August DVD Releases

Here's a selection of new movies on DVD for August 2008.

August 5, 2008

The Counterfeiters DVD
Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, this drama is in German. The story is based on the real-life Operation Bernhard, a World War II Nazi scheme to disrupt the British and American economies by issuing massive quantities of counterfeit pounds and dollars. The protagonist is Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a Russian Jew imprisoned at Sachsenhausen. A master forger, he is given good food and decent living conditions in return for his work on the counterfeiting project. But he has mixed feelings about what he is doing.

My Brother Is an Only Child DVD
This Italian-language film is a mostly lighthearted family melodrama with likable characters. It's about a politically divided working-class family in the '60s and '70s, but suffuses the story with warm humor. The family is leftist, but lives in Latina, a city built by Mussolini. The elder son Manrico becomes a communist organizer, but his younger brother Accio gets involved with local fascists. Also, there's a good-looking young woman that both brothers are attracted to. One of the humorous scenes centers on a performance of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" with Marxist lyrics.

Nim's Island DVD
Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler star in this family adventure based on Wendy Orr's novel. The main character is 12-year-old Nim (Breslin). She and her scientist father (Butler) are the only human inhabitants of a South Pacific island. When Nim's dad goes missing in a storm, she uses e-mail to request help from Alex Rover, the intrepid hero of adventure novels she reads. Butler also portrays the literary character Alex Rover. But Nim's e-mail is received by Alexandra Rover (Foster), the author of the books, who travels to the island to do what she can.

August 12, 2008

Brand Upon the Brain! DVD
Directed and co-written by Guy Maddin, this strange film was shot in 8mm black-and-white as a silent. It has sometimes been shown theatrically with live orchestra and narrator, but the DVD has recorded sound and narration by Isabella Rossellini. The story is about a man who travels to an island to repaint his childhood home, a lighthouse that served as an orphanage. But he gets caught up in memories of his sister, his overbearing mom and his mad scientist dad. He also recalls a teenage brother-and-sister detective team investigating wounds on the backs of the orphans' heads.

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer DVD
This leisurely paced, low-keyed indie is about the love lives of three generations of Mexican-American women during a hot summer in a sleepy Arizona border town. There's the teenager Blanca (America Ferrera), a virgin who's curious about sex and drawn to the new guy in town. Then there's Blanca's divorced mom Lolita (Elizabeth Peña), who gets involved with autoeroticism and two very different men, one of them married. Finally, there's Lolita's widowed mother Doña Genoveva (Lucy Gallardo), who falls for her gardener while he's teaching her to drive.

Smart People DVD
Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church star in this indie seriocomedy about a dysfunctional family. Widower Lawrence Wetherhold (Quaid) is a curmudgeonly English professor at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Living with him is his Young Republican daughter Vanessa (Page). Also, Lawrence's slacker adoptive brother Chuck (Church) moves in with them. But things change when Lawrence gets into a romantic relationship with an ER physician (Parker). Meanwhile, Vanessa develops an odd friendship with Chuck.

More August DVD Releases on the Next Page