Tucker, Jonathan

The Ruins (Unrated Edition)

Whether you consider plants a source of terror or not will ultimately determine how you feel about the grisly horror movie The Ruins, but director Carter Smith and his cast and crew certainly give their all in bringing the chills of Scott Smith's novel to the big screen. Jena Malone (Saved) and Shawn Ashmore (the X-Men franchise) are the name actors in a pair of American couples down Mexico way who are ambushed by hostile Mayans and forced to the top of an ancient temple, where a monstrous and diabolically clever entity awaits them. Director Smith and his talented crew (which includes cinematographer Darius Khondji of Se7en fame and composer Graeme Revell) create a visually impressive spookshow but can't quite deliver genuine suspense (gore, however, is handled capably), and Scott Smith's script boils away much of the character development and mounting terror in his book, which also strands the likeable cast. The movie's monster, so alarming and imaginative in the original novel, is likely to provoke as many laughs as screams from filmgoers, especially when it reveals its unique talent. -- Paul Gaita

Based on the terrifying best-seller by Scott Smith "The Ruins" follows a group of friends who become entangled in a brutal struggle for survival after visiting a remote archaeological dig in the Mexican jungle where they discover something deadly living among the ruins. "The Ruins" stars Jonathan Tucker ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre" "The Black Donnellys") Jena Malone ("Pride and Prejudice" "Donnie Darko") Shawn Ashmore ("X-Men: The Last Stand") Laura Ramsey ("She's the Man") and Joe Anderson ("Across the Universe").System Requirements:Running Time: 90 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/MONSTERS & MUTANTS Rating: UNRATED UPC: 097361385846 Manufacturer No: 138584

In the Valley of Elah

In career Army officer Hank Deerfield's worldview, the American military exists to bring order to the world, and honor and dignity to every one of its soldiers. As played by Tommy Lee Jones, in a layered performance that will haunt the viewer long after the film is over, Deerfield wears the Army life like he does his standard-issue white T-shirts--unconsciously making a cheap motel bed with crisp inspection-ready corners. Yet if war is hell, the purgatory for the relatives of damaged soldiers can cause far more anguish, and Paul Haggis' quietly devastating In the Valley of Elah tells this story through Deerfield, who is desperately trying to piece together the fate of his adored son Mike, a soldier in Iraq.

Mike's company has returned from duty, but he is missing; Hank flies from Tennessee to Fort Rudd in the Southwest, to conduct his own investigation into the disappearance. There he meets a smart but put-upon police officer (Charlize Theron, glammed-down but still showing a bit too much sexy collarbone for a cop) who also smells something off in the Army's official story of the disappearance. The two form an unlikely team, but as a friend tells Deerfield early on, "You gotta trust somebody sometime, Hank," and Mike's vanishing is Hank's tipping point.

As Hank pieces together the horrifying story of Mike's fate, the incremental pain becomes etched in Jones' ragged features, and the camera captures all of it--far more powerfully than could a million words of reportage from the front lines. Theron's performance is also strong, and Susan Sarandon is moving if underutilized as Hank's grief-stricken wife, robbed of the simple nuclear family life she so wanted. "They shouldn't send heroes to places like Iraq," says one of Mike's buddies late in the film, and it's the viewers' collective sorrow--and the film's great achievement--to feel that at the deepest human level. --A.T. Hurley

Mike Deerfield returns to the U.S. after his tour of duty in Iraq and abruptly goes missing. His father Hank a spit-and-polish ex-MP from the Vietnam era goes looking for him. What he finds goes to the heart of American combat experiences in the Iraqi conflict. Academy Award?-winning* Crash filmmaker Paul Haggis teams with Oscar?- winning* actors Tommy Lee Jones Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon in a probing powerful fact-based look at fathers and sons?and at a nation and the young soldiers it sends into battle. Jones plays Hank whose quest lays bare a tangled web of cover-up murder mystery and profound revelation about the personal costs of war.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/MILITARY & WAR UPC: 085391176275 Manufacturer No: 117627

Sleepers

Dramatization of the true story of four boys who are imprisoned for a year in the Wilkinson Home for Boys changing them forever. As adults one is a lawyer, one a reporter, & two are professional hit men and all are still filled with the pain & fear of their year in Wilkinson.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 3-FEB-2004
Media Type: DVD

The first thing you need to know about Sleepers is that it's based on a novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra that was allegedly based on a true story. The movie repeats this bogus claim, which was attacked and determined by a wide majority to be misleading. Knowing this, Sleepers can be a problematic movie because it's too neat, too clean, too manipulative in terms of legal justice and dramatic impact to be truly convincing. And yet, with its stellar cast directed by Barry Levinson, the movie succeeds as gripping entertainment, and its tale of complex morality--despite a dubious emphasis on homophobic revenge--is sufficiently provocative. It's about four boys in New York's Hell's Kitchen district who are sent to reform school, where they must endure routine sexual assaults by the sadistic guards. Years after their release, the opportunity for revenge proves irresistible for two of the young men, who must then rely on the other pair of friends (Brad Pitt, Jason Patric), a loyal priest (Robert De Niro), and a shabby lawyer (Dustin Hoffman) to defend them in court. Despite the compelling ambiguities of the story, there's never any doubt about how we're supposed to feel, and the screenplay glosses over the story's most difficult moral dilemmas. And yet, Sleepers grabs your attention and pulls you into its intense story of friendship and the price of loyalty under extreme conditions. The movie's New York settings are vividly authentic, and Minnie Driver makes a strong impression as a long-time friend of the loyal group of guys. --Jeff Shannon

The Black Donnellys - The Complete Series

From the Oscar-winning writers of Crash and the writer of Million Dollar Baby comes a bold and edgy crime-drama seriesThe Black Donnellys. Four very different Irish-American brothers - Kevin Jimmy Tommy and Sean - have sworn to live by the code of "family first." But as they become increasingly involved in the ruthless world of New Yorkorganized crime their loyalties to their friends to their loved ones and especially to each other will be put to the ultimate test. Available on DVD for the first time this explosive 3-disc set includes all 13 episodes including seven episodes that never aired on NBC.System Requirements:Running Time: 171 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 025195011136 Manufacturer No: 61101328

The Virgin Suicides

Previously criticized for her marginal acting skills, Sofia Coppola made her directorial debut with The Virgin Suicides and silenced her detractors. No amount of coaching from her director father (Francis Coppola) or husband (Spike Jonze) could have guaranteed a film this assured, and in adapting Jeffrey Eugenides's novel, Coppola demonstrates the sensitivity and emotional depth that this material demands. Surely the pain of youth and public criticism found its way into her directorial voice; in the story of four sisters who self-destruct under the steady erosion of their youthful ideals, one can clearly sense Coppola's intimate connection to the inner lives of her characters.

Played in a delicate minor key, the film is heartbreaking, mysterious, and soulfully funny, set in a Michigan suburb of the mid-1970s but timeless and universal to anyone who's been a teenager. The four surviving Lisbon sisters lost a sibling to suicide, and as its title suggests, the film will chart their mutual course to oblivion under the vigilance of repressive parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods, perfectly cast). But The Virgin Suicides is more concerned with life in that precious interlude of adolescence, when the Lisbon girls are worshipped by the neighborhood boys, their notion of perfection epitomized by Lux (Kirsten Dunst) and her storybook love for high-school stud Trip (Josh Hartnett). Unfolding at the cusp of innocence and sexual awakening, and recalled as a memory, The Virgin Suicides is, ultimately, about the preservation of the Lisbon sisters by their own deaths--suspended in time, polished to perfection, and forever untainted by adulthood. --Jeff Shannon

In a quiet Michigan community in the mid-1970s, neighborhood boys try to piece together the lives of the five Lisbon sisters, kept isolated by their over-protective parents.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 9-AUG-2005
Media Type: DVD

The Ruins

Whether you consider plants a source of terror or not will ultimately determine how you feel about the grisly horror movie The Ruins, but director Carter Smith and his cast and crew certainly give their all in bringing the chills of Scott Smith's novel to the big screen. Jena Malone (Saved) and Shawn Ashmore (the X-Men franchise) are the name actors in a pair of American couples down Mexico way who are ambushed by hostile Mayans and forced to the top of an ancient temple, where a monstrous and diabolically clever entity awaits them. Director Smith and his talented crew (which includes cinematographer Darius Khondji of Se7en fame and composer Graeme Revell) create a visually impressive spookshow but can't quite deliver genuine suspense (gore, however, is handled capably), and Scott Smith's script boils away much of the character development and mounting terror in his book, which also strands the likeable cast. The movie's monster, so alarming and imaginative in the original novel, is likely to provoke as many laughs as screams from filmgoers, especially when it reveals its unique talent. -- Paul Gaita

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre adheres to the pure and simple slasher movie formula: Introduce a gaggle of sexy young people, make vague gestures to distinguish them--Jessica Biel (Summer Catch) wants to get married and doesn't like pot, so she's our moral compass--then start hacking them to pieces one by one. The visual palette includes grimy crucified dolls, fly-specked pig carcasses, body parts floating in murky jars, a tobacco-chewing redneck sheriff, and many slender beams of sunlight cutting through dank, dusty interiors. The camera lovingly photographs Biel's tank-topped bosom and sculpted abs as she's running in terror from a bloated, chainsaw-wielding, human-skin-wearing maniac. This remake lacks the macabre comedy of the original; it's all about the nauseating sensation of waiting for something to jump out of the dark. Also featuring Eric Balfour (Six Feet Under) and R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket, Mail Call). --Bret Fetzer

Inspired by a true story and the classic 1974 film. A group of teenagers take a detour from a road trip and what happens next is beyond anyone?s darkest fears and raw nightmares.

Hostage

You get two hostage crises for the price of one in Hostage, an overwrought but otherwise involving thriller grounded by Bruce Willis's solid lead performance. Making a dramatic pit-stop on his way to Die Hard 4, Willis plays a traumatized former Los Angeles hostage negotiator, now working as a nearly-divorced police chief in sleepy Ventura County, California. Willis suddenly finds himself amidst two potentially deadly stand-offs when a trio of hapless teenagers seize hostages in the fortress-like home of an accountant (Kevin Pollack) whose connections to organized crime result in Willis struggling to rescue his estranged wife and daughter, who are being held hostage by faceless thugs at an undisclosed location. Having directed two of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell video games, director Florent Siri brings plenty of slick, competent filmmaking to Willis's desperate dilemma, and the film boasts a gritty, graphic style that draws attention away from implausible plot twists. The bothersome, over-the-top performances by the teenaged villains also slightly compromise this gloomy but emotionally gripping adaptation of Robert Crais's novel, named as one of Amazon.com's best books of 2001. --Jeff Shannon

A former Los Angeles hostage negotiator working in a small town must deal with two hostage situations, one involving his family being held hostage.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 7-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD

Pulse (Unrated Widescreen Edition)

Pulse provides clear evidence that by the summer of 2006, the cycle of American remakes of Japanese horror films had reached its inevitable downturn. After peaking with the Ring and scoring a marginal success with The Grudge, the cycle was almost guaranteed to sink to the low-point of this unnecessary and mostly lackluster remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 shocker. It benefits from a standard upgrade in CGI effects and doom-laden "bleak-chic" atmosphere, but it's almost completely devoid of suspense as a group of college students led by Mattie (played by Kristin Bell, TV's Veronica Mars) investigate the suicide of Mattie's boyfriend and discover a kind of wi-fi conduit that allows malevolent spirits to be transmitted from their afterlife to our world via the Internet - think of it as kind of a broadband connection from hell, if you will. Pretty soon it's obvious that Pulse is trying (as Kurosawa's original film before it) to serve as cautionary tale about how we've allowed our lives to become numbed and devalued by using technologies (computers, cell-phones, PDAs, etc.) that keep us all connected at the expense of personal intimacy. Many of the creepiest images from the original Pulse are carried over here, and director Jim Sonzero does his best to keep the cautionary themes intact, but at some point (and after a great deal of pre-release tinkering to fit the obligatory PG-13 rating for the lucrative teen market) you have to ask yourself: why bother? --Jeff Shannon

The year s most original horror film Pulse takes fear into new territory the very devices we trust to get us through the day. When the dead discover a means to contact the living through electronic devices cell phones and computers become open gateways to monstrosities and destruction. Starring Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) Christina Milian (Love Don t Cost a Thing) Ian Somerhalder (Lost) and Rick Gonzalez (Coach Carter) Pulse is loaded with terrifying thrills and gruesome special effects and capped with an astonishing surprise ending.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 796019795951 Manufacturer No: 79595

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (New Line Platinum Series)

The 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre adheres to the pure and simple slasher movie formula: Introduce a gaggle of sexy young people, make vague gestures to distinguish them--Jessica Biel (Summer Catch) wants to get married and doesn't like pot, so she's our moral compass--then start hacking them to pieces one by one. The visual palette includes grimy crucified dolls, fly-specked pig carcasses, body parts floating in murky jars, a tobacco-chewing redneck sheriff, and many slender beams of sunlight cutting through dank, dusty interiors. The camera lovingly photographs Biel's tank-topped bosom and sculpted abs as she's running in terror from a bloated, chainsaw-wielding, human-skin-wearing maniac. This remake lacks the macabre comedy of the original; it's all about the nauseating sensation of waiting for something to jump out of the dark. Also featuring Eric Balfour (Six Feet Under) and R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket, Mail Call). --Bret Fetzer

Prepare yourself for a level of fear like you've never experienced before! From filmmaker Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor Bad Boys II) and starring Jessica Biel ("7th Heaven") comes one of this year's most hardcore and terrifying film. You've been warned.Running Time: 98 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 794043703126