New Videos Coming Out This Week

This week’s new releases include What Women Want, Quills, and Duets. But there are other interesting movies coming your way, including some you might not have thought about, such as Michelangelo Antonioni's enigmatic masterwork La Notte. Let’s take a quick look at what the new releases scheduled for May 8, 2001, have to offer.

Duets

Tagline: "Six lost souls in search of a little harmony."

Length: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language and some sexuality

Directed by Bruce Paltrow, Duets is an unconventional musical about the world of competitive karaoke. The movie intertwines the stories of three unlikely twosomes as they make their way to Omaha to compete in a karaoke contest for a $5,000 prize. The twosomes are: (1) a white sales executive and a black ex-convict; (2) a hustler and his showgirl daughter (played by Gwyneth Paltrow, daughter of the film’s director); and (3) a taxi driver and a sexually promiscuous young woman.

Formats Available: DVD, VHS

Incubus

Length: 78 minutes
MPAA Rating: Unrated

William Shatner stars in this 1965 dream-like horror film that has the distinction of being made in the artificial language Esperanto. In Incubus, the forces of good and evil are at odds as beautiful succubi lure men to their doom. The film features cinematography by Academy Award winner Conrad Hall (American Beauty, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).

Note: This film is in Esperanto. It is subtitled in English.

Formats Available: DVD, VHS

La Notte

Length: 122 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's masterwork is visually stunning, enigmatic, and slowly paced. Set against the depersonalization, materialism, and modernization of Milan in the 1960s, La Notte explores the disintegrating relationship between a husband (Marcello Mastroianni) and wife (Jeanne Moreau). This is the second film in a trilogy by Antonioni that revolved around alienation. The first was L'Avventura, and the third was L'Eclisse.

Note: This film is in Italian. It is subtitled in English.

Formats Available: DVD, VHS

Quills

Tagline: "There are no bad words... only bad deeds."

Length: 123 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content including dialogue, violence and language

Starring Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Michael Caine, and Joaquin Phoenix, Quills chronicles the last years in the life of the Marquis de Sade (Rush), which he spent in a mental institution. At first, the priest (Phoenix) who runs the institution permits Sade to continue writing, and his manuscripts are smuggled out by a laundress (Winslet) and published. But eventually Napoleon feels threatened by Sade’s work and sends in Dr. Royer-Collard (Caine) to take charge of the situation and keep Sade under control.

Formats Available: DVD, VHS

Sunshine

Tagline: "In a time of revolution, in a family torn by tradition one man was consumed by love."

Length: 179 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexuality, and for violence, language and nudity

Ralph Fiennes plays three roles (father, son, grandson) in this drama that traces the lives of three generations of a family of Hungarian Jews under three forms of government: emperor, fascist, and communist. Ignatz Sonnenschein, whose father made the family wealthy by marketing a health tonic called Sunshine, changes the family name to Sors. Ignatz’ son Adam converts to Christianity and leads the Hungarian fencing team to the 1936 Olympics. Adam’s son Ivan becomes a police agent of the communist government.

Formats Available: DVD, VHS

What Women Want

Tagline: "He has the power to hear everything women are thinking. Finally... a man is listening."

Length: 126 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and language

This entertaining lightweight romantic comedy stars Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. Male chauvinist Nick Marshall (Gibson) expects a promotion at the ad agency where he works, but the job goes to a woman named Darcy Maguire (Hunt). Then Marshall receives an electrical shock that enables him to read the mind of any woman he encounters, and his ideas for ads for women’s products are suddenly better than those proposed by Maguire. But things get complicated when Marshall and Maguire start to fall in love.

Formats Available: DVD, VHS

Yi Yi (A One and a Two)

Length: 173 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Yi Yi chronicles three generations of a family living in contemporary Taipei. The film opens with a wedding and ends with a funeral, and within these bookends the stories of the lives of the family members unfold and are skillfully woven together by Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang. Yi Yi was named the best film of 2000 by the National Society of Film Critics.

Formats Available: DVD, VHS