Pulp Fiction (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
from Miramax Entertainment
With the knockout one-two punch of 1992's Reservoir Dogs and 1994's Pulp Fiction writer-director Quentin Tarantino stunned the filmmaking world, exploding into prominence as a cinematic heavyweight contender. But Pulp Fiction was more than just the follow-up to an impressive first feature, or the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival, or a script stuffed with the sort of juicy bubblegum dialogue actors just love to chew, or the vehicle that reestablished John Travolta on the A-list, or the relatively low-budget ($8 million) independent showcase for an ultrahip mixture of established marquee names and rising stars from the indie scene (among them Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Julia Sweeney, Kathy Griffin, and Phil Lamar). It was more, even, than an unprecedented $100-million-plus hit for indie distributor Miramax. Pulp Fiction was a sensation. No, it was not the Second Coming (I actually think Reservoir Dogs is a more substantial film; and P.T. Anderson outdid Tarantino in 1997 by making his directorial debut with two even more mature and accomplished pictures, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights). But Pulp Fiction packs so much energy and invention into telling its nonchronologically interwoven short stories (all about temptation, corruption, and redemption amongst modern criminals, large and small) it leaves viewers both exhilarated and exhausted--hearts racing and knuckles white from the ride. (Oh, and the infectious, surf-guitar-based soundtrack is tastier than a Royale with Cheese.) --Jim Emerson
A couple of hit men, a fighter forced to throw a fight, the wife of a mobster, and two would-be robbers all find redemption.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: TRAVOLTA/JACKSON/THURMAN
Title: PULP FICTION
Street Release Date: 06/07/2005
Genre: DRAMA
Silverado (2 Disc Superbit Gift Set)
by Lawrence Kasdan
from Sony Pictures
Director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill) clearly set out to make an old-fashioned Western, but he couldn't help bringing a hip, self-conscious attitude to the proceedings. Silverado thus finds its own funky tone--sometimes rousing, sometimes winking. Four cowpokes converge on a little Western burg called Silverado; they're played by Kevin Kline (a distinctly modern kind of Western hero), Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and the rowdy young Kevin Costner. Kasdan peppers the somewhat generic action with smart dialogue and a parade of quirky supporting players, including John Cleese as a sheriff who seems to have stepped straight from a Monty Python sketch into an Old West saloon. Bruce Broughton supplies the music, a real throwback to the glory days of thundering Western themes. One thing's for sure: Silverado's a lot more fun than the later Kasdan-Costner Western, Wyatt Earp. --Robert Horton
Get ready for some horse-ridin' gun-totin' whiskey-drinkin' fun in this digitally remastered collector's edition of Lawrence Kasdan's SILVERADO featuring a never-before-seen featurette with interviews from the cast and the filmmakers! The spirited Western stars Kevin Kline Scott Glenn Kevin Costner and Danny Glover as four unwitting heroes who cross paths on their journey to the sleepy town of Silverado. Little do they know the town where their family and friends reside has been taken over by a corrupt sheriff and a murderous posse. It's up to the sharp-shooting foursome to save the day but first they have to break each other out of jail and learn who their real friends are. Thanks to its authentic look and spectacular cast which also includes Rosanna Arquette John Cleese Brian Dennehy Jeff Goldblum and OscarĀ®-winner Linda Hunt (1983 Best Supporting Actress The Year of Living Dangerously) this exciting Old West adventure created a whole new generation of Western fans and earned its "modern classic" status.System Requirements:Running Time: 132 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: PG-13 UPC: 043396067097 Manufacturer No: 06709
Buffalo '66
from Lions Gate
Billy Brown is fresh out of prison and now on a deadly mission to hunt down and kill the Buffalo Bills kicker whose botched field goal he believes ruined his life.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 17-JUN-2003
Media Type: DVD
Writer-director-composer Vincent Gallo and Christina Ricci star in this quirky and deliberately grimy little movie. Gallo plays Billy Brown, recently released from prison and unable to find so much as a decent bathroom in his cold hometown. Billy's parents are unaware that he's been locked up; in a pathetic attempt to impress them with how successful he's become, he hits on the novel plan of kidnapping young dance student Layla (Ricci) and forcing her to play the role of his wife. Billy's distant--to say the least--parents are played to the hilt by Anjelica Huston and Ben Gazzara, Huston in particular bringing a demented glee to her role as Billy's football-obsessed mother. As the movie unfolds, we learn more about Billy's tormented childhood and unfortunate tendency to bet on the Bills in the Super Bowl. Gallo boldly throws himself into the task of playing a complete sleazebag, and Ricci does lovely standout work as the one ray of hope in the grinding darkness of Billy's life. This odd little love story is just the thing to make you feel better about your own relationship--especially if you're not in one. --Ali Davis
The Executioner's Song (Director's Cut)
by Lawrence Schiller
from Paramount
Based on the true story of murderer Gary Mark Gilmore spanning the last nine months of his life (May 1976-January 1977) in which at age 35 after being released for serving a long prison term in Utah for armed robbery the unstable Gilmore murdered two men in two seperate and senseless robberies in which after a brief public trial in October he was sentenced to death by firing squad which drew a lot of media attention when Gilmore insisted that his execution be carried out and he became the first man to be executed in the USA since the government reinstated the death penalty in 1976.System Requirements:Running Time: 135 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 097368522640 Manufacturer No: 852264
Crash
by David Cronenberg
from New Line Home Video
Adapted from the controversial novel by J.G. Ballard, Crash will either repel or amaze you, with little or no room for a neutral reaction. The film is perfectly matched to the artistic and intellectual proclivities of director David Cronenberg, who has used the inspiration of Ballard's novel to create what critic Roger Ebert has described as "a dissection of the mechanics of pornography." Filmed with a metallic color scheme and a dominant tone of emotional detachment, the story focuses on a close-knit group of people who have developed a sexual fetish around the collision of automobiles. They use cars as a tool of arousal, in which orgasm is directly connected to death-defying temptations of fate at high speeds. Ballard wrote his book to illustrate the connections between sex and technology--the ultimate postmodern melding of flesh and machine--and Cronenberg takes this theme to the final frontier of sexual expression. Holly Hunter, James Spader, and Deborah Unger are utterly fearless in roles that few actors would dare to play, and their surrender to Cronenberg's vision makes Crash an utterly unique and challenging film experience. It's rated NC-17, so don't say you weren't warned! --Jeff Shannon
Desperately Seeking Susan
by Susan Seidelman
from MGM (Video & DVD)
This likeable, feminist screwball comedy about several incidents of mistaken identity is remembered more as the film that made Madonna a movie star. She's flip, hip, and energetic as Susan, the wild tramp with whom bored, suburban New Jersey housewife Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette) becomes obsessed after reading of her sexual conquests in the personal ads. Of course, since Madonna essentially played herself, the role's hardly a stretch. Director Susan Seidelmen presents a series of zany incidents too complicated to recount, but the result is that Roberta swaps lifestyles with her fixation to explore New Wave culture on New York's Lower East Side. It's territory Seidelmen knew well as her more offbeat, indie debut, Smithereens, reveled in the same setting. But where Smithereens took a more edgy approach to its characters, Susan is a fairy tale romantic comedy, and eventually becomes as conventional as the suburban characters it mocks by settling conflicts with predictable Hollywood formulae. Still, there's much to be enjoyed. The film's at its funniest when juxtaposing New York hip and New Jersey suburbia, like when Arquette's straight, suit-and-tie husband dances with Madonna in a punk club. The performances, too, are engaging, especially Arquette and Aidan Quinn, playing a romantic film projectionist who becomes her grubby Prince Charming. --Dave McCoy
If you know what to look for, you can find almost anything in the personal ads...including the loveof your life! Rosanna Arquette (Pulp Fiction) is "irresistible" (Newsweek) and, in her first starring role, pop star Madonna (Evita) gives a "marvelously comic" (Time) performance in this "delightful madcap comedy" (US) about mistaken identity. Bored New Jersey housewife Roberta (Arquette) fills her days by reading the personal ads and following an ongoing romance between "Jim" (Robert Joy) and "Susan" (Madonna), a mysterious drifter who leads the kind of free-spirited life about which Roberta can only dream. And dream she does, until the day she actually shows up at the couple's prearranged rendezvous in New York City...and after a bump on the head, a bout of amnesia turns Roberta into Susan and opens the door to intrigue, laughter and love!
After Hours
from Warner Home Video
A Manhattan Yuppie's night out becomes a comic nightmare courtesy of director Martin Scorsese. Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette star in a "wild funny and wonderful original" (Judith Crist) Year: 1985 Director: Martin Scorsese Starring: Griffin Dunne Rosanna Arquette Verna BloomRunning Time: 97 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085391919209
This well-regarded cult film is a tense Kafka-esque tale concerning what happens to a likable computer guy who is in the wrong place at the wrong time in the city that never sleeps--New York. This is a New York infested with bizarre characters vividly brought to life by a once-in-a-lifetime cast. Griffin Dunne's wonderfully controlled comic performance as Paul Hackett is the glue that holds this increasingly surreal film together. Scorsese utilizes a full array of independent and underground film techniques, including special film speed manipulations, angles, and edits, deftly capturing the strange rhythms of an after-hours New York City. Many will find the jokes clever, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Some, however, will find the film an excruciating series of staged circumstances setting up a sadistically cruel dark nightmare of horrors. And there are a few lines of dialogue so poorly written they remind you how unbelievable the thin story really is. But forgive the film these few lapses--overall it's a wild, surreal ride. The most offbeat character is the beehive-sporting, Monkee-obsessed neurotic played to perfection by Teri Garr. And the moment when Griffin Dunne uses his last quarter to play Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is" and dances with Verna Bloom while an angry mob searches SoHo for him is an inspired bit of lunacy. --Christopher J. Jarmick
Pulp Fiction
from Walt Disney Video
With the knockout one-two punch of 1992's Reservoir Dogs and 1994's Pulp Fiction writer-director Quentin Tarantino stunned the filmmaking world, exploding into prominence as a cinematic heavyweight contender. But Pulp Fiction was more than just the follow-up to an impressive first feature, or the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival, or a script stuffed with the sort of juicy bubblegum dialogue actors just love to chew, or the vehicle that reestablished John Travolta on the A-list, or the relatively low-budget ($8 million) independent showcase for an ultrahip mixture of established marquee names and rising stars from the indie scene (among them Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Julia Sweeney, Kathy Griffin, and Phil Lamar). It was more, even, than an unprecedented $100-million-plus hit for indie distributor Miramax. Pulp Fiction was a sensation. No, it was not the Second Coming (I actually think Reservoir Dogs is a more substantial film; and P.T. Anderson outdid Tarantino in 1997 by making his directorial debut with two even more mature and accomplished pictures, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights). But Pulp Fiction packs so much energy and invention into telling its nonchronologically interwoven short stories (all about temptation, corruption, and redemption amongst modern criminals, large and small) it leaves viewers both exhilarated and exhausted--hearts racing and knuckles white from the ride. (Oh, and the infectious, surf-guitar-based soundtrack is tastier than a Royale with Cheese.) --Jim Emerson
The Whole Nine Yards
by Jonathan Lynn
from Warner Home Video
Well, there goes the neighborhood -- in a pine box. When hit man Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski moves into a comfy suburb, everyone's suddenly in danger of pushing up daisies. And it's not all Jimmy's doing either. Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny) directs and a talented ensemble cast packs heat in this manic comedy about life, love and plenty of ammo. Bruce Willis plays Jimmy, whose arrival sparks a chain reaction in which just about everybody wants to clip somebody else. Matthew Perry plays a hapless dentist who finds a way to get on the Tulip's good and bad sides. And Rosanna Arquette, Michael Clarke Duncan, Natasha Henstridge, Amanda Peet and Kevin Pollak add to the yards of wacky and whacked fun.
S.O.B.
by Blake Edwards
from Warner Home Video
A satirical sock to Hollywood's kisser about a movie maker's attempts to make a flop into a racy R-rated box-office hit.Running Time: 122 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 012569069923 Manufacturer No: 699
It's been years since Blake Edwards made a funny film, and this 1981 effort may have been one of his last consistent laugh producers. Richard Mulligan plays a Hollywood producer who realizes that his career may be over when the public sees his latest film: a big-budget musical that lands on test audiences with a thud. In a moment of madness, he hits upon the idea of reediting it to include soft-porn reshoots--including a shot of his movie-star wife (Julie Andrews), who has a squeaky clean public image, baring her breasts (which the squeaky clean Andrews actually does). Scathing in its satire of Hollywood numbskullery, the film features terrific performances by Mulligan, Robert Preston, and William Holden (in his last film). --Marshall Fine
+++


