List Price: $26.98 Our Price: $24.28YOU SAVE $2.7!
Buy it
DVD Jim Brown All American
Spike Lee directs a flawed but fascinating portrait of the sports legend, actor, and activist in Jim Brown: All American. Interviewing former coaches, teammates, and celebrity observers (including Oliver Stone), and with Brown's cooperation, this HBO documentary is best at detailing Brown's early life. Briefly raised by a great-grandmother in Georgia, Brown moved to Long Island, where he found a supportive, predominantly white, community that encouraged his high school victories in basketball, lacrosse, tennis, and, of course, football. He encounters racism at Syracuse University, but Brown's performance and pride overwhelmed all resistance. The Cleveland Browns chapter explains how Brown dominated the game, and then Lee ventures into his subject's experiences in Hollywood and as an African American community leader. The film is engaging and disciplined until controversial issues arise--Brown's alleged abuse toward women, for example--and Lee refuses to press. But in general, this is a good piece about a charismatic, dynamic figure. --Tom Keogh
I have seen only one Spike Lee movie so what I'm about to say is said (by my own admission) with ignorance, but Jim Brown All American must be his masterpiece... his tour de force. This hour long documentary deeply explores not only the incredible athletic career of this exceptional athlete but also the obstacles-- notably prejudice-- over which Jim Brown had to prevail on his way to greatness. It also reveals what makes Jim Brown an exceptional (and admirable) human being off the playing field as well. His capacity for love and forgiveness, portrayed in the opening scene of the documentary, impressed me at least as much as did his absolutely unbelievable performances on the football AND lacrosse fields.
At the same time, I was very impressed with Mr. Lee's evenhanded and thoughtful treatment of Jim Brown's legal troubles. He didn't whitewash or paper over this turbulent aspect of Jim Brown's life. He also documented the critical intervention of many good people in his formative years without whom Jim Brown's life might have taken a different course.
I know what you're thinking..."This guy's just another rabid Cleveland Browns fan in his 50's who grew up rooting for Jim Brown." Not so. I'm a rabid Chicago Bears fan in his 50's who sees Jim Brown and Gale Sayers starting in the same backfield on God's All-Universe Team.
The documentary was informative, entertaining, and-- above all-- inspiring. I can't wait until it is issued so I can buy it for myself and show it to all the aging Cleveland Browns fans who surround me in my cul-de-sac.
This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vanessa Redgrave - David Hemmings Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $15.98YOU SAVE $4!
Buy it
This low-budget crime thriller has the feel of a major blockbuster and owes its roots to the hard-edged crime movies of the 1930s. Christopher Walken stars as a drug kingpin who is released from prison and vows to use his position and influence--and criminal enterprise--for charitable means. But a core group of New York cops are all over him and his gang, determined to go to war, whatever the cost, to bring him down. Eventually his empire--headquartered at, of all places, Donald Trump's Plaza Hotel--crumbles under the weight of double-crossing and a body count of open warfare with the cops. This is one of the most stylish films of the last decade, with a strong supporting cast (including Lawrence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, and David Caruso) and some truly enthralling set pieces, including... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Christopher Walken - David Caruso Director(s): Abel Ferrara DVD Release Date: Released the 20 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $13.48YOU SAVE $1.5!
Buy it
Sean Penn and Benecio Del Toro, two of the most gripping actors around, play wildly different men linked through a grieving woman (Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive, The Ring) in 21 Grams. Del Toro (Traffic, The Usual Suspects) delves deep into the role of an ex-con turned born-again Christian, a deeply conflicted man struggling to set right a terrible accident, even at the expense of his family. Penn (Mystic River, Dead Man Walking) captures a cynical, philandering professor in dire need of a heart transplant, which he gets from the death of Watts' husband. 21 Grams slips back in forth in time, creating an intricate emotional web out of the past and the present that slowly draws these three together; the result is remarkably fluid and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sean Penn - Naomi Watts - Benicio Del Toro Director(s): Alejandro González Iñárritu DVD Release Date: Released the 16 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $11.98YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
Partly inspired by 1948's The Big Clock and its nominal 1987 remake No Way Out, the Denzel Washington thriller Out of Time is quite enjoyable if you ignore its implausible plotting. Like those earlier films, this reunion of Washington and his Devil in a Blue Dress director Carl Franklin is about a man--in this case the police chief (Washington) of sleepy Banyan Key, Florida--who falls into a trap set by others, sinks into legal quicksand of his own making, and must race the clock to extricate himself from a series of incriminating setbacks. The Florida setting adds welcome character to the potboiler plot, and Washington's screen-cred makes it easy to overlook the absurdities of rookie writer David Collard's screenplay. Eva Mendes is sharp and sensible as... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Denzel Washington - Eva Mendes - Sanaa Lathan Director(s): Carl Franklin DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.94 Your Price: $13.45YOU SAVE $1.49!
Buy it
The luminous Audrey Tautou (Amelie) stars in Dirty Pretty Things, a riveting thriller about an illegal immigrant in London named Okwe (Chiwetal Ejiofor, Amistad), a doctor in his homeland who now works days as a taxi driver and nights as a hotel desk clerk. When a hooker tells him there's a mess in one of the hotel's bathrooms, Okwe finds a human heart in the toilet. He soon discovers a snare of desperation, poverty, and black-market body organs--and finds that his only friend, a Turkish hotel maid (Tautou), may be the next to be caught. Dirty Pretty Things, skillfully directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, Dangerous Liaisons, My Beautiful Laundrette), fuses taut suspense with an unsettling portrait of life among the British underclass... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Chiwetel Ejiofor - Audrey Tautou - Sophie Okonedo Director(s): Stephen Frears DVD Release Date: Released the 23 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.99 Your Price: $11.97YOU SAVE $8.02!
Buy it
