| Meet the Fockers [SOUNDTRACK]
|
| Meet the Parents (Widescreen Special Edition) (2000) Starring: Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller |
| Ocean's 12 [SOUNDTRACK]
|
| Ocean's Eleven (Full Screen Edition) (2001) Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt Ocean's Eleven improves on 1960's Rat Pack original with supernova casting, a slickly updated plot, and Steven Soderbergh's graceful touch behind the camera. Soderbergh reportedly relished the opportunity "to make a movie that has no desire except to give pleasure from beginning to end," and he succeeds on those terms, blessed by the casting of George Clooney as Danny Ocean, the title role originated by Frank Sinatra. Fresh out of jail, Ocean masterminds a plot to steal $163 million from the seemingly impervious vault of Las Vegas's Bellagio casino, not just for the money but to win his ex-wife (Julia Roberts) back from the casino's ruthless owner (Andy Garcia). Soderbergh doesn't scrimp on the caper's comically intricate strategy, but he finds greater joy in assembling a stellar team (including Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, and Carl Reiner) and indulging their strengths as actors. The result is a film that's as smooth as a silk suit and just as stylish. Amazon |
| Cellular (Infinifilm Edition) (2004) Starring: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans Just when you think it's getting silly, Cellular serves up another tantalizing twist. In the time-honored tradition of Sorry, Wrong Number and Wait Until Dark, Kim Basinger is well-cast as a resourceful damsel-in-distress who thwarts her kidnappers by connecting with a n'er-do-well cell-phone user (Chris Evans, later seen in The Fantastic Four) who races against time to rescue her from afar. One good cop (William H. Macy) assembles clues to uncover conspiracy, while first-time writer Chris Morgan and pulp-movie master Larry Cohen (who conceived the plot, similar to his own Phone Booth screenplay) serve up a consistently satisfying string of high-tension surprises. Jason Statham continues to prove his rising-star status as the film's tenacious villain, and director David Ellis (Final Destination 2) takes advantage of his experience as a veteran stunt coordinator and second-unit director, making good use of locations in his native Santa Monica, and wringing credible suspense from a deliriously far-fetched premise. - Amazon |
| Friday Night Lights (Full Screen Edition) (2004) Starring: Billy Bob Thornton Based on the perennial nonfiction bestseller by H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights looks at high school football in the harsh light of reality, finding heart and hardness while stirring our emotions. Actor-director Peter Berg (Very Bad Things, The Rundown) is Bissinger's cousin; he knows the material well, and understands how an obsession with winning turns high school kids into somber, over-pressured gladiators--expendable soldiers in a community war against shame and obscurity. The fact-based story focuses on the 1988 football season of Odessa-Permian high school in West Texas, and as a fast-paced sports movie, Berg delivers the goods with a rousing, frenetically styled crowd-pleaser. But there's darkness in this tale of weary underdogs, including an abusive father (well-played by country music star Tim McGraw), threatening townsfolk, an injured star running back (Derek Luke), a tormented quarterback (Lucas Black), and the melancholy coach (Billy Bob Thornton) who takes his team to the finals. Berg's film could use less flashy cutting and more drama to support its gridiron intensity, but Friday Night Lights offers a refreshing alternative to the conventional sports movie, and makes a perfect triple-feature with the equally exciting documentaries Go Tigers! and The Last Game. - Amazon |
| The Forgotten (2004) Starring: Julianne Moore With a plot that might've been lifted from The X-Files, nothing is quite what it seems in The Forgotten, a psychological conspiracy thriller with Julianne Moore doing fine work as a grieving mother whose nine-year-old son was killed in a plane crash. At least, that's what she's been led to believe, but when even her husband (Anthony Edwards) tries to convince her that she's delusional and never had a child, things start to get very spooky indeed. Dominic West (from HBO's superb series The Wire) plays a similarly traumatized father, and when they witness some very strange events--and a mysterious man (Linus Roache) who might be indestructible--this glorified B-movie potboiler directed by Joseph Ruben (best known for Dreamscape and The Stepfather) turns into a preposterous but entertaining trip into The Twilight Zone territory. Featuring Alfre Woodard as an intuitive New York detective and Gary Sinise as a seemingly sympathetic psychiatrist, The Forgotten offers adequate shocks and an intriguing, otherworldly study of tenacious parental instinct. It deserved its mixed reviews, but it's a fun spook-fest for rainy-day viewing. - Amazon |
| Big Fish (2004) Starring: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney Director: Tim Burton
|
|
| The Phantom of the Opera (2004 Movie Soundtrack) (Special Extended Edition Package) [SOUNDTRACK] [COLLECTOR'S EDITION]
|
| The Notebook (2004) Starring: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams Director: Nick Cassavetes When you consider that old-fashioned tearjerkers are an endangered species in Hollywood, a movie like The Notebook can be embraced without apology. Yes, it's syrupy sweet and clogged with clichés, and one can only marvel at the irony of Nick Cassavetes directing a weeper that his late father John--whose own films were devoid of saccharine sentiment--would have sneered at. Still, this touchingly impassioned and great-looking adaptation of the popular Nicholas Sparks novel has much to recommend, including appealing young costars (Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams) and appealing old costars (James Garner and Gena Rowlands, the director's mother) playing the same loving couple in (respectively) early 1940s and present-day North Carolina. He was poor, she was rich, and you can guess the rest; decades later, he's unabashedly devoted, and she's drifting into the memory-loss of senile dementia. How their love endured is the story preserved in the titular notebook that he reads to her in their twilight years. The movie's open to ridicule, but as a delicate tearjerker it works just fine. Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember were also based on Sparks novels, suggesting a triple-feature that hopeless romantics will cherish. -Amazon
|
| The Aviator [SOUNDTRACK]
|
| Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2-Disc Collector's Edition) (2004) Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet |
| Beyond the Sea [SOUNDTRACK]
|
| Some Like It Hot (Special Edition) (1959) Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis Director: Billy Wilder
|
|
| Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack [SOUNDTRACK] |
|
| Anchorman - The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (Unrated Widescreen Edition) (2004) Starring: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate Will Farrell followed up his star-making vehicle Elf, which matched his fine-tuned comic obliviousness to a sweet sincerity, with a more arrogant variation on the same character: Ron Burgundy, a macho, narcissistic news anchor from the 1970s. Along with his news posse--roving reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd, Clueless), sports guy Champ Kind (David Koechner), and dim-bulb weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell, Bruce Almighty)--Burgundy rules the roost in San Diego, fawned upon by groupies and supported by a weary producer (Fred Willard, Best In Show) who tolerates Burgundy's ego because of good ratings. But when Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate, View from the Top) arrives with ambitions to become an anchor herself, she threatens the male-dominated newsroom. Anchorman has plenty of funny material, but it's as if Farrell couldn't decide what he really wanted to mock, and so took smart-ass cracks at everything in sight. Still, there are moments of inspired delirium.- Amazon |
| The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou [SOUNDTRACK] |
| Troy (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition) (2004) Starring: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana There are many reasons to recommend Troy as a good ol' fashioned Hollywood epic, especially if you've never read Homer's The Iliad. Dispensing with Greek gods altogether, this earnestly massive production (budgeted at upwards of $200 million) will surely offend historians and devoted students of the classics (for them, there's the History Channel's Troy). But there's politics aplenty in the grand-scale war that erupts when Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom) makes off with Helen (blandly beautiful German model Diane Kruger), wife of Spartan ruler Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), whose brother, the Greek king Agamemnon (Brian Cox) prods him into enraged retaliation. Greek warrior Achilles (Brad Pitt) brings lethal force to his battles (and there are many of them, mostly impressive), and his Trojan counterpart, Paris's brother Hector (Eric Bana), adds even more buffed-up beefcake to a film so chock-full o' hunks that there's barely room for Peter O'Toole (doing fine work as Trojan king Priam) and even less for Julie Christie, appearing ever-so-briefly as Achilles's melancholy mother. The drama is nearly as arid as the sun-baked locations (Mexico and Malta) that stand in for the Aegean coast, and many critics suggested that Pitt (who valiantly tries to give Achilles some tormented dimension) was simply miscast. But when you consider that Wolfgang Petersen also made The Perfect Storm, there's nothing wrong with enjoying Troy as a semi-guilty pleasure with a touch of ancient class. - Amazon |
| Very Long Engagement (Score) The orchestral score is by Angelo Badalamenti ("Twin Peaks," "Mulholland Drive," "The Company," "The Straight Story," "Lost Highway"), conducted by Phil Marshall. |
|
Garden State (2004)Starring: Zach Braff Zach Braff (from the TV show Scrubs) stars in his writing/directing debut, Garden State--normally a doomed act of hubris, but Braff pulls it off with unassuming charm. An emotionally numb actor in L.A., Andrew (Braff) comes back to New Jersey after nine years away for his mother's funeral. Andrew avoids his bitter father (Ian Holm, The Sweet Hereafter) and joins old friends (including the superb Peter Sarsgaard, Boys Don't Cry) in a round of parties. Along the way he meets a girl (Natalie Portman, Beautiful Girls) with demons of her own; bit by bit the two offer each other a little healing. Plotwise, Garden State is familiar stuff, a cross between The Graduate and a Meg Ryan movie, but Braff has an eye for goofy but resonant visual images, an ear for lively dialogue, and a great cast. The result is surprisingly fresh and funny.- Amazon.com |
|
|
Ray!: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack [SOUNDTRACK] - Ray Charles This fall Universal Pictures and Walden Media will release the feature-length biopic Ray!, the never-before-told musical biographical drama of the late American legend Ray Charles. Featuring a remarkable performance from Jamie Foxx in the central role, Ray! follows the inspiring story of a one-of-a-kind genius. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Taylor Hackford (La Bamba, An Officer And A Gentleman), the film features Foxx’s uncanny lip-syncing to classic Ray Charles tracks (utilizing the artist's original master recordings). Ray! is an inspirational story about an amazing artist and human being, with Ray Charles music at the film's very core. |
|
| Resident Evil - Apocalypse (Special Edition) (2004) 2002's popular video-game-derived hit Resident Evil didn't inspire confidence in a sequel, but Resident Evil: Apocalypse defies odds and surpasses expectations. It's a bigger, better, action-packed zombie thriller, and this time Milla Jovovich (as the first film's no-nonsense heroine) is joined by more characters from the popular Capcom video games, including Jill Valentine (played by British hottie Sienna Guillory) and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr, from 1999's The Mummy). They're armed and ready for a high-caliber encounter with devil dogs, mutant "Lickers," lurching zombies, and the leather-clad monster known only as Nemesis, unleashed by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation responsible for creating the cannibalistic undead horde. Having gained valuable experience as a respected second-unit director on high-profile films like Gladiator and The Bourne Identity, director Alexander Witt elevates this junky material to the level of slick, schlocky entertainment. - Amazon | |
| Finding Neverland [SOUNDTRACK] As did the Lewis Carroll/Alice in Wonderland-rooted Dreamchild before it, Finding Neverland explores the all-too-human roots of an English children' s literature classic, in this case author James Mathew Barrie's (Johnny Depp) enduring fable, Peter Pan. Polish stage composer cum film scorer Jan A. P. Kaczmarek takes the film's fantasy-leavened, yet ultimately bittersweet tale of Barrie, his losing battle with adulthood and the magic world of prose it inspired and invests it with an exuberant score that positively pulses with youthful abandon. Dominated by joyous writing for strings, winds and children's chorus and punctuated by the effervescent solo piano flourishes of Leszek Mozdzer (and a few other inviting ethnic conceits), the composer's music not only playfully vamps the tale's Edwardian era, but does it with an ear towards optimistic, youthful energy that's irresistible. Mozdzer also contributes several masterful solo piano interpretations of Kaczmarek's themes that, while not strictly a part of the film's score, contribute greatly to making this album a compelling whole unto itself. |
|
12/21/2003 - 12/28/2003 01/04/2004 - 01/11/2004 02/01/2004 - 02/08/2004 08/15/2004 - 08/22/2004 09/19/2004 - 09/26/2004 12/19/2004 - 12/26/2004 03/13/2005 - 03/20/2005 09/24/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 10/08/2006 10/08/2006 - 10/15/2006 10/15/2006 - 10/22/2006 10/22/2006 - 10/29/2006