More new movies on DVD for July 2007.
July 17, 2007
Avenue Montaigne DVD
In this agreeable little French-language film, Jessica (Cécile de France) is a young woman from the provinces who goes to Paris and gets hired as a waitress in a café. Her new job commences around the time a piano concert, an art action and the opening of a play are all occurring near the café. This gives Jessica an opportunity to get to know a classical pianist, an aging businessman selling off his art collection and a TV actress who will appear in a Feydeau farce. Sydney Pollack portrays an American film director.
The Hills Have Eyes 2 DVD
This horror movie is the sequel to The Hills Have Eyes (2006), and the premise is still that living in a remote part of New Mexico are ghoulish mutants, descendants of miners exposed to high doses of radiation during government nuclear tests in the 1950s. This time around, a National Guard unit made up of both men and women goes on a mission out in the desert and encounters the cannibalistic mutants. There's violence and gore aplenty as the part-time soldiers end up in a network of old mines, struggling to survive.
Premonition DVD
Sandra Bullock stars in this suspense movie in which a woman experiences events out of chronological order. Linda (Bullock) is a stay-at-home wife and mom living the good life in suburbia when a sheriff notifies her that her husband Jim has been killed in a car accident. Next morning she gets up and goes downstairs to find Jim drinking coffee. The following morning she attends Jim's wake, but the next day he is again alive. Linda comes to believe she is having premonitions and may be able to prevent Jim's death.
July 24, 2007
The Host DVD
This Korean-language horror film was directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho. The movie focuses on the Park family, which runs a snack stand on the banks of Seoul's Han River. One fine day an ugly amphibious monster suddenly emerges from the Han and attacks the crowd there. The mutant creature grabs an adolescent member of the Park family and stashes her away to eat later. Though the government claims the rampaging monster hosts a deadly virus and imposes a quarantine, the family sets out to try to save the girl.
The Number 23 DVD
Jim Carrey stars in this thriller centering around the "23 Enigma," a belief that all events can be linked to the number 23. (Example: Kurt Cobain was born in 1967 and 1+9+6+7=23. He died in 1994 and 1+9+9+4=23.) In the movie, Walter Sparrow (Carrey) is a dogcatcher who reads a detective novel in which the protagonist Fingerling (Carrey again) is obsessed with the number 23. Soon Walter begins to find unsettling parallels between his world and that of the fictional Fingerling. Walter's wife is played by Virginia Madsen.
Zodiac DVD
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.
July 31, 2007
300 DVD
Based on a graphic novel, this action spectacle is about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., which is celebrated as an example of heroic resistance against an overwhelming force. Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) leads a huge Persian army numbering perhaps 200,000 in an attempt to conquer Greece, and at one point comes to a mountain pass defended by a mere 300 men from Sparta under Leonidas (Gerard Butler). The 300 can only slow the Persian advance, but they buy time for the Greeks to regroup and win the war.
Hot Fuzz DVD
This entertaining action comedy is a British send-up of police movies. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a by-the-book London top cop who gets reassigned to the sleepy village of Sandford, where he becomes partners with bumbling sidekick Danny Butterman (Nick Frost). At first there's not much policing that needs doing, except for dealing with a few minor small town incidents. Then some villagers are murdered, and Nicholas must spring into action. Danny is thrilled as gun battles and car chases come to quaint Sandford.
Pathfinder DVD
Set in North America five or six centuries before the arrival of Columbus, this is an action-adventure movie. Occasionally Vikings arrive, and after one visit they leave behind a boy. He is raised to adulthood by Indians, who call him Ghost (Karl Urban). The leader of the tribe is Pathfinder (Russell Means). Eventually, another group of Vikings show up and get into violent warfare against Ghost and the Indians. The convention in the film is that Native Americans speak English, while Vikings speak an Icelandic dialect.
More July DVD Releases on the Previous Page
