Average customer review:
The Blind Side
Directed by John Lee Hancock
Average customer review:
The Blind Side
The Blind Side takes the true story of a young man who went from abandonment to success as a pro-football player and treats it with respect. The movie doesn't oversell what is, on the face of it, already compelling. It's almost impossible to describe the plot without sounding painfully inspirational: Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron, Be Kind Rewind), a hulking but gentle African-American teen in Tennessee, gets taken in by a well-to-do white family; the mother, Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock), pushes and mothers the boy, who eventually wins a football scholarship to the University of Mississippi. In the wrong hands, this could have been maudlin, manipulative, and condescending. To the credit of writer-director John Lee Hancock, adapting Michael Lewis's acclaimed book, the result is intelligent, genuine, and alternately funny and moving. Leigh Anne could easily have been grandstanding and virtuous, but Bullock doesn't shy away from her vain and domineering side. The football scenes will be gripping even to non-sports fans because they've been so successfully grounded in Michael's emotional life. The all-around solid cast includes country music star Tim McGraw, pint-sized Jae Head (Hancock), and Kathy Bates as the tutor who guided Michael's academic success. Don't be surprised if you can't keep yourself from watching all the real-life photos of Michael, Leigh Anne, and the rest of the family that are featured in the credits; by the end of the movie, you will care about them all. --Bret Fetzer
Average customer review:
The Blind Side
The Blind Side takes the true story of a young man who went from abandonment to success as a pro-football player and treats it with respect. The movie doesn't oversell what is, on the face of it, already compelling. It's almost impossible to describe the plot without sounding painfully inspirational: Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron, Be Kind Rewind), a hulking but gentle African-American teen in Tennessee, gets taken in by a well-to-do white family; the mother, Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock), pushes and mothers the boy, who eventually wins a football scholarship to the University of Mississippi. In the wrong hands, this could have been maudlin, manipulative, and condescending. To the credit of writer-director John Lee Hancock, adapting Michael Lewis's acclaimed book, the result is intelligent, genuine, and alternately funny and moving. Leigh Anne could easily have been grandstanding and virtuous, but Bullock doesn't shy away from her vain and domineering side. The football scenes will be gripping even to non-sports fans because they've been so successfully grounded in Michael's emotional life. The all-around solid cast includes country music star Tim McGraw, pint-sized Jae Head (Hancock), and Kathy Bates as the tutor who guided Michael's academic success. Don't be surprised if you can't keep yourself from watching all the real-life photos of Michael, Leigh Anne, and the rest of the family that are featured in the credits; by the end of the movie, you will care about them all. --Bret Fetzer
Bourne Ultimatum
From DVD Releases February 16 2010 > Action & Adventure
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Average customer review:
Bourne Ultimatum
Highly trained assassin Jason Bourne is on the hunt for the agents who stole his memory and true identity. With a new generation of skilled CIA operatives tracking his every move, Bourne is in a non-stop race around the globe as he finally learns the truth behind his mysterious past. Loaded with incredible fight and chase sequences, it’s the exhilarating movie with “mind-blowing action” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) that you can’t afford to miss!
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Average customer review:
Bourne Ultimatum
Highly trained assassin Jason Bourne is on the hunt for the agents who stole his memory and true identity. With a new generation of skilled CIA operatives tracking his every move, Bourne is in a non-stop race around the globe as he finally learns the truth behind his mysterious past. Loaded with incredible fight and chase sequences, it’s the exhilarating movie with “mind-blowing action” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) that you can’t afford to miss!
The People Speak (Extended Edition)
From DVD Releases February 9 2010 > Documentary
Directed by Howard Zinn, Chris Moore, Anthony Arnove
Average customer review:
The People Speak (Extended Edition)
The People Speak is a beautiful and moving film inspired by Howard Zinn's books A People's History of the United States--first published in 1980 and one of the bestselling history books in the United States--and Voices of a People's History of the United States, the primary-source companion to A People's History of the United States, edited with Anthony Arnove.
The film features the actual words (in letters, songs, poems, speeches, and manifestoes) of rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past--and present--including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Bob Dylan, Langston Hughes, Chief Joseph, Muhammad Ali, and unknown veterans, union workers, abolitionists, and many others never featured in high school textbooks. These dramatic moments from our history are brought to life by a group of remarkable musicians and actors.
Directed by Howard Zinn, Chris Moore, Anthony Arnove
Average customer review:
The People Speak (Extended Edition)
The People Speak is a beautiful and moving film inspired by Howard Zinn's books A People's History of the United States--first published in 1980 and one of the bestselling history books in the United States--and Voices of a People's History of the United States, the primary-source companion to A People's History of the United States, edited with Anthony Arnove.The film features the actual words (in letters, songs, poems, speeches, and manifestoes) of rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past--and present--including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Bob Dylan, Langston Hughes, Chief Joseph, Muhammad Ali, and unknown veterans, union workers, abolitionists, and many others never featured in high school textbooks. These dramatic moments from our history are brought to life by a group of remarkable musicians and actors.
A Serious Man [Blu-ray] (2009)
From DVD Releases February 9 2010 > Comedy
by Universal Studios
Average customer review:
![A Serious Man [Blu-ray] (2009)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51h8zdHqZ6L.jpg)
A Serious Man [Blu-ray] (2009)
Academy Award®-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen return to their comedy roots with this original and darkly humorous story about one ordinary man’s quest to become a serious man. Physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) can’t believe his life: His wife is leaving him for his best friend, his unemployed brother won’t move off the couch, someone is threatening his career, his kids are a mystery and his neighbor is tormenting him by sunbathing nude. Struggling to make sense of it all, Larry consults three different rabbis and their answers lead him on a twisted journey of faith, family, delinquent behavior and mortality in the film critics rave is “seriously awesome!” (Michael Hogan, Vanity Fair)
by Universal Studios
Average customer review:
A Serious Man [Blu-ray] (2009)
Academy Award®-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen return to their comedy roots with this original and darkly humorous story about one ordinary man’s quest to become a serious man. Physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) can’t believe his life: His wife is leaving him for his best friend, his unemployed brother won’t move off the couch, someone is threatening his career, his kids are a mystery and his neighbor is tormenting him by sunbathing nude. Struggling to make sense of it all, Larry consults three different rabbis and their answers lead him on a twisted journey of faith, family, delinquent behavior and mortality in the film critics rave is “seriously awesome!” (Michael Hogan, Vanity Fair)
New DVD Releases February 16 2010
New dvd releases this week: February 16 2010
Law Abiding Citizen
The legal thriller meets the serial-killer shocker in Law Abiding Citizen. The story begins when home invaders kill Clyde Shelton's wife and daughter. The bereaved father (played by a thoroughly unsympathetic Gerard Butler) looks to slick Philly prosecutor Nick Rice (a low-key Jamie Foxx) to see that they receive the maximum sentence. Instead, the murderer, Ames, testifies against his accomplice, Darby, who gets the chair, while he gets 10 years. Upon his release, Ames' mutilated body turns up in an abandoned warehouse, and all roads lead to Shelton. Rice attempts to defend him, but his client makes it impossible--Shelton wants to go to prison--so he does time, but then members of Rice’s legal team start to die. The attorney suspects Shelton, but can't connect him to the crimes, so he races against the clock to save the lives of his assistant, Sarah (Leslie Bibb), D.A. Jonas (Bruce McGill), and his own wife and child. The movie may sound like a Yank reboot of the Japanese chiller Cure, in which an inmate kills from inside institutional walls, but plays more like a mash-up between The Silence of the Lambs, without the psychological complexity, and The Devil's Advocate, without the cynical giggles. F. Gary Gray got his start with hip-hop videos and urban action flicks, like Set It Off, until he hit the big time with his remake of The Italian Job. Law Abiding Citizen is a disappointing muddle from a director who's done better in the past and will surely do better in the future.
Running Man
![Running Man [Blu-ray] (1987)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5161a8DdUWL.jpg)
Running Man [Blu-ray] (1987)
The year is 2019. Television is now ruling people’s lives. The most popular "audience participation” game show is "The Running Man”-- where convicts can win pardons instead of ”parting gifts” by defeating murderous henchmen known as "stalkers.” The stalkers haven’t had much of a challenge lately...until Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) comes along. Wrongly convicted of slaughtering 1500 innocent people, Richards is the next contestant to fight for his life...and his freedom. When ”Running Man” host Damon Killian (Dawson) says, "Come on down!”, be prepared to pay with your life! But Ben Richards isn’t going down without a fight. Off Richards goes into the burned-out sections of Los Angeles to face four of Killian’s ace stalkers: Subzero, wielding his razor-sharp hockey sticks; Buzzsaw, the mechanical motorcycle- riding slasher; Dynamo, practicing his deadly electric shock treatment; and Fireball with his mighty flame-throwing arsenal. Now, the entire country is glued to the tube in a heart-pounding "sudden death” battle!
New DVD Releases February 9 2010
New dvd releases this week: February 9 2010
Couples Retreat
Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball
Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball
The director of Smokin’ Aces and Narc brings you back into the adrenaline-pumping world of blood, bullets and badasses. Packed with insane mercenaries, sexy assassins, and more of the fan-favorite Tremor family, this all-new explosive film tells the story of a low-level FBI agent with a high-price on his head! May the best hit man survive!
Emma (2009)
From BBC Warner
Average customer review:
Emma (2009)
Beautiful, clever, and rich Emma Woodhouse is convinced she is good at matchmaking after her older sister and her governess both marry suitable husbands. No matter that as Mr Knightley drily observes, in reality, she had nothing to do with these relationships. Yet Emma, certain of her talents, plays a dangerous game as she persuades her new friend, the young, pretty and socially inferior Harriet to reject an advantageous marriage proposal to a local farmer in favour of dashing Mr Elton. So begins a story which challenges Emma's naivety, her social preconceptions and her relationship with Knightley. Fresh and funny, this perceptive adaptation, featuring a stellar cast, brings Jane Austen's comic masterpiece to life.
Average customer review:
Emma (2009)
Beautiful, clever, and rich Emma Woodhouse is convinced she is good at matchmaking after her older sister and her governess both marry suitable husbands. No matter that as Mr Knightley drily observes, in reality, she had nothing to do with these relationships. Yet Emma, certain of her talents, plays a dangerous game as she persuades her new friend, the young, pretty and socially inferior Harriet to reject an advantageous marriage proposal to a local farmer in favour of dashing Mr Elton. So begins a story which challenges Emma's naivety, her social preconceptions and her relationship with Knightley. Fresh and funny, this perceptive adaptation, featuring a stellar cast, brings Jane Austen's comic masterpiece to life.
Halloween II
Directed by Rob Zombie
Halloween 2
When Rob Zombie remade John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic, “Halloween,” he added a back story for the masked psycho killer Michael Myers that took up his film’s first half-hour. In his new “Halloween II” — a remake of the 1981 sequel, and a sequel to his own remake — he reverses the process. The film’s first half-hour cleverly encapsulates the plot of the 1981 original, leaving Mr. Zombie free to do what he will with the remaining hour-plus. If only he had more on his mind than his love of 1970s Italian horror films, his meticulous color schemes and his body count. — Mike Hale , The New York Times
Halloween 2
When Rob Zombie remade John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic, “Halloween,” he added a back story for the masked psycho killer Michael Myers that took up his film’s first half-hour. In his new “Halloween II” — a remake of the 1981 sequel, and a sequel to his own remake — he reverses the process. The film’s first half-hour cleverly encapsulates the plot of the 1981 original, leaving Mr. Zombie free to do what he will with the remaining hour-plus. If only he had more on his mind than his love of 1970s Italian horror films, his meticulous color schemes and his body count. — Mike Hale , The New York Times
Taylor Swift takes album of the year, 3 other Grammys
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Taylor Swift won the biggest Grammy of the night, album of the year for her CD "Fearless
.""This is the story we're going to be telling over and over again, that we got to win album of the year in 2010," Swift said.
Swift also won best country album. She won four Grammys overall.
Beyonce had won a pair of Grammys over Swift, winning the best female pop vocal performance award Sunday night as well as song of the year. That latter honor, a songwriters' award, was given to Beyonce for co-writing "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." List: Major Grammy winners
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