No one can definitely say 1959's North By Northwest is Alfred Hitchcock's best movie -- how to choose? -- but from first frame to last, it may well be his most entertaining. The first of Hitchcock's pictures to appear on the Blu-ray format (Warner Home Video, $35), the film has been given a $1 million restoration, and to say it looks utterly fantastic on high-definition -- one of the most astounding Blu-ray transfers to date -- is probably an understatement.
Filmmaker Richard Kelly's initial encounter with Richard Matheson's fiendish little short story Button, Button -- about a cash-strapped couple offered a million dollars to push a button on a box that will instantly cause someone they don't know to drop dead -- came not on the page, but on TV.
Classic Christmas tale retold with eye-popping effects
Everything about An Education, the story of a 16-year-old girl's affair with a 30-year-old man in London in 1962, comes together in a way that gives the movie the feel of an instant classic.
BIG SCREEN The Box (PG-13): -- After the spectacular failure of his ambitious second film Southland Tales, writer-director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) goes the simpler, high-concept route with this thriller adapted from a tiny Richard Matheson short story, about a married couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) given a wooden box. Push its button, and you become instantly wealthy -- but someone, somewhere, drops dead. Would you do it? Come on, you know you would.
A fiendishly clever twist on the ''evil child'' genre of horror films, Orphan (Warner Home Entertainment, $29 DVD, $34 Blu-ray) was unceremoniously dumped into theaters this summer with little promotion. But the movie, produced by Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment, which specializes in modest little B-pictures (House on Haunted Hill, Ghost Ship), deserved better.
Michael Jackson: This Is It (PG) -- High School Musical director Kenny Ortega, who was collaborating with the singer on a series of London concerts, culls a concert film and cinematic memorial (with some sequences in 3D) from the hundreds of hours of footage taped during Jackson's rehearsals for the shows.
The buzz on the film festival circuit is that the dearth of independent filmmaking caused by the recession has made festival programming increasingly difficult. But at the 2009 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, the show will go on.
Too many monsters spoil the goth
Can't compete with the real thing
Clocks are ticking in sci-fi quest to find The One
Truck driver role is a star-maker for Monaghan
Pawn becomes a queen in a tale of self discovery
Even by Joel and Ethan Coen's bleak standards, A Serious Man would be an uncommonly pessimistic movie. The film tells the story of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a college professor in Minnesota in 1967 whose life is spiraling out of control.
BIG SCREEN A Serious Man (R) -- Iconoclastic directors Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, Fargo) get personal with this comedy, loosely based on their middle-class Jewish upbringing, about a beleaguered college professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) who seeks advice from three rabbis on how to get control of his topsy-turvy life. As funny and bleak as anything the Coens have ever made, but without all the distancing stylistic tricks and irony.
Ten years in the making, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have finally made good on their promise to record a commentary track for South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. The only catch is that the track is exclusive to the new Blu-ray release of the film (Paramount Home Entertainment, $30), and the movie's crude animation doesn't benefit much from the format's higher resolution.
BIG SCREEN Law Abiding Citizen (R) -- An angry man (300's Gerard Butler) targets the Philadelphia prosecutor (Jamie Foxx) who orchestrated a plea bargain for the killer of his wife and daughter. Sometimes, words just aren't enough.
You never forget your first time watching Takashi Miike's Audition: For some people, it is the first and last Miike picture they ever see. The wildly prolific Miike's best-known (and arguably most disciplined) work, the movie scandalized film festival audiences when it was shown around the world in 1999, and the terrific new two-disc Audition: Collector's Edition (Shout Factory, $25 DVD, $30 Blu-ray) celebrates the movie's 10th anniversary with a truckload of enlightening extras.
BIG SCREEN Couples Retreat (PG-13) -- Four married couples (among them Vince Vaughn, Malin Akerman, Jason Bateman, Kristin Davis and Jon Favreau) vacation on an island that specializes in relationship counseling. More than specializes, actually: The therapy is mandatory. The cast is promising, and Favreau and Vaughn co-wrote the screenplay, so the movie should be funny. But the trailer looks deadly.
One of the small experimental films (like Bubble and Full Frontal) director Steven Soderbergh often makes in between larger, big-budget projects, The Girlfriend Experience (Magnolia Home Entertainment, $27 DVD, $35 Blu-ray) was shot on the Red One digital camera filmmakers have been raving about and looks absolutely sensational on Blu-ray.
When Woody Harrelson received a copy of the screenplay for Zombieland last year, he stuffed it into his duffel bag of unread scripts and promptly forgot about it.
BIG SCREEN Capitalism: A Love Story (R) -- Michael Moore's most impassioned cinematic plea for activism yet explores the recent banking and housing collapse and the increasingly larger -- and more destructive -- role corporations have played in the U.S. government since the Reagan era. Moore does an impressive job of compressing a complicated subject into two highly watchable and entertaining hours, replete with man-on-the-street examples of the toll of the recession on the middle class.
BIG SCREEN Fame (PG-13) -- Alan Parker's influential 1980 musical about the students at New York City's High School of Performing Arts gets a ''reimagining'' that includes a toning-down of the original R-rating to a High School Musical-friendly PG-13. Yes, New York has changed a lot since the 1980s. But still. Asher Book, Kristy Flores, Paul McGill and Naturi Naughton are among the talented kids who hope to live forever and learn how to fly high. This one is not being screened for critics until the last possible minute, so don't expect much.
On a new feature-length retrospective documentary titled Beware the Moon found on An American Werewolf in London: Full Moon Edition (Universal, $20 DVD, $27 Blu-ray), director Paul Davis revisits several locations seen in the 1981 horror-comedy classic, including the infamous Slaughtered Lamb tavern, since remodeled into a Denny's-like eatery called The Black Swan. There is no pentagram on the wall or gory placard hanging above the entrance. There isn't even a dartboard. Damn gentrification!
RSS|
My Yahoo|
Newsletters|
Widgets|
Mobile|
Alerts|
Twitter
Terms of Service| Privacy Policy| About our ads| Copyright| About The Miami Herald| About the McClatchy Company| Corrections| Contact Us| Advertise
Partners: El Nuevo Herald| Newspaper in Education| WLRN | Miami Herald News| CBS4 WFOR-TV| More
Copyright 2009 Miami Herald Media Co. All rights reserved
