| January DVD Releases | |
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Here's a selection of new movies on DVD for January 2008.
January 1, 2008
Resident Evil: Extinction
This video game-derived action horror movie is the follow-up to Resident Evil (2002) and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), and Milla Jovovich returns as the star. This time around, hordes of rampaging zombies have caused the collapse of civilization. The genetically altered Alice (Jovovich) and a group of uninfected humans travel through the American West as they try to reach safety in Alaska, but they must constantly fight off attacking zombies. Also, an evil scientist (Iain Glen) at the diabolical Umbrella Corporation and his minions are out to capture Alice.
Shoot 'Em Up
Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci star in this darkly humorous, over-the-top actioner likely to offend mainstream sensibilities. Smith (Owen) happens to see a pregnant woman pursued by a gunman. She is killed, but Smith saves her baby, firing a bullet to sever the umbilical cord. He takes the newborn to a lactating prostitute called DQ (Bellucci), and they soon uncover a plot by an ailing presidential candidate to get bone marrow from infants. Giamatti plays the malevolent Hertz, a hit man who deploys a squad of goons to go after Smith and DQ.
War
Jet Li and Jason Statham star in this action movie that features hand-to-hand combat, shootouts, chases and explosions. Set in San Francisco, the story involves a turf war between Japanese Yakuza and Chinese Triads. In the middle of this is an assassin known as Rogue (Li). But FBI agent Jack Crawford (Statham) is determined to avenge the death of his partner, and he blames Rogue. The plot is convoluted, but it eventually winds its way to a showdown between Crawford and Rogue. John Lone and Devon Aoki portray crime bosses on opposing sides.
3:10 to Yuma
Russell Crowe and Christian Bale star in this Western, a remake of a 1957 movie starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. The remake is half an hour longer than the original, but the story remains more or less the same. Ben Wade (Crowe) is a murderous outlaw who is captured and must be transported to federal custody, and Dan Evans (Bale) is a struggling rancher who is escorting Wade. The journey leads through Apache territory, and also Wade's gang is still out there. But Evans ends up in the town of Contention anxiously awaiting the train that will take Wade to Yuma.
Dragon Wars
Although a big-budget South Korean production, this monster movie is in English and has American actors. The main idea of the film is that Buraki, a humongous serpent, lays waste to downtown Los Angeles. The principal human characters are Ethan (Jason Behr), a TV reporter, Sarah (Amanda Brooks), a pretty young woman, and Jack (Robert Forster), an antiques dealer. Buraki is slithering around looking for Sarah, and Jack knows the legend that explains why. But Ethan may be able to protect Sarah, and he goes on the run with her as a massive battle takes place.
Sunshine
This is a science-fiction movie directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Millions, 28 Days Later). The story is set in the near future when the sun has developed a problem that has turned the Earth very cold, threatening the future of humankind. An eight-person team is aboard Icarus II, which carries a gigantic nuclear device that will be detonated in an attempt to correct the problem. The team faces various problems, including receiving a distress signal from a failed earlier mission. The cast includes Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne and Cliff Curtis.
Zodiac Director's Cut
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr., this docudrama tells the story of still officially unsolved northern California serial killings. The film chronicles the murders that occurred around 1969 and the investigations that took place over the next two decades or so. Key investigators include a police detective (Ruffalo), a newspaper reporter (Downey) and cartoonist-turned-author Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal). The movie is based on Graysmith's true crime books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked.
January 15, 2008
Good Luck Chuck
Dane Cook and Jessica Alba star in this raunchy comedy. Charlie (Cook) is a successful, unmarried dentist who had a curse put on him when he was a boy: any woman he has sex with will go on to date another guy, who she will marry. Word gets around about the curse, and marriage-minded women try to bed Charlie just so they can get hitched to someone else. His situation is enviable until he falls hard for Cam (Alba), an accident-prone penguin specialist at a marine park. This puts Charlie in a quandary: if he has sex with Cam, he will lose the only woman he's ever loved.
Mr. Woodcock
Billy Bob Thornton, Sean William Scott and Susan Sarandon star in this comedy. John Farley (Scott), author of a best-selling self-help book, returns to his hometown to visit his widowed mother (Sarandon) and learns she is dating Jasper Woodcock (Thornton). John is appalled because when he was in school, Woodcock was the gym teacher who constantly humiliated him and the other students. It turns out that Woodcock is still into tormenting people, and John sets out to do everything he can to prevent his mother from marrying the hateful bully.
The Ten
This comedy consists of a series of irreverent — some would say sacrilegious —sketches based loosely on the Ten Commandments. Paul Rudd serves as narrator, and several well-known actors appear, including Jessica Alba, Bobby Cannavale, Liev Schreiber, Ron Silver, Famke Janssen and Oliver Pratt. In the vignette based on the commandment against stealing, Winona Ryder finds love with a ventriloquist's dummy. In another episode, a librarian (Gretchen Mol) vacations in Mexico, where she has a torrid affair with a carpenter named Jesus (Justin Theroux).
January 22, 2008
The Game Plan
The Rock and a cute kid are the stars of this Disney family comedy. Joe Kingman (The Rock) is a star quarterback for the Boston Rebels. He's a popular and well-to-do bachelor, but something seems missing in his life, perhaps because he's never led his team to the championship. But one day eight-year-old ballet-loving Peyton (Madison Pettis) shows up, claiming she's his daughter. He takes her in, allows her to put a tutu on his bulldog and even performs with her ballet class. Meanwhile, the football season continues, and she follows the Rebels as they go through the playoffs.
Saw IV
This horror movie is the gruesome follow-up to Saw (2004), Saw II (2005) and Saw III (2006). The sadistic main character Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) died at the end of Saw III, and Saw IV opens with his grisly autopsy. But even though the diabolical Jigsaw is dead, his presence remains dominant in Saw IV through flashbacks and also through events he set in motion before his death. The focus remains on inventive torture devices like the one that impales a husband and wife together. This time around we meet Jigsaw's ex-wife and learn how he had formerly been an engineer.
Sydney White
Originally titled Sydney White and the Seven Dorks, this comedy starring Amanda Bynes is based on Disney's version of the Snow White fairytale. Sydney (Bynes) graduates high school and goes away to a university, where she catches the eye of the handsome, charming Tyler Prince (Matt Long). She moves into a sorority house, but Rachel Witchburn (Sara Paxton) gets her kicked out. Sydney then goes to live in a ramshackle dwelling with seven socially awkward guys and gets them involved in student politics. The poisoned apple here becomes a virus-infected Mac computer.
January 29, 2008
The Comebacks
A genre parody in the spirit of Date Movie and Epic Movie, The Comebacks spoofs inspirational sports dramas like Miracle, Rudy, Remember the Titans, Invincible and Rocky. Lambeau Fields (David Koechner) is a losing football coach who gets one last chance at Heartland State. In an allusion to Radio, Fields's team gets a mentally challenged mascot called iPod. The coach's wife takes a lover, saying he is an exchange student from Makingsweetlovetoyourwifeistan. But against all odds, Coach Fields and his team of misfits find themselves on the way to the Toilet Bowl.
Daddy Day Camp
This comedy is a sequel to Daddy Day Care (2003), but with all new actors. The roles played by Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin in the earlier movie are played this time around by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Paul Rae. Charlie Hinton (Gooding) and his pal Phil Ryerson (Rae) are now successfully running their daycare center, and they take over operation of the poorly maintained Camp Driftwood, despite a methane problem in the outhouse. But only a few troublesome kids end up at the camp, and Charlie and Phil must stave off foreclosure. There's lots of bodily function humor.
The Invasion
Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in this 2007 film based on the same source novel as 1956's and 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and 1993's Body Snatchers. In all versions, extraterrestrial aliens arrive on Earth in a virus-like form and invade the bodies of humans, creating replicas of people, but with zombie-like behavior. In the 2007 movie, a psychiatrist (Nicole Kidman) and her colleagues (Daniel Craig, Jeffrey Wright) try to find an antidote. Also, the psychiatrist, whose ex-husband (Jeremy Northam) gets taken over, battles to protect their young son.
