| May DVD Releases | |
|
Here's a selection of new movies on DVD for May 2008.
May 6, 2008
First Sunday
Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan (from TV's 30 Rock) star in this comedy, the first theatrical feature film written and directed by established playwright David E. Talbert. If Durell (Cube) can't come up with $17,000 fast, his ex (Regina Hall) will move far away with their son. That's when Durell and his sidekick LeeJohn (Morgan) decide to rob a church. However, the robbery doesn't go smoothly, and the robbers wind up taking hostages, including the pastor (Chi McBride) and flamboyant choir director (comic Katt Williams). But it all leads to an uplifting ending.
I'm Not There
Todd Haynes directed this unorthodox film that captures the many sides of Bob Dylan. Six different actors portray characters who reflect various aspects of the celebrated songwriter-singer. An 11-year-old African-American boy (Marcus Carl Franklin) plays a kid who calls himself Woody Guthrie. Christian Bale portrays Jack, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse sensation, and Julianne Moore appears as a Joan Baez-like figure. Cate Blanchett plays Jude, a folk singer who goes electric at a music festival. Other Dylan incarnations are enacted by Richard Gere and Heath Ledger.
P.S. I Love You
Hilary Swank stars in this weepy that was directed and co-written by Richard LaGravenese. Holly (Swank) is a New Yorker in a good marriage to Gerry (Gerard Butler), but he dies from a brain tumor. However, he lingers in her memory via flashbacks and fantasies. But before Gerry died, he planned out Holly's first year of widowhood, and he arranged to have a series of letters delivered to her that contain instructions. Kathy Bates plays Holly's mother, Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon portray Holly's best friends, and Harry Connick Jr. appears as a possible new love interest.
May 13, 2008
The Great Debaters
Denzel Washington stars in and directed this drama based on a 1930s true story. Forest Whitaker is also in the film. Washington plays the main character, Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at small, all-black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. Tolson believes that one way for him and his students to combat the racism they endure is to excel at debating. He handpicks a four-person team and coaches it through a series of debates, culminating in a 1935 competition against Harvard. (One of the Wiley debaters, James Farmer Jr., went on to become a leader in the civil-rights movement.)
Mad Money
Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes star in this heist comedy directed by Callie Khouri. Bridget (Keaton) and her husband (Ted Danson) live in an affluent Kansas City suburb, but he loses his job, and they run up huge debt. She takes a job as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank, where she sees carts of worn-out currency on its way to be shredded. Bridget hatches a plan where she and two lowly coworkers (Latifah and Holmes) will steal some of the cash scheduled for destruction. But the security system is difficult to defeat, and things spiral out of control.
Untraceable
Diane Lane stars as an FBI agent in this thriller involving a diabolical Web site called killwithme.com. Jennifer Marsh (Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) are agents with the FBI's cybercrime unit in Portland, Oregon, where they work with a local police detective (Billy Burke) on a difficult case: a psychopath is killing people as Internet users watch via live streamed video. The killer sets up elaborate sadistic torture devices, and the more hits the Web site gets, the faster the victims die. The murderer uses a clever scheme to conceal where the video is coming from.
May 20, 2008
This is the fifth in a series of zombie horror movies from writer-director George A. Romero that includes Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005). This time around the focus is on a group of college-age film students who are making a mummy movie in rural Pennsylvania when zombies go on the rampage. Jason (Joshua Close), one of the students, shoots a film titled The Death of Death based on what takes place as he, his girlfriend (Michelle Morgan) and others try to make their way to safety in an old Winnebago.
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets
This action-adventure movie is the sequel to National Treasure (2004), and Nicolas Cage reprises his role as treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates. Also returning are Jon Voight as Ben's dad, Justin Bartha as Ben's sidekick and Diane Kruger, now Ben's ex-girlfriend. Newcomers include Helen Mirren as Ben's mom and Ed Harris as the villain. This time around Ben has to clear the Gates family name of the charge that his ancestor collaborated with John Wilkes Booth, requiring trips to Paris and London, kidnapping the US President and going to Mount Rushmore.
Strange Wilderness
Steve Zahn, Allen Covert and Jonah Hill star in this stoner comedy that has a sensibility similar to Saturday Night Live sketches, but with more gross-out humor and profanity. Zahn plays Peter Gaulke, the inept host of a once-popular wildlife TV show called Strange Wilderness he inherited from his late father. Others who work on the program, including Fred (Covert) and Cooker (Hill), aren't much help. Only doing something spectacular can save the show from cancellation, and in their desperation the guys travel to a jungle where they hope to locate Bigfoot.
May 27, 2008
Cassandra's Dream
Woody Allen wrote and directed this drama starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. Ian (McGregor) and Terry (Farrell) are working-class brothers who live in London. Ian dreams of making big bucks, particularly after he starts dating a good-looking, but expensive woman. Terry is a chronic gambler who runs up a 90,000-pound debt to scary loan sharks. Then wealthy Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) surfaces with a problem: a colleague is threatening to ruin him. That's when Uncle Howard offers Ian and Terry financial support on the condition that they kill the troublesome colleague.
Rambo
There were three Rambo movies in the 1980s, and after a 20-year hiatus, Sylvester Stallone comes back to play the Vietnam veteran for the fourth time. Now John Rambo (Stallone) turns up operating a small boat service in a remote part of Thailand. But one day a group of missionaries shows up and hires him to transport them on a humanitarian mission to Burma. This lands Rambo in the middle of a decades-old internal conflict in which the Burmese government is trying to suppress a separatist ethnic minority known as the Karen. Soon a gory blood bath ensues.
What Would Jesus Buy?
Rob VanAldernade's first documentary feature focuses on the issue of American consumerism as he follows a performance-art troupe's cross-country tour. The troupe is led by political activist Bill Talen, who dons a white suit with clerical collar and wears his hair in a bleach-blond pompadour to become Reverend Billy, pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping. They go on a crusade at Christmastime to try to prevent a Shopocalypse. They spread the anti-consumerism gospel at various places, including Mall of America, Wal-Mart's Arkansas headquarters, and Disneyland.
