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Home Video/DVD: June Releases

June 4

"L.I.E." (2001)

Eighty-two percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked this unsettling indie drama that has pederasty as one of its central themes. Howie (Paul Franklin Dano) is a troubled 14- or 15-year-old boy who lives near the Long Island Expressway (L.I.E.), where his mother was recently killed. He burglarizes houses with his best friend Gary (Billy Kay), and there is a homoerotic tension between the two boys. When Howie's father is jailed, Howie moves in with Big John (Brian Cox), a macho ex-Marine and pederast. What critics like best about this movie is that Big John and Howie are depicted as multidimensional characters rather than as caricatures. "L.I.E." is available on video/DVD in two versions: one is unrated by the MPAA, while the other is R-rated.

"The Mothman Prophecies" (2002)

Richard Gere stars in this horror movie that also features Laura Linney, Will Patton, and Debra Messing. Gere portrays John Klein, a Washington Post reporter who is happily married to Mary (Messing). Mary is fatally injured in a car crash, but before dying, she sketches a picture of the large, moth-like creature that caused the accident. Later, Klein finds himself drawn to the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where he encounters a grizzly resident named Gordon Smallwood (Patton), who immediately accuses him of harassment and threatens him with a gun. Soon Klein teams up with local cop Connie Parker (Linney), who tells him that the whole town has been acting strange. Klein experiences a series of creepy events and uncovers the legend of a manlike flying creature known as Mothman.

June 11

"Black Hawk Down" (2001)

Directed by Ridley Scott, this is a military action movie that stars Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, and Sam Shepard. The film tells the tale of an ill-fated 1993 U.S. humanitarian mission during which 18 Americans were killed. At the time, local warlords were battling each other in the African country of Somalia, where some 300,000 Somalis died of starvation. The U.S. involvement in the conflict was to facilitate the delivery of food shipments. American military forces mounted an operation in the city of Mogadishu to capture some of the inner circle of one of the warlords. U.S. soldiers were flown in by Black Hawk helicopters, but the Americans quickly found themselves outnumbered and outgunned. Two of the choppers were shot down, and the film uses exciting combat sequences to chronicle the attempt to rescue the Americans at the crash sites.

"Kate and Leopold" (2001)

Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman are paired in this romantic comedy. Leopold (Jackman) is the Duke of Albany who, while in New York in 1876, is transported via a time portal to the early 21st century. It's not long before he meets Kate McKay (Ryan), a hard-driving marketing expert. Leopold is an old-fashioned romantic aristocrat with impeccable manners, while Kate is a practical and cynical young woman. Nevertheless, an unlikely romance gradually blossoms between the two title characters. But even as Kate slowly succumbs to Leopold's charm, a problem looms: He must soon return to the 19th century. Much of the film's humor derives from Leopold being a fish out of water, albeit a dashing and unfailingly courteous one.

"Monster's Ball" (2001)

Halle Berry won a Best Actress Oscar for her work in this drama, in which Billy Bob Thornton turns in a fine performance as well. Thornton portrays Hank Grotowski, a Georgia prison guard whose duties include taking part in carrying out the execution of death row inmate Lawrence Musgrove (Sean Combs). Berry plays Lawrence's wife Leticia, and they have a fat little son Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun). Leticia is a waitress at a diner, where she meets Hank, but neither is aware of the other's connection with the condemned man. As the white Hank and the black Leticia become friends, begin a sexual relationship, and fall in love, the unlikely pair must grapple with a number of problems. "Monster's Ball" is emotionally powerful because it avoids dealing with this material in a politically correct manner, and 86 percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked the film.

June 18
"I Am Sam" (2001)

Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer star in this drama about a mentally retarded man trying to keep his child. Sam Dawson (Penn), who has the IQ of a seven-year-old, has a job cleaning up at Starbucks. He is a single parent who has managed to successfully raise a bright seven-year-old daughter named Lucy (Dakota Fanning). But Lucy decides she doesn't want to know more than her father and stops learning at school. Bureaucrats have Lucy taken away from Sam, and she goes to live with a foster mother (Laura Dern). Then Sam gets a high-powered attorney named Rita Harrison (Pfeiffer) to help him regain custody. As Rita comes to know Sam during the ensuing legal battle, she learns important lessons about her own humanity.

"The Majestic" (2001)

Jim Carrey stars in this drama, which reminds many of old Frank Capra movies. Carrey plays Pete Appleton, a screenwriter in 1951 Hollywood who is falsely accused of being a Communist because of a meeting he had attended years earlier. He drives to Northern California and is knocked unconscious in an accident. When Pete wakes up with amnesia in a small town, he is mistaken for a missing local named Luke Trimble. As Luke, he takes on the task of reopening the town's long-closed movie theater, the Majestic, but his true identity eventually comes out. Nevertheless, the townspeople rally round him as he goes back to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

"Max Keeble's Big Move" (2001)

This is one of those kids' comedies that few adults enjoy. Max Keeble (Alex D. Linz) already has problems with the Evil Ice Cream Man (Jamie Kennedy) when he begins the 7th grade at Curtis Junior High with his friends Megan (Zena Grey) and Robe (Josh Peck). At school he is soon roughed up by the school bully, has his lunch money stolen by another student, and runs afoul of the principal (Larry Miller). Then Max's parents tell him they must move to a distant city within a few days because of his father's job, and Max initiates a program to get back at all his tormentors, believing he won't be around to live with the consequences. This movie features food fights and people being covered in mud and melted ice cream.

"Orange County" (2002)

This film is directed at audiences who like indie comedies, although brief descriptions of it make it sound more like a youth movie. Colin Hanks (Tom Hanks' son) plays Shaun Brumder, a Southern California teenager who's heavy into surfing. But when he stumbles across a novel by a Stanford prof, he decides to enroll in that prestigious university. His test scores and grades are high enough, but his admission application is rejected due to a clerical error. Supported by his girlfriend (Schuyler Fisk, Sissy Spacek's daughter) and his stoner brother (Jack Black), Shaun travels to Stanford to try to straighten things out. "Orange County" is an inventive comedy that unevenly blends elements of satire, farce, and gross-out humor.

"The Shipping News" (2001)

Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, and Judi Dench star in this drama. Directed by Lasse Hallstrom, the film is adapted from the novel by E. Annie Proulx. After the death of his parents and his wife, Quoyle (Spacey) and his young daughter leave upstate New York and join his aunt (Dench) in a coastal town in Newfoundland. There he gets a job as a reporter covering the shipping news for the local newspaper. Also, he becomes friends with Wavey (Moore), a single mother who runs a daycare center. Meanwhile, Quoyle gets to know the newspaper guys, played by actors Scott Glenn, Pete Postlethwaite, and Rhys Ifans. The movie features magnificent seascapes and great shots of the rugged Newfoundland coast.

June 25

"The Affair of the Necklace" (2001)

Based on a true story, this English-language historical drama is set in 18th-century France at the Palace of Versailles. The central character is a young woman named Jeanne de la Motte-Valois (Hillary Swank), who works a scam involving a necklace containing 647 diamonds. Joining her in the fraud are her husband (Adrien Brody) and Cagliostro (Christopher Walken), a shadowy figure at the royal court. Preying upon the yearning of Cardinal de Rohan (Jonathan Pryce) to become prime minister, Jeanne convinces him to have the royal jewelers make the necklace for Marie Antoinette (Joely Richardson). Jeanne then takes the necklace for herself and forges letters to cover up her theft. However, her scheme unravels and is a factor leading to the French Revolution.

"A Beautiful Mind" (2001)

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, this biopic stars Russell Crowe as the brilliant, but troubled, John Nash. The movie begins in the late 1940s with Nash as a young mathematician at Princeton, where he does some astonishing original work. He then takes a job at M.I.T. and meets and marries an attractive grad student (Jennifer Connelly). He is soon working on clandestine government projects under the direction of Parcher (Ed Harris) and becomes paranoid about the Soviets. He is also occasionally visited by a friend (Paul Bettany) and his young niece. However, Nash is suffering from mental illness, and his life eventually falls apart. He is treated by Dr. Rosen (Christopher Plummer), but recovery is difficult and takes many years.

"Gosford Park" (2001)

Robert Altman directed this outstanding film, which is at the level of his best work, including "M*A*S*H," "Nashville," "The Player," and "Short Cuts." Maggie Smith, Emily Watson, Alan Bates, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Derek Jacobi, and Kristin Scott Thomas are among the members of the large all-star ensemble cast. Set in 1932, the movie is about a gathering of a dozen aristocrats and their servants for a pheasant hunt at a fancy English country estate called Gosford Park, where someone is murdered. The film has aspects of an Agatha Christie mystery, but it's really a closely observed study of a fascinating social milieu, both above and below stairs. Eighty-six percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked "Gosford Park."

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2002 Recommended Releases on Video and DVD

Recommended June 2002 Releases on Home Video/DVD