intelligence officer who sets out to find the murderer of a prostitute who was also a secret agent. Focusing on three generals who were the girl's clients, Sharif obsessively attempts to prove one of them guilty of the crime. His attempts fail, until another prostitute is killed and Peter O'Toole is exposed as the psychotic general.
I Vinti (1953): Triptych of murder in an early film by Michelangelo Antonioni.
Wallenberg A Hero’s Story (1985): Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story is an incredibly riveting, Emmy award winning fact based story about a hero who helped over 100,000 Hungarian Jews escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
TELEVISION
Any Human Heart (2010): An adaptation of William Boyd's best-selling novel, Any Human Heart tells the story of Logan Mountstuart's long and rackety life, one which spans every decade of the twentieth century. 4 Part mini-series stars Jim Broadbent and features Gillian Anderson
Bill Moyers – The Language of Life (1995): An 8 part series on poets and their work. The magic of the spoken word takes center stage in this exhilarating eight-part series that showcases contemporary poets and their work. Join host Bill Moyers as he engages 18 writers—including greats Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, and Gary Snyder--in lively conversation, and share the experience of hearing them read aloud before a live audience. Produced and directed by Emmy®-winning documentarian David Grubin and filmed on location at the fifth biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in historic Waterloo, New Jersey, The Language of Life combines intimate, one-on-one interviews and public performances--several with musical accompaniment by the famed Paul Winter Consort. Featured poets include National Book Award honorees, Pulitzer Prize winners, and a former U.S. Poet Laureate. Collectively, the writers here testify to the full range of human experience and poetry’s power to inspire, redeem, and celebrate life.
How the World was Made Season 2: Spectacular on-location shooting, evidence from geologists in the field, and clear, dramatic graphics combine in SEASON TWO of this stunning series from HISTORY to show how immensely powerful, and at times violent, forces of geology have formed our planet. This season, HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE goes back in history from 4.5 billion years ago to today peeling back layers of rock, filling up river canyons, parting the oceans, and leveling mountains and volcanoes to investigate the origins of some of the most well-known locations and geological phenomena in the world. With rocks as their clues and volcanoes, ice sheets and colliding continents as their suspects, scientists launch a forensic investigation that will help viewers visualize how the Earth has evolved and formed over millions of years.
KJB – King James Bible (2010): Acclaimed actor John Rhys-Davies visits landmarks, explains relics and leads us back into a darker time to discover this fascinating tale of saints and sinners, power and passion, as the greatest translation of Holy Scripture emerges into a world and culture that would never be quite the same again.
Nova: Deadliest Earthquakes Haiti and Chile (2011): Timely Nova documentary.
Sarah Palin’s Alaska (2010): Sarah Palin's Alaska takes viewers into the country's 'final frontier' through the eyes of one of its most famous citizens - Sarah Palin. Sarah is joined by various family members as she shares the state she knows and loves. Along with Alaska's great wilderness, the Palins encounter Alaska's fascinating residents and share what its takes to thrive in the country's largest state.
NEW RELEASES ON BLU-RAY!
A.I – Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Carlos (2010) import
The Cove (2009)
I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)
Little Fockers (2010)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Tron (1982)
Tron Legacy (2010)
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NEW ARRIVALS (DVD)
(New to the store, but available as 7 day rentals)
Betty Blue (1986): Sex and sunlight are on ample display in Betty Blue, director Jean-Jacques Beineix's passionate look at mad love. (Every French director is contractually required to make at least one movie about l'amour fou.) It begins at the seashore, where handyman and failed novelist Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) has his life electrified by Betty, a woman whose sense of abandon frequently tips over into the pathological. This was the role that introduced gap-toothed, voluptuous Beatrice Dalle to the world, and neither Dalle nor the world has ever quite recovered. Traces of Beineix's preciousDiva are still present, though this is a darker and more memorable ride, especially in the three-hour "version integrale" that restores an hour of footage. Its copious nude scenes are a drawing card, but stick around for the age-old alchemy of life translated into art. Gabriel Yared's score is a favorite of movie-soundtrack mavens, especially its haunting piano theme.
The Blot (1921): The scholarly and underpaid Professor Griggs and his family live in genteel poverty in a small college town. To help out the family, beautiful young Amelia Griggs (Claire Windsor) works in the public library. Next-door to the Griggs are the Olsens, a large and lively family of immigrants living high on the hog, thanks to a thriving shoemaking business. Amelia attracts the attentions of Phil West, the son of a college trustee and her father’s laziest and naughtiest student. His rival for Amelia’s affection is Reverend Gates, a gentle, sincere and impecunious minister.
When Amelia falls ill from overwork, her mother tries to nurse her back to health. With the cupboards bare, the very proper Mrs. Griggs is sorely tempted to steal a chicken from her neighbor’s kitchen. The ensuing commotion turns out to be a blessing in disguise…
Defending Your Life (1991): Immediately following his death by bus, Daniel finds himself in the afterlife facing his past. If you can't make a case for having lived a full and fearless superb music score won an Academy Award.s life, you must go back to Earth and try again. But Daniel doesn't want to go back after he meets Julia in this heavenly fable written and directed by Albert Brooks.
Disclosure (1994): Michael Crichton's bestselling novel was both a high-tech thriller and source of controversy with its hot-button plot about a man's charge of sexual harassment against a female colleague and former lover. The movie, directed by Barry Levinson, turned these issues into a prurient thriller gussied up in glossy production values, virtual reality computer graphics, and steamy sex between Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Having cornered the market on roles for men whose brains are located south of their waistline, Douglas is well cast as the computer-industry guy who loses a plush promotion to the opportunistic Moore, and he's perfected the expression of paranoid panic. If you don't think about it too much, this is one of those films that can draw you into its manipulative web and really grab your attention. Disclosure is more entertaining than thought provoking (because the filmmakers basically danced around the story's potential controversy), but there's enough star power and visual glitz to make this an enjoyable ride.
Leo the Last (1970): Prince Leo, last in the line of rulers of a long-deposed monarchy on continental Europe and jaded with the frenetic search for kicks with the European jet-set, returns to his father's London town house for rest. With him are social-climber Margaret, to whom he is engaged, and Laszlo, who is planning a counter revolution which will restore Leo to the kingship of the monarchy. Leo is shocked to discover the one exclusive neighborhood has degenerated into a ghetto inhabited mainly by poor blacks on the brink of desperation. His nearest neighbors are the Mardi family and their beautiful daughter, Salambo, who catches his eye as does her boy friend the procurer Roscoe. Using the excuse of watching birds he watches them closely through field glasses with the coolness and detachment of a scientist watching insects under a magnifying glass. When Salambo is forced to become a whore in order to keep her family together, Leo, despite the pleadings of Margaret and Laszlo who has just about finished the steps toward the restoration, does something of which he always though himself incapable of.
Lorna (1964): Lorna has been married to Jim for a year, but still hasn't been satisfied sexually. While Jim is working at the salt mine, she is raped by an escaped convict, but falls in lust with him. Meanwhile Jim's buddies are giving him a hard time about Lorna's supposed infidelity, not realizing how close to the mark they really are. Trouble starts when Jim gets home early from work because it's their anniversary.
Love Field (1992): On November 22, 1963, America lost a president and a generation lost its innocence. Michelle Pfeiffer (What Lies Beneath) is superb (The Hollywood Reporter) in this 'thoroughly captivating (Rex Reed) film about an interracial friendship set against the back drop of a nation both divided by prejudice and united by sorrow. Dallas housewife Lurene Hallett (Pfeiffer) feels such a strong personal connection to her idol, Jackie Kennedy, that when JFK is assassinated, she defies her husband and takes an eastbound bus, determined to be there for Jackie at the funeral. On board she meets a mysterious black man traveling with a sad, silent little girl. But when Lurene realizes thathe's given her a false name, she fears she's uncovered a kidnapping plot! As a result of her well-intentioned meddling, the trio end up on the run from the police and, ultimately, on the road to a deep friendship that defies racial boundaries and changes each of them forever.
Mudhoney (1965): It's 1933, in the midst of the Depression and Prohibition. Calif, a stranger with a past walks into Spooner, Missouri on his way from Michigan to California. He hires on with Lute Wade to earn some travelling money, but gets entangled in a bad family situation: Lute's daughter is married to Sidney, a good-for-nothing drunk that frequents the rural equivalent of a whorehouse and beats his wife and is just waiting for Lute to kick the bucket to get his money. When Sidney and a local wacko preacher begin orchestrating a smear campaign against Calif, he finds it difficult to conceal his past and his growing affection for Sidney's wife.
Ren & Stimpy - The Lost Episodes (1991): After a ten year hiatus, John K. resurrected his classic cartoon for Spike TV – no holds barred. Witness the cartoons he always wanted to make, uncensored and out of control. Deemed too hot to handle by Spike execs, these episodes are now available on DVD – be warned: this is not your baby-brother’s Ren & Stimpy!
Tesis (Thesis, 1996): Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar grabbed the attention of American audiences with his dreamy thriller Open Your Eyes, but he earlier sent shock waves throughout Spain in 1996 with this disturbing debut. Thesis is a quietly creepy psychological thriller about a young college student, Ángela (Ana Torrent) investigating the social fascination with sensational violence for her thesis project. In her search for violent video footage, she stumbles onto what may be a real live snuff film, a videotape that her professor was watching before his untimely death. With the help of a geeky gore junkie she uncovers a conspiracy that may include her handsome but sinister new boyfriend, her thesis advisor, and even her weirdo partner. When she uncovers one too many secrets lying in the catacombs of the university basement, she realizes that she may be the next victim. It goes on perhaps too long, and Amenábar's pointed observations on the lure of violence and the dark side of human nature are lost as the spiraling mystery spins into a first-person nightmare, but his skill at weaving a paranoid world where evil may lurk behind every friendly face is undeniable. Thesis is reminiscent of Brian De Palma's early thrillers: dark, stylish, subdued, and bubbling with the characters' guilty (and ultimately dangerous) fascination with the transgressive.
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965): In 2020, after the colonization of the moon, the spaceships Vega, Sirius and Capella are launched from Lunar Station 7. They are to explore Venus under the command of Professor Hartman, but an asteroid collides and explodes Capella. The leader ship Vega stays orbiting and sends the astronauts Kern and Sherman with the robot John to the surface of Venus, but they have problems with communication with Dr. Marsha Evans in Vega. The Sirius lands in Venus and Commander Brendan Lockhart, Andre Ferneau and Hans Walter explore the planet and are attacked by prehistoric animals. They use a vehicle to seek Kern and Sherman while collecting samples from the planet. Meanwhile John helps the two cosmonauts to survive in the hostile land.
White Wedding (2009): Set against South Africa’s breathtaking landscapes, WHITE WEDDING is a high-spirited modern day road comedy about love, commitment, intimacy, friendship, and the unbelievable obstacles that can get in the way of a fairy-tale ending. Ayanda (Zandie Msutwana) is just days away from her lifelong dream of a modern ‘white wedding,’ complete with a dazzling dress, dozens of bridesmaids, a flamboyant wedding planner and large reception at a fancy hotel. The only problem is that her husband-to-be, the sweet, committed Elvis (Kenneth Nkosi), is 1,000 miles away with his childhood friend and best-man Tumi (Rapulana Seiphemo). What should be a simple, straightforward journey gets seriously derailed, forcing Elvis, Tumi and Rose (Jodie Whittaker), a footloose English doctor they meet along the way to tackle directional mishaps, car accidents, a tag-along goat, and a potentially dangerous encounter with a bar full of redneck Afrikaners seemingly stuck in the era of Apartheid. Ultimately charmed by Elvis’ infectious spirit, everyone surrounding him becomes determined to get him to his destination. Meanwhile, poor Ayanda is watching her dream unravel as she wrestles with problems of her own -- from questioning whether there’s any truth to Elvis’ preposterous excuses of why he might not get to the church on time, being caught between European and African traditions as her mother (Sylvia Mngxekeza) has a very different idea about how the wedding should be orchestrated, and dealing with the unexpected arrival of Tony (Mbulelo Grootboom), a slick old boyfriend with a questionable agenda. WHITE WEDDING subtly interweaves South Africa’s history as bride, groom, friends and lovers are forced to look at the meaning of marriage, fidelity, honesty and the two sides to every story.
NEW ARRIVALS (BLU-RAY)
(New to the store, but available as 7 day rentals)
Coraline (2009) Blu-Ray: A dark and creepy film about family relationships directed by Henry Selick of Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach fame, Coraline is based on the haunting book Coraline by Neil Gaiman. The first stop-motion feature shot in stereoscopic 3-D, Coraline features big-headed, stick-bodied animated characters with huge eyes and demonic grins set against menacing backgrounds and an undercurrent of spooky music. Coraline is a teenager who has just moved to an old house in the middle of nowhere with her writer parents and she is bored, bored, bored. Her only companions are an annoyingly talkative boy Wybie (short for Why Born), some eccentric neighbors from the theater and circus, and a strange, button-eyed doll with a marked resemblance to Coraline which Wybie found in an old trunk of his grandmother's. When Coraline finds an old door hidden behind an armoire and papered over with wallpaper, she convinces her mother to unlock it, only to find a wall of bricks. When Coraline revisits the door later that night, the bricks magically disappear and she discovers a strange pathway to another world where everything is just what she wishes for. In stark contrast to the real world where Coraline's parents just don't have time for her, her "Other Mother" and "Other Father" in this alternate world are the perfect loving, attentive parents who anticipate her every need and desire. Initially comforted and quite happy in this new world, suspicion that things may not be quite as they seem grows inside Coraline and her disquiet is furthered by the mute "Other Wybie" and a strange-talking cat that seems to move between both worlds. Eventually, Coraline discovers some dark secrets about her "other parents" and the seemingly perfect "other world," but it may be too late for her to escape back to the real world. Teri Hatcher is especially effective in her dual (voice) role as Mom and "Other Mom" and Dakota Fanning also gives a great performance as Coraline. Coraline is a disturbing, intriguing film that both captivates and frightens. (Ages 11 and older)
Hannibal (2001) Blue-Ray: Part four in the Hannibal Lecter Quadrilogy. Having escaped the asylum in "Silence of the Lambs," Dr Lecter goes into hiding in Florence, Italy. Back in America, Mason Verger, an old victim of the doctor's, seeks revenge. Disfigured and confined to a life-support system, he plans to draw Lecter out of his hiding place, using the one thing he truly cares for: Clarice Starling.
Happy Together (1997) Blu-Ray: The expressionistic, stylized visual brilliance (courtesy of Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle) of Happy Together is so breathtaking and enveloping it nearly detracts from this startling, queasy, despairing glimpse at a gay relationship gone amok. Director Wong Kar-Wai (Chungking Express, Fallen Angels) won the Best Director Prize at Cannes in 1997--surprising many--but on viewing the film it's easy to see why. The subject matter may not be the easiest to swallow--any relationship on the rocks sometimes gets dirty and pathetically disturbing--but there is a universality to Happy Together that rings true and real and less like an edition of The Honeymooners than isolation tinged with the embarrassment of intimacy. Ho (Leslie Cheung) and Lai (Tony Leung) have left Hong Kong for Buenos Aires. The journey is another in Ho's attempts to "start over." But their initial optimism is short-lived, and once they become dislocated strangers in this strange land it only further thrusts the two into their already codependent, caretaking dark love affair. But like all crazy love, the trip through masochistic hell--from violence to apathy--leads to self-enlightenment, and Wong Kar-Wai's gorgeous, grasping film is true, tricky, difficult, and emotionally wrought, aided by Hong Kong superstars Cheung and Leung, who contribute greatly to creating a work that is exceptional--and lump-in-throat brutal--in image, story, and performance.
Moulin Rouge! (2001) Blu-Ray: A dazzling and yet frequently maddening bid to bring the movie musical kicking and screaming into the 21st century, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge bears no relation to the many previous films set in the famous Parisian nightclub. This may appear to be Paris in the 1890s, with can-can dancers, bohemian denizens like Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), and ribaldry at every turn, but it's really Luhrmann's pop-cultural wonderland. Everyone and everything is encouraged to shatter boundaries of time and texture, colliding and careening in a fast-cutting frenzy that thinks nothing of casting Elton John's "Your Song" 80 years before its time. Nothing is original in this kaleidoscopic, absinthe-inspired love tragedy--the words, the music, it's all been heard before. But when filtered through Luhrmann's love for pop songs and timeless showmanship, you're reminded of the cinema's power to renew itself while paying homage to its past.
Network (1976) Blu-Ray: Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But while Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of "reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, it's every bit as potent now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about the ratings frenzy at the cost of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight (who each won Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low ratings. His character's response is to announce he'll kill himself on live television two weeks hence. What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman's descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity. Dunaway plays the frigid, ratings-obsessed producer who pursues success with cold-blooded zeal; Holden is the married executive who tries to thaw her out during his own seething midlife crisis. Through it all, Chayefsky (via Finch) urges the viewer to repeat the now-famous mantra "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" to reclaim our humanity from the medium that threatens to steal it away.
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