Let's take a look at the best movies on DVD for February 2009.
Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie, this is a dramatization of a true story. In 1928 Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) dotes on her nine-year-old son Walter, but one day she comes home from her telephone company job to discover he's gone missing. A few months later, the police deliver to Christine a boy they say is Walter, but she knows is not. Soon she finds herself locked up in a mental institution. Meanwhile, an investigation is conducted that leads to a creepy serial killer. In addition to directing, Eastwood composed the film's musical score.
High School Musical (2006) and
High School Musical 2 (2007) were extraordinarily popular made-for-TV movies produced for the Disney Channel. This is the third installment in the franchise, and it made it to the big screen with director-choreographer Kenny Ortega returning, along with the half-dozen principal actors, including Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale. The story is still at Albuquerque's East High, where the seniors prepare to put on a spring musical. Troy (Efron) may have a shot at Juilliard, but his girlfriend Gabriella (Hudgens) is making plans for Stanford.
This animated comedy is the sequel to
Madagascar (2005), and all the principal characters are back, voiced by the same celebrities. The main characters are still Alex the lion (voice of Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (voice of Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (voice of Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (voice of David Schwimmer). This time around the four, joined by lemurs and penguins, leave Madagascar in a rickety airplane bound for New York, but crash-land in the African savannah. There Alex reunites with his parents, and the gang has a new round of adventures.
Michael Cera and Kat Dennings are paired in this low-keyed romantic comedy. Nick (Cera) and Norah (Dennings) are high school students who share a passion for music and get together over the course of one long night while clubbing in Lower Manhattan. They have a series of adventures and fall for each other as they go on an odyssey looking for a fictional band called Where's Fluffy. Along the way, there's soundtrack music by real-life contemporary indie and alternative pop and rock groups, such as Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses and We Are Scientists.
This low-budget horror movie is an English-language remake of the Spanish film
[Rec]. A TV reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman (Steve Harris) are assigned to follow LA firemen for a night. A 911 call comes in from an apartment building, and the TV crew goes there with the emergency response team. Inside a strange rabies-like disease has broken out, and infected residents are spreading it by biting others. Authorities seal off the building, and the TV crew records horrible things, even as they try to avoid being bitten themselves. The movie was made from the footage they shot.
Directed by Oliver Stone, this is a biopic about US President George W. Bush. Josh Brolin portrays the title character, and W.'s father, former President George H.W. Bush, is played by James Cromwell. The main parts of the story take place during the early phases of the Iraq War and find W. surrounded by Vice President Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn), Secretary of State Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright), political strategist Karl Rove (Toby Jones) and a fictional preacher (Stacy Keach). The portrait of W. is unflattering, but not unsympathetic.
Kevin Smith wrote, directed and edited this raunchy, but sweet comedy that stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks. Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Banks) are longtime platonic pals who are roommates in a shabby Pittsburgh apartment, but they're in debt and will be evicted if they don't get some money soon. That's when they come up with the idea of making a pornographic movie. But that means they'll have sex with each other, which alarms them because they're afraid it may change their relationship. Real-life porn star Katie Morgan is in the film, along with former porn star Traci Lords.
