From New DVD Releases July 20 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies July 20 2010
Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. July 20 2010
Cop Out
Directed by Kevin Smith
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Fan-favorite filmmaker Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy) directs the first movie he didn't write himself: Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan (30 Rock) as mismatched cops. When a bust goes wrong, they get suspended, forcing Willis to sell a treasured baseball card in order to pay for his daughter's wedding. But while selling the card, it gets stolen, sending the pair on a wild chase featuring a parkour-loving housebreaker, a hot Latina trapped in the trunk of a Mercedes-Benz, a 10-year-old car thief, and a lot of other goofiness. It's hard to believe that Smith didn't have a hand in the writing, as the comedy has all of his loose, ramshackle habits (and his reliance on jokes about poop and male genitalia)--though much of it also has the feel of being improvised by Willis and Morgan. Cop Out wants to mock buddy-cop movies, but it also wants to be a buddy-cop movie; these conflicting impulses are never harmonized, so the whole movie feels out of tune. The star-studded supporting cast includes Jason Lee, Michelle Trachtenberg, Seann William Scott, Fred Armisen, Kevin Pollak, Adam Brody, Rashida Jones, and Susie Essman.
The Runaways
Directed by Floria Sigismondi
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In adapting Cherie Currie's memoir, Neon Angel, Floria Sigismondi focuses on three figures. Sensing imminent stardom, Sunset Strip impresario Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) brings together blond Bowie fanatic Cherie (Dakota Fanning) with raven-haired rocker Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Manufactured bands weren't a novel phenomenon in the 1970s, but the Runaways wrote their own songs and played their own instruments, paving the way for the all-girl outfits to come. With a mother (Tatum O'Neal) in Singapore and a perpetually drunk father, Cherie and her sister, Marie (Riley Keough), must fend for themselves. When the group heads out on tour, there's no adult supervision, leading to drinking and drugging from California to Japan, where the crowds go wild, but just as they're taking off in public, they're falling apart in private. Cherie tires of Fowley's tough-love tactics, while her bandmates resent the focus on their sexpot singer. The best thing about Sigismondi's film is that her risky casting choices pay off: Fanning leaves her little-girl roles behind just as easily as Stewart breaks free from her Twilight shackles, so it's too bad Jett has no back story and that the other players, particularly Sandy West (Stella Maeve) and Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton), don't register more as distinct personalities. Shannon's Fowley, on the other hand, steals the show with his profane performance. For a film dedicated to female empowerment, that may not have been the director's intention, but as Fowley says, "This isn't about women's lib; this is about women's libido."
The Losers
Directed by Sylvain White
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The Losers provides nonstop and pretty thrilling action, with a stellar cast, doing the comic book series from which it was adapted proud in the process. The movie may not have an airtight plot line, but its enthusiastic, talented actors--Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, and the underappreciated Jason Patric--and the crisp, punch-packing direction by Sylvain White more than make up for it. The Losers follows the gambits of a team of U.S. Special Forces, with appropriately comic-bookish names like Clay (Morgan), Roque (Idris Elba), Jensen (Evans), Pooch (Columbus Short), and Cougar (Óscar Jaenada). They're sent to Bolivia, where they are double-crossed and presumed dead--with a big bad evil guy, Max (Patric), hot on their trail. In the jungle, they join up with a mystery woman (Saldana, a confident, believable action hero) with her own agenda--and perhaps not the most trustworthy of intentions. The action is nonstop, with plenty of great special effects, as the team continues mostly under the radar with both its mission and trying to stay one step ahead of the shadowy Max. Morgan is terrific as a budding action star, self-deprecating in the manner of George Clooney, and a man who (almost always) gets the job done. And he'd be nowhere without his crew of sidekicks, all of whom have great chemistry and repartee, though it's Evans's Jensen who gets the best comic-relief lines. "I'm warning you, I am a lethal killing machine," Jensen intones to a mocking disbeliever. "In the words of ancient Taoist masters, 'Don't start none… Won't be none.'" Saldana brings great sex appeal to her role as the mystery ally. The comic-book nonstop action in The Losers makes it the perfect movie escape--a true winner for fans of action, humor, and a little extra kick in the pants.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Directed by Judith Ehrlich;Rick Goldsmith
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2010 Oscar Nominee for Best Documentary
Co-winner of 2009 Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review (and one of their Five Best Documentaries of the Year), Winner of the Special Jury Award at IDFA, and now nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official and Vietnam War strategist, who in 1971 concluded that the war is based on decades of lies and leaks 7,000 pages of top secret documents to The New York Times, making headlines around the world. A riveting story of how this one man's profound change of heart created a landmark struggle involving America's newspapers, its president and Supreme Court. With Daniel Ellsberg, Patricia Ellsberg, Tony Russo, Howard Zinn, Hedrick Smith, John Dean, and, from the secret White House tapes, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America."
Mother
Directed by Bong Joon-Ho
Just as South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's previous film, The Host, subverted the traditions of the giant monster movie to examine the effects of a crisis on a unique family, his latest effort, Mother, embraces the tropes of the murder mystery for an unsettling and affecting story of parental love taken to its extreme. Popular South Korean television actress Kim Hye-ja gives a powerful performance as a downtrodden acupuncturist whose mentally challenged son (Korean A-lister Won Bin) is accused of murdering a local schoolgirl. Bullied into a confession by the local police (led by Yoon Je-moon of The Host), the young man faces incarceration at a mental hospital unless his mother can discover the killer's true identity. Her inquiry leads her into classic noir territory, with perceived truths blown apart at every turn; in typical Joon-ho fashion, these discoveries are marked by moments of shocking violence, dark slapstick humor, and moving familial drama, which come together in a genuinely unique perspective on the nature of truth and commitment. The official South Korean submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards, Mother is yet another entry on a growing list of exceptional motion pictures from one of the international scene's most intriguing filmmakers.
A Town Called Panic
Directed by Stephane Aubier;Vincent Patar
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Writer-directors Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar spun this nutty feature off their Belgian TV series A Town Called Panic (Panique au Village, 2000). When Cowboy and Indian decide to build a barbecue as a birthday gift for their friend and roommate Horse, they inadvertently order a zillion bricks, rather than the 50 the project requires. The weight of so much masonry causes the house to collapse, and a string of increasingly absurd complications ensues. The stop-motion animation is much cruder than the work in Coraline or Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Even the main characters have only a few articulations, and the directors avoid close-ups, so they don't have to animate facial expressions or lip-synch dialogue. The result feels like something an aspiring film student might make using old plastic toys. Many viewers (and critics) embraced the anarchic humor of A Town Called Panic; less sanguine audience members dismissed it as the animated equivalent of an old Cheech and Chong movie: something that's funny if you're stoned, but isn't if you're not. The extras include a making-of documentary, interviews with directors Aubier and Patar, and an assortment of deleted scenes and tests--more material than such a marginal film really warrants. (Unrated, suitable for ages 10 and older: cartoon violence, ethnic stereotypes)
2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams (Unrated)
From First Look Pictures
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From director Tim Sullivan comes the eagerly anticipated second installment of the gore-soaked horror-comedy franchise, 2001 MANIACS: FIELD OF SCREAMS! The Southern residents of Pleasant Valley take their cannibalistic Guts N' Glory Jamboree on the road to Iowa where they encounter spoiled Northern heiresses Rome and Tina Sheraton and the cast and crew of their ''Road Rascals'' reality show. Performing ''The Bloodiest Show on Earth,'' our Southern Maniacs prove to be more than ratings killers in what John Landis has called ''one of the rare sequels that surpasses the original.''
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