Gulager, Clu

The Last Picture Show (Definitive Director's Cut Special Edition)

Like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and The Graduate, The Last Picture Show is one of the signature films of the "New Hollywood" that emerged in the late 1960s and early '70s. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and lovingly directed by Peter Bogdanovich (who cowrote the script with McMurtry), this 1971 drama has been interpreted as an affectionate tribute to classic Hollywood filmmaking and the great directors (such as John Ford) that Bogdanovich so deeply admired. It's also a eulogy for lost innocence and small-town life, so accurately rendered that critic Roger Ebert called it "the best film of 1951," referring to the movie's one-year time frame, its black-and-white cinematography (by Robert Surtees), and its sparse but evocative visual style. The story is set in the tiny, dying town of Anarene, Texas, where the main-street movie house is about to close for good, and where a pair of high-school football players are coming of age and struggling to define their uncertain futures. There's little to do in Anarene, and while Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) engages in a passionless fling with his football coach's wife (Cloris Leachman), his best friend Duane (Jeff Bridges) enlists for service in the Korean War. Both boys fall for a manipulative high-school beauty (Cybill Shepherd) who's well aware of her sexual allure. But it's not so much what happens in The Last Picture show as how it happens--and how Bogdanovich and his excellent cast so effectively capture the melancholy mood of a ghost town in the making. As Hank Williams sings on the film's evocative soundtrack, The Last Picture Show looks, feels, and sounds like a sad but unforgettably precious moment out of time. --Jeff Shannon

Story of teenagers in a small Texas town just prior to the hero leaving for Korea and the closing of the town's movie theater.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 13-FEB-2007
Media Type: DVD

Feast (Unrated Edition)

From executive producers Wes Craven Ben Affleck Matt Damon and Chris Moore comes the incredible horror extravaganza Feast (Harry Knowles Ain t It Cool News) whose production was chronicled on the third season of Bravo s hit reality series Project Greenlight.When a motley crew of strangers find themselves trapped in an isolated tavern they must band together in a battle for survival against a family of flesh-hungry creatures. Terrifying and full of surprises Feast turns the screen blood red as the group is devoured one-by-one.Directed by first time filmmaker John Gulager the ensemble cast of rising stars includes Balthazar Getty (Alias) Henry Rollins (The Henry Rollins Show) Navi Rawat (The O.C. NUMB3RS) Josh Zuckerman (Surviving Christmas) Judah Friedlander (MTV2 s Wonder Showzen) Jason Mewes (Clerks II) Jenny Wade (Rumor Has It) and Krista Allen (HBO s Unscripted).Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 796019795777 Manufacturer No: 79577

In need of some good old-fashioned gore? You'll find it by the bucketload in the low-budget monsterfest Feast, which arrives on DVD in an even bloodier unrated edition. The winning entry in the third season of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's reality series/talent contest Project Greenlight (Wes Craven is also on board as an advisor/producer), Feast is a wall-to-wall splatterthon that operates on an agreeably simple premise: A crew of motley characters is trapped in a remote location (in this case, a desert bar) by ravenous, flesh-eating monsters (here, a quartet of toothy and astoundingly fecund humanoids). The result? Lots of gruesome deaths and plenty of manic action, delivered with kinetic style by first-time feature director John Gulager. Not everything about Feast works--Gulager's drive is thwarted by the unfocused script, which favors smarmy dialogue over substance--but the effects are impressive, given the film's price tag, and the cast is incredibly game for the gory goings-on, with Krista Allen (Entourage), Judah Friedlander (30 Rock), Balthazar Getty (Alias), and Gulager's father, veteran actor Clu Gulager, among the stand-outs. The DVD includes a smattering of outtakes and deleted scenes (including an alternate ending); commentary by Gulager, the screenwriters, and two of the film's numerous producers; and a making-of featurette, which Project Greenlight viewers should find interesting solely for producers Chris Moore and Michael Leahy's attitudes towards Gulager (both were a hair's breath away from firing him throughout the production, but here, amusingly suggest unconditional support). -- Paul Gaita

The Other Side of Midnight

An over-the-top film co-starring a young and gorgeous Susan Sarandon, The Other Side of Midnight is a deliciously melodramatic adaptation of Sidney Sheldon's sweeping (and often schlocky) novel of the same name. Released theatrically in 1977, the film focuses on the intermingling lives of sexily innocent Noelle (Marie-France Pisier), who has a brief affair with a cad named Larry (John Beck), who ends up marrying wealthy and proper Catherine (Sarandon). When Noelle and Larry meet first lock eyes, he is a dashing World War II American fighter pilot who professes his love for her. But when she discovers she is pregnant with his baby, he is nowhere to be found. So what's a poor girl to do but abort her baby, rise to stardom as one of the world's most famous actresses, and plot revenge against her duplicitous ex-lover? But faster than you can say, "You go, girl!" (or "Oh no she didn't," depending on your point of view), Noelle once again falls for Larry's vaguely porn star charms. But what to do with Catherine, who refuses to divorce her cheating spouse? Make no mistake about it: The Other Side of Midnight is not quality filmmaking and is probably not something Academy Award winner Sarandon even lists on her resume. But she is a joy to watch, even as she has to deliver clunky lines such as, "If you don't love me, Larry, don't lay me." This is not a great movie. Heck, it's not even a particularly good movie. But it's one of those guilty pleasures that you'll watch all the way through, even as you're complaining about the implausibility of it all. --Jae-Ha Kim

An American pilot's jilted French lover reenters his life seeking revenge, but the two fall back in love with each other putting his current wife's life in danger.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 20-MAR-2007
Media Type: DVD

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka

From Keenan Ivory Wayans, the man who brought us Jim Carrey (initially just one of the bunch on Wayans's television comedy-sketch show, In Living Color), comes I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), a comedy spoof on the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. Wayans plays Jack Spade, an army private just returning from the service. He comes home to find his younger brother June Bug dead of a overdose of gold chains (an "O.G.") He vows revenge, and with the help of some of the neighborhood's old school heroes including Flyguy (Antonio Fargas), Kung Fu Joe (Steve James), Hammer (Isaac Hayes), Slammer (football star Jim Brown), and John Slade (Bernie Casey), Spade wages a war against Mr. Big, the neighborhood crime lord.

In the tradition of Airplane! and Naked Gun, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka pokes fun through satire and offensive comedy. The film also features some of the players that would end up on In Living Color and has appearances from such varied actors as Clarence Williams III, Eve Plumb (better known to most as Jan Brady), and Chris Rock as a rib-joint customer. --Shannon Gee

A hilarious Soul Cinema send-up, this ultra-slick, urban action comedy blows 70's blaxploitation movies right out of the 'hood! Featuring the very funny Wayans family (Keenen, Damon and Kim), Bernie Casey, Antonio Fargas, Isaac Hayes, Jim Brown, Ja'net DuBois, David Alan Grier, Kadeem Hardison and Chris Rock, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is a perfect "mixture of nostalgia, silliness and genuinely unpredictable humor" (The New York Times). Jack Spade, a goody-goody war hero with medals for short-hand, returns to the ghetto to discover that his brother, Junebug, has OG'd (Over-Golded on jewelry). Jack swears revenge against the local gang boss, Mr. Big, and sets off to enlist an army of Shaft, Superfly and Black Caesarlook-a-likes, that is. They don't come easy, cheap or youngbut they do have nice clothes and enough firepower left in them to practically destroy Mr. Big's Big Brim Bar where the bad guys wearyou guessed itbig hats!

The Return of the Living Dead

"Do ya wanna party?" challenges the soundtrack to this freaky and funny reworking of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Paced to the beat of a pounding rock score, this comic flesh feast delivers both laughs and outlandish gore. No longer lumbering, moaning creatures, these lithe, feral, and cunning undead claw their way out of the cemetery and into the skulls of a human smorgasbord. They even master the art of home delivery: "Send more cops," croaks a corpse into a patrol car radio. Director Dan O'Bannon even takes pains to explain their motivation between the tributes to the granddaddy of zombie horrors ("Well, it worked in the movie!" screams James Karen when a pickax to the skull hardly phases a lively cadaver). Not that it really matters amid the gore and gallows humor, but it does add a kick to the cynically sinister climax. --Sean Axmaker

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the cemetery'those brain-eating zombies are back and hungry for more tasty mortals. A fiendish mix of outrageous humor and heart-stopping terror, The Return of the Living Dead is a veritable smorgasbord of fun (LA Herald-Examiner) filled with skin-crawling jolts, eye-popping visuals and relentless surprise! On his first day on the job at an army surplus store, poor Freddy unwittingly releases nerve gas from a secret U.S. military canister, unleashing an unbelievable terror. The gas re-animates a corps of corpses, who arise from their graves with a ravenous hunger for human brains! And luckily for those carnivorous cadavers, there is a group of partying teens nearby, just waiting to be eaten!

The Return of the Living Dead (Collector's Edition)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the cemetery'those brain-eating zombies are back and hungry for more tasty mortals. A fiendish mix of outrageous humor and heart-stopping terror The Return of the Living Dead is a veritable smorgasbord of fun (LA Herald-Examiner) filled with skin-crawling jolts eye-popping visuals and relentless surprise! On his first day on the job at an army surplus store poor Freddy unwittingly releases nerve gas from a secret U.S. military canister unleashing an unbelievable terror. The gas re-animates a corps of corpses who arise from their graves with a ravenous hunger for human brains! And luckily for those carnivorous cadavers there is a group of partying teens nearby just waiting to be eaten!System Requirements:Running Time: 114 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: R UPC: 027616085474 Manufacturer No: M108547

Winning

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 28-DEC-2004
Media Type: DVD

Paul Newman plays a racecar driver, Frank Capua, who steps out of his professional and personal isolation long enough to marry a single mother, Elora (Joanne Woodward). The two have a brief but happy life together with Elora's 13-year-old son, Charley (Richard Thomas), but it comes to an end when Frank goes back on the racing circuit and Elora assuages her loneliness in the arms of her husband's chief rival, Luther (Robert Wagner). Frank checks out, and Charley travels across the country to find him and effect a reconciliation. A touching movie (with some good racing footage) by director James Goldstone, Winning is about the real pain of people who have become used to a certain way of safe, arm's-length living, and who have to learn to get beyond it to find redemption in love and faith. Good performances by Newman, Woodward, and Thomas, who makes a terrific impression in one of his earliest roles. --Tom Keogh

The Killers - Criterion Collection

The Killers (1946)
This 1946 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story adds well over an hour of new material to the original tale. The reason is, while director Robert Siodmak, star Burt Lancaster, and an outstanding supporting cast are faithful to Hemingway's work, his story only takes up about 15 minutes of screen time. Burt Lancaster plays the doomed man sought by hired guns in a small town. Hemingway's bruisingly concise dialogue makes an early sequence set in a diner quite unnerving, but after the killers dispense with their prey, Siodmak turns to an insurance investigator (Edmond O'Brien) who looks into the reasons behind the murder. An exemplary film noir (complete with a fickle femme fatale played by Ava Gardner), The Killers is all mood and fatalism.

The Killers (1964)
The 1964 remake (of sorts) by Don Siegel builds another whole world around Hemingway's narrow, if intense, premise. The two assassins of Siegel's film (Clu Gulager, Lee Marvin) go in search of their intended victim--a teacher (John Cassavetes) at a school for the blind--and find that he not only recognizes his fate when they show up, but seems entirely resigned to it. Curiosity leads the killers to seek out the party who hired them and discover why Cassavetes's character didn't run or fight. Soon the facts tumble into place--the dead man had once been a top-drawer racer who fell for a glamorous woman (Angie Dickinson), the latter gradually pulling him into the orbit of a criminal villain (a convincingly evil Ronald Reagan)--and the film becomes increasingly dark and dangerous. Originally shot for television but rejected for its violence, Siegel's film is a blistering experience of swimming against the currents of fate for one's survival--and losing. --Tom Keogh

McQ

Police lieutenant resigns from the force to track down some big dope dealers involved in killing a couple of police officers. John Wayne is a force to be reckoned with when he stars as a cop who quits the force to seek revenge for his murdered partner in this high action suspenseful drama.Running Time: 111 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG UPC: 085391158622 Manufacturer No: 115862

After turning down the role of Dirty Harry, John Wayne made up for lost time by starring in this pretty-good 1974 police drama. Shot on location in a gritty pre-Microsoft Seattle, McQ finds John Wayne butting heads with fellow cops and local crime elements as he investigates the murder of a fellow cop and friend. Wayne is obviously a bit long-in-tooth to be taking on this kind of role, but the script allows for some decent character development, including Colleen Dewhurst in a brief but memorable role as a washed-up barmaid, and the action sequences by veteran director John Sturges still hold up well. For anyone who cares, a key drug-heist sequence was shot in the hospital that now houses Amazon.com's Seattle headquarters. --Kristian St. Clair

The Hidden

There's a power-mad space slug slithering among (and through) the innocent citizens of L.A., and it's up to a hardboiled cop and a detective from way up north to stop it in this wonderfully straight-faced sci-fi action flick. The basic plot may be nothing new, but this remains one of the most underrated testosterone fests of the '80s, with a plethora of amazing stunts (there are more expensive cars smashed here than in the entire oeuvre of Hal Needham), characterizations far beyond the call of duty by Michael Nouri and the otherworldly Kyle MacLachlan, and a startlingly creepy denouement. Babylon 5's Claudia Christian has a memorable role as a stripper with a high-caliber fetish. Essential viewing for audiences in the mood for something slimy. --Andrew Wright