Noonan, Tom

The Monster Squad (Two-Disc 20th Anniversary Edition)

Thriller for the younger set about a bunch of kids who stumble upon a talisman which is being sought by five monsters (Dracula Frankenstein the Wolfman the Mummy and yes--Gill Man). The monsters need the charm because it will give them the power to live longer but can they retrieve it from the lads who are also aware of its abilities?System Requirements:Running Time: 82 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 017153215663 Manufacturer No: 21566

Heat

An L.A. cop (Al Pacino) becomes fixated on a deadly thief (Robert Dinero) and his crew ( Val Kilmer & Jon Voight) who are taking Los Angeles to the cleaners. This movie includes one of the most spectacular shoot outs in film history as Dinero and Kilmer rip through downtown Los Angeles with both guns blazing.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085391163169 Manufacturer No: 116316

Seraphim Falls

A great-looking, well-acted Western in the old-school tradition, Seraphim Falls is definitely worth a look for fans of the genre. There's nothing really new here (which explains why it played only briefly in theaters), and more than a few critics noted its obvious similarities to Clint Eastwood's classic The Outlaw Josey Wales. Still, you have to admire director and cowriter David Von Ancken (a 10-year TV veteran making his feature debut) for delivering an engrossing post-Civil War revenge story (cowritten with Abby Everett Jacques) that isn't hobbled by its overly familiar plotting. Blessed by the exquisite cinematography of John Toll (whose credits include The Thin Red Line, Almost Famous and The Last Samurai) and bolstered by a lush but unobtrusive score by Harry Gregson-Williams, this prestigious production begins very well indeed, with a wintry manhunt in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada, circa 1868. Former Union captain Gideon (Pierce Brosnan) is being tracked by a seemingly brutal pursuer named Carver (Liam Neeson) whose four-man posse (including veteran character actors Ed Lauter and Michael Wincott) is soon reduced to two.

As the manhunt continues, Brosnan and Neeson make the most of minimal dialogue, and flashbacks give us hints about the tragic event that set this plot in motion. It's a simple, elemental tale of justice in the wilderness, with occasional quirks like a snake-oil vendor (Anjelica Huston) who appears literally out of nowhere, and a top-hatted Indian (Wes Studi) who gives the film a slight, mystical air of mystery. And while a more daring director might have opted for a more powerful visual style, there's something to be said for Von Ancken's straightforward approach, perfectly matched by Toll's breathtaking landscapes, shot on location in Oregon and New Mexico and ranging from raging rivers to sun-baked desert flats. None of this makes Seraphim Falls a particularly exceptional movie, but with a fine cast that also includes such familiar faces as Angie Harmon, Tom Noonan, Xander Berkeley, and Kevin J. O'Connor, there's ample reward in a film that doesn't pretend to be anything more than a respectable entry in its genre. --Jeff Shannon

Liam Neeson (Batman Begins Star Wars: Episode 1 "The Phantom Menace" ) and Pierce Brosnan (Bond movies The Thomas Crown Affair) star in this epic chase and primal battle set in the breathtaking landscape of the West. The civil war has ended but Colonel Morsman Carver (Neeson) is on one final mission: to kill Gideon (Brosnan) no matter what it takes. Launched by a gunshot and propelled by rage the relentless pursuit takes them both far from the comforts and codes of civilization into the bloodiest recesses of their own souls. Also starring Academy Award® winner Anjelica Huston and Angie Harmon. It's been five years since the end of the American Civil War. Somewhere deep within the snowy mountains of the American West a lone figure - Gideon (Brosnan) sits in front of a fire lost in thought. Abruptly he is pulled out of his reverie by the echo of a Henry rifle and a bullet puffing into the snow inches from his head. Instantly Gideon calculates his one chance of survival. To leave everything he owns and run for the cover. And so begins the thrilling account of Colonel Morsman Carver's (Neeson) terrible revenge - to hunt down and kill Gideon no matter what it takes. There will be many men dead before these two meet face to face and only then will Carver fully comprehend the full cost of his undertaking. Launched by a gunshot and propelled by rage the relentless pursuit will take them both far from the comforts and codes of civilization and into the unforgiving wilderness.Run Time: 112 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 043396171596 Manufacturer No: 17159

Heat

Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995, which also marked the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate time periods of The Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers scenario. De Niro plays a master thief with highly skilled partners (Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) whose latest heist draws the attention of Pacino, playing a seasoned Los Angeles detective whose investigation reveals that cop and criminal lead similar lives. Both are so devoted to their professions that their personal lives are a disaster. Pacino's with a wife (Diane Venora) who cheats to avoid the reality of their desolate marriage; De Niro pays the price for a life with no outside connections; and Kilmer's wife (Ashley Judd) has all but given up hope that her husband will quit his criminal career. These are men obsessed, and as De Niro and Pacino know, they'll both do whatever's necessary to bring the other down. Mann's brilliant screenplay explores these personal obsessions and sacrifices with absorbing insight, and the tension mounts with some of the most riveting action sequences ever filmed--most notably a daylight siege that turns downtown Los Angeles into a virtual war zone of automatic gunfire. At nearly three hours, the film qualifies as a kind of intimate epic, certain to leave some viewers impatiently waiting for more action, but it's all part of Mann's compelling strategy. Heat is a true rarity: a crime thriller with equal measures of intense excitement and dramatic depth, giving De Niro and Pacino a prime showcase for their finely matched talents. --Jeff Shannon

An L.A. cop (Al Pacino) becomes fixated on a deadly thief (Robert Dinero) and his crew ( Val Kilmer & Jon Voight) who are taking Los Angeles to the cleaners. This movie includes one of the most spectacular shoot outs in film history as Dinero and Kilmer rip through downtown Los Angeles with both guns blazing.

The Hannibal Lecter Collection (Manhunter / The Silence of the Lambs / Hannibal)

Manhunter:Though it will always be remembered as the movie featuring the "other" Hannibal Lecter, Michael Mann's 1986 thriller Manhunter is nearly as good as The Silence of the Lambs, and in some respects it's arguably even better. Based on Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, which introduced the world to the nefarious killer Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, the film stars William Petersen (giving a suitably brooding performance) as ex-FBI agent Will Graham, who is coaxed out of semiretirement to track down a serial killer who has thwarted the authorities at every turn.

Graham's approach to the case is a perilous one. First he seeks counsel with Lecter (Brian Cox) in the latter's high-security prison cell--an encounter that is utterly horrifying in its psychological effect--and then he begins to mold his own psyche to that of the killer, with potentially devastating results. As directed by Mann (who was at the acme of his success with TV's Miami Vice), this sophisticated cat-and-mouse game never resorts to the compromise of cheap thrills. Predating Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Lecter by four years, Cox plays the character closer to Harris's original, lower-key conception, and he's no less compelling in the role. Petersen is equally well cast, and as always Mann employs rock music to astonishing effect, using nearly all of Iron Butterfly's heavy-metal epic "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" to accompany the film's heart-stopping climactic sequence. All of this makes Manhunter one of the finest films of its kind, as well as further proof that Harris's fiction is a blessing to any filmmaker brave enough to adapt it. --Jeff Shannon

The Silence of the Lambs: Based on Thomas Harris's novel, this terrifying film by Jonathan Demme really only contains a couple of genuinely shocking moments (one involving an autopsy, the other a prison break). The rest of the film is a splatter-free visual and psychological descent into the hell of madness, redeemed astonishingly by an unlikely connection between a monster and a haunted young woman. Anthony Hopkins is extraordinary as the cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, virtually entombed in a subterranean prison for the criminally insane. At the behest of the FBI, agent-in-training Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) approaches Lecter, requesting his insights into the identity and methods of a serial killer named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). In exchange, Lecter demands the right to penetrate Starling's most painful memories, creating a bizarre but palpable intimacy that liberates them both under separate but equally horrific circumstances. Demme, a filmmaker with a uniquely populist vision (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild), also spent his early years making pulp for Roger Corman (Caged Heat), and he hasn't forgotten the significance of tone, atmosphere, and the unsettling nature of a crudely effective close-up. Much of the film, in fact, consists of actors staring straight into the camera (usually from Clarice's point of view), making every bridge between one set of eyes to another seem terribly dangerous. --Tom Keogh

Hannibal: Yes, he's back, and he's still hungry. Ten years after The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, reprising his Oscar-winning role) is living the good life in Italy, studying art and sipping espresso. FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore, replacing Jodie Foster), on the other hand, hasn't had it so good--an outsider from the start, she's now a quiet, moody loner who doesn't play bureaucratic games and suffers for it. A botched drug raid results in her demotion--and a request from Lecter's only living victim, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, uncredited), for a little Q and A. Little does Clarice realize that the hideously deformed Verger--who, upon suggestion from Dr. Lecter, peeled off his own face--is using her as bait to lure Dr. Lecter out of hiding, quite certain he'll capture the good doctor.

Taking the basic plot contraptions from Thomas Harris's baroque novel, Hannibal is so stylistically different from its predecessor that it forces you to take it on its own terms. Director Ridley Scott gives the film a sleek, almost European look that lets you know that, unlike the first film (which was about the quintessentially American Clarice), this movie is all Hannibal. Does it work? Yes--but only up to a point. Scott adeptly sets up an atmosphere of foreboding, but it's all buildup for anticlimax, as Verger's plot for abducting Hannibal (and feeding him to man-eating wild boars) doesn't really deliver the requisite visceral thrills, and the much-ballyhooed climatic dinner sequence between Clarice, Dr. Lecter, and a third unlucky guest wobbles between parody and horror. Hopkins and Moore are both first-rate, but the film contrives to keep them as far apart as possible, when what made Silence so amazing was their interaction. When they do connect it's quite thrilling, but it's unfortunately too little too late. --Mark Englehart

Disc 1: HANNIBAL Disc 2: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS Disc 3: MANHUNTER

Easy Money

Rodney Dangerfield gets a load of respectand a chunk of changein Easy Money! Joined byJoe Pesci and Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dangerfield is outrageous as a working-class buffoon who takes on the first-class tycoons in this million-dollar comedy!Monty Capuletti (Dangerfield) has everything money can't buya loving wife, two devoted daughtersand a few things it can: he drinks, smokes, gambles and eats way too much! But Monty couldn't be happier especially when he learns that his mother-in-law has left him a hefty inheritance. There's just one catch: according to the will, he must turn his vices into virtues before he can turn his windfall into cold, hard cash! Now, themisbehaving Monty will have to put the brakes on the binging and trade his lifestyle for a LifecycleÂ(r), or lose his one shot at the family fortuneforever!

The Astronaut's Wife

An intriguingly creepy premise but failed execution marks this stylish and ultimately bland thriller about a pretty, young woman whose pretty, young astronaut husband comes back from his most recent space mission a little... odd. Before that fated space trip, Spencer (Johnny Depp) and Jillian (Charlize Theron) were a sunny, happy couple with matching blonde hairdos and a predilection for romping in the sack from extremely clever camera angles. However, after a communications blackout brings Spencer and his partner back down to earth prematurely, things are a little... peculiar. Spencer's partner goes bonkers and has a heart attack; on top of that, the partner's wife takes a fatal shower with a plugged-in radio. Getting out of the space biz, Spencer accepts a job as a corporate exec in New York, and as a welcome to the Big Apple for his comely wife, he molests her at the company cocktail party. Soon enough, Jillian is pregnant, but as you might expect, this pregnancy (twins, don't you know) is a little... unusual. Writer-director Rand Ravich takes his sweet time getting from extremely obvious plot point A to even more obvious plot point B, stretching out the development particulars in mind-numbing, suspense-killing fashion. Even Joe Morton, as a sinisterly psychotic NASA official, can't liven things up--you know you're in bad thriller territory when the biggest scare comes from a light suddenly being switched off. Theron, sporting a Mia Farrow-Rosemary's Baby haircut, sleepwalks beautifully through the movie, but she did this role much, much better in The Devil's Advocate. Depp, with a cornpone Southern accent, is about as realistic as his peroxided hair. Ravich does the viewer no favors with a hackneyed ending straight out of a B-grade paperback horror novel in which the most shocking moment is Theron's sudden emergence as a brunette. With Blair Brown as a jaded socialite who offers to help out Theron by providing do-it-yourself abortion pills, and a lovely Donna Murphy as the suicidal wife who figures it all out before everyone else. --Mark Englehart

A woman becomes embroiled in a mystery after her astronaut husband suffers an accident and retires as a hero from the space program. When he begins acting strangely, she must decide whether his odd behavior is all in her mind, or if he is no longer the man she once knew.

The Last Action Hero

A young boy's movie hero comes to life, and together they fight the bad guys.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 23-MAR-2004
Media Type: DVD

Jack Slater is an action-film hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. An old projectionist (Robert Prosky) hands a magic movie ticket to Jack's biggest preteen fan (Austin O'Brien), and the kid steps right inside the latest Jack Slater film, becoming the actor star's sidekick in gunfights and car chases. But when Jack's nemesis (Charles Dance) gets his hands on the ticket, the fight busts out into the real world and Jack (à la Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear) refuses to believe he's a fictional character. Director John McTiernan churns some nifty scenes out of this setup, although the fiction-to-reality shuffle is not as deft as in, say, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, and the plot needs the kind of logic and discipline found in that classic when-worlds-collide film Back to the Future. Still, Schwarzenegger has moments of wit and smashing action, and we get a faux-movie trailer advertising an intriguing new shoot-'em-up: "Something's rotten in the State of Denmark--and Hamlet is taking out the trash!"

The Man with One Red Shoe

Adapted from a popular French comedy-thriller, The Man with One Red Shoe follows a concert violinist (Tom Hanks) used as a patsy in a conflict between two rival factions of the CIA. Singled out at the airport solely because he's wearing mismatched shoes, Hanks is henceforth believed to be a mole with important information; a rogue crew of agents follows him, searches his apartment, and even seduces him in order to find out what he knows. At the same time, loyal agents--who also believe he's a mole--follow and protect him from predation by the rogues. Lori Singer plays a beautiful blonde spy with a conscience and an astonishing backless dress; Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, and Edward Herrmann are agents trying to second-guess each other; Jim Belushi plays Hanks's best friend, a jealous percussionist, and Carrie Fisher plays Belushi's wife, a flautist who's infatuated with Hanks and wants him to make some jungle love. Hanks plays it straight and is reliably pleasant. In the hands of Hitchcock, this might have generated some real suspense; as it is, it's amusing with some good twists, some weak gags, and one remarkable bicycle stunt. --Bret Fetzer

In this hilarious undercover comedy, violinist Richard Drew (Hanks) is mistaken for a spy after wearing one red shoe and triggers a game of rivalry between two feuding CIA bosses (Charles Durning, Dabney Coleman). Though Richard is mugged, shot at and chased, he remains unaware that he is an object of suspicion and even falls in love with the agent (Lori Singer) who's trailing him. Meanwhile, his friend's (Jim Belushi) love-starved wife (Carrie Fisher) has designs on him as well.

Mystery Train

Elvis may not be alive, but his spirit continues to permeate the American cultural landscape. Jim Jarmusch pays tribute his legacy in his funky third feature, Mystery Train. The name comes from the great bluesy recording Elvis made for Sun Records in 1955, but the stories of wandering tourists and lost souls drifting through Memphis come from the mind of Jarmusch. Three different tales play out in a single 24-hour period, a loose trilogy spinning around a fleabag hotel manned by a sleepy Screamin' Jay Hawkins and his eager bellboy Cinqué Lee. A young Japanese couple arrives in Memphis to take the Elvis tour, an Italian woman (Nicoletta Braschi of Life Is Beautiful) takes possession of her dead husband's ashes and gets a surprise visit from a wandering spirit, and three Memphis lowlifes (including indie stalwart Steve Buscemi and Clash guitarist Joe Strummer) take an aimless and ultimately fateful midnight cruise around town. Jarmusch lazily unfolds his tales at the speed of life, the unhurried rhythms lending the deadpan mix of quirky Americana, pop culture, and cinematic poetry a quietly lived-in quality, while he juggles timelines in a trick Quentin Tarantino borrowed for Pulp Fiction. The offbeat interweaving is just another pattern to the crazy quilt, lovely examples of the mercurial playfulness of life in Jarmusch's America. --Sean Axmaker

After the critical triumphs of Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law, director Jim Jarmusch was called 'the most arresting filmmaker to surface in the American cinema by The New York Times. Mystery Train is a 'smart and curiously affecting (The Nation) comedy, that is funny and thoroughly satisfying (The New York Times)! Named after an Elvis Presleyhit, Mystery Train interweaves three engrossing stories, all centering around the Presley legend and his beloved hometown of Memphis. As the characters paths collidethrough laughter, fear and fateyou can practically feel the presence of the King himself in every scene and his legacy impressed on a generation of equally lost souls in 'this wry, brilliantly structured comedy (Boxoffice).