List Price: $29.99 Our Price: $23.99YOU SAVE $6!
Buy it
DVD Mindhunters
Creepy, tense, and enigmatic, Renny Harlin's Mindhunters is a grisly cross between Agatha Christie's whodunit classic And Then There Were None and Jonathan Demme's horrifying The Silence of the Lambs. An interesting ensemble cast, including Christian Slater (Windtalkers), Jonny Lee Miller (Melinda and Melinda), L.L. Cool J (Harlin's Deep Blue Sea), and Kathryn Morris (television's Cold Case) portray promising FBI profilers-in-training. Val Kilmer plays their ambiguous instructor putting the candidates through their paces and leaving them for a weekend on a spooky island, where those who survive a terrifying exercise--penetrating the mind of a serial killer via elaborate clues--will go to the head of the class. The rules change, however, when the students themselves turn out to be victims, bumped off one after another, the survivors half-mad with suspicion and paranoia that the murderer is one of their own. The film's concept is sound even if the execution (so to speak) gets out of hand with problems of logic. Among other things, none of these characters could possibly find time to pull off some of the psychopath's more complicated killing rituals. Quibbles aside, however, Mindhunters is particularly watchable if one is in the mood for a movie that plays mind games. --Tom Keogh
I usually don't write DVD reviews, just because movies are such a personal preference. Somebody's one star is someone else's four star, and no review will change that. Still, I just watched this movie for the first time, and I found it to be so incredibly contrived, formulaic, and overly complex that I just couldn't shake the idea that I was watching an exercise on film. The traps are so complex and delicate, that if someone sneezed at the wrong time they would would fail. And yet they all work exactly as planned, at the exact time, and kill the right person. I guess the idea is that because the killer is so intelligent, all of these plans, which must have taken years of preparation, work. By the end I didn't care at all who was doing it, or why, because I didn't buy it for even a second. I also didn't feel I knew any of the characters well enough to do more than shrug when they were killed.
I'm a sucker for a good two-star thriller, but this one just didn't work for me. If you choose to buy it, I hope it turns out to be a four-star for you. It was a one star for me.
BEST THRILLER OF 2004
I agree with previous reviewers - it's unexplainable why this excellent thriller was lying somewhere on a shelf for such a long time and came out practically with no promotion. Here in Russia we somehow got this movie on DVD about a year ago, I thought it had to be extremely popular abroad and was amazed it's not. Because to my opinion it's one of the best thrillers of the year. Renny Harlin who's known to be able to create visually splendid action films this time was better than usual. "Mind Hunters" is a model for what this kind of "There's-a-killer-among-us" thrillers should be - several men on isolated island, intricate and spectacular killings, sophisticated plot that grips you from the beginning and doesn't let go till the end, wonderful cast (Val Kilmer, Christian Slater, Jonny Le Miller, LL Cool J)... What else is desirable?
"Mind Hunters" tries to lead you to the wrong directions all the time, it's extremely intense, very elaborate and dodgy. If you like this kind of puzzle-thrillers you'll enjoy this one for sure.
It's a shame this film didn't make big of a box-office and passed almost unnoticed - it really deserves better destiny. I hope this DVD edition will be the movie's second birth.
Forget the Holes...Enjoy the Show
Thoroughly entertaining. Good suspense. Definitely worth renting, but not a keeper.
The story line is good: A group (great cast by the way) of FBI trainees are sent to an island training facility where they will simulate catching a serial killer. But things go awry and ironic chaos ensues when they realize there is a real serial killer among them on the island and the killer is after the trainees!
While the movie is playing it's important not to think too much about what you're watching, because the holes are abundant and deep. I mean, there are just a lot of scenarios where the cast find themselves too often in the wrong place at just the right time necessary for events to go as planned. Similarly, you might start to question the amount of time that the villain needs to accomplish some of the diabolical murders that occur. So don't think about the holes during the flick; it'll ruin a good show.
All in all, well acted and fun to watch. But certainly not a collector's item. So I'd opt for the rental. Sorry Amazon.
Brutal and breathtaking, Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's stunningly realized vision of Frank Miller's pulpy comic books. In the first of three separate but loosely related stories, Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed. In the second story, Dwight's (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again.
More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 16 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.99 Your Price: $14.99YOU SAVE $5!
Buy it
You get two hostage crises for the price of one in Hostage, an overwrought but otherwise involving thriller grounded by Bruce Willis's solid lead performance. Making a dramatic pit-stop on his way to Die Hard 4, Willis plays a traumatized former Los Angeles hostage negotiator, now working as a nearly-divorced police chief in sleepy Ventura County, California. Willis suddenly finds himself amidst two potentially deadly stand-offs when a trio of hapless teenagers seize hostages in the fortress-like home of an accountant (Kevin Pollack) whose connections to organized crime result in Willis struggling to rescue his estranged wife and daughter, who are being held hostage by faceless thugs at an undisclosed location. Having directed two of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell video... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bruce Willis - Kevin Pollak - Serena Scott Thomas Director(s): Florent Emilio Siri DVD Release Date: Released the 21 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $22.49YOU SAVE $7.5!
Buy it
Movie studios, by and large, avoid controversial subjects like race the way you might avoid a hive of angry bees. So it's remarkable that Crash even got made; that it's a rich, intelligent, and moving exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents--black, white, latino, Asian, and Persian--is downright amazing. A politically nervous district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his high-strung wife (Sandra Bullock, biting into a welcome change of pace from Miss Congeniality) get car-jacked by an oddly sociological pair of young black men (Larenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges); a rich black T.V. director (Terrence Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton) get pulled over by a white racist cop (Matt Dillon) and his reluctant partner (Ryan Phillipe); a... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Paul Haggis DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $13.49YOU SAVE $6.49!
Buy it
Director Sydney Pollack delivers megawatt star power, high gloss, and political passion to The Interpreter, his first thriller since The Firm. With Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn delivering smooth, understated performances, the film more closely recalls Pollack's 1975 Robert Redford/Faye Dunaway paranoid thriller Three Days of the Condor, trading conspiratorial politicians for potential assassination in the United Nations General Assembly (this being the first film ever granted permission to use actual U.N. locations). Kidman plays a U.N. interpreter who inadvertently overhears hints of a plot to kill the reviled, tyrannical leader of her (fictional) African homeland; Penn is the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her, or to determine her role (if any) in the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Nicole Kidman - Sean Penn - Catherine Keener Director(s): Sydney Pollack DVD Release Date: Released the 04 October 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.98 Your Price: $17.98YOU SAVE $12!
Buy it
