Edwards, Luke

Newsies (Collector's Edition)

Except for feature-length animation, the musical has gone the way of the dinosaur. The Walt Disney company took a stab at reviving the live-action musical in 1992 with Newsies, a throwback picture with a curious subject. In 1899, the pint-sized newsboys delivering the New York papers go on strike against the unfair practices of news magnates Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. The production is heavy on kiddie humor, although Christian Bale (the child star of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun) is charismatic as one of the older leaders of the revolt. The adult stars don't fare as well, with Robert Duvall doddering around as Pulitzer and Ann-Margret and Bill Pullman doing decorative duty. The film was not well received when first released, but hindsight reveals its charm (and allowed the young target audience to catch up with the picture on video). The first-time director is Kenny Ortega, the choreographer of Dirty Dancing, who brings plenty of energy to the action. --Robert Horton

Starring Academy Award(R)-winner Robert Duvall (Best Actor -- TENDER MERCIES, 1983) and screen favorite Ann-Margret, here's the true story of a courageous group of newsboys who become unlikely heroes when they team up to fight an unscrupulous newspaper tycoon. Determined to make their dreams come true, they find the courage to challenge the powerful! Critically acclaimed from coast to coast -- if you're looking for must-see, feel-good entertainment, NEWSIES delivers!

The Wizard

Fred Savage stars in this warm-hearted family adventure that features the excitement and thrills of video game competition. Corey (Savage) refuses to let his emotionally disturbed younger brother Jimmy (Luke Edwards) be institutionalized and the two run away together. They soon join forces with a resourceful girl (Jenny Lewis) who notices that Jimmy has a special talent: he is a wizard at video games and gets the high score on absolutely everything he plays. Evading their parents and a sinister bounty hunter the trio head for a climactic showdown at the video game championships in California. Co-starring Beau Bridges and Christian Slater it s an inside look at the world of video gamers that will have you cheering the whole way!System Requirements:Running Time: 100 MinutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 025192932427 Manufacturer No: 29324

Less raunchy than Tommy and more conventional than Tron, The Wizard also revolves around gaming. There's even a Bridges on board. In Tron it was Jeff, in The Wizard it's Beau. As opposed to the rock opera's pinball-playing "deaf, dumb, and blind kid," however, quasi-catatonic Jimmy (Luke Edwards) is a video game wiz. While the nine-year-old lives with his mother, half-brothers Corey (Fred Savage, circa The Wonder Years) and Nick (Christian Slater, fresh from Heathers) live with their father, Sam (Bridges). When Jimmy, who recently lost his sister, is placed in a home, Corey busts him out for a trip to California. (Today, Jimmy's condition would be labeled post-traumatic stress disorder.) As they're leaving Utah, they join forces with gaming enthusiast Haley (Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis), who suggests LA's National Video Game Championships. So, off they go by foot, skateboard, and the kindness of strangers. Sam, Nick, and obnoxious bounty hunter Putnam (Will Seltzer) are close behind. The outcome may be a foregone conclusion--the fractured family makes their peace--but The Wizard still offers a nostalgic, Nintendo-laden look at 1980s gamer culture (Power Glove, Super Mario Bros. 3, etc.). Plus, sharp-eyed viewers will spot Toby Maguire milling around before the showdown at Universal Studios Theme Park. If not for the hitchhiking, gambling, and reckless automotive destruction--after Putnam takes a knife to Sam's tires, Sam smashes his headlights with a shovel--the movie would be appropriate for all ages. In other words, it earns its PG rating. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Little Big League

Baseball's a funny and fun game when a 12-year-old becomes manager of the Minnesota Twins and inspires them to play with the joy of youngsters.Running Time: 120 min.System Requirements:Running Time 119 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 053939251227

When the owner of the hapless Minnesota Twins (talk about art imitating life) dies and leaves his grandson (Luke Edwards) the team in his will, the 12-year-old decides to manage the team himself. Aside from the obvious headline value of his move, no one seems to like the idea and the kid finds himself battling for his fledgling managerial career. Eventually, however, he wins the confidence of his favorite player (Timothy Busfield) and before long has the team playing like kids: for the fun of it, rather than the money. (Now there's a concept.) Though billed as a family movie, the saccharine level is high enough to scare off most adults. But kids, particularly baseball fans, will eat it up, as much for the appearances of baseball stars like Ken Griffey Jr. and Paul O'Neill as for the plot itself. --Marshall Fine

Jeepers Creepers 2 (Special Edition)

Despite the usual symptoms of sequelitis, Jeepers Creepers 2 delivers the goods for those who enjoyed the 2001 original--a group large enough to propel this sequel to a record-setting opening in August 2003. While establishing the flesh-eating "Creeper" as a new horror icon with frantic action and more elaborate special effects, writer-director Victor Salva follows the traditional formula, dispensing with plot almost altogether and focusing entirely on threat, menace, mayhem, and gore. That's likely to disappoint horror fans hoping for a more revealing exploration of the Creeper's origins (room for another sequel, perhaps?), and by trapping nondescript teens in a school bus attacked by the Creeper, Salva severely limits the movie's overall potential. Still, there's something to be said for straightforward shocks, and Jeepers Creepers 2 delivers enough of them to justify its profitable existence. --Jeff Shannon

When their bus is crippled on the side of a deserted road, a team of high school athletes discoversan opponent they cannot defeatand may not survive. Staring hungrily at them through the school bus windows, the "Creeper" returns again and again. But when the teammates discover that it's selective about whom it attacks, it will test their ability to stick togetheras the insatiable menace tries to tear them apart!

Cheaters

"I learned more about the way the world really works from my nine months on the academic decathlon team than most people will learn in a lifetime," ruminates Jolie Fitch (Jena Malone) in the coda of Cheaters, John Stockwell's dramatization of the 1995 Steinmetz school scandal. Fitch is the team leader of the crumbling inner-city school's first "academic decathlon" squad, a group of hard-working kids hopelessly outclassed by the perennial champions from a lavishly funded model school for the gifted and the rich. When a Steinmetz student discovers the question sheet for the upcoming finals, the issue isn't whether to cheat, but how. Stockwell discards easy moralizing and empty platitudes for an ambiguous perspective framed by questions of privilege and prejudice. Jeff Daniels, so long the cinema's hapless nice guy, is excellent as the tireless teacher, a well-meaning idealist who struggles with his inner demons through the ordeal. Malone is refreshing as a street-wise class brain whose ambition drives the team on. Their guilt is the focus of a predatory media scandal, but it's the hypocrisy of the system and the double standards of the gatekeepers that Stockwell takes to task in his compelling drama. Some might call it cynical, but Cheaters is too sharp and smart for such an easy label. Better to call it disillusioned. --Sean Axmaker

In a major academic contest against affluent Whitney High, the struggling kids of Steinmetz High School know they didn't have a chance. But one teacher and seven of his students had a dream. They knew they could succeed with the right amount of study, the right application, the right discipline...the right answers. When an opportunity to win presents itself, it's a no brainer-and for seven kids and their teacher, that could be the problem.

Little Big League

Baseball's a funny and fun game when a 12-year-old becomes manager of the Minnesota Twins and inspires them to play with the joy of youngsters.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 053939273021

Mother's Boys

In the spine-tingling tradition of FATAL ATTRACTION, MOTHER'S BOYS is a stylish, provocative suspense thriller guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat! After Jude Madigan (Jamie Lee Curtis -- HALLOWEEN: H2O) abruptly deserts her family, husband Robert (Peter Gallagher -- WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING) and their young children slowly build a happy new life with another woman (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer -- SHATTERED). But when Jude unexpectedly returns three years later, her dangerous obsession to reclaim her former life threatens to destroy everything that dares stand in her way! Packed with heart-stopping excitement and compelling intrigue, this riveting, seductive, cliff-hanger entertains from beginning to end!

Guilty by Suspicion

A fictional dramatization of the anti-Communist witch-hunts that plagued the U.S. during the late 1940s and early '50s, Guilty by Suspicion examines one of the most shameful periods of American history. After producing such prominent films as Rocky and Raging Bull, Irwin Winkler made his directorial debut with this 1991 drama, basing his screenplay on the harsh reality of the blacklisting era. Set during 1951, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held hearings to target alleged Communist affiliations within the Hollywood filmmaking community, the film stars Robert De Niro as a prominent director who is urged to "name names" to appease the committee. Rather than betray one of his closest friends, he refuses to "cooperate" with the committee and is quickly blacklisted, his entire career in jeopardy. Costarring Annette Bening as the director's sympathetic ex-wife, the film doesn't pack the emotional punch of The Front (another blacklisting-era film, starring Woody Allen), but Winkler captures the paranoid anxiety of the period with a wealth of authentic detail. Because the De Niro character underestimates the power of the HUAC, we share his shock and dismay when he must finally face the committee. Without seeming like a dry history lesson, Guilty by Suspicion illuminates the unconstitutional evil of the blacklist era while offering a glimpse behind the scenes of Hollywood's past. Adding to the realism, director Martin Scorsese makes a rare cameo as another filmmaker under fire. Although Winkler's script and direction are perhaps too melodramatic, Guilty by Suspicion was clearly made with noble purpose and intention. For anyone interested in the blacklisting era and Hollywood history, this movie's a must-see. --Jeff Shannon

Debating Robert Lee

A group of jaded laid-back high school students from Palos Verdes California sign up for a debate class taught by a tough combative teacher from the Georgia Military Academy who challenges them to find their own voice in a world designed to drown it out. System Requirements:Running Time: 108 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 689219500442 Manufacturer No: NLE950044

The Yarn Princess