Dane, Lawrence

Scanners

David Cronenberg's 1981 horror film is a darkly paranoid story of a homeless man (Stephen Lack) mistakenly believed to be insane, when in fact he can't turn off the sound of other people's thoughts in his telepathic mind. Helped by a doctor (Patrick McGoohan) and enlisted in a program of "scanners"--telepaths who also can will heads to explode--he becomes involved in a battle against nefarious forces. A number of critics consider this to be Cronenberg's first great film, and indeed it has a serious vision of destiny that rivals some of the important German expressionist works from the silent cinema. Lack is very good as the odd hero, and McGoohan is effectively eccentric and chilly as the scientist who saves him from the street, only to thrust him into a terrible struggle. --Tom Keogh

Welcome to the world of the Scannersa race of humans with telekinetic powers that can wreak havoc beyond your most dreaded nightmare. Writer/director David Cronenberg (The Fly, Naked Lunch) brings the terror closer than ever beforehe brings it right into your mind. Cronenberg is a modern-day horror master whose name fits in easily with the likes of King, Craven and Carpenter...and Scanners, with its spectacular and shockingly realistic special effects, is a startling masterpiece of the genre. When a rogue Scanner of unparalleled power (Michael Ironside) wages a bloody war against the normals, young empath Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) is recruited to trackhim down. But Vale is inexperiencedand a battle with another Scanner could mean a grisly death...or worse. Can Vale vanquish his insanely violent, power-mad adversary? Only one thing is certain: Scanners delivers the chills-down-your-spine, heart-in-your-throat, you-can't-watch-but-you-daren't-leave goods (Time)!

It Takes Two

Two young girls who happen to look identical bump into each other in the woods and decide to swap households so they can play matchmaker to their single parents.Running Time: 101 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 085391460022

This first theatrical outing for the ubiquitous Olsen twins is their take on The Parent Trap meets The Prince and the Pauper. One plays a foster child under the care of a single social worker (Kirstie Alley) whose marital status prevents her from adopting her favorite charge. The other is the neglected daughter of a "bazillionaire" (Steve Guttenberg), who's about to marry a gold-digging socialite (played nastily by Jane Sibbett, Ross's first ex-wife on TV's Friends). The foster kid comes to a charity camp abutting the rich girl's summer estate and--presto--the identical strangers meet, hatch a plan to solve both their dilemmas, and switch identities. Directed by Andy Tennant (Ever After), this PG-rated film features some decent G-rated chemistry between Alley and Guttenberg and surprisingly uncloying performances by Mary-Kate and Ashley. The rating is for mild language. (Ages 5 and up) --Kimberly Heinrichs

Day One

The history of the atomic bomb--its conception, creation, and deployment--gets an impressively complex yet propulsive treatment in this compelling docudrama. Day One balances human drama, scientific history, and political machinations with uncommon skill and considerable smarts. From the moment that General Groves (Brian Dennehy, Presumed Innocent) is appointed to drive the Manhattan Project, the movie has a driving force; Dennehy presents a brusk and demanding man who never questions whether he is right or wrong. In contrast comes J. Robert Oppenheimer (David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck), a fundamentally decent man whose conflicts about the consequences of the atomic bomb eat at him--Strathairn captures Oppenheimer's qualms even as his will to succeed drives him forward. Day One cunningly juxtaposes political meetings with scientific discussions, subtly comparing different paths of thought. The compressed script distills enormous debates without simplifying them and--even more striking--making the discussions feel like actual conversation, with irrational and expedient factors as significant as the weighty ideas. The story builds to considerable tension as the bomb is tested and, with highly debatable justification, used on a civilian population. Day One presents history at a breakneck pace, using human detail to keep the broad sweep of events grounded, without losing sight of that big picture. Rarely have momentous decisions been so well interlaced with human fallibility. Also featuring Tony Shalhoub (Monk), Michael Tucker (L.A. Law), and a powerhouse supporting cast of old-school character actors like Hume Cronyn, Barnard Hughes, and Hal Holbrook. --Bret Fetzer

This Emmy® winning, historically accurate drama tells the complex and moving story of the Manhattan Project. Racing against the Nazi war machine and enduring intense military and political pressure, Allied scientists wrestle with the challenge of creating the ultimate weapon. Leading the superb cast are Michael Tucker (L.A. Law) as Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck.) as mission chief J. Robert Oppenheimer, Brian Dennehy (Death of a Salesman) as General Leslie Groves, and David Ogden Stiers (MASH) as FDR. Also featuring Hal Holbrook (Mark Twain Tonight!), Hume Cronyn (12 Angry Men), and Tony Shalhoub (Monk).

Before the bomb can be perfected, Hitler's death and Germany's surrender remove one enemy from the equation. But Japan remains. Day One builds quietly to a shattering climax, as the scientists who developed the bomb out of patriotic fervor witness its grisly consequences.

Waking the Dead

Actor-turned-director Keith Gordon has crafted a touching love story that transcends time, political ideology, and even death. The movie opens in 1974 as Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) watches a TV news report announcing the death in Chile of three American activists, including Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), his one true love. The story flashes back to when they first met, showing how he was always more conservative, with grand political aspirations, but the relationship worked because they both shared dreams of making the world a better place, one from inside the system and the other from outside. The movie also flashes forward to his life in the early '80s, when he gets tapped to run for Congress. He starts having visions of her, but he is never quite sure if she's a hallucination arising out of his stress, a manifestation of his political consciousness, an out-and-out ghost, or maybe she's still alive somehow. Whatever she is, his deep longing for her is making him crack up. Gordon smartly jumps the story back and forth in time, forgoing an "objective" reality in favor of a more subjective and emotional one. It is a structure based on memory, and that in tandem with the content is what makes Waking the Dead a very powerful film indeed.--Andy Spletzer

Happy Birthday to Me

Happy Birthday to Me typifies the horror genre prior to the self-reflection and irony that saturated the genre in the late '80s and '90s. A solid cast, decent acting, a well-written script, and relatively high production values result in a solid movie that is engaging on its own in addition to offering a glimpse into the history of '80s horror. The plot follows the rules of the genre (later parodied in such films as the Scream and Scary Movie series). A number of teenagers (played by actors who appear visibly older than their characters) from an elite prep school get into mischievous sexual situations fueled by alcohol and pot smoking. As teens start to disappear, murdered in a variety of violent ways, the film suggests a number of suspects. Is the killer the troubled star played by Melissa Sue Anderson who lost her overbearing, social-climbing mother in a car accident that she survived? Or is it the stern school mistress, the wacky, cool social clown, the social misfit, or none of the above? The film keeps you guessing until the final scene. Happy Birthday is a must-see for serious fans of the horror genre and this release is a solid digital mastering of the movie. Hardcore fans should note that the DVD release was not able to secure the rights to the original soundtrack so this version features an alternate soundtrack of largely nondescript '80s electronic music. --Brian Saltzman

Red Green - Duct Tape Forever

The cult PBS comedy The Red Green Show stretches into a feature film with Duct Tape Forever, still very much about a batch of underachieving Canadian men and their high church of low expectations, the Possum Lodge. The longtime TV series, starring Steve Smith as flannel-shirted handyman Red Green, makes a comic virtue of Canuck self-parody and universal male ineptness.

"Whenever a man does a dumb thing," says Red, "it's better if he doesn't have an audience." Well, a lot of eyes are on Red, his geeky nephew Harold (Patrick McKenna), and the other boys after a rich man (Richard Fitzpatrick) drives his car into a Possum Lodge sinkhole and sues for damages. The solution: Build a giant, duct tape goose and enter it in a Minnesota contest for cash prizes. Of course. Co-creator Smith re-tools the show's self-deprecating essence and run-on joke about male incompetence into a winning movie. --Tom Keogh

Danielle Steel's Vanished

Red Green - Stuffed and Mounted 1

"If women don't find you handsome," goes flannel-shirted, fix-it guy Red Green's motto, "they should at least find you handy." Well, pretty to think so. Being handy is an elusive virtue at The Red Green Show's Possum Lodge, where Red and his dweeby nephew, Harold (Patrick McKenna) and friends routinely gather to make a shambles of simple repairs, science experiments, sundry hobbies, and such wild-eyed solutions to nonexistent problems as How to Get a Badger out of Your Pants. (The latter involves a length of ventilator hose and a tray of stale hors d'oeuvres.)

The eight choice episodes on this disc include the clever "The Network Deal," in which Harold's efforts to draw an American viewership to Red Green results in the casting of a blonde goddess to play Red's wife, and "The Wind-Powered Boat," featuring an extended conversation about Kenyan tiger ranches and Nylon-producing farms. You have to be there. --Tom Keogh

Bride of Chucky

Brace yourself: this is a clever, consistently entertaining, and even inspired continuation of the mean-spirited slasher series. For those not in the know, Chucky is a mop-top kid's doll come to life with the soul of a serial killer and the voice of Brad Dourif (doing his best Jack Nicholson). Revived by his former paramour Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly, looking every inch a life-size Barbie in stiletto heels and skintight black leather), Chucky proceeds to turn his human sweetie into a pint-sized Talking Tina doll with attitude, and together they hit the road for a magic amulet and young new bodies to inhabit. They hitch a ride with sweet young runaways Katherine Heigl and Nick Stabile and leave a trail of corpses bloodied, burned, and cut to ribbons. The kids are cute, but the real heat is generated by the latex lovers who use murder as foreplay and consummate their renewed romance in a night of passionate sex ("Shouldn't you wear a rubber?" "I'm all rubber!"). Hong Kong director Ronny Yu (The Bride with White Hair) directs with a light touch and against all odds transforms walking dolls Chucky and Tiffany into funny, energetic, full-blooded characters: l'amour fou has never been more crazy. John Ritter costars as Heigl's overprotective uncle (another obstacle on the road to dolly freedom) and Alexis Arquette is hilarious as a lanky goth nerd. The wild conclusion leaves room for another high-concept sequel. The DVD features two commentary tracks, a behind-the-scenes documentary, and "Jennifer Tilly's Diary." --Sean Axmaker

Millennium

Time-hoppers from the future, led by Cheryl Ladd, are abducting airline passengers about to crash, and transporting them a millennium hence in order to reseed a future blighted by environmental disaster. This is a dangerous business, plagued by the specter of accidentally creating time paradoxes, which could throw the future out of whack. Unfortunately, they've lost a couple of the stunners they use to subdue troublesome passengers, and these fall into the hands of a curious physicist (Daniel J. Travanti) and an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (Kris Kristofferson). Cheryl Ladd must retrieve these devices before a time paradox wipes out her world, but manages to complicate things by developing a romance with Kristofferson. All of which is very intriguing, having come from the short story, "Air Raid," by science fiction luminary John Varley, who also is credited with the screenplay. The part about airline abductions to save the disastrous future is straight from the original story, and the rest is expanded (you wouldn't say extrapolated) from it. The results are not very happy. About a third of the film is maddeningly wasted by repeating action from a different point of view. Seems natural when there are disparate timelines to deal with, but here nothing is added by the conceit. Only Travanti turns in a creditable performance as the physicist, bent on proving his theories about the future. He seems hungry for discovery, which is one of the things you want from a science fiction story, that sense of awe. But here it's just, "Aw, shucks!" --Jim Gay